I - THE IRISH MIDWIFE— BY WILLIAM CARLETON. DANDY KEHO’S CHRISTENING. “ Come, neighbours,” said Corny, “ we must dhrink the good woman’s health before we ate, especially as it’s the first time, any how.” “To be sure they will, achora, an’ why not? An’ if it’s the first time, Corny, it won’t be the . Musha! you’re welcome, Mrs. ! an’ jist in time too” — this she said, addressing his mother-in-law, who then entered. “ Look at this swaddy , Mrs ; my soul to happiness, but he’s fit to be the son of a lord. Eh, a pet ? Where was my darlin’ ? Corny, let me dip my finger in the whisky till I rub his gums wid id. That’s my bully ! Oh, the heavens love it, see how it puts the little mouth about lookin’ for it again. Throth you’ll have the spunk in you yet, acushla, an’ it’s a credit to the Kehos you’ll be, if you’re spared, as you will, plaise the heavens !” — See pages 314, 315. THE NEW IRISH JOURNAL OF INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE; FORMING A NATIONAL LIBRARY OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE CONNECTED WITH THE HISTORY, ANTIQUITIES, AND SCENERY OF IRELAND : WITH NUMEROUS ORIGINAL LEGENDS AND STORIES (WRITTEN EXPRESSLY FOR THIS WORK) BY MRS. s. C. IIALL, WM. CARLETON, MARTIN DOYLE, GEORGE PETRIE, &c. &c. ILLUSTRATED WITH ENGRAVINGS BY EMINENT IRISH ARTISTS. SEALS OF IRISH CHIEFS. - ON COLLECT L'R^ARY feikaTNUT HILL, MASS, DUBLIN: PUBLISHED BY JAMES DUFFY, 25, ANGLESE A- STREET, AND SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. 1842. VAr Ho3 EKlSLf Vi / 4) A ^ 03 1 1 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 1 . SATURDAY, JULY 4, 1840. Volume I. THE CASTLE OF AUGHNANURE. THE CASTLE OF AUGHNANURE, COUNTY OF GALWAY. Not many years since there was an extensive district in the west of Ireland, which, except to those inhabiting it, was a sort of terra incognita, or unknown region, to the people of the British isles. It had no carriage roads, no inns or hotels, no towns ; and the only notion popularly formed of it was that of an inhospitable desert — the refugium of malefactors and Irish savages, who set all law at defiance, and into which it would be an act of madness for any civilized man to ven- ture. This district was popularly called the Kingdom of Connemara, a name applied to that great tract extending from the town of Galway to the Killery harbour, bounded on the east by the great lakes called Lough Corrib and Lough Mask, and on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, and comprising within it the baronies of Moycullen and Ballinahmch, and the half barony of Ross. It is not an unknown region now. It has two prosperous towns and several villages, good roads, and comfortable hotels. “ The Queen’s writ will run in it;” and the inhabitants are remarkable for their intelligence, quiet- ness, honesty, hospitality, and many other good qualities ; and in the summer months it is the favourite resort of the artist, antiquary, geologist, botanist, ornithologist, sportsman — in short, of pleasure tourists of all descriptions, and from every quarter of the British empire ; for it is a district singularly rich in its attractions to all those who look for health and pleasure from a summer’s ramble, combined with excitable occupation. Of its picturesque beauties much has already been written. They have been sketched by the practised hand of Inglis, and by the more graphic pencil of Caesar Otway ; but its history and more important antiquities have been as yet but little noticed, and, consequently, generally passed by without attracting the attention or exciting anv interest in the mind of the traveller. We propose to our- selves to supply this defect to some extent, and have conse- quently chosen as the subject of our first illustration the an- cient castle, of which we have presented our readers with a view, and which is the most picturesque, and, indeed, important remain of antiquity within the district which we have described. Journeying along the great road from Galway to Oughterard, and at the distance of about two miles from the latter, the attention of the traveller will most probably be attracted by a beautiful little river, over which, on a natural bridge of lime- stone rock, the road passes ; and looking to the right, towards the wide expanse of the waters of Lough Corrib, he will perceive the grey tower or keep of an extensive castle, once the chief seat or fortress of the O’Flaherties, the hereditary lords of West Connaught, or Connemara. This castle is called the Castle of Aughnanure, or, properly, Achaidh-na-n-Jubhar, Acha-na-n-ure, or the field of the yews — an appellation de- rived from the number of ancient trees of that description which grew around it, but of which only a single tree now survives. This vestige is, however, the most ancient and in- teresting ruin of the locality. Its antiquity must be great in- deed — more than a thousand years ; and, growing as it does out of a huge ledge of limestone rock, and throwing its wi- thered and nearly leafless branches is fantastic forms across 2 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. the little river which divides it from the castle, the pictur- esqueness of its situation is such as the painter must look at with feelings of admiration and delight. It has also its his- torical legend to give it additional interest ; and unfortunately this legend, though quite in harmony with the lone and melan- choly features of the scene, is but too characteristic of the unhappy social and political state of Ireland at the period to which it relates— the most unfortunate period, as it may be emphatically called, of Ireland’s history — that of the civil wars in the middle of the seventeenth century. The principle, how- ever, which we propose to ourselves in the conducting of our publication, will not permit us to give this legend a place in its pages ; it may be learned on the spot ; and we have only alluded to it here, in order to state that it is to the religious veneration kept alive by this tradition that the yew tree of Aughnanure owes its preservation from the fate which has overtaken all its original companions. The Castle of Aughnanure, though greatly dilapidated by time, and probably still more so by the great hurricane of last year, is still in sufficient preservation to convey to those who may examine its ruins a vivid impression of the domestic habits and peculiar household economy of an old Irish chief of nearly the highest rank. His house, a strong and lofty tower, stands in an ample court-yard, surrounded by out- works perforated with shot-holes, and only accessible through its drawbridge gateway-tower. The river, which conveyed his boats to the adjacent lake, and supplied his table -with the luxuries of trout and salmon, washes the rock on which its walls are raised, and forms a little harbour within them. Cel- lars, bake-houses, and houses for the accommodation of his numerous followers, are also to be seen ; and an appendage not usually found in connection with such fortresses also ap- pears, namely, a spacious banqueting-hall for the revels of peaceful times, the ample windows of which exhibit a style of architecture of no small elegance of design and execution. We shall probably in some early number of our Journal give a genealogical account of the noble family to whom this castle belonged ; but in the mean time it may be satisfactory to the reader to give him an idea of the class of persons by whom the chief was attended, and who occasionally required accommodation in his mansion. They are thus enumerated in an ancient manuscript preserved in the College Library : — O’Canavan, his physician ; Mac Gillegannan, chief of the horse ; O’Colgan, his standard-bearer ; Mac Kinnon and O’Mulavill, his brehons, or judges ; the O’Duvans, his atten- dants on ordinary visitings ; Mac Gille- Kelly, his ollave in genealogy and poetry ; Mac Beolain, his keeper of the black bell of St Patrick ; O’Donnell, his master of revels; O’Ki- cherain and O’Conlachtna, the keepers of his bees ; O’Mur- gaile, his chief steward, or collector of his revenues. The date of the erection of this castle is not exactly known, though it was originally inscribed on a stone over its entranco gateway, which existed in the last century. From the style of its architecture, however, it may be assigned with sufficient certainty to the middle of the sixteenth century, with the exception, perhaps, of the banqueting-hall, which appears to be of a somewhat later age. While the town of Galway was besieged in 1651 by the par- liamentary forces under the command of Sir Charles Coote, the Castle of Aughnanure afforded protection to the Lord Deputy the Marquess of Clanricarde, until the successes of his adversaries forced him and many other nobles to seek safety in the more distant wilds of Connemara. This event is thus stated by the learned Roderick O’Flaherty in 1683 : — “ Anno 1651. — Among the many strange and rare vicis- situdes of our own present age, the Marquis of Clanricarde, Lord Deputy of Ireland, the Earl of Castlehaven, and Earl of Clancarty, driven out of the rest of Ireland, were enter- tained, as they landed on the west shore of this lake for a night’s lodging, under tne mean roof of Mortough Boy Bran- hagh, an honest farmer’s house, the same year wherein the most potent monarch of Great Britain, our present sovereign, bowed his imperial triple crown under the boughs of an oak tree, where his life depended on the shade of the tree leaves.” There are several of the official letters of the Marquis pre- served in his Memoirs, dated from Aughnanure, and written during the stormy period of which we have made mention. The Castle of Aughnanure has passed from the family to whom it originally belonged ; but the representative and the chief of his name, Henry Parker O’Flaherty, Esq. of Lemon- field, a descendant in the female line from the celebrated Grania W aille, still possesses a good estate in its vicinity. P THE IRISH IN ENGLAND. NO. I THE WASHERWOMAN. BY MRS S. C. HALL. The only regular washerwomen extant in England at this present moment, are natives of the Emerald Isle. We have — I pray you observe the distinction, gentle rea- der — laundresses in abundance. But washerwomen! — all the washerwomen are Irish. The Irish Washerwoman promises to wash the muslin cur- tains as white as a hound’s tooth, and as sweet as “ new mown hay and she tells the truth. But when she promises to “get them up” as clear as a kitten’s eyes, she tells a story. In nine cases out of ten, the Irish Washerwoman mars her own admirable washing by a carelessness in the “ getting up.” She makes her starch in a hurry, though it requires the most patient blending, the most incessant stirring, the most con- stant boiling, and the cleanest of all skiliits ; and she will not understand the superiority of powder over stone blue, but snatches the blue-bag (originally compounded from the “ heel” or “ toe” of a stocking) out of the half-broken tea- cup, where it lay companioning a lump of yellow soap since last wash — squeezes it into the starch (which, perhaps, she has been heedless enough to stir with a dirty spoon), and then there is no possibility of clear curtains, clear point, clear any thing. “ Biddy, these curtains were as white as snow before you starched them.” “ Thrue for ye, ma’am dear.” “ They are blue now, Biddy.” “ Not all out.” “ No, Biddy, not all over — only here and there." “ Ah, lave off, ma’am, honey, will ye ? — ’tisn’t that I mane ; but there’s a hole worked in the blue-rag, bad luck to it, and more blue nor is wanting gets out ; and the weary’s in the starch, it got lumpy.” “ It could not have got ‘ lumpy’ if it had been well blended.” “ It was blended like butther ; but I just left off stirring one minute to look at the soldiers.” “ Ah, Biddy, an English laundress would not ‘ run after the soldiers !’ ’ Such an observation is sure to offend Biddy’s propriety, and she goes off in a “ huff,” muttering that if they didn’t go “ look afther them, they’d skulk afther them ; it’s the London Blacks does the mischief, and the mistress ought to know that herself. English laundresses indeed ! they haven’t power in their elbow to wash white.” Biddy says all this, and more, for she is a stickler for the honour of her country, and wonders that I should prefer any thing English to every thing Irish. But the fact remains the same. The actual labour necessary at the wash-tub is far better performed by the Irish than the English ; but the order, neatness, and exactness required in “ the getting up,” is better accomplished by the English than the Irish. This is perfectly consistent with the national character of both countries. Biddy Mahony is without exception the most useful person I know, and she knows it also ; and yet it never makes her presuming. It is not only as a washerwoman that her talent shines forth : she gets through as much hard work as two women, though, as she says herself, “ the mistress always finds fault with her finishing touches" There she stands, a fine-looking woman still, though not young ; her large mouth ever ready with its smile ; her features expressive of shrewd good humour ; and her keen grey eyes alive and about, not resting for a moment, and withal cunning, if not keen ; the borders of her cap are twice as deep as they need be, and flap untidily about her face ; she wears a coloured handker- chief inside a dark blue spotted cotton gown, which wraps loosely in front, where it is confined by the string of her apron ; her hands and wrists have a half-boiled appearance, which it is painful to look at — not that she uses as much soda as an English laundress, but she does not spare her personal exertions, and rubs most unmercifully. One bitter frosty day last winter, I saw Biddy standing near the laundry win- dow, stitching away with great industry. “ What are you doing, Biddy?” “ Oh, never heed me, ma’am, honey.” “ Why, Biddy, what a state your left wrist is in ! — it is posi. tively bleeding; you have rubbed all the skin off.” “ And THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 3 ain’t I going to put a skin on it?” she said, smiling through the tears which positive pain had drawn from her eyes, in spite of her efforts to conceal them, and showing me a dou- ble piece of wash leather -which she was sewing together so as to cover the torn flesh. Now, was not that heroism ? But Biddy is a heroine, without knowing it. And in common with many others of her sex and country, her heroism is of that patient, self-denying character which “ passeth show.” She is uniformly patient — cau bear an ex- traordinary quantity of abuse and unkindness, and knows quite well that to a certain degree she is in an enemy’s country. Half the bad opinion of the “ low Irish,” as they are often insultingly termed, arises from old national preju- dices ; the other half is created by themselves, for many of them are provokingly uproarious, and altogether heedless of the manners and opinions of those among whom they live. This is not the case with Biddy ; she has a great deal of what we are apt to call “ cunning” in the poor, but which we gen- teelly denominate “ tact” in the rich. While you imagine she is only pulling out the strings of her apron, she is all eye, ear, and understanding ; she is watchful as a cat ; and if she indulges in an aside jest, which sometimes never finds words, on the peculiarities of her employers, there is nothing very atrocious in the fact. Poor Biddy’s betters do the same, and term it “badinage.” It is not always that we judge the poor and rich by the same law. With young servants the Irish Washerwoman is always a favourite : she is cheerful, tosses a cup to read a fortune in perfection, and not unfrequently, I am sorry to say, has half of a dirty torn pack of cards in her pocket for the same pur- pose. She sings at her work, and through the wreath of curl- ing steam that winds from the upraised skylight of the laun- dry, comes some old time-honoured melody, that in an instant brings the scenes and sounds of Ireland around us. She will rend our hearts with the “ Cruskeen laun,“ or “ Gramachree,” and then strike into “ Garryowen” or “ St Patrick’s Bay,” with the ready transition of interest and feeling that belongs only to her country. Old English servants regard the Irish Washerwoman with suspicion ; they think she does too much for the money, that she gives “ Missus” a bad habit ; and yet they are ready enough to put their own “clothes” into the month’s w'ash, and expect Biddy to “pass them through the tub;” a favour she is too -wise to refuse. Happily for the menage of our English houses, the tempta- tion to thievery which must exist where, as in Dublin, ser- vants are allowed w'hat is termed “ breakfast money,” wkich means that they are not to eat of their employers’ bread, but “find themselves,” and w'hich restriction, all who understand human nature know is the greatest possible inducement to picking and stealing ; happily, I say, English servants have no temptation to steal the necessaries of life ; they are fed and treated as human beings ; and consequently there is not a tithe of the extravagance, the waste, the pilfering, which is to be met with in Irish kitchens. For all this I blame the system rather than the servant; and it is quite odd how Biddy accommodates herself to every modification of system in every house she goes to. The only thin g she cannot bear is to hear her country abused ; even a jest at its expense will send the blood mounting to her cheek; and some years ago (for Biddy and I are old acquaintances) I used to tease her most unmercifully on that head. There is nothing elevates the Irish peasant so highly in my esteem as his earnest love for his country when absent from it. Your well-bred Irishman, in nine cases out of ten, looks discon- certed when you allude to his country, and with either a brogue or a tone, an oily, easy, musical swing of the voice, which is never lost, begs to inquire “ how you knew he was Irish?” and has sometimes the audacity to remark, “ that people cannot help their misfortunes.” But the peasant-born have none of this painful affectation. Hear Biddy when challenged as to her country : the ques- tioner is a lady. “ Thrue for ye, madam, I am Irish, sure, and my people before me, God be praised for it ! I’d be long sorry to dis- grace my counthry, my lady. Fine men and women stays in it and comes out of it, the more’s the pity — that last, I mane ; it’s well enough for the likes of me to lave it ; I could do it no good. But, as to the gentry, the sod keeps them, and sure they might keep on the sod I Ye needn’t be afraid of me, my lady ; I scorn to disgrace my counthry ; I’m not afraid of my character, or work — it’s all I have to be proud of in the wide world.” How much more respect does this beget in every right- thinking mind, than the mean attempt to conceal a fact of which we all, as w-ell as poor Biddy, have a right to be proud ! The greatest hero in the world was unfortunate, but lie was not less a hero ; the most highly favoured country in the world has been in the same predicament, but it is not less a great country. Biddy’s reply, how r ever, to any one in an inferior grade of society, is very different. “ Is it Irish ? — to be sure I am. Do ye think I’m going to deny my counthry, God bless it ! Throth and it’s myself that is, and proud of that same. Irish ! what else would I be, I wonder ?” Poor Biddy ! her life has been one long-drawn scene of incessant, almost heart-rending labour. From the time she w r as eight years old, she earned her own bread ; and any, ignorant of the wild spirit-springing outbursts of glee, that might almost be termed “the Irish epidemic,” wnuld wonder how it was that Biddy retained her habitual cheerfulness, to say nothing of the hearty laughter she indulges in of an evening, and the Irish jig she treats the servants to at the kitchen Christmas merry-making. Last Christmas, indeed, Biddy was not so gay as usual. Our pretty housemaid had for tw r o or three years made it a regular request that Biddy should put her own w-edding ring in the kitchen pudding — I do not know why, for Jessie never had the luck to find it in her division. But so it was. A merry night is Christmas eve in our cheerful English homes — The cook puffed out with additional importance, weighing her ingredients according to rule, for “ a one-pound or two- pound pudding ;” surveying her larded turkey, and pro- nouncing upon the relative merits of the sirloin which is to be “ roast for the parlour,” and “ the ribs” that are destined for the kitchen ; although she has a great deal to do, like all English cooks she is in a most sw'eet temper, because there is a great deal to eat ; and she exults over the “ dozens” of mince pies, the soup, the savoury fish, the huge bundles of celery, and the rotund barrel of oysters, in a manner that must be seen to be understood. I'he housemaid is eqally busy in her department. The groom smuggles in the mistle- toe, which the old butler slyly suspends from one of the bacon hooks in the ceiling, and then kisses the cook beneath. The green-grocer’s boy gets w T ell rated for not bringing “ red berries on all the holly.” The evening is wound up with po- tations, “ pottle deep,” of ale and hot elderberry -wine, and a loud cheer echoes through the house when the clock strikes tw r elve. Poor must the family be, who have not a few' pounds of meat, a few loaves of bread, and a few shillings, to distri- bute amongst some old pensioners on Christmas eve. In our small household, Biddy has been a positive neces- sary for many Christmas days, and as many Christmas eves . she was never told to come — it was an understood thing. Biddy rang the gate bell every twenty-fourth of December, at six o’clock, and even the English cook returned her national salutation of “ God save all here,” with cordiality. Jessie, as I have said, is her great ally ; I am sure she has found her at least a score of husbands, in the tea cups, in as many months. The morning of last Christmas eve, however, Biddy came not. Six o’clock, seven o’clock, eight o’clock, and the maids were not up. “ How did they know the hour ? — Biddy never rang.” The house wvas in a state of commotion. The cook declaring, bit by bit, “ that she knew how it would hend ! — it w r as halways the way with them Hirish. Oh, dirty, ungrate- ful ! — very pretty ! Who was to eat the copper, or boil the am, or see after the sallery, or butter the tins, or old the pudding cloth?” — while Jessie w'himpered, “ or drop the ring in the kitchen pudding /” Instead of the clattering domestic bustle of old Christmas, every one looked sulky, and, as usual when a household is not astir in the early morning, every thing w'ent wrong. I got out of temper myself, and, resolved if possible never to speak to a servant when angry, I put on my furs, and set forth to see what had become of my poor industrious country- woman. She lived at the corner of Gore Lane ! — the St Giles’s of our respectable parish of Kensington ; and w'hen I entered her little room — which, by the w r ay, though never orderly, was always clean — Biddy, who had been sitting over the embers 4 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. of the fire, instead of sending the beams of her countenance to greet me, turned away, and burst into tears. This was unexpected, and the ire which had in some degree arisen at the disappointment that had disturbed the house, vanished altogether. I forgot to sav that Biddy had been happily relieved from the blight of a drunken husband about six years ago, and laboured to support three little children without ever having entertained the remotest idea of sending them to the parish. She had “ her families,” for whom she washed at their own houses, and at over hours “took in” work at her small cottage. To assist in this, and also from motives of charity, she employed a young girl distinguished by the name of Louisa, whom she preserved from worse than death. This creature she found starving ; and although she brought fever amongst her children, and her preserver lost much employment in con- sequence, Biddy “ saw her through the sickness, and, by the goodness of Almighty God, would be nothing the worse or thepoorer for having befriended a motherless child.” Those who bestow from the treasures of their abundance, deserve praise ; but those who, like the poor Irish Washer- woman, bestow half of their daily bread, and suffer the needy to shelter beneath their roof, deserve blessings. The cause of Biddy’s absence, and the cause of Biddy’s tears, I will endeavour to repeat in her own words : — “ I come home last night, as usual, more dead than alive, until I got sitting down with the childre ; for, having put two or three potatoes, as usual, my lady, to heat, just on the bar, I thought, tired as I was, I’d iron out the few small things ‘ Loo’ had put in blue, particularly a clane cap and hand- kercher, and the aprons for to-day, as yer honor likes to see me nice ; and the boy got a prize at school ; for, let me do as I would, I took care they should have the edication that makes the poor rieh. Well, I noticed that Loo’s hair was hanging in ringlets down her face, and I says to her, ‘ My honey,’ I says, ‘ if Annie was you, and she’s my own, I’d make her put up her hair plain ; the way her Majesty wears it is good enough, I should think, for such as you, Louisa and with that she says, ‘ It might do for Annie ; but for her part, her mo- ther was a tradeswoman.’ Well, I bit my tongue to hinder myself from hurting her feelings by telling her what her mo- ther was, for the blush qf shame is the only one that misbecomes a woman s cheek. But I waited till our work was over, and, picking her out the two mealy potatoes , and sharing, as I always did, my half pint of beer with her, when I had it, I raisoned with her, as I often did before ; and looking to where my three sleeping childre lay, little Jemmy’s cheek blooming like a rose, on his prize book, which he took into bed with him, I called God to witness, that though nature, like, would draw my heart more to my own flesh and blood, yet I’d see to her as I would to them. She made me no answer, but put the potatoes aside, and said, ‘ Mother, go to bed.’ I let her call me mother,’ con- tinued Biddy, ‘ it’s such a sweet sound, and hinders one, when one has it to call, from feeling lonesome in the world ; it’s the shelter for many a breaking heart, and the home of many a wild one ; ould as I am, I miss my mother still ! ‘ Louisa,’ I says, ‘ I’ve heard my own childre their prayers — kneel down, a’lanna, there, and get over them.” ‘ My throat’s so sore,’ she says, ‘ I can’t say ’em out. Don’t ye see I could not eat the potatoes ?’ This was about half past twelve, and I had spoke to the po-lis to give me a call at five. But when I woke, the grey of the morning was in the room with me ; and knowing where I ought to have been, I hustled on my things, and hearing a po-lis below the window (we know them by the steady tramp they have, as if they’d rather go slow than fast), I says, ‘ If you plaise, what’s the clock, and why didn’t you call me?’ * It’s half past seven,’ he says ; ‘ and sure the girl, when she went out at half past five, said you war up.’ ‘ My God ! — what girl ?’ I says, turning all over like a corpse ; and then I missed my bonnet and shawl, and saw my box empty ; she had even taken the book from under the child’s cheek. But that wasn’t all. I’d have forgiven her for the loss of the clothes, and the tears she forced from the eyes of ray innocent child ; I’d forgive her for making my heart grow oulder in half an hour, than it had grown in its whole life before; but my wedding ring, ma’am! — her head had often this shoulder for its pillow, and I’d throw this arm over her, so. Oh, ma’am darlint, could you believe it ? — she stole my wedding ring aff my hand — the hand that had saved and slaved for her ! The ring ! oh, many’s the tear I’ve shed on it ; and many a time, when I’ve been next to starving, and it has glittered in my eyes, I’ve been tempted to part with it, but I couldn’t. It had grown thin, like myself, with the hardship of the world ; and yet when I’d look at it twisting on my poor wrinkled finger, I’d think of the times gone by, of him who had put it on, and would have kept his promise but for the temptation of drink, and what it lades to ; and those times, when throuble would be crushing me into the earth, I’d think of what I heard onct — that a ring was a thing like etarnity, having no beginning nor end ; and I’d turn it, and turn it, and turn it ! and find comfort in believing that the little pen- ance here was nothing in comparison to that without a beginning or an end that we war to go to hereafter — it might be in heaven, or it might (God save us !) be in the other place ; and,” said poor Biddy, “ I drew a dale of consolation from that, and she knew it — she, the sarpint, that I shared my children’ s food with — she knew it, and, while I slept the heavy sleep of hard labour, she had the heart to rob me ! — to rob me of the only treasure (barring the childre) I had in the world ! I’m a great sinner ; I can’t say, God forgive her ; nor I can’t work ; and it’s put me apast doing my duty ; and Jessie, the craythur, laid ever so much store by it, on account of the little innocent charrums ; and, altogether, it’s the sorest Christmas day that ever came to me. Oh, sure, I wouldn’t have that girl’s heart in my breast for a goolden crown — the ingratitude of her bates the world!” It really was a case of the most hardened ingratitude I had ever known — the little wretch ! to rob the only friend she ever had, while sleeping in the very bed where she had been tended, and tendered, and cared for, so unceasingly. “ She might take all I had in the world, if she had only left me that,'” she repeated continually, while rocking herself back- wards and forwards over the fire, after the fashion of her country ; “ the thrifle of money, the rags, and the child’s book — all — and I’d have had a clane breast. I could forgive her from my heart, but I can’t forgive her for taking my ring — for taking my wedding ring !” This was not all. The girl was traced and captured ; and the same day Biddy was told she must go to Queen-square to identify the prisoner. “ Me,” she exclaimed, “who never was in the place of the law before, what can I say but that she tuck it?” An Irish cause always creates a sensation in a police-office. The magistrates smile at each other, the reporter cuts his pencil and arranges his note-book, and the clerk covers the lower part of his face with his hand, to conceal the expression that plays around his mouth. Biddy’s curtsey — a genuine Irish dip — and her opening speech, which she commenced by wishing their honours a merry Christmas and plenty of them, and that they might have the power of doing good to the end of their days, and never meet with ingratitude for that same,” was the only absurdity connected with her deposition. When she saw the creature with whom her heart had dwelt so long, in the custody of the police, she was completely overcome, and intermingled her evidence with so man) entreaties that mercy should be shown the hardened delin- quent, that the magistrate was sensibly affected. Short as was the time that had elapsed between Louisa’s elopement and discovery, she had spent the money and panned the ring : and twenty hands at least were extended to the Irish Washerwoman with money to redeem the pledge. Poor Biddy had never been so rich before in all her life ; but that did not console her for the sentence passed upon her protege, and it was a long time before she was restored to her usual spirits. She flagged and pined ; and when the spring began to advance a little, and the sun to shine, her misery became quite troublesome, her continual wail being “ for the poor sinful craythur who was shut up among stone walls, and would be sure to come out worse than she went in !’ The old cook lived to grow thoroughly ashamed of the reproaches she cast on Biddy, and Jessie shows her off on all occasions as a specimen of an Irish Washerwoman. Quick Senses of the Arab Their eyesight is pecu- liarly sharp and keen. Almost before I could on the horizon discern more than a moving speck, my guides would detect a stranger, and distinguish upon a little nearer approach, by his garb and appearance, the tribe to which he belonged - WeUsted’s City of the Caliphs. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 5 THE IRISH IN 1644: AS DESCRIBED BY A FRENCHMAN OF THAT PERIOD. We are indebted to our talented countryman, Crofton Croker, for the translation of the tour of a French traveller, M. de la Boullaye Le Gouz, in Ireland in 1644. Its author journeyed from Dublin to the principal cities and towns in Ireland, and sketches what he saw in a very amusing man- ner. The value of the publication, however, is greatly en- hanced by the interesting notes appended to it by Mr Croker and some of his friends ; and as the work is less known in Ireland than it should be, we extract from it the Frenchman’s sketch of the habits and customs of the Irish people as they prevailed two centuries back, in the belief that they will be acceptable to our readers. “ Ireland, or Hibernia, has always been called the Island of Saints, owing to the number of great men who have been born there. The natives are known to the English under the name of Iriche, to the French under that of Hibernois, which they take from the Latin, or of Irois, from the English, or Lr- landois from the name of the island, because land signifies ground. They call themselves Ayrenake, in their own lan- guage, a tongue which you must learn by practice, because they do not write it ; they learn Latin in English characters, with which characters they also write their own language ; and so I have seen a monk write, but in such a way as no one but himself could read it. Saint Patrick was the apostle of this island, who according to the natives blessed the land, and gave his malediction to all venomous things ; and it cannot be denied that the earth and the timber of Ireland, being transported, will contain neither serpents, worms, spiders, nor rats, as one sees in the west of England and in Scotland, where all particular per- sons have their trunks and the boards of their floors of Irish ■wood ; and in all Ireland there is not to be found a serpent or toad. The Irish of the southern and eastern coasts follow the customs of the English ; those of the north, the Scotch. The others are not very polished, and are called by the English savages. The English colonists were of the English church, and the Scotch were Calvinists, but at present they are all Puritans. The native Irish are very good Catholics, though knowing little of their religion ; those of the Hebrides and of the North acknowledge only Jesus and St Colombe [ ColumkiU], but their faith is great in the church of Rome. Before the English revolution, when an Irish gentleman died, his Bri- tannic majesty became seised of the property and tutellage of the children of the deceased, whom they usually brought up in the English Protestant religion. Lord Insequin [Inchi- quin ] was educated in this manner, to whom the Irish have given the name of plague or pest of his country. The Irish gentlemen eat a great deal of meat and butter, and but little bread. They drink milk, and beer, into which they put laurel leaves, and eat bread baked in the English manner. The poor grind barley and peas between two stones, and make it into bread, wdiich they cook upon a small iron table heated on a tripod ; they put into it some oats, and this bread, which in the form of cakes they call haraan, they eat with great draughts of buttermilk. Their beer is very good, and the eau de vie, which they call brandovin [brandy] excellent. The ,butter, the beef, and the mutton, are better than in England. The towns are built in the English fashion, but the houses in the country are in this manner : — Two stakes are fixed in the ground, across which is a transverse pole to support two rows of rafters on the tw r o sides, which are covered with leaves and straw. The cabins are of another fashion. There are four walls the height of a man, supporting rafters over wdiich they thatch with straw and leaves. They are without chimneys, and make the fire in the middle of the hut, which greatly incommodes those who are not fond of smoke. The castles or houses of the nobility consist of four walls ex- tremely high, thatched with straw ; but, to tell the truth, they are nothing but square towers without windows, or at least having such small apertures as to give no more light than there is in a prison. They have little furniture, and cover their rooms with rushes, of which they make their beds in summer, and of straw in winter. They put the rushes a foot deep on their floors, and on their windows, and many of them ornament the ceilings with branches. They are fond of the harp, on which nearly all play, as the English do on the fiddle, the French on the lute, the Ita- lians on the guitar, the Spaniards on the castanets, the Scotch on the bagpipe, the Swiss on the fife, the Germans on the trumpet, the Dutch on the tambourine, and the Turks on the flageolet. The Irish carry a scquine [s£etn] or Turkish dagger, which they dart very adroitly at fifteen paces distance ; and have this advantage, that if they remain masters of the field of battle, there remains no enemy ; and if they are routed, they fly in such a manner that it is impossible to catch them. I have seen an Irishman ivith ease accomplish tw r enty-five leagues a day. They march to battle with the bagpipes instead of fifes ; but they have few drums, and they use the musket and cannon as we do. They are better soldiers abroad than at home. The red-haired are considered the most handsome in Ire- land. The women have hanging breasts ; and those who are freckled, like a trout, are esteemed the most beautiful. ! i The trade of Ireland consists in salmon and herrings, wdiich they take in great numbers. You have one hundred and tw'enty herrings for an English peimy, equal to a carolus of France, in the fishing time. They import wine and salt from France, and sell there strong frize cloths at good prices. The Irish are fond of strangers, and it costs little to travel amongst them. When a traveller of good address enters their houses with assurance, he has but to draw a box of sinisine, or snuff, and offer it to them ; then these people re- ceive him with admiration, and give him the best they have to eat. They love the Spaniards as their brothers, the French as their friends, the Italians as their allies, the Germans as their relatives, the English and Scotch as their irreconcileable enemies. I was surrounded on my journey from Kilkinik [. Kilkenny ] to Cachel [ Cashel ] by a detachment of twenty Irish soldiers ; and when they learned I was a Frankard (it is thus they call us), they did not molest me in the least, but made me offers of service, seeing that I was neither Sazanach [Natron] nor English. The Irish, whom the English call savages, have for their head-dress a little blue bonnet, raised two fingers-breadth in front, and behind covering their head and ears. Their doublet has a long body and four skirts ; and their breeches are a pantaloon of white frize, which they call trousers. Their shoes, which are pointed, they call brogues, with a single sole. They often told me of a proverb in English, ‘ Airische brogues for Englich dogues’ [Irish brogues for English dops] 4 the shoes of Ireland for the dogs of England,’ meaning that their ehoes are worth more than fie English. For cloaks they have five or six yar / s of frize drawn round the neck, the body, and over the hesid, and they never quit this mantle, either in sleeping, working, or eating. The ge- nerality of them have no shirts, and about as many lice as hairs on their heads, which they kill before each other without any ceremony. The northern Irish have for their only dress a breeches, and a covering for the back, without bonnets, shoes, or stockings. The women of the north have a double rug, girded round their middle and fastened to the throat. Those bordering on Scotland have not more clothing. The girls of Ireland, even those living in towms, have for their head-dress only a ribbon, and if married, they have a napkin on the head in the manner of the Egyptians. The body of their gowns comes only to their breasts, and when they are engaged in work, they gird their petticoat with their sash about the ab- domen. They wear a hat and mantle very large, of a brown colour [ couleur minime ] of which the cape is of coarse woollen frize, in the fashion of the women of Lower Normandy. ” BARBARITY OF THE LAW IN IRELAND A CENTURY AGO. 44 Last week, at the assizes of Kilkenny, a fellow who was to be tried for robbery, not pleading, a jury was appointed to try whether he was wilfully mute, or by the hands of God ; and they giving a verdict that he was wilfully mute, he was condemned to be pressed to death. He accordingly suffered on Wednesday, pursuant to his sentence, which was as fol- lows : — That the criminal shall be confined in some low dark room, -where he shall be laid on his back, with no covering except round his loins, and shall have as much -weight laid upon him as he can bear, and more ; that he shall have ns> 6 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. thing to live upon but the worst bread and water ; and the day that he eats he shall not drink, nor the day that he drinks he shall not eat ; and so shall continue till he dies.” Reilly's Dublin News Letter , August 9, 1740. WHIPS FOR A PENNY. BY MARTIN DOYLE. * l Whips for a Penny!” This cry attracted my attention; I looked about, and saw a stout young man with a bundle of children’s whips under his arm, standing on a flagway in Lud- gate-street, in the centre of a group of little boys, who if not wealthy enough to buy from his stock, were at least unani- mously disposed to do so. The whips, considering the price, were very neatly made, and cracked melodiously, as the man took frequent opportunities of proving, for the cadences of his almost continuously repeated cry “ Whips for a penny, whips for a penny !” were emphatically marked by a time- keeping “ crack, crack,” to the delight of the juvenile audi- tors. Curious to ascertain if this person would meet such a de- mand for these Lilliputian whips as would afford him the means of living with reasonable comfort, I watched his move- ments for nearly an hour, during which period he disposed of five or six of them. One of the purchasers was a good-na- tured looking woman, with a male child about two years old, to whom she presented the admired object. The infant, with instinctive perception of its proper use, grasped the handle with his tiny fingers, and promptly commenced a smart but not very effective course of flagellation on the bosom from which he had derived his earlier aliment, to the infinite de- light of the doting mother. A fine boy, strutting about in frock and trousers, was next introduced by his nurse to the vender of thongs, and the first application of his lash was made to an unfortunate little dog which had been separated from his owner, and was at this time roaming about in soli- citude and terror, and probably with an empty stomach, when Master Jack added a fresh pang to his miseries. A hardier customer came next, and flourished his whip the moment he bought it, at some weary and frightened lambs which a butcher’s boy was urging forward through every obstacle, with a bludgeon, towards their slaughter-house. A half-starved kitten, which had ventured within the threshold of a shop, where in piteous posture it seemed to crave protec- tion and a drop of milk, caught the quick eye of a fourth urchin, just as he had untwisted his lash, and was immediately started from its momentary place of refuge by the pursuing imp. A fifth came up, a big, knowing-looking chap, about twelve years old, who, after a slight and contemptuous exa- mination of them, loudly remarked to their owner, “ Vy, these ere vhips a’n’t no good to urt no vun — I’m blowed hif they his.” You young tyrant ! thought I to myself. I was moving off in disgust, when a benevolent-looking gentleman came up and was about to buy one for the happy, open-countenancea boy, who called him uncle, when I took the liberty of putting one of my forefingers to my nose, as the most ready but quiet method of indicating my desire to prevent the completion of his purpose. The gentleman took my hint at once, sup- posing in all probability that there was some mystery in the matter— -perhaps that 1 wished to save him from the awk- ward consequences of purchasing stolen goods, and walked away. I followed him, and overtaking him, touched the rim of my beaver, as nearly as I could imitate the London mode, and at once said, “ My dear sir, excuse me for obtruding my advice upon you, but as you have the organ of benevolence strongly developed, and your little nephew has already indica- tion of its future prominence, if duly exercised, I thought it better that you should not put a whip into his hands, lest Ills better feelings should be counter-influenced. Look there,” continued I, as we reached the steep part of Holbom-hill, “ see that pair of miserable horses endeavouring to keep their footing on the steep and slippery pavement; hear the con- stant reverberations of the driver s whip, which he applies so unmercifully to keep them from falling, by the most forced and unnatural efforts ; see them straining every muscle to drag along their burden, while they pant from pain, terror, and exhaustion ; look at the frequent welts on their poor skins. Depend upon it, the fellow who drives had a penny whip for his first plaything !” The gentleman looked rather earnestly at me. “ You are right ; sir,” said he ; i( early initial tion in the modes of cruelty” “ Precisely,” said L “ The boy-child is taught to terrify any animal that comes within his reach, as soon as he is able to do so ; his parents, sponsors, nurses, friends, are severally disposed to give him for his first present a toy whip, and he soon acquires dex- terity in using it. Man, naturally overbearing and cruel, is rendered infinitely more so by education. He first flogs his wooden horse (the little boy pricked up his ears, and I hope will retain the impression of what passed) and then his living pony or donkey, as the case may be ; he whips every thing that crosses his way ; and even at the little birds, which are happily beyond the reach of his lash, he flings stones, or he robs them of their young, for the mere satisfaction of render- ing them miserable.” “ Ay, sir,” said the gentleman, “ and he becomes a sports- man in course of time, and flogs his pointers, setters, and hounds, for pursuing their instincts — he becomes their tyrant. He goes to one of our universities, perhaps, and drives gigs, tandems, and even stage-coaches, without knowing how to handle the reins ; he blunders, turns corners too sharply, pulls the wrong rein, diverts the well-trained horses from their proper course, which they would have critically pursued but for his interference, nearly oversets the vehicle by his awk- wardness, and then, as if to persuade the lookers on that the fault was not his, he belabours the poor brutes to the utmost of his power ; or it may be, lays on the thong merely for prac- tice until he is proficient enough to apply it knowingly. Are the horses tired, continued he, “ worn out in service ? — lie flogs to keep them alive, and makes a boast of his ingenuity in forcing a jaded set to their journey’s end, by establishing a ‘ raw, and torturing them there.” “ Depend upon it,” said I, “ such a chap had ‘ whips for a penny’ when he was a child.” “ Quite so,” said my companion ; “ you have put this matter before me in a new point of view.” Here we were startled by the familiar sound of the coach whip, and saw a stage-driver flogging in the severest style four heated, panting, and overpowered horses, coming in with a heavily laden coach ; the lash was perpetually laid on ; even the keenest at the draught were flogged, that they might pull on the rest, and the less powerful were flogged to keep up with them. The coachman, no doubt, when a child, had his share of ‘whips for a pennv.’ When he grew up and entered upon his vocation, he perhaps at first compassionated the horses which he was obliged to force to their stages in a given time ; he might have had his favourites among them too, and yet often and severely tested their powers of speed or endurance ; and at length, as they became diseased ana stiff in the limbs, and broken-winded from overwork, he may have satisfied him- self with the reflection, that the fault was not his, that his employer ought to have given him a better team, and that it was a shame for him to ask any coachman to drive such “rum uns.” Habit renders him callous ; he does not no wfeel for the sufferings of the wretched animals he guides and punishes ; nay, he often coolly takes from the boot-box the short handled Tommy, which is merely the well-grown and severer whip of the species which his employer and himself had used in child- hood, when they both bought “ whips for a penny,” and lays it as heavily as his vigorous arm empowers him, on one of the worn-out wheelers, which unhappily for themselves are within range of its infliction. The hackney-coachmen and cabmen, too, “ Though oft I’ve heard good judges say It costs them more for whips than hay,” are not much worse than their more consequential brethren of the whip ; all of them consider the noble creature, subju- gated by their power, and abused mo3t criminally through their cruelty, as a mere piece of machinery, to be flogged along like a top as long as it can be kept going. We reached the upper end of one of the numerous lanes leading from the Thames ; five splendid horses were endea- vouring to draw up a heavy waggon-load of coals ; but as the two first turned into the street at right angles to the others, they were not aiding those behind them. Being stopped in their progress for some time, by a crowd of coaches, chaises, cabs, carts, and omnibuses, the labour of keeping the waggon on the spot it had already attained, and whicn was steep and slippery, rested upon the three hinder horses. At length the team was put in motion, all the leading ones being useless in succession as they turned to the angle of the street ; and just at the critical point, when the whole enormous draught rested on the shaft horse, the waggoner, taxing its strength beyond its capability, struck it with the whip. The noble brute made THE IRISH PENN Y JOURNAL. 7 one desperate plunge to execute his tyrant’s will, and fell — • dead upon the pavement. “ I think,” said my companion, “ that we have had a good lesson upon whips to-day ; I should refer any other gift for my little boy here ; for though it may e urged that he, like the rest of his sex at the same age, would merely make a noise with a whip, and would inflict no serious pain, I am bound to bear in mind the actual fact, that with the very sound of a whip is associated in the imagination of all domesticated animals, the apprehension of pain; that they are terrorized when they hear that sound, even through a child’s hand, and I must therefore conclude that this symbol of cruelty should not be his plaything.” I agreed with him fullv, ancl as our business lay in different directions, we parted at fflackfriar’s Bridge, not, however, until my companion of the hour had handed me his card of address. This was an act of unexpected compliment which I could not return exactly in the same way ; I told him that I had never written my name an a visiting card in my life, but that I wa3 Martin Doyle, at his service, and a contributor to the new Irish Penny Jour- nal, just started in Dublin. “ Is not Dublin,” said he, “in Ireland?” I stared. “ I believe,” added he, “that Ire- land is a pretty place.” I wished the geographical gentleman a rather hasty farewell. As I walked on, I pondered on the many other instances in which the whip is an instrument of terror or tyranny. First, I thought of the Russian bride meekly offering a horsewhip to her lord, as the token of her submission to the infliction of his blows, whenever it might suit his temper to bestow such proofs of tenderness upon her, and of the perpetual system of flagellation, which, as we are told by travellers, is exercised in the dominions of the great autocrat upon wives, children, servants, and cattle. I thought of French postilions — flagella- t.ors of the first order, at least as far as “ cracking” without intermission testifies; and, finally, of the British horse-racer. Horses high in mettle, ardent in the course, without a sti- mulus of any kind, struggle neck and neck for victory ; they approach the winning post; one jockey flogs more power- fully than his compeers ; the agonized horse, in his fearful efforts, is lifted as it were from the ground, by two or three desperate twinings (the stabbing at the sides is. but a variety of the torture) of the cutting whalebone round his flanks ; and at the critical instant, making a bound, as it w^ere, to escape from his half-flayed skin, throws his head forward in his effort, half a yard beyond that of his rival, who has had his share of torture too, and is declared the winner — of what ? — a gold-handled prize-whip, which is borne aw r ay in triumph by the owner of the winning horse ! To be sure, he pockets some of that which is so truly designated “ the root of all evil ; but the acquisition of the whip is the distinguishing honour. And how does this wdiip in reality differ from any of the whips for a penny ?” It is of pure gold and whalebone ; the others are but of painted stick and the cheapest leather ; yet they are both but playthings — the one in the hand of a man who has spent, it may be, half his patrimony, and as much of his time in the endeavour to win it, while he attaches no real or intrin- sic value to it afterwards ; the other in the hand of the child, to whom it appears a real and substantial prize. The jockey- man is not a whit more rational in this respect than the boy who bestrides his hobby-horse, and flourishes his penny whip. Then succeeded to my imagination a far more brutal scene, the steeple-chase. A horse is overpowered in a deep and heavy fallow ; he is flogged to press him through it ; he reaches a break-neck wall ; a desperate cut of the whip sends him flying over it ; again and again he puts forth his. strength and speed, and falls, and rises again at the instigation of the whip. He comes to a brook ; it is too wflde for his failing powers, and there is a rotten and precipitous bank at the other side ; he shudders, and recoils a moment, but a tremen- dous lash, worse than the dread of drowning, and the. goad- ing of the spur, force him in desperation to the leap ; his hind feet give way at the landing side; he falls backward; his spine is broken, and at length a pistol bullet ends his miseries. In a word, the donation of “ whips for a penny” to^any child, fairly starts him on the first stage of cruelty ; and if, from peculiarity of temperament or the restraining influence of the beneficent Creator (who, though he has allowed man to have dominion, and has put under 3ns feet all sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field, has withheld from him the autho- rity to abuse his privilege), the child grows into the man who is merciful to his beast, the merit is not due to the injudi- cious person who first presents Mm with his mimic whip in infancy. THE WORLD’S CHANGES. “ Contarini Fleming wrote merely, Time.” — D’ Israeli the Younger The Solemn Shadow that bears in his hands The conquering Scythe and the Glass of Sands, Paused once on his flight where the sunrise shone On a warlike city’s towers of stone ; And he asked of a panoplied soldier near, “ How long has this fortressed city been here ?” And the man looked up, Man’s pride on his brow — “ The city stands here from the ages of old * And as it was then, and as it is now, So will it endure till the funeral kneF Of the world be knolled, As Eternity’s annals shall tell.” And after a thousand years were o’er, The Shadow paused over the spot once more. And vestige was none of a city there, But lakes lay blue, and plains lay bare, And the marshalled corn stood high and pale, And a Shepherd piped of love in a vale. “ How I” spake the Shadow, “ can temple and tower Thus fleet, like mist, from the morning hour ?” But the Shepherd shook the long locks from his brow — “ The -world is filled with sheep and corn ; Thus was it of old, thus is it now, Thus, too, will it be while moon and sun Rule night and morn, For Nature and Life are one.’ And after a thousand years were o’er, The Shadow paused over the spot once more. And lo ! in the room of the meadow-lands A sea foamed far over saffron sands, And flashed in the noontide bright and dark, And a fisher was casting his nets from a bark ; How marvelled the Shadow ! “ Where then is the plain ? And where be the acres of golden grain ?” But the fisher dashed off the salt spray from his brow — “ The waters begirdle the earth alway. The sea ever rolled as it rolleth now : What babblest thou about grain and fields ? By night and day Man looks for what Ocean yields.” And after a thousand years were o’er, The Shadow paused over the spot once more. And the ruddy rays of the eventide Were gilding the skirts of a forest wide ; The moss of the trees looked old, so old ! And valley and hill, the ancient mould Was robed in sward, an evergreen cloak ; And a woodman sang as he felled an oak. Him asked the Shadow — “ Rememberest thou Any trace of a Sea where wave those trees ?” But the w r oodman laughed : Said he, “ I trow, If oaks and pines do flourish and fall, It is not amid seas ; — The earth is one forest all.” And after a thousand years were o’er, The Shadow paused over the spot once more. And what saw the Shadow ? A city agen, But peopled by pale mechanical men, With workhouses filled, and prisons, and marts, And faces that spake exanimate hearts. Strange picture and sad ! was the Shadow’s thought ; And, turning to one of the Ghastly, he sought For a clue in words to the When and the How Of the ominous Change he now beheld ; But the man uplifted his care-worn brow — “Change? WhatwasLife ever but Conflict and Change? From the ages of eld Hath affliction been widening its range.” Enough ! said the Shadow, and passed from the spot : — At last it is vanished, the beautiful youth Of the earth, to return with no To-morrow; All changes have checquered Mortality’s lot ; But this is the darkest — for Knowledge and Truth Are but golden gates to the Temple of Sorrow ! M. 8 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. ANCIENT MUSIC OF IRELAND. A great and truly national work — the Ancient Music of Ire- land — collected and arranged for the piano-forte by Edward Bunting, has just issued from the Dublin press; and whe- ther we consider its intrinsic merits, the beauty of its typo- graphy and binding, or the liberal and enterprising spirit of its publishers, they are all equally deserving of the highest approbation. This is indeed a work of which Ireland may feel truly proud, for, though in every respect Irish, we be- lieve nothing equal to it in its way has hitherto appeared in the British empire, and we trust that all the parties con- cerned in its production will receive the rewards to which they are so justly entitled. To all lovers of national melody this work will give the most intense pleasure ; while by those who think there is no melody so sweet and touching as that of Ireland, it will be welcomed with feelings of delight which no words could adequately express. It is a work which as- suredly will never die. To its venerable Editor, Ireland owes a deep feeling of gratitude, as the zealous and enthusiastic collector and preserver of her music in all its characteristic beauty ; for though our national poet, Moore, has contri- buted by the peculiar charm of his verses to extend the fame of our music over the civilized world, it should never be for- gotten that it is to Bunting that is due the merit of having originally rescued from obscurity those touching strains of melody, the effect of which, even upon the hearts of those most indifferent to Irish interests generally, Moore has so feelingly depicted in his well-known lines : — u The stranger shall hear thy lament on his plains ; The sighs of thy harp shall be sent o’er the deep ; Till thy masters themselves, as they rivet thy chains, Shall pause at the song of their captive, and weep.” The merits of this work are, however, of a vastly higher order than those of either of the former collections which Mr Bunting gave to the world ; for, while the melodies are of equal beauty, they are arranged with such exquisite mu- sical feeling and skill as to enhance that beauty greatly ; and we do not hesitate to express our conviction that there is not any musician living who could have harmonized them with greater judgment or feeling. This volume contains above one hundred and sixty melodies, and of these only a few have been previously made known to the public. It also contains an interesting preface, and a most valuable disser- tation on the ancient music of Ireland, in which its charac- teristic peculiarities are admirably analysed ; and on the me- thod of playing the Harp ; the Musical Vocabulary of the old Irish Harpers ; a Treatise on the Antiquity of the Harp and Bagpipe in Ireland by Samuel Ferguson, Esq., M.R.I.A., full of curious antiquarian lore, and in which is comprised an account of the various efforts made to revive the Irish Harp ; a dissertation by Mr Petrie on the true age of the Harp, popularly called the Harp of Brian Boru ; and, lastly, anec- dotes of the most distinguished Irish Harpers of the last two centuries, collected by the Editor himself. To these are added, Remaiks on the Antiquity and Authors of the Tunes when ascertained, with copious indices, giving their original Irish names, as well as the names and localities of the per- sons from whom they were obtained. The work is illustrated with numerous wood-cuts, as well as with copperplate en- gravings of the ancient Irish Harp above alluded to. This slight notice will, it is hoped, give our readers for the pre- sent some idea of the value and importance of this delightful work ; but we shall return to it again and again, for we con- sider it is no less than our duty to make its merits familiar to our readers, as our music is a treasure of which all classes of our countrymen should feel equally proud, and in the ho- nour of extending the celebrity of which they should all feel equally desirous to participate. P. SIMPLICITY OF CHARACTER. Dr Barrett having on a certain occasion detected a student walking in the Fellows’ Garden, Trinity College, Dublin, asked him how he had obtained admission. “ I jumped over the library, sir,” said the student. “ D’ye see me now, sir? — vou are telling me an infernal lie, sir !” exclaimed the Vice- trovost. “ Lie, sir !” echoed the student ; “ I’ll do it again !” and forthwith proceeded to button his coat, in appa- rent preparation for the feat ; when the worthy doctor, seiz- ing his arm, prevented him, exclaiming with horror, “ Stop, glop — you’ll break youi* bones if you attempt it !” TO OUR READERS. The want of a cheap literary publication for the great body of the people of this country, suited to their tastes and habits, combining instruction with amusement, avoiding the exciting and profitless discussion of political or polemical questions, and placed within the reach of their humble means, has long been matter of regret to those reflecting and benevolent minds who are anxious for the advancement and civilization of Ireland — and the reflection has been rather a humiliating one, that while England and Scotland abound with such cheap publications — for in London alone there are upwards of twenty weekly perio- dicals sold at one penny each — Ireland, with a population so ex- tensive, and so strongly characterised by a thirst for knowledge, has not even one work of this class. It is impossible to be- lieve that such an anomaly can have originated in any other cause than the want of spirit and enterprise on the part of those who ought to have the patriotism to endeavour to enlighten their countrymen, and thereby elevate their condition, even although the effort should be attended with risk, and trouble to themselves. It may be objected that some of the cheap publications already and for some years in existence, though in all respects fitted for the instruction of the people, and enjoying such an extensive circulation in the Sister Island as they justly deserve, have never obtained that proportionate share of popularity here which would indicate a conviction of their usefulness or excellence on the part of the Irish people. But the obvious reply to this objection is, that, undeniable as the merits of many of these pub- lications must be allowed to be, none of them were adapted to the intellectual wants of a people, distinguished, as the Irish are, by strong peculiarities of mind and temperament, as well as by marked national predilections — and who, being more circum- scribed in their means than the inhabitants of the Sister Coun- tries, necessarily required a stimulus more powerful to excite them. A work of a more amusing character, and more essen- tially Irish, was therefore necessary; and such a work it is now intended to offer to the Public. The Irish Penny Journal will be in a great degree de- voted to subjects connected with the history, literature, antiqui- ties, and general condition of Ireland, but it will not be devoted to such subjects exclusively ; it will contain, in a fair proportion, articles on home and foreign manufactures, information on the arts and sciences, and useful knowledge generally. All subjects tending in the remotest degree to irritate or offend political or religious feelings will be rigidly abstained from, and every endeavour will be made to diffuse sentiments of benevo- lence and mutual good-will through all classes of the community. The matter will also be, to a considerable extent, original and to render it so, contributions will be obtained from a great number of the most eminent literary and scientific writers of whom Ireland can boast. A publication thu3 conducted, and, as may be confidently anti- cipated, displaying merits of a very superior order, while it will effect its primary object of conveying instruction to the people generally, will at the same time, it is hoped, be found not un- deserving of the support of the higher and more educated classes ; while to the inhabitants of Great Britain it will be found extremely interesting, as embodying a large amount of in- formation respecting Ireland, and the manners of her people as they really exist, and not as they haye been hitherto too fre- quently misrepresented and caricatured. To give to such a work a reasonable prospect of success, it is indeed essential that it should be patronised by all classes ; and an appeal is therefore confidently made to the high-minded and patriotic people of Ireland in its behalf, as without a very ex- tensive circulation it could not be given at so low a price as would bring it within the reach of the poorer classes of the country, whose limited means would preclude the possibility of purchasing a dearer publication. On their own parts, the Proprietors of the Irish Penny Journal have only to observe, that no efforts shall be spared to render their Work deserving of general support; and that as their expectations of immediate success are not extravagant, they will not be deterred, by temporary discouragements in the commencement of their undertaking, from persevering in their exertions to establish, upon a firm basis of popularity, a publica- tion of such merit in itself, and so essential, as they conceive, to the improvement and advantage of the people of Ireland. The Irish Penny Journal will be published every Saturday morning at the Office of the General Advertiser, Church- lane, College-green. It will be printed upon fine paper, and each Number will be embellished with at least one Wood-cut Illustration of high character as a work of art ; and in point of quality as well as quantity of letter-press, it will be inferior to no Publication of the kind that has hitherto appeared. Printed and Published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, 6 Church Lane, College Green, Dublin. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 2. SATURDAY, JULY 11, 1840. Volume I. ENTRANCE TO THE GREAT CAVE OF KISH-CORRAN, AS SEEN FROM THE INTERIOR. THE CAVES OF KISH-CORRAN. Among the many wonders of Ireland, as yet undescribed and little known, even to Irishmen, beyond their immediate loca- lities, the subject of our prefixed illustration has every claim to find a place, and to attract our attention as a subject equally interesting to the geologist, artist, and historian. That it should have hitherto remained unnoticed, as we think it has, while objects of the same description in other localities less remarkable and interesting have been repeatedly de- scribed, may be attributed chiefly to the circumstance of its situation being remote from any leading road, and in a wild and rarely visited district of country, namely, the barony of Corran, in the county of Sligo. Of this barony, the moun- tain called Ceis or Kish- Corran, is the most striking geogra- phical feature. It is composed of tabular limestone; has a flat outline at top, but is precipitous on its sides, and rises to an altitude of upwards of a thousand feet. To the traveller journeying from Boyle to Sligo it must be a familiar and pleasing object, as, after passing the little town of Ballina- fad, it offers, for some miles of the road towards the west and south-west, the charms of a mountain boundary in con- trast to the rich woods of Hollybrook, and the delightful vistas of the water of Lough Arrow, or Arva, which skirt the road along the east. But the most precipitous and noble point of Kish-Corran is presented to the west, and is not seen by the traveller on this road, which must for a time be abandoned to enable him to see it, as well as the wonderful caves which open on its face, and to which we have now to call the attention of our readers. On this western side, the mountain, to within a hundred feet or two of its summit, pre- sents a green but boldly sloping grassy face, formed of the debris of the rocks above, which rise perpendicularly, and look more like a wall — lichen-stained and ivy-decked— formed by the Cyclops or giants of old, than creations of nature’s hand. And such impression is increased in no small degree by the lofty and magnificent caves, which present themselves like doorways, and lead into the inmost recesses of the mountain. It is of one of these entrances, and the most remarkable for grandeur, that our illustration attempts to give an idea. Its height is no less than twenty feet. How far the caves extend, we are unable to speak with certainty ; they are undoubtedly of great extent, and, if the local accounts are to be trusted, reach even to the opposite or eastern side of the mountain, and contain lakes of unfathomable depth, and spars of unima- ginable beauty. A spot so striking to the imagination could not be, in Ire- land, without its legends of a romantic and singular character ; and some of these are of a most remote antiquity, and con- nected with the earliest legendary history of our country. In the ancient topographical tract called the Dinnseanchus, which gives the origin, according to the poets, of the names of the most remarkable mountains, lakes, rivers, caves, forts, &c. in Ireland, we are told that Corran received its name from the harper of Diancecht, to whom that magical race, called the Tuatha de Danann, gave the territory as a reward for his musical skill ; and popular tradition still points to the cave of Kish-Corran as his residence, according to the ancient form quoted in the Dinnseanchus : — “ Here used to dwell the gentle Corann, whose hand was skilled in playing on the harp ; Corann was the only ollave of 10 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL Drancich (with whom he lived), in free and peaceable security. To Corann of the soft music, the Tuatha De gave with great honour a free territory for his skilful playing, his knowledge, and his astrology. Here was he, this generous man, not with- out literature or in a churlish fortress, but in a place where the stranger was at liberty to a free sojournment Avith him, this liberal prosperous man.” The same authority accounts for the prefix Cels, or, as it is pronounced, Kish, Avhich is applied to the mountain by a very singular legend, according to which it would appear that it Avas originally the name of a lady, who Avith five others were, by a charm compounded with the nut-fruit, metamorphosed into pigs, the unhappy Ceis herself being here subsequently slain. HoAvever this may be, there is nothing improbable in the supposition that the caves of Kish-Corran were in former times the favourite dens of the Avild boar, the wolf, and many other animals now extinct ; they furnish a secure retreat to the fox and many other wild animals at the present day. P. ON BENEVOLENCE OF CHARACTER. BY MARTIN DOYRK. If it be afflictive, on one side, to reflect upon the deeds of cruelty and oppression which prevail upon earth, through the instrumentality of man, it is delightful, on the other, to per- ceive that human reason, instead of being abused and per- verted into a source of tyrannical oppression, is occasionally exercised, as it ought to be, in promoting happiness and so- cial harmony, even among brutes ; in producing that degree of peaceful concord, Avhich it has been proved may exist among animals Avhose natural antipathies are the most vio- lent imaginable — that feeling which disarms the strong among them of all desire to tyrannise over and destroy the Aveak, and is brought into exercise by a steady and persevering sys- tem. of early training (and consequent acquirement of abiding habits), directly opposed to that Avhich prompts us to place a whip in the hand of a child. I have been led into this train of contemplation, from having recently witnessed a practical illustration of the won- derful effects producible by Avhat may fairly be termed a benevolent system, for there is no degree whatever of harsh discipline connected with it — no starvation, no Woavs, nothing of that “ reign of terror,” under the influence of Avhich Van Amburgh has doubtless effected his dominion over the most ferocious of beasts ; the exhibition of which power, while it surprises, does not please us ; for, though, by an effort of the imagination, the mind may be led for a moment to the anti- cipation of the scene in which “ the Avolf shall dAvell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie doAvn Avith the kid,” it quickly considers this surprising display of human power Avith painful sensations, from the conviction that extreme severity of dis- cipline alone has enabled man in this instance to attain his despotic sovereignty, and that the unnatural results which he beholds are an evidence that the legitimate dominion granted to man “ over every thing that moveth upon the earth,” has in this case, as in ten thousand others, been overstrained and abused. While animals of prey are in a state of nature, they either avoid each other, or meet in deadly contest, according to the degree of their antipathies ; and until He who has impressed their dispositions upon them shall bid them lie down together in peace, no efforts of puny man can avail in changing their habits, except under such rare circumstances as confirm the general law of instinct which leads them to destroy each other. But the dislike which many of the domesticated ani- mals entertain for each other, is greatly increased by the en- couragement which they receive from man. The dog, Avhich under other treatment would be familiar Avith the cat or the hog, is taught from his puppyhood to pursue and Avorry each of them ; the cat instinctively defends herself with those claAvs which are her natural weapons, and she scratches her oppo- nent’s face, and through their after life they are never tho- roughly reconciled to each other, but live proverbially as “ cat and dog.” The hog cannot defend himself from the teeth of the dog ; his ears are torn by them ; he cannot reta- liate, but he lives ever afterwards in dread of the whole ca- nine race. Dogs, which otherAvise would live in harmony together, are taught to fight ; their natural jealousy is en- couraged, and they are rendered bullies by profession. That the dread of man is in a cert ain degree naturally upon every beast of the field and bird of the air, cannot be dis- puted ; but this feeling is increased considerably by the expe- rience which many brutes have of man’s caprice or tyranny, and this dread is transmissible (as may be justly inferred from cases which are perfectly analogous, such as the acquired ha- bit of pointing at game) to their posterity. A benevolent man, living, as we read of Robinson Crusoe, among his goats, ceases to be an object of apprehension to the animals around him ; even birds, habituated to his kind- ness and protection, would become divested of the dread of man ; and each successive generation of those familiarized birds would probably become more and more disposed to asso- ciate Avith him, if he were systematically kind and encourag- ing in his manner. Such experiments with the brute kind, it is true, can be but extremely partial, and are unattended with any very practically useful results in themselves ; but, as respects the education of children, they are of extreme utility in exciting tender and benevolent feelings, and awaken- ing the intellectual faculties from subjects merely sensual or idly amusing ; they teach us “to look from Nature up to Nature’s God.” There never was a better founded observation than that of the late Mr Cobbett, that no one should be entrusted with the care of the nobler animals Avho had not been habituated to treat the lesser ones with kindness. 1 love to see a child feeding his rabbits or pigeons, and fami- liarly playing Avith them, consulting their tastes, and contri- buting to their comforts by every means within his power. Surely such a pursuit should not be rudely discouraged ; hoAv much more humanizing than the desire to possess “ whips for a penny,” to Avhich 1 have recently adverted ! It tends to render a child compassionate in his disposition to all God’s creatures, and unwilling to hurt, for the sake of inflicting pain, or from thoughtless mischief. And I am just enough of phrenologist to be of opinion that, if there be any remarkable developement of the organ of destructiveness, this may be sufficiently counteracted by the exercise of feelings Avhich have connection with the faculty of benevolence, and so modified, by avoiding all pursuits of a cruel nature, as to constitute, with God’s blessing, a benevolent character, Avhich, by the indulgence of the inherent inclina- tion to cruel sports, would become of the opposite nature ; for there is unquestionably an adaptation of the mind, as Avell as the body, to the circumstances under which individuals are placed. It is Avith the faculties of the human mind as AA’ith the habits of brutes ; Avhen exercised, they acquire strength, and gradually become more developed and confirmed ; ay, and become hereditary too in proportion to their original or gra- dually progressing degree of developement. Hoav important, then, that the higher faculties, on Avhich depends the elevation of the moral character, should be strengthened by use and exercise ! But 1 have digressed far from the illustration Avhich I Avas about to give at the beginning, of a practically benevo- lent system of brute education. There stands on every fine day, near one of the great London bridges, a mild, cheerful looking man, Avho exhibits to the passers by an assemblage of animals of the most de- cided antipathies by nature, Avho live together in the same large cage in perfect harmony. The notion of collecting into one family such apparently discordant members, originated, I believe, with a gentleman Avho has long made the brute animal economy the subject of his investigations, and who suggested to John Austin the harmlessness, at least, of earning the means of his support by the novel and interesting exhibition of a cat, rats, mice, Guinea pigs, hawks, pigeons, oavIs, and starlings, and, I believe, another bird, under the same limited roof, and Avith perfect freedom of access from one to another. One of the pigeons is iioav hatching, without any cause of alarm from the hawk for the safety of her anticipated off- spring ; for that bird is so far from being of a destructive temper, that he frequently feeds a young starling Avith meat from his ovra bill, and apparently of his OAvn impulse ; nor do any of the birds manifest apprehension from the cat, Avhich has been almost born in their company, and although fre- quently permitted to go outside the cage and take the air without restraint, returns soon again, without having had her disposition corrupted by intercourse Avith bad company, takes up her favourite position in a corner, where the rats most affec- tionately run up to her for Avarmth and concealment from the public gaze, behind her furry and comfortable back. The pigeons are also alloAved their liberty occasionally, but they soon return to their quarters, which habit has rendered plea- sant to them. Now, 1 by no means recommend to parents, for their chil- THE IRISH PENNY' JOURNAL 11 dren, the establishment of a domestic menagerie , for the care of this would be extremely troublesome, and occupy time which should be spent to far better purpose ; nor do I recom- mend the keeping of useless pets of any kind, my object be- ing merely to point out, by actual exemplification, what the benevolent principle, systematically exercised, can produce even under the most adverse circumstances. On what are called pets, such as lapdogs and parrots, much warm, kind feeling is often unprofitable bestowed. When Ponto dies of plethora, or Poll from cold or infirmity, sensibilities are sometimes called forth, which would not flow from the contemplation of human sufferings. The servant who is daily employed to wash and comb the dog, is perhaps never sent upon an errand of mercy to any of the distressed families around the mistress, and a wayworn group of children may unavailingly solicit the luxurious food which is placed before the pampered pet, with- out shame or scruple. I do not intend to maintain the pet system in general ; it is the principle of humanity which I seek, not that mawkish sensibility which causes so many to weep at the dramatic ex- hibition of fictitious woe, who would not drop one tear of sym- pathy for real misery, divested, as in the scenes of every-day life, of the embellishments and romantic adjuncts which false sentiment delights in. We all, it is true, require some especial objects of endearment, something on which the feelings of the heart may find expansion, else we become cold, selfish, and very disagreeable to every one. In childhood, therefore, the disposition to love even the domestic animals born for our use, should be sedulously fostered, but not to such excess as to weaken the affection for parents, brothers, sisters, or friends. The principle should only be checked, however, in its exuber- ance, never crushed. In mature years the affections should have the highest objects, and in those instances in which the Creator has denied the gift of offspring to us, I would respect- fully suggest to those who desire pets, the adoption of an or- phan or two, whom they may train both for earth and heaven, in preference to any other perishable idols. LAGIIT-E-OURIA. “ The longest way round is often the shortest way home.” — Old Proverb. I was not more than eight or nine years old when the fol- lowing anecdote was related to me by the actor or sufferer, whichever he might be called, himself. He was a fine stately old gentleman. His family had once been powerful ; but in the troubles with which the page of Ireland’s history is filled and darkened, they had been reduced, and he, fleeced by a treacherous guardian of the last remnant of the property, had been compelled to accept the influence of friends in pro- curing him a commission in the civil service (for in war he would not serve them) of a government which he loathed. He was of a stern and rather gloomy disposition, and rarely condescended to social or pleasant conversation, much less to notice children ; but sometimes the genial fire within would thaw the icy surface, and diffuse life and light around. The bow could not be kept ever bent : the garrison was too feeble to keep constant watch and ward, and a view would be sometimes gained, through an open door, of a heart fitted by nature to give and receive all sublunary happi- ness. 1 heard his history long after his career had closed. But it has nothing to do with the present story — another time for it. I had been playing marbles with my cousin and playfellows ; we quarrelled, and were proceeding to blows, w r hen Mr M , who was sitting, unobserved by us, on a stone bench, and had witnessed our dispute, called to us both to approach him. He took one on each knee, and looking alternately at us, said, in a tone so mild and different from his usual harsh commanding voice, that we could scarcely think it was the same man who spoke, “ Boys, beware of sudden ungovernable passion ; under its influence you might commit, in one moment, an act which would embitter, with remorse and vain regret, all your subsequent life. When a young man, I once suffered so keenly the conse- quence of my ungovernable temper, that were I to live a thou- sand years, I could not forget it. I see that your curiosity is ex- cited, and you w r ould like to hear the circumstance ; but it is connected with a ghost story, and I must tell you all.” “ Oh ! do, Mr M said I, “ for papa says there are no such things as ghosts or fairies, and nurse says there are ; and nurse neyer tells lies, and certainly papa would not, and I do not know what to think between them.” “ Well,” said he, “ I shall tell you the story, and it will help you to form your judgment. From the high road between Cork and Cloyne, and about three miles from the latter, a small by-road, or ‘ borheen/ branches off. It is of very ancient date, belonging to times when men w'ere guided by the position of the sun during the day, and the stars at night, and when, consequently, their track lay over mountain and hollow, through wood and bog, as the avoidance of impediments (except to a very short distance) would have thrown them quite out of their reckon- ing, and toil was much less regarded then than in these de- generate days. The road by Laght-e-Ouria is decidedly a shorter way to Cloyne than the high road from which it di- verges ; but a saying has arisen since it was made, ‘ the longest way round is the shortest way home,’ that has been so often used as a conclusion to a debate upon ‘ which of the roads should be taken,’ that the wisdom of our ancestors is voted folly, and their ways are no longer trodden. Other reasons than the unevenness of its surface are how- ever not wanting, and many a headstrong drunken farmer, upon whom all other argument had been tried in vain, has been induced to turn his horse’s head to the new road, by the soft voice of the ‘ Vanitha’ whispering in his ear that ‘ it would be midnight ere they passed Laght-e-Ouria.’ Laght, in Irish, signifies a heap of stones, and it is cus- tomary in Ireland, wherever a murder has been committed, for every passer-by to throw a stone upon the spot. A heap, or ‘ laght,’ is thus soon formed, and it receives the cogno- men of the unfortunate individual whose untimely end it com- memorates. In the beginning of the month of October 1775, when re- siding in Cork, I received a note from the Earl of Inchi- quin, desiring me to meet him at Cloyne between five and six o’clock on the following morning, on most pressing and im- portant business. I immediately ordered my horse, deter- mining to dine with a particular friend who resided about half way, to jog quietly on in the evening, and have, what I always relished, a night’s repose on the spot where my morn- ing’s business awaited me. Mr Ahern was one of a class well known in the south as ‘gentlemen farmers,’ being mostly reduced gentlemen who farmed a portion of the grounds that once belonged to their ancestors, in many instances to themselves. Hospitality, the virtue they most prided themselves upon, they carried to a fault ; and my friend Ahern, in common -with the rest, made it a rule, without an exception, that a bottle either of wine or whisky once opened, should be finished on the spot. Upon this occasion, however, I felt it necessary to demur. The last bottle of whisky having been opened with- out my consent, and feeling that, although I was still capable of proceeding on my journey, the half of what remained would put it completely out of the question, I positively refused to take another drop except the ‘ Dhuch-an-dhurrish,’ or part- ing glass, and resisting all his importunities to stay the night, not relishing a ride of a dark morning, I took my departure about an hour before midnight. I never was a believer in ghosts or fairies, or any class of idle, mischievous, disembodied creatures ; but upon this oc- casion, whether from melancholy or loneliness, or the dark- ness, which was so intense as to force me to proceed very slowly, or from my friend’s stirrup-cup having slightly obnubilated my reasoning faculties without producing the usual valour, I know not. Certain it is, I did not feel comfortable, and wished most fervently for just as much light as would enable me to urge my horse forward at a quicker pace, but the more I wished for light the darker it became, until my eyes ached in endeavouring to penetrate the gloom. A row of tall trees ran along at each side of the road, and nearly met at top, and the fitful breeze just agitating the leaves, or occasionally moving the branches so as to cause a low, moaning, creaking noise, jarred my nerves, and made me feel still more and more unpleasant. At length, when I had arrived at an intolerable pitch of nervous excitement, the darkness became less intense, and I could just distinguish a breach in the row of trees upon the right, which marked the locality of the ‘ laght.’ Taking advantage of the opportunity, I pressed my horse. He seemed to have become as nervous as myself, for he answered to the slight touch of the spur with a loud snort and a violent spring, which I considered so totally uncalled for, as to give me a very fair excuse for being in a passion, and venting my irritability, which I proceeded to do with my whip, as giving my muscles more action than 12 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL the spur ; but instead of plunging along at a mad gallop, as I expected, my horse reared, and turning sharply round, at- tempted a flight back. Again and again I turned his head to the road, but onward he would not go ; this was very strange, for he never shied or started. At length I tried the soothing system ; for I must confess that the general belief that horses see what is hidden from the eyes of man, occurred to me, and I coaxed and patted him, and spoke gently and encouragingly to him, but he kept sidling, and tramping, attempting to turn, and answering every word or pat with a long snore, whilst I could perceive by his forward pricked ears and the direction of his head, that his eyes were rivetted upon the heap of stones. Whilst thus engaged, and having somewhat quieted his terror, I heard a sound like the rattling of chains. Round and away with Rainbow. I brought him up again nearer than before. Again the chains clanked, and I could distinctly hear that they were chains, ere my horse bolted and ran again. ‘ The third time,’ said I, ‘ contains a charm, they say ; and, man or devil, ghost or fairy, I’ll over- haul you. Who’s there?’ No answer. ‘ Who’s there?’ Clank, clank, went the chains. I could see nothing. The perspiration was running down my face, but I was furious. ‘ By the hand of my grandfather, if you do not answer me, I’ll go to you, and whilst sinew and whalebone last, you shall feel the butt of a loaded whip. Who are you?’ Again the chains clanked, and my horse would not consent to keep such company any longer. I dismounted, and, taking him a few paces back, tied him to a tree, and returned on foot to the spot. Behind the trees was a deep trench partly filled with water ; a hawthorn hedge grew at the farther side, and threw its branches nearly across. As I approached the ‘ laght,’ the rattling of the chains again rose, accompanied by a plashing, scrambling noise, as of something breaking through the hedge and trench. I sprang forward, striking with the heavy han- dle of my whip, having twisted the thong firmly round my hand and wrist. I had only beaten air, but the violence of the blow and weight of the whip carried me forward ; and, missing my footing in the darkness, I fell against, or rather upon, the monster of the chains ; and having made a furious grasp to save myself, judge what was my horror at catching a handful of hair, such as might be expected to be felt upon an arctic bear ! The creature slipped from me, and with a tremendous plunge and frightful rattling of its chains, gained the road, overwhelming me completely in the muddy ditch. Just at that instant the whole truth flashed across my mind ; and with a vengeful rage that I am ashamed to confess, I sprang up, and pursuing my unfortunate victim, a jackass, who could make but little exertion to escape, being spancelled with a piece of an iron chain, I kept my oath, by belabouring- poor Neddy until I could strike no more from exhaustion. I then turned to remount my horse ; but he was gone, having left the principal portion of his bridle hanging on the bough for a keepsake. Nothing saved Neddy from a second edition, with considerable additions, but the recollection of the hour, the necessity of catching my horse, and the confounded dis- tance I should have to travel afterwards, for he was, of course, gone the wrong way. I ran as fast as I could, but was soon obliged to pull up. I found that I was carrying weight, and no light weight, for my clothes were saturated with water, and covered thickly with mud. Having scraped off as much as I could of the latter, I got along, and about two o’clock reached my friend’s house again, entertaining a faint hope that Rainbow had re- turned to the last stall he had occupied ; and so he had. Not finding the gate open, he had jumped the road fence, and was quietly grazing with two or three other horses. There was now light enough to distinguish objects at a hun- dred yards ; and I could see his saddle, but how to catch him was now the question, for he had at all times a propensity to keep his liberty when he had got it ; and to think of catching him without help was idle. I approached the house, but just then recollected that my friend had a couple of dangerous mastiff dogs, of extraordinary size and ferocity ; and as the entrance to the front of the house lay through the farm-yard, in which they were kept, it would be as much as my life was worth to approach it. My only chance was to get at the rere ; and having made the circuit of a few fields, I reached it, and, selecting a window likely to belong to some sleeping apartment on the ground floor, I tapped at it with the butt of my whip. Receiving no answer, I repeated the knock, and placing my head close, heard a female voice exclaim, ‘ Marcy save us, it’s the boys and the speaker hurried barefooted from the room. I knew that the only female inmate of the house was the daughter of an old follower of the family, now called ‘ the servant man ;’ for Pat or Paddy fulfilled the ma- nifold duties of butler, footman, gardener, and valet, besides taking a hand at every thing about the farm in turn. Whilst considering whether or not I should knock again, I had the satisfaction to see, by the still increasing light, that the shutter of an upper window was cautiously opened ; then the window was gently raised ; and I waited for the appearance of a head to announce myself, when a bright flash issued forth, accompanied by a tremendous report. Away went my hat ; and at the same instant the dogs opened, not barking, but with yells upon yells, as if Pandemonium was let loose. ‘ Ahern ! Ahern !’ I roared out, ‘ what are you at ? ’Tis I — don’t you know’me ? — M. — — My horse has run aw r ay ; he’s in your field, and I want help to catch him.’ I bellowed this at the top of my voice, in the vain endeavour to drown the ‘ bow-wow-oo-oo-oo-oo-oo’ of the dogs. The answer I received was, ‘ You to (hiccup) blazes (hiccup) ; here’s at you again, you villains.’ I threw myself down as my quondam kind host discharged a second blunderbuss at me ; but was instantly on my legs again, as the roaring of the dogs an- nounced their rapid approach. They had in some manner got out of the yard. I glanced hurriedly round for some place of shelter. A large arbutus tree was the nearest object, and into it I scrambled, just as the dogs appeared in full career upon the field. They made repeated springs at me, for I was not above eight feet from the ground, but I contrived, by well-aimed kicks in the jaws, to keep them at bay for a while. I was thus pleasantly engaged for about five minutes, when Ahern and four or five men made their appearance. He carried a blunderbuss in his hand, another tucked under his arm, and a brace of holster pistols stuck in his waistband. His old ser- vant had the master’s fowling-piece, and the rest, who were farm servants, had pitchforks. As soon as I espied them, I roared out, ‘ Call off the dogs, I’m M , you stupid drunken rascal.’ 4 Ho! ho! he’s — hie — up in the arbutus.’ ‘ Blur-an-agers, tare-an-taflfy, sir, you’ll shoot the dogs !’ said old Paddy, knocking up the levelled blunderbuss. 4 It’s Mr M — — ; don’t ye know his voice ? Down, Fin — down, Oscar — down with ye,’ and with persuasive words, and still more persuasive blows of the fowl- ing-piece, Pat drew off the dogs, and took them away. I came down in a state of indescribable rage. Nothing vexes a man so much as the consciousness of being an object of mirth or ridicule. Having paused awhile for words, I poured forth a torrent of abuse on Ahern, tie hiccupped once or twice, looked with the most stupid astonishment at me, and, when I paused for breath, ‘ damned me but it would have been due to me to be shot ; firstly, for leaving a Christian habitation at the dead hour of the night ; secondly, for going at that hour by a haunted road ; and, thirdly, for attempting to get in at a back window of his house, when I well knew that I had only to raise the latch, and walk in at the frontdoor.’ ‘ How tiled — could I get past your infernal dogs ?’ said I. ‘ Good dogs always know friends from foes,’ he replied ; ‘ but— hie— it was just one of your tricks — you wanted to frighten me, and — ha ! ha ! ha ! — you got frightened yourself, and the devil’s cure to you ! — hie.’ I was beginning again, when he stopped me by saying, ‘ that if I thought he had taken any advantage of me, matters could be made even and he produced the holster pistols, saying ‘ that they were both double loaded ; he had charged them himself, and I might have my choice.’ In a minute the ground was measured ; the men were ordered not to interfere, but stand aside ; and Ahern himself asked me if I was ready, and immediately said 4 fire !’ Well might he say 4 the pistols were double charged;’ they were trebly charged — loaded to the muzzles. In fact, it was safer to stand before than behind them. I was stunned by the report, and remained standing, until roused by one of the men asking me 4 was I shot ?’ adding, that 4 I had killed the masther.’ In an instant the whole impropriety of my conduct flashed before me, and I ran to my poor unfortunate friend, who lay motionless. I knelt down by his side, and never shall I forget the piercing anguish that at that moment penetrated my soul. All his virtues — his amiable qualities — . his kind-heartedness — every good action of his life with which I was acquainted, and they were numerous, appeared in order before my mental vision ; and then conscience, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL 13 shaking the aegis, on which appeared, not the Gorgon’s, but my poor friend’s blackened countenance, before me, and asking, ‘ Why did you do this?’ froze up my faculties, and converted my outward seeming into stone ; but within, there was a foretaste of the eternal torments. Involuntarily I called upon his name ; the sound of my own voice started me, arousing me to a sense of keener anguish ; and I was about to break forth into some violent extravagance, when my unfortunate friend opened his eyes, and, looking at me with kindness, said, ‘ M — — , you did not do it ; my pistol burst and has hurt me — take me into the house — I’m sober enough now.’ Upon examination it was discovered that a piece of the pistol barrel had hit him above the forehead, cutting a path through his scalp ; one of his fingers was broken, and his hand and arm were severely contused, but he seemed to think nothing of it, but desired one of the men to go for old Biddy Hoolaghan, a celebrated doctress, and the rest of them to catch Rainbow. I refused to leave him in his then present condition, of which I was the unlucky cause, but he would not hear of my stop- ping. ‘ No, no,’ said he, ‘ your business cannot be neglected ; and as to fault, we may divide the matter between us, and bear each bis own share. If I did not make the ridiculous rule, that a bottle of whisky once opened should be finished at once, I would not have drunk after you left me, but have gone to bed at once ; in which case I’d have known your voice, and all would have been right. And if you were not so lazy as to object to a morning ride (which you must take after all), you’d have staid where you were, and saved all the mischief. But, at all events, remember for the rest of your days that ‘ the longest way round is often the shortest Avay home.’ Rainbow was caught at length. Ahern lent me a bridle, and at four o’clock I faced the road again, and arrived at Cloyne, without further adventure, at five, thoroughly soaked with the rain, which commenced heavily soon after my second de- parture, and for which I was thankful, as it partially cleansed me from the ditch mud, and accounted for my dripping and soiled state when I made my appearance before the earl, which I was obliged to do, without changing my dress, at half past five.” Naisi. CHARACTER OF O’DONNELL, PRINCE OF TYR- CONNELL IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. (From the MS. Annals of the Four Masters, translated by Mr O’Donovan.) A.D. 1537. In this year died O’Donnell (Hugh, son of Hugh Roe, who was son of Niall Garve, who was son of Torlogh of the Wine), Lord of Tyrconnell, Inishowen, Kinel- Moen,* Fermanagh, and Lower Connaught ; a man to whom rents and tributes had been paid by the people of other terri- tories over which he had acquired dominion and jurisdiction, such as Moylorg, Machaire-Chonnacht, Claim- Conway, Cos- tello, Gallen, Tirawly, and Conmaicne-Cuile, to the west, and Oireacht-ui- Chatham (the patrimony of O’Kane), the Route, and Clannaboy, to the east ; for of all these there was not one territory that had not given him pledges for the payment of his tribute of protection. It was this man who had compelled the four lords who ruled Tyrone in his lifetime, to give him new charters of Inishowen, Kinel-Moen, and Fermanagh, by way of confirmations of the ancient charters which his ances- tors had held in proof of their right to govern these coun- tries ; and this he had done, in order that he might peaceably enjoy jurisdiction over them, and have authority to summon their forces into the field when he wanted them. Neither in all this is there anything to be wondered at, for never had victory been seen Avith his enemies — never had he retreated one foot from any army, whether small or numerous ; he had been distin- guished as an abolisher of evil customs, and a restrainer of evil deeds, a destroyer and banisher of rebels and plunderers, and a rigid enforcer of the Irish laAVS and ordinances after the strictest and most upright manner ; he was a man in whose reign the sea- sons had been favourable, so that both sea and land had been profusely productive Avhile he continued on the throne ;f a man * Now the barony of Raphoe. t Corraac, in his instructions to his son Carbry, tells him that “ when a worthy prince reigns, the great God sends favourable seasons.” It is worthy of remark that, among the oriental nations, the same notion prevails to the present day ; and the poets of the East frequently express their anticipations of favourable weather and abundant harvests upon the accession of a peace- able monarch to the throne. who had established every person in his country in his rightful hereditary possessions, to the end that no one of them might bear enmity to another ; a man who had not suffered the power of the English to come into his country, for he had formed a league of peace and amity with the King of England so soon as he saw that the Irish would not yield the superiority to any one chief or lord among themselves, but that friends and blood relations fiercely contended against one another ; and a man who had carefully protected from harm or violation the Ter- mon-lands (or sanctuai'ies) belonging to the friars, church- men, poets, and ollaves. This O’Donnell (Hugh, son of Hugh Roe) died on the 5th of July, in the year of salvation 1537, being Wednesday, in the monastery of Donegall, having first taken upon him the habit of St Francis, having bewailed his crimes and iniquities, and done penance for his sins and transgressions. He was buried in the same monastery, with all the honour and solemnity which were his due ; and Magnus O’Donnell was nominated to succeed him in his place by the successors of St Colurnb- kille [viz. the Abbots of Kilmacrenan, Raphoe, and Derry], with the permission and by the advice of the nobles of T yr- connell, both lay and ecclesiastical. THE HARP. The harp Avas the favourite musical instrument, not only of the Irish, but of the Britons and other northern nations, during the middle ages, as is evident from their Iuavs, and from every passage in their history in which there is the least allusion to music. By the laAvs of Wales, the possession of a harp Avas one of the three things that were necessary to constitute a gentleman, that is, a freeman ; and no person could pretend to that title, unless he had one of those favourite instruments, and could play upon it. In the same laws, to prevent slaves from pretending to be gentlemen, it Avas expressly forbidden to teach or to permit them to play upon the harp ; and none but 'the king, the king’s musicians, and gentlemen, were allowed to have harps in their possession. A gentleman’s harp was not liable to be seized for debt, because the want of it would have degraded him from his rank, and reduced him to a slave. The harp was in no less estimation and universal use among the Saxons and Danes ; those Avho played upon this instru- ment Avere declared gentlemen by law ; their persons were esteemed inviolable, and secured from injuries by A-ery severe penalties ; they Avere readily admitted into the highest com- pany, and treated with distinguished marks of respect Avher- ever they appeared. AnecdoteAp Jerome Duigenan, a Harper. — Some cu- rious tales are told of Jerome Duigenan, a Leitrim harper, born in the year 1710. One is of so extraordinary a charac- ter, that, Avere it not for the particularity of the details, which savour strongly of an origin in fact, the editor Avould hesitate to give it publicity. He is, however, persuaded that he has it as it was communicated to O’Neill, betAveen whose time and that of Duigenan there was scarcely room for the invention of a story not substantially true. It is as follows : — “ There Avas a harper,” says O’Neill, “ before my time, named Jerome Duigenan, not blind, an excellent Greek and Latin scholar, and a charming performer. I have heard numerous anecdotes of him. The one that pleased me most was this. He lived Avith a Colonel Jones, of Drumshambo, Avho Avas one of the representatives in parliament for the county of Leitrim. The colonel, being in Dublin, at the meeting of parliament, met with an English nobleman who had brought over a Welsh harper. When the Welshman had played some tunes before the colonel, which he did very well, the nobleman asked him, had he ever heard so sweet a finger? ‘ Yes,’ replied Jones, ‘ and that by a man who never wears either linen or woollen.’ ‘ I bet you a hundred guineas,’ says the nobleman, ‘you can’t produce any one to excel my Welshman.’ The bet Avas accord- ingly made, and Duigenan Avas written to, to come imme- diately to Dublin, and bring his harp and dress of Cauthack Avith him ; that is, a dress made of beaten rushes, Avith some- thing like a caddy or plaid of the same stuff. On Duigenan’ s arrival in Dublin, the colonel acquainted the members with the nature of his bet, and they requested that it might be decided in the House of Commons, before business com- menced. The tAvo harpers performed before all the members accordingly, and it was unanimously decided in favour of 14 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL Duigenan, who wore his full Cauthack dress, and a cap of the same stuff, shaped like a sugar loaf, with many tassels ; he was a tall, handsome man, and looked very well in it.” — Bunting's Ancient Music of Ireland. THE MOUNTAIN WALK. BY J. U. U. From the haunts of busy life, Homes of care, and paths of strife, Up the breezy mountain way, ’Mid the upper fields of day, Let me wander, far and lonely, Without guide, save nature only ; And still ever as I go, Lose all thought of things below. Cast all sorrow to the wind, While the low vales sink behind : Fetterless and spirit free As the merry mountain bee. Like a spirit, thought and eye Buoyant between earth and sky. There to bask in free pure light On the joyous mountain height; Dallying with the breeze and shower, Claiming kin with every flower, Catching iris dreams that glance On the breath of circumstance. Changing with the changeful scene — Solemn, sombre, gay, serene : As each change fresh wonders bring, Weaving thought from every thing. Oft let shadowy hollows fall, And grey cliffs’ embattled wall Crown the gloom with hoary height. Where the raven wheels his flight. Or green vale unfolding soft, In the lonesome crags aloft Shut the far down world from view. There, long up ether’s darkening blue, The eye may gaze for worlds unseen, In the skyey void serene, And weave visions strange and fair, Of the starry empires there — Spirits changeless, pure, and bright, In their glorious vales of light ; Till some wild note break the spell From sequester’d rural dell Where the mountain goatherds dwell : So to break the wild fond dream, And to man bring down the theme ; For all earthly things impart Thoughts of Man to human heart. Then from towery crag on high, If far city win the eye, Glittering through the misty air, ’Twere a prospect meet and fair For the lone sequestered gaze O’er its wide uncertain maze. Then to muse on wealth and fame, And on every specious name That gilds the dross of earth below, Till, from reflection, wisdom grow. Wisdom : — not that sense which cleavcth To the world where all deceiveth ; Not grave prudence, hard, yet hollow — In the beaten round to follow Lengthened aims, in life’s short day, While the ages glide away : — But that moral, old and sage, Said and sung in every age ; Old as man — yet ever new, Heard by all, and known to few ; Murmur of Being’s wave, that still, Unheeded as the babbling rill, In the world’s noise, makes music only ’Midst the hush of deserts lonely. Last, from o’er the seaward steep, Let me view the spacious deep, While the billows break and flow In the caverned gloom below, There let cloud and sunbeam flee O’er the sunned and shadowy sea — Light and dark in fleeting strife, Like the vanities of life ; So to dream of joy and woe, Imaged in the gliding show, As they come, and as they fly, To the verge of sea and sky ; So our joys and sorrows flee, Onward to eternity. Then away in spirit wrought By the voluntary thought, Where the heath is freshly springing, Where the sky-borne lark is clinging On mid air with lively song, Which the echoing cliffs prolong ; O’er wild steep and dreamy hollow, On, still onward let me follow. While the airy morn is bright, While rich noon is at its height, Till eve falls with sober grey, Freely let me roam away. APOLOGUES AND FABLES, IN PROSE AND VERSE, FROM THE GERMAN AND OTHER LANGUAGES. ( Translated for the Irish Penny Journal.) No. I.— THE DISCONTENTED STONES. A mason was one day at work, building a stout wall to protect a garden ; nigh him lay a piled-up heap of stones, which he took into his hands in succession, one by one, ac- cording as he wanted them. The stones on their part sub- mitted with exemplary quietness to be handled and intro- duced into their appropriate places ; for they were fully aware that the mason’s object was to erect a wall, and they knew equally well that that object could not be attained, if they took it into their thick heads to rebel against the principle upon which he was proceeding. At last, however, somewhat to the mason’s amusement, it did so happen, after he had accomplished a considerable portion of his task, that one contumacious fellow, upon being laid hold of, began to talk very big upon the rights of stones, and the tyranny of coercing stonekind in general, declaring, that for himself, whether in a wall or out of a wall, he was determined to en- joy that liberty which was the birthright of every stone upon the earth, and that he would sooner be trodden into powder than surrender it. “ I tell you plumply and plainly, Master Mason,” said he, “ that I will not be subjected to restraint. I must have scope for my energies. I must have room to look about me, and be able to roll to the left side or to the right, as I think proper, like a free agent !” The mason, on hearing this, could not refrain from laugh- ing. “ Truly,” said he, “ I have lighted here on an eccentric specimen of the stony tribe. So, my good friend, you wish to have room to roll about in — eh ?” “ Precisely,” returned the other. “ Did you ever hear of the adage, ‘ a rolling stone gathers no moss ?’ ” “ Yes, and despise it,” answered the Stone ; “ a moss is a token of antiquity ; and antiquity and absurdity are synony- mous terms in my vocabulary. May heaven defend me from ever gathering moss !” “ Whew !” whistled the mason, in a manner to indicate mingled surprise and contempt. “ Pray, what do you take yourself to be ?” “ What do I take myself to be ! Just a stone — a wall stone — neither more nor less.” “ And are you content that I should allot you a position in the wall ?” “ Certainly I am.” “ And yet,” said the mason, “ you declare you will not be satisfied to remain under constraint ? You must have room forsooth for your energies ! lleally your inconsistency is most ridiculous. Come ; I have no time to lose ; tell me at once what you would be at. Will you go into the wall, or shall I deposit you again on the ground ?” “ I have made up my mind to oblige you by going into the wall,” replied the Stone, with a patronizing air ; “but I will THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL 15 not be swindled out of ray natural rights ! Liberty is the first of these — and I must have liberty, even in a wall.” “ So you shall,” said the man; “your liberty will bo that of obtaining your just position in the wall, and of maintaining it undisturbedly.” “Bah! what stupid, sneaking notions you have of liberty, surely ! I tell you again that I must have space to expand and expatiate in. Do you think that I can stoop to fill the office of a mere wedge?” “ You tire out my patience, friend,” said the mason : “ there is no use in arguing the matter further. I see I cannot get you to take up your lodging in the wall : I see I must throw you on the earth again.” “ Very well ; be it so,” returned the Stone : “ liberty before all things ! Pitch me to a respectable distance from the other stones, that I may feel, myself unshackled and independent. I have the same right to be a free-sto?ie that you have to be a free-masow.” “ There, then,” said the mason, and with the words he cast the Stone from him into the middle of the highway. The Stone was now in the full enjoyment of its darling li- berty. Exceedingly did it congratulate itself. For a time also everything went well with it. The summer was a mild one; the skies were bright, and the foot of the passenger was con- tinually transferring it to a new locality, and showing it daily more and more of the ways of the world. But, alas ! the sum- mer could not last for ever : autumn came, and brought with it clouds of dust and showers of yellow leaves ; and when the wind-gusts had subsided, there fell on the earth heavy torrents of rain; and the highway was covered with mire, and the measure of the isolated stone was forthwith taken for a surtout of mud ; and there it lay, fallen from its high estate, and com- pletely confounded by the passing eye with the vilest of the rubbish in its vicinity. But this 'was not the worst : in the course of a few weeks, the rains continuing still to fall, and the mire to accumulate, the earth gave way under it, and it became, as it were, im- bedded in a hole produced by the force of its own pressure on the soft soil, till at last no part of it remained above ground ex- cept the upper surface. Unfortunately, too, there was no longer a possibility of retracing its steps, for the wall was hoav erected and the mason was far away. Nothing remained for it but to sink deeplier and deeplier into the earth, until not a vestige of it remained visible to the eye. Alas ! for our poor Stone ! Oh, Liberty ! Oh, Independence ! ye are indeed desirable ob- jects of attainment ; but surely they who seek ye at the expense of the great combining principle of social order, commit a senseless and irremediable blunder. In the spring following, the mason was employed in building another wall. He hoped that his work would be suffered to proceed wdthout interruption on this occasion at least, but he was speedily undeceived ; for one of the stones, just as in the previous year, began to grumble, and protest against the treatment to which it was about to be subjected. The mason, recollecting the former scene, was on the point of flinging it away at once ; but second thoughts suggested to him the eli- gibility of first trying the effect of a little reasoning and re- monstrance, “ for, after all,” said he, aloud, “ no two stones are alike, and though I have met with one that was proof against argument, another may be less intractable in my hands.” “ There it is ! ” cried the Stone impatiently ; “ no two stones alike ! — that’s your foolish mistake, your ignorance. I tell you that there is no difference between one stone and another : I am just as good as any stone in the wall, and I insist on my prerogatives.” “ Hoity-toity !” exclaimed the mason, “ but you are a sturdy beggar ! Will you be condescending enough to define your prerogatives ? I wall thank you to tell me briefly how you would have me dispose of you.” “ I want to be a corner-stone, then,” said the rebel, “ and a corner-stone I will be. I stand on my rights : all stones are equal ; so, quick ! — let me occupy a position in the corner.” “ That you cannot do, my friend,” returned the mason : “don’t you see that the corner-stones are already in their places ?” “ I see that well enough,” said the Stone ; “ but you can take one of them out, and install me in its place. I have as clear a right to be there as any of them : equality is the badge of us all : every one of us is from a common quarry : we are all stones alike. T ake one of them out, and put me in. ” “ Now', see how grossly inconsistent you are!” urged the workman: “all stones, you assert, are equal, and have the same rights : yet you would have me rudely displace and de- grade one of them for your pleasure, though, according to your own acknowledgment, you are not a bit better than he is ! Upon my word, but you have enlightened conceptions of what constitutes equality. But I cannot stand here arguing the question with you all day ; my time is precious ; I beg you will decide whether you are satisfied to form part of the wall or not.” “ Assuredly I am,” said the other, “ but only as a corner stone. How can you be so blind as not to see that we are all stones alike, and all therefore equal ?” “ You are all stones alike,” replied the mason, “ and so far equal, in a certain sense ; but your equality consists merely in your being all liable to serve as wall-stones, not in your being all qualified for the place of corner-stones.” “ A truce with your slavish doctrines !” cried the malcon- tent ; “ either make of me a corner-stone, or build your wall without me.” “ Is that your final decision?” asked the mason. “ I warn you not to trifle with me, for I cannot let my work wait for you any longer.” “ I have said it,” said the Stone. “ I would see your wall trampled into dust, and the whole universe along with it, be- fore I would surrender my great principle. Do what you please.” “ Go, then, refractory wronghead,” exclaimed the mason, “ go and enjoy your equality where none will be likely to dis- pute it !” And so saying, he cast the Stone from him with a vigorous jerk ; and the Stone, after it had completed its jour- ney through the air, fell down, and from the force of its own gravitation sank several feet low into the bottom of a deep and slimy pool. This was, for all historical purposes, the termination of its existence. What became of it in the pool ultimately, it is im- possible to conjecture, for half a century has elapsed since ; but as a total extinguisher was put upon its aspirations after notoriety by the accident, it is highly probable that if not worn quite away by the friction of the surrounding mud and water, it was at least gnawed to the core, in a moral sense, by its regrets for the folly of its past misconduct — regrets which we may suppose to have been shared in a pretty equal degree by its twin-brother of the preceding year, which had stickled so stoutly in its colloquy with the mason for its favourite theory of liberty and independence. THE AIR WE BREATHE. The objects which come every day before our eyes, the offices which involuntarily and almost unconsciously we at each moment must perform in order that we may live, are pre- cisely the subjects concerning which the mass of mankind are least curious, and of the true nature and utility of which they are the most completely ignorant. It is thus with the air we breathe. There is no person but is aware of the ne- cessity of breathing, and of the motion of the air caused by winds ; but how few have asked themselves, What is air ? How much is there of it ? Could the same air be always used for breathing ? How do fishes manage living in water in place of air ? Yet the information thus obtainable might be the means of saving the lives of hundreds, as certainly tho ignorance on these points has been the source of death, by painful and lingering torture, in many cases. We purpose, therefore, now to give some information about air, to show the importance of it to mankind, and to indicate how much we owe to the Omniscient Providence that has given to air the properties that we find it to possess. Although “ trifles light as air” has become a proverb, yet air is positively heavy. A hogshead of air weighs about ten ounces ; this is heavier than the gas which is burned in the streets and shops, of which a hogshead would weigh only seven, ounces ; and very much heavier than hydrogen gas, with which balloons were formerly filled, a hogshead of hydrogen gas Aveighing only two-thirds of an ounce. A balloon filled with hjulrogen, or even with coal gas, rises into the air, as oil or a cork rises up through Avater. The air being thus heavy, presses upon the earth ; and by measuring the degree of pres- sure Ave can tell Iioav much air there is. This is done by an instrument termed a barometer — a glass tube closed at one end, and which, having been filled Avith quicksilver, is turned upside doAvn in a cup containing quicksilver also. The tube being shut at the top, the air does not press on the 16 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL quicksilver inside, but presses upon that in the basin ; the quicksilver in the tube, which tends naturally to fall down into the basin, is thus forced to remain up in the tube by the pressure of external air ; and it rises so high that the pres- sure inside, of the quicksilver, and outside, of the air, is equal. If the pressure of the air diminishes, the quicksilver falls ; if the pressure of the air increases, the quicksilver rises : and as all great changes of the air are connected with changes of the weather, the barometer is generally known and consulted as a sort of weather-glass. Every space of an inch square supports fifteen pounds weight of air ; at the rate of ten ounces to a hogshead, the depth of the air would therefore be about five miles. But it is much deeper, for air is what is termed compressible — that is to say, it may by pressure be squeezed into a smaller bulk ; and hence the air next the ground, being compressed by the portions above it, is much the heaviest portion. At three miles high a hogshead of air weighs only five ounces, and at eight miles high only two ounces ; hence the limits of the air are much farther removed, and it is known to extend to at least forty miles. The office of the air is to support animal life : no animal can live without air : even fishes require air. The water in which they swim contains air mixed with it, and this water washing, the gills, which are their lungs, serves to them as the air directly acts on us. If wo boil water until the air is expelled from it, and let it cool in a close vessel, we may drown a fish by putting it into such water, as easily as a land animal ; it could not breathe. It is thus that in the lakes on the tops of very high mountains there are no fish. The heights are deserted by land and by water animals, in consequence of the air being too thin ‘to support life. The way in which the air acts upon the body is very interesting. The most abun- dant element of our food is what the chemists term carbon, of which, in a gross manner, charcoal may serve as an exam- ple. Now, we eat much more of this than we require for the supply of our bodies, and it must be got rid of. This is done by its uniting in the body with a substance termed oxygen, and forming carbonic acid, the sort of air which boils up in soda water and ginger beer. This dissolves in the blood, co- louring it a deep purple, and escapes from it when by the action of the heart the black blood is exposed to the action of the air on the surface of the lungs. Now; the office of the air is to supply this oxygen which removes the carbon from the blood. But the air is not pure oxygen. If it were, it would act too violently. An animal which breathes, pure ox ’ gen, becomes flushed, pants violently, and, if not choked, dies of inflam- mation of the lungs, produced by the intense action. In the air we breathe, the oxygen gas is diluted to the proper de- gree by another gas, termed nitrogen, which is totally des- titute of power ; it does of itself no good and no harm ; it is the only substance that could be mixed in the air we breathe, without interfering in any way. When thus the blood loses, by exposure to the air in the lungs, its carbonic acid, it takes oxygen in its place ; from dark purple it becomes bright red, and is then proper to take up a fresh quantity of carbon, and to sustain the body in health by its removal. When any thing burns in the air, it is the oxygen which is active. The nitrogen dilutes here also the oxygen, and keeps its activity down to the degree most suitable to our wants. If the air were pure oxygen, all our domestic fires would be violent conflagrations ; our iron pokers and tongs, if heated red hot, would take fire and burn like squibs ; no comfort, no safety for society could exist. But in burning, this oxygen is destroyed. If a candle be placed lighted under a glass bell, it will, after a little, go out. The air will become unfit to support combustion. Here also, as well as in the burning of coals, coke, gas, oil, charcoal, &c. the oxygen is changed into carbonic acid, and precisely as a fresh supply of oxygen is necessary for the continuance of life, so is it for combustion. The air contains about one part in five of oxygen, and, as has been seen, this oxygen is liable to continual destruction by the breathing of animals and the burning of fuel and of lights. An ordinary man spoils in twenty-four hours 720 cubic feet of air, that is, a mass of air 1 1 feet 6 inches square and 6 feet thick. The burning of three ounces of charcoal, or of a mould candle of six to the pound, produces the same effect. It is not unusual in a factory to burn ten tons of coal a-day, which spoils 3,185,760 cubic feet of air, a mass of a quarter of a mile square and six feet thick. If we multiply these numbers by the number of inhabitants, of man and of all other animals upon the earth, and also by the quantity of fuel burned all over the globe, it will be evident that without some regulating power superior to all that mere human means could devise, the air might ultimately become unfit to be the sustenance of living; beings, and all the numerous tribes of animated nature which now adorn its surface, would be de- stroyed. By the all-wise arrangement of Providence, however, the animals, in thus converting the oxygen of the air into carbo- nic acid, become the means of supplying nourishment to another class of beings equally interesting and numerous. All vegetables breathe ; but as animals take in too much car- bon with their solid food, so do plants obtain too little from the substances that give nourishment to their roots. The animal breathes to give off carbon, the vegetable breathes to take it up. The two great divisions of living nature thus act in contrary ways upon the air ; the oxygen consumed by the animal or by combustion, is given out again by the carbon of the carbonic acid becoming fixed in the plant of which it forms the woody mass; and thus the composition of the air is kept balanced at its proper point, and provision for the due nutrition of animals and vegetables is secured. The air we breathe serves, however, for other important uses. Without the air, the fresh breezes which moderate the heats of summer could not exist, and there would prevail in nature an eternal silence, for it is by means of air that we not only breathe, but hear. The variety of aspect given to the sky by the formation and rapid change of clouds, arises from the mixture of warm and of cold damp air. If there was no air, there might be dew, but there could never be a cloud. Without the air we could not have the bright blue sky which gives to our fine season its greatest charm. The heavens would be a vault of intense black, in which the sun would appear alone a glaring ball of fire, whose rays, unmiti- gated by the air which now absorbs them in their passage through its mass, would be a continual source of ill. The blue sky, the bright white clouds, arise from the sun’s rays being partly stopped, and turned from one object to another. The sun’s rays really consist of light of all the colours of the rain- bow ; of these the red portion is lost in passing through the air, and the blue remains, giving the colour we observe. With- out the air, a place shaded from the sun would be in absolute darkness ; as it now exists, a quantity of light is scattered about in every way by the different portions of the air, and thus an agreeable shade provided in place of the total absence of all light. On very elevated tops of mountains, where the traveller is placed above the greater portion of the air, all these effects of its absence which we have noticed, are found to exist. On the summit of Mont Blanc, a pistol dis- charged is scarcely heard, and a companion once out of sight, may be lost ; for neither can he produce any noise by his own exertions, nor could his voice reach his friends, even if he could speak ; the sky is deep indigo-coloured, or nearly black; and those objects on which the sun’s light does not directly fall, are seen with difficulty. Such are the uses of the common air we breathe. Such are the benefits we derive from a blessing, of whose existence when at rest we are almost unconscious. Absence of Mind.— A well-known gentleman of Magda- len College, Cambridge, had taken his watch from his pocket, to mark the time he intended to boil an egg for his breakfast, when a friend entering the room, found him absorbed in some abstruse calculation, with the egg in his hand, upon which he was intently looking, and the watch supplying its place in the saucepan of boiling water. Early Rising. — Six or seven hours’ sleep is certainly suf- ficient, and no one ought to exceed eight. To make sleep re- freshing, the following things are requisite : — To take suffi- cient exercise in the open air ; to avoid strong tea or coffee ; to eat a light supper ; and to lie down with a mind as cheer- ful and serene as possible. We hardly ever knew an early riser who did not enjoy a good state of health. It consists vtdth observation, that all very old men have been early risers. This is the only circumstance attending longevity, to which we never knew an exception. Printed and Published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, G Church Lane, College Green, Dublin. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 3. SATURDAY, JULY 18, 1840. Volume I. THE ROCK OF CASHEL, AS To such of our readers as have not had the good fortune to see the ancient metropolis of Munster, our prefixed illustra- tion will, it is hoped, give some general idea of the situation and grandeur of a group of ruins, which on various accounts claim to rank as the most interesting in the British islands. Ancient buildings of greater extent and higher architectural splendour may indeed be found elsewhere ; but in no other spot in the empire can there be seen congregated together so many structures of such different characters and uses, and of such separate and remote ages ; their imposing effect being strikingly heightened by the singulai’ity and grandeur of their situation, and the absence from about them of any objects that might destroy the associations they are so well calculated to excite. To give an adequate idea, however, of this magni- ficent architectural assemblage, would require not one, but a series of views, from its various surrounding sides. These we shall probably furnish in the course of our future numbers; and in the mean time we may state, that the buildings of which it is composed are the following : — - 1st, An Ecclesiastical Round Tower, in perfect preserva- tion. 2d, Cormac’s Chapel, a small stone-roofed church, with SEEN FROM THE SOUTH. two side-towers, in the Norman style of the eleventh and twelfth centuries — also in good preservation. 3d, A Cathedral, with nave, choir, and transepts, in the pointed style of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, now in ruins, but which was originally only second in extent and the magnificence of its architecture to the cathedrals in our own metropolis. 4th, A strong Castle, which served as the palace of the Archbishops of Cashel. 5th, The Vicar’s Hall, and the mansions of the inferior ec- clesiastical officers of the Cathedral, which are also in ruins. If, then, the reader will picture to himself such a group of buildings, standing in solitary grandeur on a lofty, isolated, and on some sides precipitous rock, in the midst of the green luxuriant plains of “ the Golden Vale,” he may be able to form some idea of the various aspects of sublimity and picturesque- ness which it is so well calculated to assume, and of the ex- citing interest it must necessarily create even in minds of the lowest degree of intellectuality. Viewed from any point, it is, indeed, such a scene as, once beheld, would impress itself on the memory for ever. It would appear from our ancient histories that the Rock 18 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. of Cashel was the site of the regal fortress of the Kings of Munster, from ages anterior to the preaching of the gospel in Ireland ; and it is stated in the ancient lives of our patron Saint, that the monarch iEngus, the son of Nathfraoich, was here converted, with his family, and the nobles of Munster, by St Patrick in the fifth century. It would appear also from the same authorities, that at this period there was a Pagan tem- ple within the fortress, which the Irish apostle destroyed ; and though it is nowhere distinctly stated, as far as we are able to discover, that a Christian church was founded on its site in that age, the fact that it was so, may fairly be inferred from the statement in the Tripartite Life of the Saint, in which it is stated that no less than seventeen kings, descended from JEngus and his brother Oilioll, being ordained monks, reign- ed at Cashel, from the time of St Patrick to the reign of Cinn- geoghan, who, according to the Annals of Innisfallen, was deposed in the year 901, Cormac MacCuilleanan being set up in his place. However this may be, it can hardly admit of doubt that a church was erected, if not at that time, at least some centuries afterwards, as appears from the existing round tower, which is unquestionably of an age considerably anterior to any of the other structures now remaining. It is said, indeed, and popularly believed, that a cathedral church was erected here in the ninth century by the King-Bishop Cormac MacCuilleanan ; and if we had historical authority for this supposition, we might conclude, with every proba- bility, that the round tower was of that age. But no such evidence has been found, and Cashel is only noticed in our an- nals as a regal residence of the Munster kings, till the begin- ning of the twelfth century, when, at the year 1101, it is stated in the Annals of the Four Masters, that “ a convocation of the people of Leoth Mogha, or the southern half of Ireland, was held at Cashel, at which Murtough O’Brien, with the nobles of the laity and clergy, and O’Dunan, the illustrious bishop and chief senior of Ireland, attended, and on which occasion Murtough O’Brien made such an offering as king never made before him, namely, Cashel of the Kings, which he bestowed on the devout, without the intervention of a laic or an ecclesi- astic, but for the use of the religious of Ireland in general.” The successor of this monarch, Cormac MacCarthy, being de- posed in 1127, as stated in the Annals of Innisfallen, com- menced the erection of the church, now popularly called “ Cormac’s Chapel.” He was, however, soon afterwards re- stored to his throne, and on the completion of this church it was consecrated in 1 134. This" event is recorded by all our ancient annalists in nearly the following words “ 1 134. The church built by Cormac MacCarthy at Cashel was consecrated this year by the archbishop and bishops of Munster, at which ceremony the nobility of Ireland, both clergy and laity, were present.” It can scarcely be doubted that this was the finest architec- tural work hitherto erected in Ireland, but its proportions were small ; and when, in 1 152, the archbishopric of Munster was fixed at Cashel by Cardinal John Paparo, the papal le- gate, it became necessary to provide a church of greater am- plitude. The present cathedral was in consequence erected by Donald O’Brien, King of Limerick, and endowed with am- ple provisions in lands, and the older church was converted into a chapel, or chapter-house. But though the present ruined cathedral claims this very early antiquity, its existing architectural features chiefly belong to a later age — namely, the commencement of the fifteenth cen- tury, when, as appears from Wares’s Antiquities, the cathe- dral was rebuilt by the archbishop, Richard O’Hedian, or at least repaired, from a very ruinous condition in which it then was. The Vicar’s Hall, &c. was also erected by this prelate; and it is not improbable that the castle was erected, or at least re-edified, at the same period It would appear, however, to have been repaired as late as the sixteenth century, from the shields bearing the arms of Fitzgerald and Butler, which are sculptured on it — prelates of these names having governed the see in succession in the early half of that century. The interior of the cathedral is crowded with monuments of considerable antiquity ; and the tomb of Cormac MacCar- thy is to be seen on one side of the north porch, at the entrance to his chapel. It was opened above a century since, and a pastoral staff, of exquisite beauty, and corresponding in style with the ornaments of the chapel, was extracted from it. It is now in the possession of Mr Petrie. The cemetery con- tains no monument of any considerable age ; but on the south side there is a splendid but greatly dilapidated stone cross, which, there can be no doubt, belongs to the twelfth century. To give any detailed description of the architectural fea- tures of these various edifices, would extend beyond the space prescribed by the limits of our little Journal for a single paper ; yet, as some description will be expected of us, we shall briefly state a few particulars. The round tower — the more ancient remain upon the Rock — is fifty-six feet in circumference and ninety feet in height ; it contains five stories, has four apertures at top, and has its doorway twelve feet from the ground. Cormac’s Chapel consists of a nave and choir, but has neither transepts nor lateral aisles. It is richly decorated in the Norman style of the time, both exteriorly and interiorly ; and the entire length of the building is fifty-three feet. There are crypts between the arches of the choir and nave and the stone roof ; and there is a square tower on each side of the building, at the junction of the nave and choir. Taken as a whole, there is no specimen of its kind in the British empire so perfect or curious. The cathedral, as already stated, consists of a choir, nave, and transepts, with a square tower in the centre. The greatest length, from east to west, is about two hundred and ten feet, and the breadth in the transepts is about a hundred and seventy feet. There are no side aisles, and the windows are of the lancet form, usual in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. A century has not yet elapsed since this magni- ficent pile was doomed to destruction, and that by one who should have been its most zealous preserver. Archbishop Price, who succeeded to this see in 1744, and died in 1752, not being able, as tradition states, to drive in his carriage up the steep ascent to the church door, procured an act of par- liament to remove the cathedral from the Rock of Cashel into the town, on which the roof was taken off for thevalue of the lead, and the venerable pile was abandoned to ruin ! Of the remarkable historical events connected with these ruins, our space will only permit us to state, that in 1495 the cathedral was burned by Gerald, the eighth Earl of Kil- dare; for which act, being accused before the king, his excuse was, that it was true, but that he would not have done so but that he had supposed the archbishop was in it ; and his can- dour was rewarded with the chief governorship of Ireland ! In 1647, the cathedral — being filled with a vast number of persons, many of whom were ecclesiastics, who had fled thither for refuge and protection, a strong garrison having been placed in it by Lord Taafe — was taken by storm by the Lord Inchi- quin, with a considerable slaughter of the garrison and citi- zens, including twenty ecclesiastics. It was again taken by Cromwell in the year 1649. In conclusion, we shall only remark, that the venerable group of ruins of which we have attempted this slight sketch, considered as an object of interest to pleasure tourists, and those of our own country in particular, have not as yet been sufficiently appreciated ; and that, as Sir Walter Scott truly remarked, though the scenery of our lakes and mountains may be rivalled in many parts of the sister islands, there is no- thing of their class, viewed as a whole, comparable in interest with the ruins on the Rock of Cashel. P. Poetical, Prophecy of Bishop Berkeley — To our illustrious countryman, Bishop Berkeley, may be with justice applied what he himself says of his favourite, Plato, that “ he has joined with an imagination the most splendid and magnificent, an intellect fully as deep and clear.” A morsel of poetry from such a writer ought to be preserved as a lite- rary curiosity, and as a proof of the great variety of his ta- lents ; but when we consider that the following was written almost in a prophetic spirit, more than a century ago, and consequently long before the events to which he seems to al- lude could well have been anticipated, it has an additional claim upon our notice. “AMERICA, 1730. There shall be sung another golden age, The rise of empires and of arts. The good and great inspiring epic rage, The wisest heads and noblest hearts. Not such as Europe breeds in her decay ; Such as she bred when fresh and young, When heavenly flame did animate her clay. By future poets shall be sung. Westward the course of empire bends its way— The four first acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama and the day ; Time’s noblest offspring is the last.” THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. THE SCENERY AND ANTIQUITIES OF IRELAND ILLUSTRATED, BY BARTLETT AND WILLIS. “ Know thyself,” was the wise advice of the ancient Greek philosopher ; and it is certainly desirable that we should know ourselves, and take every pains in our power to acquire self- knowledge. But the task is by no means an easy one ; and hence the poet Burns well exclaims, “ Oh, wad some power the giftie gi’e us, To see oursells as others see us ; It wad frae monie a blunder free us, And foolish notion. What airs in dress and gait wad lea’ us, And e’en devotion !” Determined, however, as we for own part always are, to ac- quire a knowledge of ourselves, we felt no small gratifica- tion at the opportunity which, we presumed, would be amply afforded us by the work of Messrs Bartlett and Willis, the first an English artist, and the second an American litterateur, who have left their homes, in a most commendable spirit of philanthropy, to depict our scenery and antiquities, and to tell us all that it behoves us to know about them and ourselves. We accordingly lost not a moment in possessing ourselves of the precious treasure that would, as we hoped, “ the giftie gi’e us, to see oursells as others see us and verily we must ac- knowledge that our wonderment during its perusal has been excessive, and that it has convinced us that we never knew ourselves before, or ever saw any thing about us with proper eyes. Henceforward we shall be cautious how w r e trust to the evidence of our senses for any thing we may see, for it is pretty plain that hitherto they have been of no manner of use to us. They have deceived and bamboozled us our whole lives long ; and from the present moment we will trust to none save those of Messrs Bartlett and Willis — at least we will never trust to our own. The very vignette on the title-page gave us some startling notification of the fearful discovery that awaited us. We had flattered ourselves that we were quite familiar with all the remarkable features of Irish scenery, and should not fail at a glance to identify any delineation of them, inasmuch as there is not a river or lake in Ireland of any extent that we have not sailed on, not a mountain that we have not climbed, not a headland or island on our coast that we have not visited. But here was a subject of a striking and most remarkable charac- ter that appeared quite new to us, nor should we ever have been able to guess at it, if a friend to whom we applied for in- formation had not assured us, to our utter astonishment, that he was informed it was nothing less than our old acquaintance the Giants’ Causeway ! The wonder at our blindness, however, in some degree diminished when we perceived— if we can guess at the only point from which such a view could be obtained — that the ingenious artist had represented the sun setting in the north ; for as often as we had been at the Causeway, we never had the observation or good fortune to witness such a sight. We must confess, moreover, that our feelings of mortification -at our ignorance were partly soothed, when we turned over to the next vignette, which we at once recognised by its bridge to have been intended for Poul-a-phuca, or, as Messrs Bartlett and Willis name it, more correctly we presume, Phoula Phuca ! We cannot, however, state the impression left on our minds by each of the prints in succession ; but we shall take a glance at two or three of them ; and when we have pointed out the particulars that most confounded us in each, we can have little doubt that such of our readers as have never seen the places they are intended to represent, will concur in the conviction that has been forced upon us by our inspection of them. The first of them that astounded us beyond measure was that called “ Ancient Cross, Clonmacnoise.” At this place we had erewhile spent some of our happiest hours, meditat- ing among its tombs, and admiring alike its various ancient architectural remains, and the sublimely desolate but appro- priate character of its natural scenery. So familiar had we grown with this most exciting scene, that we thought that we should have been able to identify every stone in it blind- fold ; but that was all a mistake : we had only a dim and erroneous vision of its features ; we saw nothing accurately. For instance, the stone cross which forms the principal ob- ject in the foreground, and which gives name to this sub- ject — this cross, which we had often drawn and measured, 19 and found to be just fifteen feet in height, as Harris the antiquary had supposed before us, here appears to be more than twenty feet ! while the base of it, which to our eyes always presented the appearance of a surface covered with a sculptural design of a deer-hunt, by men, dogs, chariots, and horses, is here an unadorned blank ! The small round tower in the middle ground, which, as we believed, stood on the very shore, nearly level with the Shannon, has in this view mounted up the side of the hill. But what struck us as furnishing the most remarkable proofs of our defect of vision is, that the doorway of the great round tower, called O’Rourke’s Tower, which, according to our mea- surement, was five feet six inches in height, and placed at the distance of eight feet from the ground, is here represented as at least twenty feet from it ; and the stone wall of the cemetery, which, as it seemed to our perception, ran nearly from the doorway of the tower to within a few yards of the cross, has no existence whatever in the print, its place being occupied by some huge Druidical monument which we never were able to see. The perspective in this view is also of a novel kind, and well worthy of the attention of the Irish artists, and all those in Ireland who may hitherto have sup- posed that they knew something of this science. They will see that the level lines, or courses, on circular buildings, in- stead of ascending to the horizontal line when below it, de- scend to some horizontal line of their own ; and that in fact there is not one horizontal line only in the picture, but per- haps a dozen, which fully proves that our previous notions on this point were wholly erroneous. But we must huimy on. What have we got next ? “ Clew Bay from West Port,” or “ Baie De Clew, vue de West Port.” Well, we believe this is intended for the beautiful Bay of Westport, called Clew Bay ; but, if so, what has become of the beautiful country of Murisk, renowned in Irish song, which used to be situated at the base of Croagh Phadruig, or Croagh Patric? And is this the noble Reek itself ? Good heavens ! but it must have suffered from some strange con- vulsion since we saw it ; it has been actually torn into a per- pendicular cliff from its very summit to its base. But what are we thinking of? It was, we suppose, always so ; and our not having observed it, is only a proof that we were never able to look at it correctly — and we should know better in future. One peep more, and we shall have done. What is this ? Scene from Cloonacartin Hill, Connemara. Ay, that’s a scene we have looked at for many an hour. That group of jagged and pointed mountains to the left is the glorious Twelve Pins of Binnabeola. W e never indeed saw them grouped so closely together, or standing so upright ; but no matter : the hurri- cane of last year perhaps has blown them together, and carried away their sloping bases. But what do we see in the middle ground? The two lakes of Derry Clare and Lough Ina joined in one; and the rapid and unnavigable river which united them, or which we thought we saw there— where is it ? Non est inventus : alas ! alas ! it is not to be found. Most wonder- ful ! Lough Ina, with its three little wooded islands, no longer exists as a separate lake. It has, however, now got ten islands instead of three ; but, then, they are all bare — all, all ! — and the ancient ones have lost their wood. In like manner the flat heathy grounds between the mountains and the lakes to the right, have wholly disappeared, and nothing but water is to be seen in their place. But our limits will not permit us to notice any more of Mr Bartlett’s innumerable discoveries, which are equally remark- able in all his other views ; so, after making him our grate- ful bow, we turn to the labours of his coadjutor, the cele- brated author of “ Pencillings by the Way,” &c., little doubt- ing that by his lucubrations we shall be equally edified and astonished. Mr Willis does not attempt a description of the scenes depicted by his co-labourer- — it would, perhaps, be a difficult task for him, as in the instance of the view from Cloonacartin Hill, which we have noticed. But instead thereof, he treats us to pencillings of his own of a very graphic character, and usually as little like nature, as we had supposed it in Ireland, as even the drawings of Mr Bartlett. The chief difference between them is, that while the sketches of the one are landscape, those of the other are generally in the figure line ; and after the model of the Dutch masters, mostly consisting of hackney-car drivers, waiters, chamber-maids, and, what his principal forte lies in, beggars ! In his sketches of the latter he beats Callot himself ; they are evidently drawn for love of the thing. After witnessing “ the 20 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. •splendid failure at Eglintoun Castle,” Mr Willis embarks at Port-Patrick, and lands at Donaghadee. This he tells us he did in imitation of St Patrick, “ who evidently,” like Mr Willis, “ knew enough of geography to decide which point of Scot- land was nearest to the opposite shore.” This was new to ns ; but it should be noted in chronicles. He then travels on an Irish car to Belfast, and, like more of our modern visitors who favour us with their lucubrations, gives us a sketch of the said car, horse, and its driver, which, of course, are all singular things in their way. The pencilling, however, is a pleasant one enough, as it shows us that the car- driver very soon smoked the character of the travellers he had to take care of, and quizzed accordingly in a very proper and creditable Irish style. After a dangerous journey Mr Willis arrives safely in Belfast, and proceeds to give us his sketch of its inhabitants in the following words : — “It was market-day at Belfast, and the streets were thronged with the country people, the most inactive crowd of human beings, it struck me, that I had ever seen. The women were all crouching under their grey cloaks, or squat- ting upon the thills of the potato-carts, or upon steps or curb- stones ; and the men were leaning where there was any thing to lean against, or dragging their feet heavily after them, in a listless lounge along the pavement. It was difficult to re- member that this was the most energetic and mercurial po- pulation in (he world ; yet a second thought tells one that there is an analogy in this to the habits of the most powerful of the animal creation — the lion and the leopard, when not excited, taking their ease like the Irishman.” Men of Belfast, what think you of that ? But hear him out — “ I had thought, among a people so imaginative as the Irish, to have seen some touch of fancy in dress, if ever so poor— a bit of ribbon on the women’s caps, or a jaunty cock of the ‘boy’s’ tile, or his jacket or coat worn shapely and with an air. But dirty cloaks, ribbonless caps, uncombed hair, and not even a little straw taken from the cart and put under them when they sat on the dirty side-walk, were universal symptoms that left no room for belief in the existence of any vanity whatsoever in the women ; many of them of an age, too, when such fancies are supposed to be universal to the sex. The men could scarce be less ornamental in their exteriors ; but the dirty sugar-loaf hat, with a shapeless rim, and a twine around it to hold a pipe; the coat thrown over the shoulders, with the sleeves hanging behind ; the shoes mended by a wisp of straw stuffed into the holes, and their faces and bare breasts nearly as dirty as their feet, were alike the uniform of old and young. Still those who were not bargaining were laughing, and even in our flourishing canter through the market I had time to make up my mind, that if they had taken a farewell of vanity, they had not of fun.” Again we say, men of Belfast, what think you of that ? Did you ever see yourselves in this manner? If so, we must say that it is more than we ever did, though we have spent many a gay week in your noble, thriving, and most indus- trious town. “ Neither a bit of ribbon on the women’s caps, nor a jaunty cock of the boy’s tile no, “ but the dirty sugar- loaf hat, with a shapeless rim, and a twine round it to hold a pipe ; and the shoes mended by a wisp of straw stuffed into the holes,” &e. This certainly flogs ; and we must look more at- tentively to the Belfastians in future. Mr Willis proceeds to the hotel called the Donegal Arms, which he allows is a handsome house, in a broad and handsome street ; and then he adds, “ But I could not help pointing out to my companion the line of soiled polish at the height of a man’s shoulder on every wall and doorpost within sight, show- ing, with the plainness of a high-water mark, the average height as well as the prevailing habit of the people. We cer- tainly have not yet found time to acquire that polish in America [most civilized people!] ; and if we must wait till the work- ing classes find time to lean, it will be a century or two at least before we can show as polished an hotel as the Donegal Arms at Belfast, or (at that particular line above the side walk) as polished a city altogether.” Such is Mr Willis’s description of the Gresham’s Hotel of Belfast, a house which we had foolishly thought was remarkable for its cleanliness, order, and good accommodation. Of course he got a miser- able dinner of “unornamented chops and potatoes,” after which he proceeded to visit the lions of Belfast. But we cannot .follow him in all his wanderings, though he tells us many things that are not a little amusing, as, for instance, that the houses have a noseless and flattened aspect; that he saw Du- bufe’s pictures of Adam and Eve, and sagaciously remarks how curious it is to observe how particularly clean they are (that is, Adam and Eve) before they sinned, and how very dingy after— being dirtied by their fall ; and, what was very agreeable to him, the exhibitor of the pictures actually called him by name, having remembered seeing the great penciller in America ! After having read the advertisements stuck on every wall, of “ vessels bound to New York,” and having “ done that, end of the town,” lie returned towards the inn. He then sallied out again to do the other end, and tells us with great satisfaction of a successful petty larceny of a very sen- timental kind which he achieved in the Botanical Gardens — namely, plucking a heart' s-ease, as an expressive remembrance of his visit — “ in spite of a cautionary placard, and the keeper standing under the porch and looking on.” After this feat he returned to the inn, and very wisely went to bed. “ A bare- footed damsel, with very pink heels” — recollect, reader, that this was in the Donegal Arms — “ was ‘ My grim chamberlain, Who lighted me to bed;’ and in some fear of oversleeping the hour for the coach in the morning, I reiterated, and ‘ sealed with a silver token,’ my request to be waked at six. Fortunately for a person who possesses Saneho’s ‘ alacrity at sleep,’ the noise of a coach rattling over the pavement woke me just in time to save my coffee and my place. I returned to my chamber the mo- ment before mounting the coach for something I had forgot- ten, and as the clock was striking eight, the faithful damsel knocked at my door and informed me that it was past six.” Mr Willis is a fortunate traveller. Often as we have stopped at the Donegal Arms, we never had the good fortune to see the pink heels or bare legs of a chambermaid ; and the mo- ral economy of the house must be greatly changed also, when they allow the gentlemen to be called by the said bare-legged damsels ; a duty which, in our visits at it and all other respecta- ble hotels, always devolved on that useful personage called Boots. We do not think, however, that this change of the sys- tem — leaving the calling of the gentlemen to the chambermaids — would work well, except in the case of American travellers. Still, however, as he says, he was in time, and started off — no longer in St Patrick’s track, but on King William’s route to the battle of the Boyne — and arrives in Drogheda to dinner. He tells us that the country is very bare of wood, and then proceeds in the following words to describe the habitations. “ But what shall I say of the human habitations in this (so called) most thriving and best-conditioned quarter of Ireland? If I had not seen every second face at a hovel-door with a smile on it, and heard laughing and begging in the same breath everywhere, I should think here were human beings abandoned by their Maker. Many of the dwellings I saw upon the road- side looked to me like the abodes of extinguished hope — for- gotten instincts — grovelling, despairing, nay, almost idiotic wretchedness. I did not know there were such sights in the world. I did not know that men and women, upright, and made in God’s image, could live in styes, like swine, with swine — sitting, lying down, cooking and eating in such filth as all brute animals, save the one ‘unclean,’ revolt from and avoid. The extraordinary part of it, too, is, that it seems almost altogether the result of choice. I scarce saw one hovel, the mud-floor of which was not excavated several inches below the ground-level without ; and as there is no sill, or raised threshold, there is no bar, I will not say to the water, but to the liquid filth that oozes to its lower reservoir within. A few miles from Drogheda, I pointed out to my companions a woman sitting in a hovel at work, with the muddy water up to her ancles, and an enormous hog scratching himself against her knee. These disgusting animals were everywhere Aval king in and out of the hovels at pleasure, jostling aside the half-naked children, or wallowing in the wash, outside or in — the best- conditioned and most privileged inmates, indeed, of every habitation. All this, of course, is matter of choice, and so is the offal-heap, situated, in almost every instance, directly before the door, and draining its putrid mass into the holloAV, under the peasant’s table. Yet mirth does live in these places— people do smile on you from these squalid abodes of Avretched- ness — the rose of health does shoAv itself upon the cheeks of children, whose cradle is a dung-heap, and Avhose play-fellows are hogs ! And ot the beings who live thus, courage, wit, and quenchless love ot liberty, are the undenied and universal characteristics. Truly, that mysterious law of nature by which corruption paints the rose and feeds the fragrant cup of the lily, is not without its similitude ! Who shall say Avhat is THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL 21 clean, when the back of the most loathsome of reptiles turns out, on examination, more beautiful than the butterfly ? Who shall say what extremes may not meet, when, amid the filth of an Irish hovel, spring, like flowers, out of ordure, the graces of a prince in his palace ?” All this, the reader will remark, was seen from the top of a stage-coach on a drenching wet day ! What wonderful powers of observation he must have ! The penciller next treats us to a song, descriptive of an Irish cabin, which he tells us was sung for him by one of the most beautiful women he saw in Ireland. His memorable arrival in Drogheda is thus described : — “ As we drove into Drogheda, we entered a crowd, which I can only describe as suggesting the idea of a miraculous advent of rags. It was market-day, and the streets were so thronged that you could scarce see the pavement, except under the feet of the horses ; and the public square was a sea of tat- ters, Here and all over Ireland I could but wonder where and how these rent and frittered habiliments had gone through the preparatory stages of wear and tear. There were no degrees — nothing above rags to be seen in coat or petticoat, waistcoat or breeches, cloak or shirt. Even the hats and shoes were in rags ; not a whole covering, even of the coarsest material, was to be detected on a thousand backs about us : nothing shabby, nothing threadbare, nothing mended, except here and there a hole in a beggar's coat, stuffed with straw. Who can give me the genealogy of Irish rags ? Who took the gloss from these coats, once broadcloth ? who wore them ? who tore them ? who sold them to the Jews ? (for, by the way, Irish rags are fine rags, seldom frieze or fustian). How came the tat- ters of the entire world, in short, assembled in Ireland ? for if, as it would seem, they have all descended from the backs of gentlemen, the entire world must contribute to maintain the supply.” Readers, such of you as have been in Drogheda, did you ever see any thing like this ? People of Drogheda, do you recognise yourselves in this picture here drawn of you? We are sure you cannot. But he is not done with you yet. He had been rather unlucky in the pursuit of his favourite sub- jects for study in Belfast— namely, the beggars ; but this dis- appointment was atoned for in Drogheda. He describes them thus : — “ I had been rather surprised at the scarcity of beggars in Belfast, but the beggary of Drogheda fully came up to the travellers’ descriptions. They were of every possible variety. At the first turn the coach made in the town, we were very near running over a blind man, who knelt in the liquid mud of the gutter (the calves of his legs quite covered by the pool, and only his heels appearing above), and held up in his hands the naked and footless stumps of a boy’s legs. The child sat in a wooden box, with his back against the man’s breast, and ate away very unconcernedly at a loaf of bread, while the blind exhibitor turned his face up to the sky, and, waving the stumps slightly from side to side, kept up a vociferation for charity that was heard above all the turmoil of the market place. When we stopped to change horses, the entire popu- lation, as deep as they could stand, at least with any chance i of being heard, held out their hands, and in every conceivable j tone and mode of arresting the attention, implored charity. The sight was awful : old age in shapes so hideous, I should think the most horrible nightmare never had conceived. The rain poured down upon their tangled and uncovered heads, seaming, with its cleansing torrents, faces so hollow, so de- graded in expression, and, withal, so clotted with filth and neglect, that they seemed like features of which the very own- ers had long lost, not only care, but consciousness and remem- j brance ; as if, in the horrors of want and idiotcy, they had ; anticipated the corrupting apathy of the grave, and aban- '■ doned every thing except the hunger which gnawed them into ! memory of existence. The feeble blows and palsied fighting : of these hag-like spectres for the pence thrown to them from ; the coach, and the howling, harsh, and unnatural voices in | which they imprecated curses on each other in the fury of the ! struggle, have left a remembrance in my mind, which deepens ] immeasurably my fancied nadir of human abandonment and degradation. God’s image so blasted, so defiled, so sunk be- low the ‘ beasts that perish,’ I would not have believed was to be found in the same world with hope.” But we, and our readers too, have probably had enough of Mr Willis’s “Pencillings by the Way” in Ireland — pencillings j which would seem to have been sketched with a material to which he is apparently very partial, namely, dirt. And now, in return for the favour which this gentleman and his coad- jutor have conferred upon us, by their exertions to enable us to improve our acquaintance with ourselves, we shall commu- nicate our own opinion of them, and hope they will be equally benefited by the knowledge. We think, then, that they are a pair of gentlemen who must have a wonderfully good opi- nion of themselves, and that not altogether without reason, inasmuch as they possess in common one quality, which shall be nameless, but in which not even we, natives of the Emerald Isle as we are, can pretend to compete with them. We do not think that there are any two Irishmen living, who would travel into a foreign country to represent its scenery like the one, or sketch the manners and characteristics of its inhabi- tants like the other, and expect that they should be rewarded by the purchase of their works by that people or in that country. Mr Bartlett is but an indifferent artist, unac- quainted even with some of the rudiments of his art, who has acquired the trade-knack of making pretty pictures by imitating the works of others, and by a total disregard of the real features of the scenes which he undertakes to depict. Mr Willis is a more accomplished sketcher in his line ; and his delineations might be of value, if his conceited ambition to produce effect did not continually mar whatever intrinsic worth they might otherwise possess ; but as it is, he is little better than a pert and flippant caricaturist. Neither one nor the other of these gentlemen, in short, would seem qualified for the task which they have so daringly undertaken ; and we think it would have been well, if, before they resolved upon going through with it, they had been mindful of the Eastern proverb, “ A lie, though it promise good, will do thee harm, and truth will do thee good at the last.” Applying this to ourselves as critics, we feel in conclusion bound to acknow- ledge that the prints in this work, considered as engravings, are deserving of the highest praise. X. Y. SUNRISE. The night is past, And the mists are fast Receding before the morning blast ; But still the light Of the Moon is bright, As reluctant she yields to the Sun his right ; And the morning star Appears, afar, To announce the approach of Aurora’s car. The silver sea Yet seems to be As calm as the rest of infancy ; And the mountain steep Is still in the deep Profound repose of a giant’s sleep ; And the gurgling rill, That is never still, Seems to double its noise to arouse the hill. The Moon in the west Now sinks to rest, And the night-bird withdraws to its ivied nest In yon antique tower. Which show's how the power And pride of man pass away in an hour ; And the carol — hark ! Of the early lark, Proclaims the Sun to the del! still dark. A yellow ray, As if from the spray Of the ocean, springs with the stars to play; But tliev shrink away, As afraid to stay, And leave the rude beam to disport as it may; And, one by one, They all have gone, And the sky is bright where they lately shone. The surges roar On the sounding shore, As if to awaken the mountain hoar ; But the morning light Has just touched the height Of his topmost erag, and awaked his sight, 22 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. And twitched away, In mirthful play, His dew-soaked nightcap of misty grey. See yon green wood That o’erhangs the flood Of that beautiful river ; it seems as it would Fain stoop to greet The water sweet, "Which coquettishly glides away, as fleet As a mountain fay, In fairy play, And to the great ocean runs away. Now the zenith is white With a doubtful light, That is dulled with the dregs of the recent night ; But ’tis fast giving way To the saffron ray, That can only be seen at dawn of day; And this is pushed on By the golden one Which precedes the car of the glorious Sun. Now, the fearful pride Of the mountain’s side, Bocks and chasms and cliffs one by one are descried ; And the brightening light Descends the height, With majestic step, to the plain now bright ; And the golden vest Which adorns the east, Sends its searching rays to the dark, sullen west. The carpet of gold O’er his path ’s now unrolled, And all Nature’s expectant its king to behold— And see ! the first gem, The most brilliant of them That flash in the front of his diadem ; And — maj estic — slow, Ide uprises now. O’er rejoicing worlds, his radiant brow ! OLD PRO VERBS. “ there’s luck in leisure.” “ DELAYS are dangerous.” “ James Scanlan wants to see you, sir. I told him you were hardly done dinner, but he begged me to let you know he is waiting.” “ Dear me,” said my father, “ what can he want ? Show him in, Carey.— Well, James, what is the matter?” “ Oh ! your honour, sir, won’t you come see my poor father? He’ll speak to you, but we can’t get a word from him. Pie’s dying of grief, my mother is so bad.” “ Your mother, James ! — -what has happened her ?” “ She took a heavy cold, sir, on Friday last, from a wetting she got going to Cashel ; and when she came home, she took to her bed, and it’s worse and worse she has got ever since, and at last she began to rave this morning ; and as Dr McCarthy was going past to the dispensary, Pat called him in ; and when he looked at her, he just shook his head and said he’d send her something, but that we must be prepared for any thing that might happen. Well, sir, when my father heard that, he went and sat down by the bedside, and taking my mother’s hand in his, says he, ‘ Ah, then, Mary, a-cushla- machree, am I going to lose you ? Are you going from me ? Did I ever think I’d see this day ? Ah, Mary, avourneen, sure you won’t leave me ?” And from that to this he has never stirred, nor spoken, nor taken the least notice of any one — not even of me — not even of me.” The poor fellow burst into a flood of tears - In a few minutes I was standing with my father by the bed- side of Mrs Scanlan. She was quite unconscious of what was passing around. Pier husband, who was my father’s principal tenant, and a substantial farmer, sat as his eldest and favourite son had described ; and although the object of my father’s visit was to rouse him from his lethargy, it was long ere he addressed himself to the task. It seemed almost sacrilegious to disturb such hallowed grief. A t length he laid his hand upon Scanlan’s shoulder. “ Come, James,” said he, “ look up, man ; don’t be so utterly cast down. You know the old saying, ‘ Whilst there’s life, there’s hope.’ ” “ It’s kind of your honour to try and comfort me ; but yours was always the good heart, and the kind one, and you never made the sight of your sunny face a compliment. But it’s no use — there’s no hope. The death’s on her handsome countenance.” He groaned deeply, and rocked himself backwards and for- wards. “ James,” said my father, “ we must be resigned to the will of God, but we need not make ourselves miserable by antici- pating evils.” “ Your honour was but a slip of a gossoon when you danced at the bright girl’s wedding, and you’re come now in time to see the last of the old woman — the old woman, the old woman,” repeated he, as if something struck him in the sound of the words as strange. “ Two-and-forty is not old, but they called her ‘ the old woman’ since the boys began to grow up. But she never grew old to me ; she’s the same now that she was the first evening I told her, that she was the only treasure on the face of the earth that my heart coveted. Only, much as I loved her then, I love her more now. Oh ! Mary, Mary, pulse of my heart, would to God I could die before you !” The younger son Pat, his mother’s favourite, now entered the room in a state of pitiable excitement. He had been at the dispensary to procure the medicine prescribed by the doctor, and to his imagination every person and every thing seemed to have conspired to delay him, whilst the lookers on deemed his haste almost superhuman. He immediately attempted to administer the draught he had brought, but his mother could not be made to understand what was wanted of her ; and at length, as if teased by his impor- tunities, she suddenly dashed the cup of medicine from her. The look of unutterable anguish with which he regarded her, as she rejected and destroyed that upon the taking of which depended the last hope, was indescribable. The almost fierceness of his haste, which he now saw had been utterly useless, had flushed his cheek and lighted up hi3 countenance, and he stood with his hands clasped, and raised as if in prayer, with firmly shut lips, and his eyes, in which you could view the transition from eager hope to utter despair, fixed upon her face, like a being that was changing into stone. At the other side of the bed was his father, who had re- sumed his former attitude, and beside him stood his eldest son, whose utterly wretched countenance, alternating from one parent to the other, showed that he suffered that lowest state of misery, which anticipates still further and greater woe as a consequence from that which overwhelms at present. My father left the room. I looked upon the group one in- stant. I felt that I could have resigned the possession of worlds to be permitted the luxury of raising the load of grief from those afflicted hearts ; but it could not be, and I retired to relieve my surcharged feelings in solitude. Ere morning dawned, nature had received another instal- ment of her debt. My father and I attended the funeral, and were surprised at the apparent fortitude of Mr Scanlan. We wished to bring him with us to the Hall after the sad ceremony, but he would not come. We then accompanied him to his own house. As we entered, I glanced at him: he was ghastly pale. He looked slowly round, fixed his eyes one moment on the countenance of his younger son, another on the elder, and sank upon a chair. Since the period of which I now write, I have often wit- nessed the closing scene of mortality, and various are the opi- nions I have heard, as to which point of time, between the moment of death and the first appearance abroad of the sur- vivors in their mourning apparel, is the saddest, the most afflicting, or the most trying — whether the moment of dis- solution, the first appearance of the undertaker, the laying out in the apparel of death, the bringing of the coffin, the last frantic kiss and look, the screwing down, the carrying out, the dull thud of the clay upon the coffin lid. Oh ! think not that I am coolly writing this, that I am probing with the sur- geon’s calmness the deep, the sensitive (with many bleeding) wounds that death has given. I am but a young man, yet my brain reels, and my eyes burn, and my heart swells to my throat, as memory holds the mirror to my view, and I see depicted in it the scenes, and feel again the feelings, that have been more than once or twice excited at the stages which I have just recounted in order. But of all the stabs thus given to the heart, of all those mo- ments of anguish, the keenest is that felt when the survivor re-enters the house, where the form and the voice and the THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 23 cheerful laugh of the departed one had made his home a little paradise, and feels that that home is now for ever desolate ! Is there a desert so deserted ? “ James,” said Mr S caul an, after he had looked steadfastly at him for some time, “ you were the first she brought me; and when you came into the world, I was almost beside myself with joy; and when I was allowed to enter the room where she was sitting up in bed, with you in her arms, I almost smothered you both with kisses ; and 1 cried, and laughed, and danced about as if I was mad. Sure I need’nt be ashamed to own it, now that she’s gone. And when I told her that they said you were the image of me, she answered me, ‘ So he ought, for sure you were always before my eyes ;’ and when I said that I could’nt be ‘ always,’ she said that ’twas the eyes of her heart she meant. So, Pat, avourneen (addressing the younger, who had been all this time crying bitterly), though you’re the living image of her that’s dead, and though father could’nt love son more than I do you, you’re not surprised that I gave James the preference sometimes, though I never loved you the less.” “ Father dear,” said Pat, “ I was never jealous of Jem, nor he of me; we both knew that our faces and tempers and dispositions took after you both — Jem’s after you, and mine after my mother. Oh ! mother dear ! mother dear !” He burst into a paroxysm of grief, ran wildly into his mother’s room, and threw himself across the bed, roaring in a frenzied manner, “ James, honey, isn’t the house terrible lonesome?” and a violent shudder ran through poor Scanlan’s frame. “ Isn’t there a great echo in it? It’s very chilly ; I believe I had better go and He down on the bed.” tie stood up, and, continuing the forward movement of his body after he had risen to a standing position, would have fallen, extended on his face, but that I caught him just as his watchful son had sprung to save him. Poor Pat now mastered his feelings in some degree, and turned his entire attention to assist his surviving parent. He was hud on the bed, and shortly recovered himself, and addressed my father. “ I know your honour feels for my trouble, and will excuse the boys and me for not showing the attention we ought to show for your goodness.” “ Say nothing about attention to me, James ; I am sorry for your trouble, and, God knows, I wish I knew how to relieve and comfort you.” “ I’m sure "you do, sir. — Boys, I won’t be long with you. The pidse of my heart is gone. Look up to his honour, and never forget, that, though there’s no clanship in these times, and though many a shoneen holds a higher head than his in the country now, you still owe him your love and fealty, for he's one of the real old stock ; and your forefathers followed his forefathers in war and peace, when, if you stood on the highest crag of the Bogaragh, you could’nt see to the bounds of their wide domains. And while his honour is present, and I have my senses clear about me, I’ll lay my commands on you both, boys ; and if ever you break through them (though I am sure you never will), let his honour, and the young master here bear witness against you.” He then delivered what was simply a verbal will, directing how they should dispose of and divide his property and effects, and concluded as follows : — “When your mother and I were married, we were both of us full of old sayings and proverbs, and we thought, like most ■others, that their meaning should be taken in the plainest and fullest signification; and as most of them are universally allowed to contain a great deal of wisdom and good sense, we thought that whoever regulated Ins or her conduct strictly according to their rule, would of necessity be the wisest per- son in the -world. One of these sayings, that I had been taught to believe was one of the wisest ever pronounced by man, was, ‘ there’s luck in leisure,’ and this was my most favourite maxim ; but when I got married, I found that your mother — that your mother had a favourite one also — 1 delays are dangerous.’ Well, the first year, when the corn -was coming up, a corn factor came to this part of the country, and offered a middling fair price for an average crop. Mary bade me take it, as I’d have that much money certain, and if the season should turn out bad, the factor -would be the sufferer, and I'd be safe. 4 Take it at once,’ said she; ‘you know “delays are dan- gerous.” ’ I began to consider that if the season should be only mid- dling, inclining to bad, I might get as much money still, as the factor offered; and if it should turn out fine, the crop would produce a great deal more, whilst it would be only in the event of a bad season that I’d be apt to lose. ‘ There’s luck in leisure,’ said I; ‘ I’ll wait.’ Well, the season was dreadful; most of the crops were to- tally destroyed, and we suffered more than almost any of the neighbours. I was afraid to look Mary in the face, when I had made out the extent of my loss, but she only said, ‘ Come, Jemmy, it can’t be helped; the worse luck now, the better another time. You’ll attend more to wise old sayings for the future ; they were made out of wiser heads than yours.’ ‘ Ah, but, Mary, a-cushla, it was following an old saying that I was ; sure you have often heard say, “ there’s luck in lei- sure.” ’ ‘ Poh,’ said she, ‘ that’s only a foolish saying, take my word for it.’ Next year the sky-farmer came again. He had lost no- thing, for no one would deal with him, on his terms, the year before ; and to hear how heartlessly he’d jeer and jibe them that had the sore hearts in their bosoms, and calculate up for them how much they had lost, and then he’d say, he supposed they would’nt refuse a good offer another time. Well, I asked him was he going to make me a good offer, and he said he would’nt care if he did, and he offered as much as would hardly pay the rent, letting alone seed and labour. ‘ Why,’ said I, ‘ you’ll give as much as you offered last year.’ ‘ Not I indeed,’ said he ; ‘ I bought experience instead of corn last year, and you paid for it ;’ and he laughed, and shook himself with glee," and chuckled, and jingled the guineas in his pockets, until I was hardly able to keep from knocking him down. Well, I higgled and bargained, and tried to raise him, but not another penny would he give ; and at last he said that he was going away in the morning, and so I might take it or leave it, as I liked— he would’nt force his money on any man, not he. ‘ Delays are dangerous,’ thought I ; and, though it was a certain loss, I agreed. A finer season than that, never came from the heavens. The factor came to see the crops, and such crops as they were ! Several others had done like me ; and if he laughed at us the year before, he laughed ten times more now. The year before he had lost nothing : this year he had made a fortune. He had laughed at our losses before, but he now laughed over his own gains. ‘ They may laugh who win.’ If he had taken it quieter, he might have done the same thing again ; but by acting as he did, he set every one against him, and he never after could buy up growing crops here. ‘ Mary, my darling,’ said I, ‘ we’re almost ruined, in the second year, by following old sayings. I’ll never believe in them again.’ ‘ Jemmy, dear,’ said she, ‘ I have been think- ing the matter over, and I believe it’s not the sayings that are wrong, but the wrong use that’s made of them ; for if we had said them the other way, we’d have made money instead of losing it ; and for the future we’ll try to use the sense that God has given us, and the acquirements such as they are that He has enabled us to obtain, in directing us to the proper use and timely application of those proverbs that are really wise and useful when properly applied.’ As it was the will of the Almighty, boys, that your dear mother should not have had her senses about her when depart- ing, and it’s likely that these are the last of her sensible words t that I’ll ever be able to tell you, I’d have you take them, and think upon them as if they were her last addressed to you, and let neither proverbs, however apparently wise in them- selves, nor superstitious remarks, ever guide your actions or sway your conduct until you have appfied to them the touch- stone of your own common sense. May God bless and guide you, my darling boys ; and now I have done with the world and its affairs.” That day fortnight the funeral of James Scanlan was at- tended by Naisi. Irish Bulls. — On the first appearance of Miss Edge- worth’s admirable “ Essay on Irish Bulls,” the secretary of a celebrated agricultural society in Ireland received orders from its committee to procure several copies of the book, for the use of the members in their labours for improving the breed of cattle ! An ambitious Horse and accommodating Rider. — An Irishman was riding through a bog, when his horse sank deeply into the mud, and in his efforts to extricate himself, Bob got his foot into the stirrup. “ Arrah, musha!” ex- claimed the rider, “ if you are going to get up, it is time for me to get down !” and he forthwith proceeded to dismount with all reasonable speed. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 24 NOVEL AND SINGULAR MODE OF RELIEVING NERVOUS COMPLAINTS. In a London medical work entitled The Doctor, are given the particulars of an interesting case of neuralgia, or tic douleureux, which, it appears, after having been treated with the usual medicines for more than two years, with little or no remis- sion of the painful symptoms attending it, yielded at length to a new and extraordinary remedy, in the shape of a metal magnet. The experiments tried upon the occasion promise results of such considerable interest and practical importance to the health perhaps of thousands, that we shall offer no apology to our readers for copying the history of the cure and the accompanying details into our columns, premising only, that while we individually place every reliance on the good faith of the witnesses who attest the facts recorded, we do not consider ourselves bound to vouch for their state- ment authoritatively to others, or draw any inference of a positive kind with respect to a remedy, of the nature and effects of which, after all, it is properly the province of the faculty alone to form a judgment. “ Our readers (observes the writer) will remember the in- teresting case of neuralgia of the finger, at St Thomas’s Hos- pital, upon which Dr Elliotson stated, in a clinical lecture, that he had exhausted his store of remedial agents, without developing a shade of improvement. [The remedies resorted to primarily were, carbonate of iron, cyanuret of potass, strych- nine, croton oil, hydrocyanic acid, and extract of bella- donna.] A more severe case, probably, was never subjected to treatment. The man left the hospital for a time, totally un- relieved, but soon afterwards returned, when, in accordance with a suggestion, as Dr Elliotson has since observed, of a correspondent of our own, the colchicum autumnale was tried in the case, without, however, the slightest benefit being de- rived therefrom. The sedative powers of the lobelia inflata then suggested to Dr Elliotson the propriety of giving the patient the chance of that medicine. The grounds on which it was employed proved to be in some measure correctly founded. The man took the lobelia, in increasing doses, every hour, beginning with seven drops of the tincture, and adding a drop to each progressive dose, until as large a quantity had been reached as could be taken without deranging the func- tions of the stomach. Some amelioration of the affection fol- lowed this treatment. The patient, who was before unable even to cross the ward, or bear without excruciating agony the slightest contact with his finger-nails, and had become emaciated to the extremest degree, from pain and sleepless- ness, was now' enabled to walk a little way and enjoy inter- vals of rest, partly recovered his good looks, and became comparatively cheerful. The relief, however, was very far from being either perfect or permanent. In fact, the continued exhibition of the me- dicine was demanded to secure any portion of rest. A short time since, however, a new remedial agent pre- sented itself, in the form of the magnet. The hospital was visited, first by Dr Kyle, and subsequently by Dr Blundell, who followed up the application begun by Dr Kyle. The lobelia inflata was allowed by Dr Elliotson to be suspended, and the effect of the magnet tried. That effect was, to the surprise of all who witnessed it, a most decided one ; the pain was, on every application of the instrument, removed, and continued absent for several hours. On Tuesday last [in June 1833], Dr Blundell attended the hospital at the hour of Dr Elliotson’s visit, when, in the pre- sence of the pupils and our reporter, he drew forth the mag- net, and commenced its application to the patient’s finger. The instrument is of the horse-shoe form, about ten inches in its long axis, and five in its short, composed of five layers of metal, the central being the longest, and the whole bound with stout ribbon. The patient was at the time apparently suffering considerable pain, and unable to use his hand. The north pole of the magnet was gently passed five or six times down the sides and back of the middle finger, and then rested on the central joint. The result was such an immediate ces- sation of suffering, that he could gnash his fingers into the palm of his hand with ease and comfort, and he declared him- self to be entirely relieved. The power of the instrument, however, did not cease here. Dr Blundell showed that it possessed the means of reproducing the pain in the most in- tense form. The south pole of the magnet was directed along the finger. At the third pass the patient began to bite his lip and close his eyes with an expression of pain. At a few ! passes more his chin was spasmodically buried in his breast, and his wrinkled features expressed the acutest suffering. This was allowed to continue for a few seconds, when the north pole was again presented to the finger, and the agony speedily subsided. The spectators then left the man lying with a countenance perfectly tranquil. At the extremity of the ward lay an elderly lady, a martyr to tic douleureux in the lower jaw, extending to the ear, and affecting a large portion of the head. The disease, she stated, was of more than nine years’ duration, and had never ceased to afflict her for a day during that period, up to her entrance into the hospital. Her appearance w as propor- tionably miserable. The magnet had also been applied in her case, and with similar advantage, as she stated. On the present occasion it w r as found, on approaching her bed, that she was in consequence free from pain on that morning, and the further aid of the magnet was not needed. ‘ But cannot you show its power by producing the pain?’ inquired a by- stander. The suggestion was acted on.. The south pole of the magnet was passed from the centre of the chin along the lower jawbone up to the ear. At the third pass the poor woman indicated that the tic was commencing, and in a few seconds more the affection was experienced intensely. The process was then stopped, as the experiment had been carried far enough to satisfy all present of its consummation ; and after a brief space the presentation of the north pole wholly freed the sufferer from pain. The operator subsequently stated, that by continuing the passes he could have carried the pain on to the production of delirium. There is a female patient in another ward, who had suf- fered intense toothache for three months, when, a fortnight since, according to her own evidence, which we have no rea- son to doubt, it was instantly cured by one application of the magnet, through the medium of a key, and had not returned in the slightest degree up to the period of the visit of which we have given the details. These are very interesting facts. We submit them to our readers unaccompanied by comment. The specific name given to his instrument by Dr Blundell, is that of 4 mineral magnet.’ How far its application to disease admits of exten- sion, we are at present ignorant.” A Solvent Bank. — The best bank ever yet known is a bank of earth ; it never refuses to discount to honest labour ; and the best share Is the plough-share, on which dividends are always liberal. An Irish Bull of 1630 — Nowe that Ireland doth give birthe to strange sortes of men, whose too greate quicknesse of thoughte doth impeede theyre judgmente, this storye whiche I have heard, will shewe. A wealthie lord of the countie of Corke there had a goodlie faire house new-built, but the broken brickes, tiles, sande, lime, stones, and such rubbish, as are commonlie the remnantes of such buildinges, lay confusedlie in heapes, ande scattered here ande there ; the lord therefore demanded of his surveyor, wherefore the rubbish was not con- veyed awaie ; the surveyor said, that hee proposed to hyre an hundred carts for the purpose. The lord replied, that the charge of carts might be saved, for a pit might be digged in the grounde, and soe burie it. “ Then, my lord,” said the sur- veyor, “ I pray you what will wee doe with the earth which wee digge out of the said pitt ?” “ Why, you coxcombe,” said the lord, “ canst thou not digge the pitt deepe enough to hold rubbish and all together?” — From the works of Taylor, the Water Poet. Carolan’s Liberality — Carolan never prostituted his muse to party politics or religious bigotry, though attach- ment to the ancient faith and families of Ireland was the ruling principle of his heart ; yet he could discern the virtues and celebrate the praises of those who dissented from the one, or claimed no connection with the other Hardimans Irish Minstrelsy. Fuller.— The well-known author of “ British Worthies” wrote his own epitaph, as it appears in Westminster Abbey. It consists of only four words, but it speaks volumes, namely, “ Here lies Fuller’s earth.” Printed and Published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin.— Agents London : K. Groomdridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row. Manchester: Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street. Liverpool: J. Davies, North John Street. Birmingham: J. Drake. Bristol: M. Bingham. Broad Street. Edinburgh: Fraser and Crawford, George Street. Glasgow : David Robertson, Trongate. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 4. SATURDAY, JULY 25, 1840. Volume I. C AISLE AN-NA-CIRCE, OR THE HEN’S CASTLE. Oub prefixed illustration gives a near view of one of the most interesting ruins now remaining in the romantic region of Connemara, or the Irish Highlands, and which is no less re- markable for its great antiquity than for the singularly wild and picturesque character of its situation, and that of its sur- rounding scenery. It is the feature that gives poetic interest to the most beautiful portion of Lough Corrib — its upper extremity — where a portion of the lake, about three miles in length, is apparently surrounded and shut in by the rocky and precipitous mountains of Connemara and the Joyce country, which it reflects upon its surface, without any object to break their shadows, or excite a feeling of human interest, but the one little lonely Island-Castle of the Hen. That an object thus situated— having no accompaniments around but those in keeping wnth it — should, in the fanciful traditions of an imaginative people, be deemed to have had a supernatural origin, is only what might have been naturally expected ; and such, indeed, is the popular belief. If we inquire of the pea- santry its origin, or the origin of its name, the ready answer is given, that it was built by enchantment in one night by a cock and a hen grouse, who had been an Irish prince and princess ! There is, indeed, among some of the people of the district a dim tradition of its having been erected as a fastness by an O’Conor, King of Connaught, and some venture to conjecture that this king was no other than the unfortunate Roderick, the last King of Ireland ; and that the castle was intended by him to serve as a place of refuge and safety, to which he could retire by boat, if necessity required, from the neighbouring monastery of Cong, in which he spent the last few years of his life : and it is only by this supposition that they can account for the circumstance of a castle being erected by the Q’Conors in the very heart of a district which they believe to have been in the possession of the O’Flahertys from time immemorial. But this conjecture is wholly erroneous, and the true founders and age of this castle are to be found in our authentic but as yet unpublished Annals, from which it appears certain that the Hen’s Castle was one of several fortresses erected, with the assistance of Richard de Burgo, Lord of Connaught, and Lord Justice of Ireland, by the sons of Roderick, the last monarch of the kingdom. It is stated in the Annals of Con- naught, and in the Annals of the Four Masters, at the year 1225, that Hugh O’Conor (son of Cathal Crovedearg), King of Connaught, and the Lord Justice of Ireland, Richard De Burgo, arriving with their English at the Port of Inis Creamha, on the east side of Lough Corrib, caused Hugh O’Flaherty, the Lord of West Connaught, to surrender the island of inis Creamha, Oil en-na- Circe, or the Hen's Island, 26 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. and all the vessels of the lake, into Hugh O’Conor ’s hands, for assurance of his fidelity. From this entry it would appear that the Hen’s Island, as well as the island called Inis Creamha, had each a castle on it previously ; and this conclusion is strengthened by a subse- quent entry in the same Annals, at the year 1233, from which it appears that this castle, as well as others, had been erected by the sons of Roderick, who had been long in contention for the government with Cathal Crovedearg, and his sons Hugh and Felim, and had, during these troubles, possessed them- selves of O’Flaherty’s country. On the death of Hugh O’Conor, who was treacherously slain by Geoffry De Mares, or He Marisco, in 1228, they appear to have again seized on the strongholds of the country, that of the Hen’s Castle among the rest, and to have retained them till 1233, when their rival Felim O’Conor finally triumphed, and broke down their cas- tles. This event is thus narrated in the Annals of the Four Masters : — “ 1233. Felim, the son of Charles the Red-handed, led an army into Connaught. Cormac, the son of Tomaltagh (Lord of Moylurg), went to meet him, and brought him to Moylurg, where they erected a camp at Druim Greagraighe, and were joined by Cormac, by Conor his son, the inhabitants of the three Tuathas, and by the two sons of Mortogh Mac Dermot, Honogh and Mortogh. They here consulted with each other, and resolved upon going in pursuit of Hugh (King of Con- naught) and the other sons of Roderic. After overtaking them, they defeated Hugh, slew himself, his brother, Hugh Muimhneaeh his son, and Donogh More, the son of Dermot, who was the son of Roderic, and many others besides. There were also slain Ptaghallach O’Flanigan, Thomas Biris, Con- stable of Ireland, his relative John Guer, and many other Englishmen. This was after the bells and croziers had been rung against them, after they had been cursed and excommu- nicated by the clergy of Connaught ; for Hugh Muimhneaeh had violated and plundered Tibohine and many other churches, so that he and his adherents fell in revenge of their dishonour to the saints whose churches they had violated. The king- dom and sovereignty of Connaught were wrested from the sons of Roderic, the son of Torlogh, on that day. Felim, the son of Charles the Red-handed, then assumed the government of Connaught, and demolished, the castles which had been erected by the power of the sons of Roderic O' Conor and Mac William Burke, namely, the Castle of Bon Gaillimhe, Caislen- na- Circe, Caislen-na-Caillighe, and the Castle of Dunamon. In subsequent times the Hen’s Castle reverted to the O’Fla- hertys, and w'as repaired and garrisoned by them till the time of Cromwell, when, as we are informed by Roderick O’Flaherty, it was finally dismantled and left to decay. Still, however, enough remains to exhibit its original plan, which was that of an Anglo-Norman castle or keep, in the form of a paral- lelogram, with three projecting towers on its two longest sides : and the architectural features of the thirteenth century are also visible in some of its beautifully executed windows and doorways. The Hen’s Castle is not without its legendary traditions connected with its history anterior to its dilapidation ; and the following outline of one of these — and the latest — as told at the cottage firesides around Lough Corrib, may be worth preserving as having a probable foundation in truth. It is said that during the troubled reign of Queen Elizabeth, a lady of the O’Flahertys, who was an heiress and a widow, with an only child, a daughter, to preserve her property from the grasp of her own family and that of the De Burgos or Burkes, shut herself up with her child in the Hen’s Castle, attended by twenty faithful followers, of tried courage and de- votion to her service, of her own and her husband’s family. As such a step was, however, pregnant with danger to herself, by exciting the attention and alarm of the government and lo- cal authorities, and furnishing her enemies with an excuse for aggression, she felt it necessary to obtain the queen’s sanction to her proceedings ; and accordingly she addressed a letter to her majesty, requesting her permission to arm her followers, and alleging as a reason for it, the disaffected state of the country, and her ardent desire to preserve its peace for her majesty. The letter, after the fashion of the times, was not signed by the lady in her acquired matron’s name, but in her maiden one, of which no doubt she was more proud : it was Bivian or Bevinda O’Flaherty. The queen received it gra- ciously ; but not being particularly well acquainted with the gender of Irish Christian names, and never suspecting, from the style or matter of the epistle, that it bad emanated from one of her own sex, she returned an answer, written with her own hand, authorising her good friend “ Captain Bivian O’- Flaherty” to retain twenty men at her majesty’s expense, for the preservation of the peace of the country ; and they were maintained accordingly, till the infant heiress, becoming adult, was united to Thomas Blake, the ancestor of the present Sir John Blake of Menlo Castle, and proprietor of the Castle of the Hen. To these brief notices of an ancient castle, not hitherto described, or its age ascertained, we shall only add, that there are few military structures of lime and stone now remaining in Ireland that can boast an equal antiquity. P. OCCUPATIONS FOR THE YOUNG. BY MARTIN DOYLE. Habit is said to be a second nature, and it is often stronger than the first. At first we easily take the bend from the hand of the master, but the second nature, which is of our own making, is frequently proof against any alteration. How important, then, is education, which gives the turn and mould- ing to the mind while it is flexible, fixes the habits, and forms the character ! The discipline of the mind, with respect to its natural bias, is either misdirected or misunderstood in nine cases out of ten, and latent talents or tendencies, which by proper culture might be rendered sources of enjoyment to the possessor, and useful to the community, are restrained, if not too powerful for suppression, from their proper developement, by absurd and artificial treatment. In the upper classes, a parent, perhaps, incapable of esti- mating the capacity of his son, determines with himself that the profession, suppose of divinity, of law, or of medicine, is the most lucrative, gentlemanlike, or otherwise eligible, and that the boy shall be educated accordingly. The unfortunate youth who has no talent for the acquisition of languages, and cannot comprehend the simplest proposition in geometry, is condemned to pursue a prescribed routine, and to pass many of the most precious years of his life in the unavailing effort to learn, through the drudgery of a classical school, what is repugnant to his taste, ar.d beyond his powers of comprehension ; and all this time, from being constantly engaged in thumbing the elementary books of the dead lan- guages (which are never at his finger ends, in the acceptation of the common phrase), he grows up shamefully ignorant of his vernacular tongue, in which he can neither read with fluency nor spell with correctness. The schoolmaster, however, is expected to prepare him for the university within a given time, and he must be" made up for entrance accordingly. If the parents are told that Young Hopeful has no turn for a literary life, no capacity for learn- ing what is required, they doubt the judgment of the infor- mant, who tells them the truth ; for the acknowledgment of this would be an indirect admission of their own incapacity ; and in proportion to their ignorance and dullness, is their self assurance that their booby has excellent abilities. The youth is therefore forced forward in spite of his natural repugnance to books ; and if afterwards smuggled through the university into a profession which may give him place or emolument, without ability or exertion on"his part, he dis- graces his station by general ignorance and unfitness ; and if he be admitted into a profession which yields honour or emo- lument only in proportion to talents and industry, be totally fails of the object, and it is discovered too late that the selec- tion of his avocation was in some way unlucky. Now, it is very probable that if such an every-day boy had been permitted to pursue some track for which his inclinations qualified him, instead of being limited to a course of unsuit- able and distasteful occupations, he might have acquired useful knowledge of some sort. For example, supposing him to stum- ble at metrical “ longs and shorts,” or to be stuck between the horns of a dilemma, or be lost amidst the mazes of metaphysics, he might have that peculiar turn which would render him a good farmer, an excellent judge of “ long and short wools” or of “ long and short horns, ’ or that shrewdness which would render him a clever tradesman, a man “ w ho knows what’s what, and that’s as high As metaphysic wit doth fly.” And so certain am I that many young men who enter our university would prefer and far better comprehend the plain and practical lecture of a professor of agriculture, surrounded by models of machinery and plates of cattle, &e., than lec- THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. lures of a far more pretending character, that I cannot avoid lamenting the deficiency in the department of agriculture which Socrates designated “ the nurse and mother of all the arts,” and Gibbon “ the foundation of all manufactures.” The example afforded in this respect by the University of Edinburgh is worthy of the imitation of Trinity College. To afford at least the opportunities of gaining such information on this subject as the mind may be capable of receiving or predisposed to receive, cannot but be deemed judicious. And the theoretical knowledge of husbandry is incalculably more needed by the gentry and middle classes of Ireland than by those of the same grades in Scotland, where almost every land-proprietor and farmer understands the subject more or less. Far be it from me to decry the advantages of what is called learning, but 1 would have a more diversified course, both in our schools of every clans, and in the universities, so as to com- prehend those useful branches of information, to which the student, if denied by Providence the faculties requisite for the attainment of others, may apply himself with pleasure or ad- vantage. I have met with many young persons of exceeding dullness in book learning , of decided distaste to the pursuits of litera- ture, who have manifested a quick apprehension of mechanical contrivances, practically exhibited a love of natural history, of gardening, of agriculture, of something, in short, of a utilita- rian character. If these tendencies had been duly cultivated, the results would have been favourable to the individuals them- selves, and probably to the public also. I have often been puzzled to account for the pre-eminence of the Scotch as a clever and a thinking people : it cannot be from atmospheric influence ; and I am disposed to question the correctness of the assertion of a grave Caledonian, that the line spirit of philosophical inquiry which distinguishes his countrymen is mainly attributable to their use of oatmeal por- ridge ; it must rather be from well-directed education, from the early acquired habit of thinking for one's self and of giving a reason for every thing as far as they can, that the Scotch are so intelligent and so fitted for their respective stations in the social circle. My own countrymen are naturally as shrewd and intellec- tual "as the Scotch, but their minds are too generally ill dis- ciplined, and school education, for all classes, is too generally defective every where. Several hours of the day are passed in wearisome restraint within the walls of a schoolroom, in learning words without ideas, sounds without sense ; the mind being seldom engaged in the tasks with either pleasure or profit. And besides the impediments which obstruct the progress of useful occupation, arising from the blindness of parents, the unfitness of teachers, and the incapacity of pupils, there are to be encountered in all schools the natural preference of idleness to any kind of systematic occupation, the love of mischief and freaks, which prevail among combinations of boys, and the difficulty of analysing character and dispositions in crowded seminaries. But in schools for the poor, where order and discipline are easily enforced ; in places of private education, and under the paternal roof, where by far the greatest degree of happiness and simplicity of character are enjoyed and preserved — in such cases, in which instructors and parents are qualified to educate, a system of literary instruction, combining "with it relaxation of a useful kind, may be pursued. Among the latter I would place gardening and botany foremost among the out-of-door occupations, and these pur- suits apply to both sexes, and to the humblest of the peasan- try, as well as to the nobles of the land, for with the idea of a garden is connected every association that is pure and heaven-born. I myself even now look back upon those of my childish hours which were employed in the garden, with un- mixed pleasure, and the first early crop of radishes which I raised with my own hands in a garden border, afforded me more innocent pride than any far more valuable crop that I have subsequently raised upon my farm. The care of flowers and shrubs, and the absence of corrupting influences, during the indulgence of this pursuit, render it a subject of ex- treme interest in the formation of individual and national cha- racter. Those of the poor who are disposed to take a real interest in their gardens, as is the case of thousands of the English peasantry, instead of finding their summer evening occupa- tions in their allotments wearisome after their day of other 27 toil, seem to find relaxation in the comparatively light work which they thus perform for themselves ; and in the pleasurable contemplation of their own flowers, though they be but common beauties, and of their own tiny crops, they feel that calm- ness and tranquillity, that quiet satisfaction, which lay the passions at rest, and therefore indispose for the boisterous mirth and the ungodly society of the frequenters of the beer- house or the gin-shop. Poultry, pigeons, and rabbits, may be reared by young people, both for amusement and profit. The child who un- derstands much of the natural history of domestic animals from practical observation, and perceives the force of those influences which unite the parent and the offspring, will so far sympathize with, and apprehend the nature of, those influ- ences, as to feel pain at the thought of wantonly dissociating that connection, and would be far less likely “ to rob the poor birds of their young,” than the child who had not been familiarized with the nature and habits of the feathered race. Children who have watched over a brood of chickens from the moment of their first disengagement from the shell, and witnessed the instinct with which the Creator causes them to come at the call of their mother, and contemplate the love with which “ the hen gathers her chickens under her wings,” will take no pleasure in destroying that life of which they had anxiously traced the progress from the hour in which the first sign of developed animation appeared. It is improbable that the boy (and far more so that the girl, who is naturally kind) to whose hand the birds have fearlessly looked for food, while they clamorously delighted in his presence, could in his manhood witness any torturing of the feathered race, such as the diabolical barbarity of throwing at cocks on Shrove Tuesday, which used to disgrace Great Britain ; or take plea- sure in the barbarities of a cock-fight* or a gander-fight. f For those who are excluded from the enjoyments of rural life, and those occupations to which I have referred, there remain other pursuits of extreme interest, according to their respective tastes — geology, chemistry, mechanics, which employ both the head and the hand. Many a youth may be taught “ sermons in stones,” &c — see the quotation in Shakspeare, As You Like It — and be kept from bad company, by having access to a lathe, and becoming practically “ a tool-making animal,” who, from his distaste to books, would be otherwise miserably destitute of rational employment. I do not wish to see either young cr old persons too much “ Ago g for novelty where’er it lies, In mosses, fleas, or cockleshells, or flies” — But natural history, to a reasonable extent, is surely a useful and improving study for both rich and poor ; it leads them to look from the creature to the Creator ; to contemplate His works, His glories, and His beneficent designs, both in the ma- terial and the spiritual world. In short, I would supply the mind and body with those occupations which best harmonise together, and most powerfully tend to overcome the degra- ding and demoralising effects of ignorance, which is confess- edly the greatest enemy to religion, to peace, good order, and social happiness. * We learn from a German writer the origin of this cruel custom. When the Danes ruled in England, the native inhabitants of some town formed a conspiracy to regain possession of it by murdering the Danish usurpers, 'i heir design, however, was defeated by the crowing o f some cocks. When the English afterwards regained authority, they instituted the barbarous and childishly resentful practice of throwing at cocks tied to a stake on the com- memoration day of their disappointment through the vigilance of the cocks. f “ At St Petersburgh, in Russia (says Dr Granville), they have no cock- pits ; but they have a goose-pit, where in the spring they fight ganders trained to the sport, and to peck at each other's shoulders till they draw blood. These ganders have been sold as high as five hundred roubles each ; and the sport prevails to a degree of enthusiasm among the hemp-merchants. Strange that the vicious and inhuman curiosity of man can delight to arouse and stimulate the pr inciples of enmity and cruelty in these apparently peace- ful and sociable birds ! The barbarities of which the human character is capable from habitual indulgence in such brutal sports arc almost inconceivable. Every one has heard the horrible story of Ardesoif of Tottenham, who, about forty years since, being disappointed by a famous game-cock refusing to fight, was incited by his savage passion to roast the animal alive whilst entertaining his friends. The company, alarmed by the dreadful shrieks of the victim, interfered, but were resisted by Ardesoif, who threatened death to ar.y who should oppose him -. and in a storm of ragiiig and vindictive de- lirium, and uttering the most horrid imprecations, he dropped down dead. I had hoped to find this one among the thousand fanatical lies which have been coined in the insane expectation that truth can he advanced by tire propagation of falsehood : but to my sorrowful disappointment, on a late in- quiry among the friends of the deceased miscreant, 1 found the truth of the horrible story but too probable.’' — Mowbray's Treatise on Toultry. 28 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. ALEXANDER AND THE TREE. “ From this tree it was that the Voice came which spake of old to Iskander (Alexander the Great), saying, as an oracle, ‘ Iskander indeed cometh into India, but goeth from thence into the Land of Darkness.'” — Apocryphal History of Alexander the Great. The sun is bright, the air is bland, The heavens wear that stainless blue Which only in an Orient land The eye of man may view ; And lo ! around, and all abroad, A glittering host, a mighty horde — And at their head a demigod Who slays with lightning-sword ! The bright noon burns, but idly now Those warriors rest by copse and hill, And shadows on their Leader’s brow Seem ominous of ill : Spell-bound, lie stands beside a tree, And well he may, for through its leaves Unstirred by wind, come brokenly Moans, as of one that grieves ! How strange ! he thought ; — Life is a boon Given, and resumed — but how ? and when ? But now I asked myself how soon I should go home agen ! How soon 1 might once more behold My mourning mother’s tearful face ; How soon my kindred might enfold Me in their dear embrace ! There was an Indian Magian there — And, stepping forth, he bent his knee : “ Oh, king !” he said, “be wise ! — beware This too prophetic tree !” “Ha!” cried the king, “thou knowest, then, Seer, What yon strange oracle reveals ?” “ Alas !” the Magian said, “ 1 hear Deep words, like thunder-peals ! “ 1 hear the groans of more than Man, Hear tones that warn, denounce, beseech ; Hear — woe is me ! — how darkly ran That stream of thrilling speech ! * Oh, king,’ it spake, ‘ all-trampling king ! Thou leadest legions from afar — But Battle droops his clotted wing ! Night menaces thy star! “ * Fond visions of thy boyhood’s years Dawn like dim light upon thy soul ; Thou soest again thy mother’s tears Which Love could not control ! Ah ! thy career in sooth is run ! Ah ! thou indeed returnest home ! The Mother waits to clasp her son Low in her lampless dome ! “ ‘Yet go, rejoicing ! He who reigns O’er Earth alone leaves worlds unscanned ; Life binds the spirit as with chains ; Seek thou the Phantom-land ! Leave Conquest all it looks for here — Leave willing slaves a bloody throne — Thine henceforth is another sphere, Death’s realm, the dark Unknown !’ ” The Magian paused ; the leaves w ere; hushed. But wailings broke from all around, Until the Chief, whose red blood flushed His cheek with hotter bound, Asked, in the tones of one with whom Fear never yet had been a guest — “And when doth Fate achieve my doom? And where shall be my rest ?” “ Oh, noble heart !” the Magian said, And tears unbidden filled his eyes, “ We should not weep for thee ! — the Dead Change but their home and skies : The moon shall beam, the myrtles bloom Foi thee no more — yet sorrow not ! The immortal pomp of Hades’ gloom Best consecrates thy lot,” In June, in June, in laughing June, And where the dells show deepest green, Pavilioned overhead, at noon, With gold and silken sheen — These be for thee— the place, tho time ; Trust not thy heart, trust not thine eyes, Behind the Mount thy warm hopes climb, The Land of Darkness lies !” Unblenching at the fateful words, The Hero turned around in haste — “ On ! on !” he cried, “ ye million swords. Your course, like mine, is traced ; Let me but close Life’s narrow span Where weapons clash and banners wave ; I would not live to mourn that Man But conquers for a grave !” M. APOLOGUES AND FABLES, IN PROSE AND VERSE, FROM THE GERMAN AND OTHER LANGUAGES. (Translated for the Irish Penny Journal.) No. II.— THE THREE RINGS. In the reign of the Sultan Sal-ad-Deen there lived in the city of Damascus a Jew called Nathaniel, who was pre-eminently distinguished among his fellow- citizens for his wisdom, his liberality of mind, the goodness of his disposition, and the urbanity of his manners, so that he had acquired the esteem even of those among the Mooslemin who were accounted the strictest adherents to the exclusive tenets of the Mahommedan creed. From being generally talked of by the common people, he came gradually to attract the notice of the higher classes, until the sultan himself, hearing so much of the man, became curious to learn how it was that so excellent and intelligent a person could reconcile it with his conscience to live and die in the errors of Judaism. With the view of satisfying himself on the subject, he at length resolved on condescending to a personal interview with the Jew, and accordingly one day ordered him to be summoned before him. The Jew, in obedience to the imperial mandate, presented himself at the palace gates, and was forthwith ushered, amid guards and slaves innnmerable, into the presence of the august Sal-ad-Deen, Light of the World, Protector of the Universe, and Keeper of the Portals of Paradise ; who, however, being graciously determined that the lightning of his glances should not annihilate the Israelite, had caused his face to be covered on the occasion with a magnificent veil, through the golden gauze-work of which he could carry on at his ease his own examination of his visitor’s features. “ Men talk highly of thee, Nathaniel,” said the sultan, after he had commanded the Jew to seat himself on the car- pet ; “ they praise thy virtue, thy integrity, thy understanding, beyond those of the sons of Adam. Yet thou professest a false religion, and showest no sign of a disposition to embrace the true one. How is this obstinacy of thine reconcilable with the wisdom and moderation for which the true believers give thee credit?” “ If I profess a false religion, your highness,” returned the Jew modestly, “ it is because I have never been able to dis- tinguish infallibly between false religions and true. I adhere to the faith of my fathers.” “ The idolaters do so no less than thou,” said Sal-ad-Deen, “ but their blindness is wilful, and so is thine. Dost thou mean to say that all religions are upon the same level in the sight of the God of Truth?” “ Not so, assuredly,” answered Nathaniel : “ Truth is but one ; and there can be but one true religion. That is a sim- ple and obvious axiom, the correctness of which I have never sought to controvert.” “ Spoken like a wise man !” cried the sultan ; — “ that is,” he added, “ if the religion to which thou alludest be Islamism, as it must be of course. Come : I know thou art favourably inclined towards the truth ; thou hast an honest countenance: declare openly the conviction at which thou must have long since arrived, that they who believe in the Koran are the sole inheritors of Paradise. Is not that thy unhesitating persua- sion ?” “ Will your highness pardon me,” said the Jew, “ if, in- stead of answering you directly, 1 narrate to you a parable THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 29 bearing upon this subject, and leave you to draw from it such inferences as may please you?” “ I am satisfied to hear thee,” said the sultan after a pause ; “ only let there be no sophistry in the argument of thy narra- tive. Make the story short also, for I hate long tales about nothing.” The Jew, thus licensed, began : — “ May it please your high- ness,” said he, “ there lived in Assyria, in one of the ages of old, a certain man who had received from a venerated hand a beautiful and valuable ring, the stone of which was an opal, and sparkled in the sunlight with ever-varying hues. This ring, moreover, was a talisman, and had the secret power of rendering him who wore it with a sincere desire of benefiting by it, acceptable and amiable in the eyes of both God and man. It is not therefore to be wondered at, that the owner continually wore it during his lifetime, never taking it off his finger for an instant, or that, when dying, he should adopt precautions to secure it to his lineal descendants for ever. He bequeathed it accordingly first to the most beloved of his sons, ordaining that by him it should be again bequeathed to the dearest of his offspring, and so down from generation to ge- neration, no one having a claim in right of priority of birth, but preference being given to the favourite son, who, by vir- tue of the ring, should rule unconstrained as lord of the house and head of the family. Your highness listens ?” “ I listen : I understand : proceed,” said the sultan. The Jew resumed : — “ Well : from son to son this ring at length descended to a father who had three sons, all of them alike remarkable for their goodness of disposition, all equally prompt in anticipating his wishes, all equally loving and vir- tuous, and between whom, therefore, he found it difficult to make any distinction in the paternal affection he bore them. Sometimes he thought the eldest the most deserving ; anon his predilections varied in favour of the second ; and by and bye his heart was drawn towards the youngest : — in short, he could make no choice. What added to his embarrassment was, that, yielding to a good-natured weakness, he had privately promised each of the youths to leave the ring to him, and him only ; and how to keep his promise, he did not know. Matters, however, went on smoothly enough for a season ; but at last death approached, and the worthy father became painfully perplexed. What was to be done ? Loving his sons, as he did, all alike, could he inflict so bitter a disap- pointment upon two of them as the loss of the ring would cer- tainly prove to them ? He was unable to bear the reflection. After long pondering, a plan occurred to him, the anticipated good effects of which would, he trusted, more than compen- sate for the deceit connected with it. He sent secretly for a clever jeweller ; and, showing him the ring, he desired him to make two other rings on the same model, and to spare neither pains nor cost to render the three exactly alike. The jeweller promised, and kept his promise : the rings were finished, and in so perfect a manner that even the father’s eye could not distinguish between them as far as mere external appearance went. Overjoyed beyond expression at this unlooked-for con- summation of his wishes, he Summoned his three sons in suc- cession into his presence, and from his deathbed bestowed upon each, apart from the other two, his last blessing and one of the rings ; after which, being at his own desire left once more alone, he resigned his spirit tranquilly into the hands of its eternal Author. Is your highness attentive?” “ I am,” said Sal-ad-Deen, “ but to very little purpose, it would seem. .Make an end of thy story quickly, that I may see the drift of it.” “ It, is soon ended, most powerful sultan,” said Nathaniel, “ for all that remains to be told is what doubtless your high- ness already half conjectures— the result, namely, of this good-natured deception. Scarce was the old man laid in his grave, when each of the sons produced his ring, and claimed the right of being sole master and lord of the house. Ques- tions, wranglings, complaints, accusations, succeeded — all to no end, however ; for the difficulty of discovering which was the true ring was as great then as that of discovering which is the true faith now.” “ How !” interrupted the sultan indignantly, “ this to me ? Dost thou tell me that the faith of the Mooslemin is not acknowledged by all right-thinking persons to be the true one ? “ May it please your highness,” said the Jew, calmly, “ I am here at your own command, and I answer your questions according to the best of my poor ability. If the allegory 1 relate be objectionable, it is for the sultan to find fault with it alone, and not with the reflections which it must necessarily suggest.” “ And dost thou mean, then, that thy paltry tale shall serve as a full answer to my query ?” demanded Sal-ad-Deen. “ No, your highness,” said Nathaniel, “ but I would have it serve as my apology for not giving such an answer. The father of these youths caused the three rings to be made ex- pressly that no examination might be able to detect any dis- similarity between them ; and I will venture to assert, that not even the Sublimest of Mankind, the Sultan Sal-ad-Deen himself, could, unless by accident, have placed his hand on the true one.” “ Thou triflest with me, Nathaniel,” said the sultan ; “ a ring is not a religion. There are, it is true, many modes of worship on the earth : but has not Islamism always remained a distinct system of faith from the false creeds ? "Look at its dogmas, its ceremonies, the modes of prayer, the habits, yea, the very food and raiment of its professors ! What sayest thou of these ?” “ Simply,” returned the Jew, “ that none of them are proofs of the truth of Islamism. Nay, be not wroth with me, your highness, for what I say of your religion I say equally of all others. There is one true religion, as there was one true ring in my parable; but you must have perceived that all men are not alike capable of discovering the truth by their own unassisted efforts, and that a certain degree of trust in the good faith of others as teachers is therefore essential to the re- ception of religious belief at all. In whom, then, I would ask, is it most natural for us to place our trust ? Surely in our own people — in those of whose blood we are — who have been about us from our childhood, and given us unnumbered proofs of love — and who have never been guilty of intentionally prac- tising deception upon us. How can I ask of you to abandon the prepossessions of your fathers before you, and in which, true or false, you have been nurtured? Or how can you expect, that, in order to yield to your teachers the praise be- longing solely to the truth, I should virtually declare my ancestors fools or hypocrites ?” “ Sophistical declamation !” said the sultan, “ which will avail thee little on the Judgment Day. Is thy parable ended ?” “ In point of instruction it is,” replied Nathaniel, “ but I shall briefly relate the conclusion to which the disputes among the brothers conducted. When they found agreement impos- sible, they mutually cited one another before the tribunal of the law. Each of them solemnly swore that he had received a ring immediately from his father’s hand — as was the fact — after having obtained his father’s promise to bestow it on him, as was also the fact. Each of them indignantly repu- diated the supposition that such a father could have deceived him ; and each declared, that, unwilling as he was to think uncharitably of his own brethren, he had no alternative left but that of branding them as impostors, forgers, and swin- dlers.” “ And what said the judge?” demanded Sal-ad-Deen; “ I presume the final decision of the question hung upon his arbitration ?” “ Your highness is correct : the judge at once pronounced his award, winch was definitive. ‘You want,’ said he, ‘a satisfactory adjudication on this question, which you have con- tested among yourselves so long and so fruitlessly. Summon then your father before me : call him from the dead and let him speak ; it is otherwise impracticable for me to come at the knowledge of his intentions. Do you think that I sit here for the purpose of expounding riddles and reconciling contradic- tions ? Or do you, perhaps, expect that the true ring will by some miracle be compelled to bear oral testimony here in court to its own genuineness ? But hold : I understand that the ring is endowed with the occult power of rendering its wearer amiable and faultless in the eyes of men. By that test I am willing to try it, and so to pronounce judgment. Which of you three, then, is the greatest object of love to the other two? You are silent. What! does this ring, which should awaken love in all, act with an inward influence only, not an outward? Does each of you love only himself? Oh, go ! you are all alike deceivers or deceived : none of your rings is the true one. The true ring is probably lost ; and to supply its place your father ordered three spurious ones for common use among you. If you will abide by a piece of advice instead of a formal decision, here is my counsel to you : leave the matter where it stands. If each of you has had a ring presented to him by his father, let each believe his own to be the real ring. Possibly your father might have grown disinclined to tolerate 30 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. any longer the exclusiveness implied in the possession of a single ring by one member of a family ; and, certainly, as he loved you all with the same affection, it could not gratify him to appear the oppressor of two by favouring one in particular. Let each of you therefore feel honoured by this all-embracing generosity of your parent ; let each of you endeavour to out- shine his brothers in the cultivation of every virtue which the ring is presumed to confer — assisting the mysterious influ- ence supposed to reside in it by habits of gentleness, benevo- lence, and mutual tolerance, and by resignation in all things to the will of God ; and if the virtues of the ring continue to manifest themselves in your children, and your children’s chil- dren, and their descendants to the hundredth generation, then, after the lapse of thousands of years, appear again and for the last time before this judgment seat ! A Greater than I will then occupy it, and He will decide this controversy for ever.’ So spake the upright judge, and broke up the court. Your highness now, I trust, thoroughly comprehends my rea- son for not answering your question in a direct manner ?” “ Is that the end of thy story ?” asked Sal-ad-Deen. “ If it please your highness,” said the .Tew, who had by this time arisen, and was gradually, though respectfully, proceeding to accomplish his retreat. “ Bv my beard,” said the sultan, after a considerable pause, “ it is an ingenious apologue that of thine, and there may be something in it too ; but still it does not persuade me that thou art excusable in thy pertinacious rejection of Islamism. 1 own I tremble for thee after all. Go thy ways, however, for the present, with this purse of tomauns, by way of pre- mium for thy mother-wit ; but I shall shortly send for thee again ; and as I do not much fancy remaining in any man’s debt, thou shall, then, as a wholesome counterpoise to thy so- phistry, obtain from me in reply either a parable of my own, or one from the Koran, upon which I will argue with thee to thy signal confusion !” M. ANECDOTES OF MACKLIN, THE IRISH COMEDIAN. Macklin was exceedingly quick at a reply, especially in a dispute. One day Doctor Johnson was contending some dramatical question, and quoted a passage from a Greek poet in support of his opinion. “ I don’t understand Greek though, Doctor,” said Macklin. “ Sir,” said Johnson, pompously, “ a man who undertakes to argue, should understand all lan- guages.” “ Oh, very well,” returned Macklin; “how will you answer this argument ?” and immediately treated him to a long quotation in Irish. One night, sitting at the back of the front boxes with a gentleman of his acquaintance, one of the underbred box-lobby loungers of the day stood up immediately before him, and being rather large in person, covered the sight of the stage from him. Every body expected that Macklin would have knocked the fellow down notwithstanding his size, but he managed the matter in another temper. Patting him gently on the shoulder with his cane, he requested of him with much apparent politeness, “ that when he saw or heard any thing very entertaining on the stage, he would be pleased to turn round and let him and the gentleman beside him know of it ; “ for you see, my dear sir,” added the veteran, “ that at pre- sent we must totally depend upon you as a telegraph.” This had the desired effect, and the lounger walked off. Talking of the caution necessary to be used in conversation amongst a mixed company, Macklin observed, “ Sir, I have experienced to my cost that a man in any situation of life should never be off his guard. It is the fault of the Irish that they are too ready to ‘commit’ themselves. Now, tills never happens with the Scotch : — a Scotchman is always on the look-out ; he never lives a moment extempore, and that is one great reason why he is so successful in life as we see.” Macklhi was very intimate with Frank Hayman (at that time one of our best historical painters), and happening to call on him one morning soon after the death of the painter’s wife, with whom he (Frank) had lived but on indifferent terms, he found him wrangling with the undertaker about his high charge for the funeral expenses. Macklin listened to the altercation for some time ; at last, going up to Hayman — “ Come, come, Frank,” said he, “ this bill is to be sure a little extravagant, but you should pay it, if it were only on account of the respect you owe your wife’s memory ; for I am sure,” he added with the greatest gravity, “ she would have paid twice as much for your burial with the greatest gladness, if she had had the opportunity.” A notorious egotist one day in a large company, indirectly praising himself for a number of good qualities which it was well known he did not possess, asked Macklin the reason why he should have the singular propensity of interfering in the concerns of others for their benefit, when he so often met with unsuitable returns. “ I could tell you, sir,” said Macklin. “ Ah ! well do, then, my good fellow ; yon are a man of some observation ; and — I — a — should be glad of your — a— defini- tion.” “ Why, then, sir,” replied Macklin, “the cause is im- pudence — nothing but stark staring impudence !” A gentleman at a public dinner asking him, rather incon- siderately, whether he remembered Mrs Barry the celebrated Irish actress, who died about the latter end of Queen Anne’s reign, he stared him in the face with considerable ferocity, and bawled out, “ No, sir, nor Harry the Eighth neither !” An Irish dignitary of the church, not remarkable for his ve- racity, complaining that a tradesman of his parish had called him a liar, Macklin asked what reply he had made him. “ I told him,” said the bishop, “ that a lie was among those things that I dared not commit.” “ And why, doctor,” returned Macklin, with an indescribable sort of comic frown, “ why did you give the rascal so erroneous a notion of your courage ?” One of the band of the Covent-Garden theatre, who played the French horn, was telling some anecdotes of Garrick’s cu- riosity, and withal praising the great actor incessantly. Mack- lin, who heard him from the lower end of the table, and who always fired up like lighted straw at the praises of Garrick, exclaimed aloud, “ I believe, sir, you are a trumpeter.” “Well,” said the band-man, “ and what if I am ?” “ Nothing more, sir,” vociferated Macklin, “than this, that, being a trumpeter, you are by profession a dealer in puffs !” BAD AIR AND GOOD AIR. In a former number we directed attention to the many re- markable properties of the air we breathe, and pointed out how dependent we are for comfort and even existence on the maintenance of the air in a state fit for respiration. The dif- ference between good air and bad air can be easily collected from that article ; but as the peculiar conditions of the air which are capable of affecting health deserve very careful con- sideration, we are tempted to resume the subject. The even balance which, as was explained, is struck be- tween the two sorts of breathing, that of the animal which gives out carbonic acid, and that of the vegetable which takes it in, is capable of maintaining the air upon the large scale always in the proper state. But in order that the people may be benefited by this wise arrangement, it is necessary that they should be living abroad in the open air and in the fields ; that a man, in proportion as he destroys the oxygen of the air, should have around him plants to give out an equal quantity in its place ; that, in fact, mankind, in order to avail themselves of the providential security for breathing permanently good air, should live out of doors, engaged, at least principally, in agricultural employments, as was the condition of society in the early ages, and in some portions of the globe to a certain extent is so still. But in countries like ours, where vast numbers of families are collected in cities, with narrow streets and lanes; where an open place like Stephen’s Green or Merrion Square is anxiously sought after, and disproportionate rents paid for the houses which are around it, this immediate restoration of the injury done to the air by breathing, and the burning of lights and fuel, cannot occur. The air is vitiated permanently, and those resident in towns require for their health’s sake to un- derstand how the evil may be rendered as small as possible. Even in a town, the total quantity of air is so great, that if it all come into play, it can he but slightly injured. But such is often not the case. How often, when there is a fine healthful breeze outside the town, do we find, on entering a narrow street, the mass of air perfectly motionless, and all the mis- chievous vapours which are produced, collecting until they become almost irrespirable. This is a great source of disease in towns ; and to prevent or remedy it, requires but frequent change of the air which a room or a street contains : it re- quires but ventilation. It is by means of a fireplace that a room is generally ven- tilated. The air which has served for the burning of tlie fuel is thereby made very hot, and hot air, being much lighter than cold air, rises up the chimney, generally mixed with THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. •> i .j i soot, and is then called smoke. According as the hot air leaves the room, cold air enters to supply its place through the open doors or windows, or, if these be closed, through every little crevice which can give it passage. There is thus pro- duced a rapid current of air, or draught, as it is termed. The air vitiated by the breathing of persons in the room is carried away along with that vitiated by the fire, and at any one mo- ment the air in the room is found to be almost completely pure. It is therefore to proper ventilation that the inhabitants of towns must look for the maintenance of health. Disregard to this precaution has been the means of increasing to a frightful extent the mortality of large cities, and instances have been given, where an infectious disease, which had ravaged a num- ber of low and confined streets in a large English town, stop- ped suddenly, and avoided a street otherwise no better than the rest, but which had been kept clean, and the rooms venti- lated, by the exertions of some well-informed persons. For the preservation of the health of the poorer classes in large towns, medicine is of far less impoi’tance than cleanliness and ventilation. We are sure, however, that many of our intelligent readers are ready now to start an objection to the account just given of the cause of bad air in cities. If the air of a city be in- jured by the large quantity of carbonic acid which is formed, a city should be the best place possible for the health of vege- tables. If the air which is bad for man be good for plants, the vegetation in a confined street should surpass, in brilliancy and verdure, that of the most open and best attended gardens. It is true, unfortunately, that the only produce of our once in- dustrious Liberty is now' the grass which is growing in the seats of former bustle ; but we have not even the satisfaction of knowing that that flourishes. It is pale, sickly, and stunted ; for the air of the city is vitiated by causes different from that which alone has hitherto occupied us, and these causes are as injurious to plants as to mail. The carbon of our fuel pro- duces, in burning, carbonic acid, but carbon is not the only substance in ordinary fuel. Most coals contain sulphur, and in burning, this body produces sulphurous acid, also a gas, which is highly irritating and poisonous, particularly to plants, and which, mixing with the air, renders the city as injurious to the organization of a plant as the carbonic acid to the respiration of an animal. To render air fit for respiration, it is necessary to do more than keep the proper quantity of oxygen in it ; the carbonic acid must be taken away. Plants, our readers have already remarked, do both, and hence the admirable fitness of external nature to the objects for which the Creator has designed it. If the carbonic acid v r ere not taken away, all animals would be poisoned, even if the proper quantity of oxygen remained, for carbonic acid is a positive poison, which kills by acting on the brain like opium. A person can live, breathing with only one lung ; in the disease of consumption, an individual may live for months with only one lung, or even only part of a lung, remaining fit for use ; but if perfectly good air be breathed with one lung, and carbonic acid with the other, the person will be poisoned after a very short time ; consequently, it is of great importance to prevent the accumulation of carbonic acid, even where it is not produced at the expense of the oxygen of the air. Carbonic acid is indeed produced in a great variety of ways, besides by animals in breathing, and fuel in burning. It is remarkable that it is only the green parts of plants which breathe as has been described ; the leaves and stems giving out oxygen, and absorbing carbonic acid. The flowers and the ripe fruits of plants act on the air in the same way as animals, and hence deteriorate it ; and the rooms where stores of fruit are kept, are known to be very unwholesome, and persons have been suffocated by sleeping in a room w'here there was a very great quantity of flowers. Oils, particularly drying oil, and spirit of turpentine, act on air also, absorbing oxygen and giv- ing out carbonic acid ; and the air of a newly painted house, if the doors and windows are kept close, is consequently found to be very unfit for respiration. In many countries, particularly where there are burning mountains, carbonic acid is given off from the ground, and it collects in every hollow or cave, in consequence of being much heavier than the air. There is a cave in Italy, called the Dog’s Grotto, because a dog on entering it is instantly suffocated, though a man may walk in without injury. The cause is, that the cave is filled up by carbonic acid to about four feet deep ; a dog, or any animal that holds its head lower than that height, breathes carbonic acid and is choked, but a man breathes the pure air which is above it, and escapes. In deep dry wells which have been neglected, carbonic acid accumulates, and workmen w'ho go down to clean the pit are sometimes suffocated. In such cases a candle should first be let down, and if it burns, the air is fit to breathe. If the candle be extinguished, it is un- safe for an individual to descend. In the Island of Java, however, perhaps the most remark- able collection of carbonic acid is to be found. On the sum- mit of the highest mountain there is a circular valley of considerable depth, and presenting to the eye a spectacle combining the utmost beauty and horror. The sides of the valley are clothed with the richest perennial verdure of the tropics ; all the plants which grow on that fine island are there found of surpassing magnitude and beauty, but intermixed with the skeletons of tigers, wolves, and men. There is no living animal. The greatest developement of vegetable life goes hand in hand with absolute destruction to all animal existence. The natives call this place the Valley of Death. It is the crater of an extinct volcano. From its bottom issue perpetually watery vapour and carbonic acid, the elements which clothe its sides with vegetable riches ; but the whole being an invisible lake of carbonic acid, proves instant destruc- tion to the unwary animal that passes over its brink. Some deserters from an English regiment concealed themselves in it, and their bodies, seen through the transparent but deadly gas by which they were surrounded, verified a fact which had been previously suspected to be a fable of the natives. In the fermentation of corn, for making malt liquors or ar- dent spirits, a large quantity of carbonic acid is generated, and workmen who heedlessly descend into the vats to cleanse them, are very often suffocated. The trial by a lighted candle should never in such cases be omitted. In the burning of lime there is a very large proportion of carbonic acid set free ; and poor persons who are tempted to sleep on the platform of a lime-kiln for the sake of the warmth it affords, are sometimes suffocated by the vitiated air they breathe. The air, so far as regards its influence on health, is mo- dified in a very important manner by causes which are not so positively known and measured as those we have hitherto examined. The spreading of odours through the air, whether they be the “ spicy gales of Araby the blest,” or the more unwelcome indications of putrescent matter, takes place by means of quantities of substances so small as to defy the powers of detection we possess. Many diseases, it is" well established, arise from the formation and diffusion through the air of peculiar poisons in amazingly small quantity. Thus ague is produced by a specific poison generated in marshes. These poisons resemble other ordinary poisons, inasmuch as we can decompose them, and thus destroy their power. The chemical substance chlorine decomposes almost every vege- table or animal material that it touches. Thus it destroys all colours, and is hence of the greatest use in bleaching ; it also destroys all atmospheric poisons, and, consequently, in hos- pitals and in private houses it is used to disinfect or prevent the spreading of disease, by decomposing the material which conveys it through the air. For change of air we therefore, with reason, go to the coun- try when we can ; but whether to the sea side or to the inte- rior, to Enniskerry or Kingstown, is not dependent on the nature of the air. Wherever the invalid finds most amusement, and agreeable occupation which does not fatigue ; wherever the beauty of scenery, and the society of those to whom the heart is bound in ties of mutual esteem and love, present to the mind of one harassed by intense exertion of thought, or broken down by disease of body, a relief in admiration of the wisdom and goodness of his Creator, and in sympathy and kindliness to- wards his fellow men, the atmosphere is clearest ; the bracing, enlivening influence of the pure country air is the most sen- sible, and the mind and body are most effectually restored to the condition of perfect health. Ireland tor Ever! and Kilmainham to the Devil! — Mr Egan, better known as “ Bully Egan,” held the chair- manship of Kilmainham at the time that the government were using their utmost endeavours to pass the Act of Union, and, of course, expected to be deprived of his office if he should oppose it. However, when the time for the division had ar- rived, his love of country preponderating over his love of pelf, he voted against the measure, exultingly exclaiming, “ Ireland for ever ! and Kilmainham to the devil !” 32 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. PERSEVERANCE. Perseverance in the steady pursuit of a laudable and lawful object, is almost a sure path to eminence. It is a thing which seems to be inherent in some, but it may be cultivated in all. Even those children who seem to be efther indolent like the sloth, or changeful as the butterfly, by the skilful training of a watchful parent, may be endowed with the habit of perse- verance. The following anecdotes may aid in illustrating to youth the nature and value of this virtue. The celebrated Timour the Tartar, after a series of the most brilliant vic- tories, was at length conquered and made captive. Though confined in a prison, whose massive walls and thick iron bars discouraged every attempt to escape, he still strove at each chink and crevice to find some way of deliverance. At length, weary and dispirited, he sat down in a corner of his gloomy prison, and gave himself up to despair. While brooding over his sorrows, an ant, with a piece of wood thrice as large as itself, attracted his attention. The insect seemed desirous to asoend the perpendicular face of the wall, and made several attempts to effect it. But after reaching a little elevation, it came to a jutting angle of the stone, and fell backward to the floor. But again, again, and again the attempt was renewed. The monarch watched the struggles of the insect, and in the interest thus excited forgot his own condition. The ant per- severed, and at the sixtieth trial surmounted the obstacle. Timour sprang to his feet, exclaiming, “ I will never despair — perseverance conquers all things !” A similar anecdote is told of Robert Bruce, the restorer of the Scottish monarchy. Being out on an expedition to recon- noitre the enemy, he had occasion to sleep at night in a barn. In the morning, still reclining his head on a pillow of straw, he beheld a spider climbing up a beam of the roof. The in- sect fell to the ground, but immediately made a second essay to ascend. This attracted the notice of the hero, who with regret saw the spider fall a second time from the same emi- nence. It made a third unsuccessful attempt. Not without a mixture of concern and curiosity, the monarch twelve times beheld the insect baffled in its aim ; but the thirteenth essay was crowned with success. It gained the summit of the barn ; and the king, starting from his couch, exclaimed, “ This des- picable insect has taught me perseverance ! I will follow its example. Have I not been twelve times defeated by the enemy’s superior force ? On one fight more hangs the inde- pendence of my country !” In a few days his anticipations were fully realised, by the glorious result," to Scotland, of the battle of Bannockburn. A few years since, while travelling in an adjacent state, I came to a little valley, surrounded by rocky and precipitous Mils. In that valley was a single house. It was old, and, by its irregularity of form, seemed to have been built at various periods. It was, however, in good condition, and bespoke thrift and comfort. Not a shingle was missing from the roof, no dangling clapboards disfigured its sides, no unhinged blinds swung idly in the wind, no old hats were thrust through the windows. All around was tidy and well-conditioned. The woodhouse was stored with tall ranges of hickory, the barns were ample, and stacks of hay without declared' that it was full within. The soil around, as I have said, was rocky, but cultivation had rendered it fertile. Thriving orchards, rich pastures and prolific meadows, occupied the bed of the valley and the rugged sides of the hills. I was struck with the scene, and when I reached a village at the distance of two or three miles, _ I made some inquiries, where I learnt the story of the proprietor. He was originally a poor boy, and wholly de- pendent upon his own exertions. He was brought up' as a farmer, and began life as a day labourer. In childhood he had read that “ procrastination is the thief of time.” He did not at first understand its meaning, and pondered long upon this desperate thief who bore the formidable title of Procras- tination. It was at length explained to him ; but the struggles he had made to comprehend the adage fixed it deep in his mind. He often thought of it, and, feeling its force, it be- came the ruling maxim of his life. Following its dictates -with inflexible perseverance, he at length became proprietor of the little valley I have described. Year by year it improved under his care, and at the period of which 1 am speaking, he was supposed to be worth at least twenty thousand dollars. Such is the force of perseverance. It gives power to weak- ness, and opens to poverty the world’s wealth. It spreads fer- tility over the barren landscape, and bids the choicest fruits and flowers spring up and flourish in the desert abode of thorns and briars. Look at Boston ! Where are the three hills which first met the view of the pilgrims as they sailed up its bay ? Their tops are shorn down by man’s perseverance. Look at the granite hills of Quincy ? Proudly anchored in the bosom of the earth, they seem to defy the puny efforts of man, but they are yielding to man’s perseverance. Forbidden and hope- less as they would appear to the eye of indolence and weak- ness, they are better than the treasures of Peru and the gem- strewn mountains of Brazil, to a people endowed with the hardy spirit of perseverance ! They are better, for, while they enable them to command the precious metals yielded by other climes, they cherish a spirit and a power which all the gold of Golconda could not purchase — Fireside Education, by S. G. Goodrich. LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP. “ Look before you leap,” is an advice applicable to many circumstances of human life, besides the mere examination of the locality in which, on which, or over which, you are about to exhibit your own or your horse’s agility in the perform- ance of a saltation. Such was the course of meditation that suggested itself to my mind, as I beheld an old woman step slowly and deliberately off the foot-path of Carlisle Bridge, and, without looking right or left, walk directly across the path of the Kilkenny mail-coach, that was just then coming in, the driver, of course, making his cattle do the thing hand- somely, as they were so near home. Before he could pull up, the leaders had upset her, and the coroner had ten- pence of his shilling surely counted, when a tall, athletic-look- ing gentleman, stooping suddenly, seized her by the legs, and dragged her from under the horse’s feet, somewhat to the dis- arrangement of her attire. “ Look before you leap,” said he, giving her a smart shake ; “ did you never hear that adage, you stupid creature ?” “Arrah !” said she, with the most perfect innocence, “ sure 1 was’nt goin’ to jump. Such a saym’ was’nt made for the likes iv me.” “ Poh! you stupid being,” said he, and walked on. I followed, making the above reflection, when, about half way over, the actively benevolent gentleman saw a little boy about nine or ten years old put his hand into a gentleman’s pocket ; he instantly, with a promptitude similar to what he had just exhibited, dealt him a blow that nearly knocked the breath out of him. The proprietor of the pocket, startled by the “ Hagli” that announced the sudden and almost total expulsion of the suffer- er’s breath, turned sharply round, and, as the boy staggered over against the balustrades, fiercely asked, “ Who did that?” “ That young rascal, sir, had his hand in your pocket/' said the striker. “ Well, sir, and what if he had ? — He’s my son." “ Your son! Sir, I beg a thousand pardons. I — I — I — ” There is nothing I hate more than to see an unfortunate in- dividual in an awkward dilemma. Maybe it is from having so often suffered, that I have a sort of fellow feeling. So, merely repeating to the recent promulgator of the old adage his own words, “ Look before you leap,” I passed on. N. Epitaphs — The shortest, plainest, and truest, are the best. I say the shortest, for when a passenger sees a chronicle written upon a tomb, he takes it on trust that some great man lies there buried, without taking pains to examine who it is. Mr Cambden, in his “ Remains,” presents us with examples of great men who had little epitaphs. And when once a witty gentleman was asked, what epitaph was fittest to be written on Cambden’s tomb, “ let it be,” said he, “ Cambden’s remains.” I say also the plainest, for except the sense lie above ground, few will trouble themselves to dig for it. Lastly, it must be true ; not as in some monuments, where the red veins in the marble may seem to blush at the falsehoods written on it. He was a witty man who first taught a stone to speak, but he was a wicked man who first taught it to lie. A good memory is the best monument ; others are subject to casualty and time ; and we know that the Pyramids themselves, doting with age, have forgotten the names of their founders.— Scrap Book. g k " ■■ "" ■■■ Printed and Published every Saturday by Gunn and Cam e RON.Z t the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6. Church Lane, College Green. Dublin Agents London : R. Groombridgb. Panyer Alley. Paternoster Row. Manchester: Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street. Liverpool- J Davies, North John Street. Birmingham: J. Drake. Bristol: m'. Bingham. Broad Street. Edinburgh: Fraser and Crawford, George street. Glasgow • David Robertson, Trongate. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 5 . SATURDAY, AUGUST 1, 1840. Volume I. LOUGH If the citizens of our capital have to acknowledge, and per- haps lament, that they are unable to compete with some other cities of the empire in the extent of their commerce, the num- ber of their manufactories, the wealth of their resident aristo- cracy, or, in short, any of the various results which a long and uninterrupted course of artificial prosperity is certain to bestow, they may still console themselves with the reflec- tion, that in the singularly varied beauties of scenery with which their city is surrounded they possess riches of greater value, and enjoyments of a higher nature, of which they can- not be deprived by any circumstance, and in which no other city can ever hope to rival them. And although to the mere grovelling pursuer of gain, who is incapable of a single ele- vated or ennobling feeling, such a consideration may seem a matter of trivial importance, to those of wiser, better, and more happily constituted minds, it will alw r ays be a source of self-gratulation, as affording pleasures easily procured, and which they would not exchange for any of a grosser kind. It is, indeed, beyond a question, that there is no city in the Bri- tish empire exhibiting around it such a variety of picturesque beauties as our ow r n dear Dublin. We have the villa-studded, pastoral plain — the spacious bay, with all its variety of coast, from the sandy beach to the bluff sea-promontory — the Bit AY'. richly-wooded valley with Its limpid river — the lonely moun- tain glen with its cataracts and tiny trout-streams— the purple heath and the solitary tarn, or pool — the rural village and the gay watering-place ; while in addition to all these, the interest imparted to natural scenery, by remains of ancient times, is every where present. In short, there is no class of scenery which the poet, the painter, the geologist, the botanist, or the mere man of pleasure, could desire, that may not be reached in a drive of an hour or two from any part of our city. Nature has showered on us, with a generous hand, her vai’ious riches — the riches derived from her and our Creator. It must, howover, be confessed that, as yet, we have not leanied suffi- ciently to appreciate these gifts, and, consequently, do not sufficiently enjoy them. “ The world is too much with us” — . and there are many scenes of striking interest within our reach, which are more frequently seen by the stranger visitant than by ourselves. Of these, one of the most remarkable is the mountain lake called Lough Bray, of which w r e give a sketch in our present number. How many thousands are there of the citizens of Dublin who have never seen, perhaps never heard of, this little mountain pool ; and yet it is pne of the most perfect examples of scenery of its kind in Ireland — one of those spots in which nature appears in her most stern and 34 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. rugged aspect ; solitary, gloomy, and unfit for the companion- ship of man. Still it is not wholly a desert. The eagles which build in its cliffs have seen a man of a kindred lofty spirit — an eagle among men— build himself a nest amongst these soli- tudes ; and they have been often startled from their eyry by the sounds of aristocratic joy and merriment, when the shores of the dark lake have been enlivened by the presence of the most distinguished in beauty and rank in Ireland. It is perhaps of all situations a spot in which we should least expect to find a gentleman’s villa ; yet this innovation is not materially injurious to the prevailing sentiment of the scene. The house is in the Old English style of architecture, highly picturesque, and in all respects worthy of the refined taste of the late Mr William Morrison, the distinguished architect by whom it was erected, and whose early death was an event which may justly be regarded in the light of a national loss. It was erected for Sir Philip Crampton, at the expense of his Grace the Duke of Northumberland, who, while Vice- roy of Ireland, had spent some happy days with Sir Philip in this romantic spot, in a cottage of humbler pretensions, which had occupied its site, and was accidentally burned. The gift was one equally worthy of the illustrious donor, and the talented and estimable receiver ; and there are few if any of our readers who will not join us in the wish that he may long live to enjoy it. Lough Bray is situated near the head of the beautiful vale called Glen Cree, in the county of Wicklow, into which it sends a stream, which, subsequently uniting with the Glenis- loreane river, is called the Dargle and Bray river, and falls into the sea to the north of Bray Head. Though the name is generally used in the singular number, Lough Bray properly consists of two lakes, called Upper and Lower ; but the lower is the principal one, both in point of beauty and grandeur of scenery, as well as in extent of surface, its area occupying a space of thirty-seven acres. It is nearly surrounded by moun- tain precipices, in which eagles are wont to build, and has very much the character of the crater of an extinct volcano. Lough Bray is most easily visited from Dublin by the Mili- tary Road, by which route the distance is little more than ten Irish miles. • P. TnE SOD PARTY. Of all the pleasant interludes in the drama of life, a sod party, where every thing goes right, is one of the pleasantest. What talking ! what fuss ! what discussions ! what direfully important arrangements for a week before-hand ! what a puzzle how to divide the various necessaries into such rela- tively fair proportions that no individual should feel more burdened than another. I do not mean one of those parties where all the trouble and expense fall upon one unfortunate individual, who, consequently, can derive no pleasure from the affair, except that of seeing others enjoying themselves — a very great pleasure, doubtless, considered abstractedly, but rather too refined for every-day mortals — no ; but a regular pic-nic, where lots are drawn, and each supplies whatever may be written on the slip that she or he holds, and furnishes a quota of the trouble, as well as of the provisions ; one in- dividual, nevertheless, being the director. What a hurry-skurry on the morning of the eventful day ! Then the assembling of the carriages and other vehicles at the place of rendezvous. “ Dear me,” said Mrs Harvey, on the morning of the day appointed for her pic-nic, having consulted her watch for the twentieth time ; “ dear me, where is Mr Sharpe ? What can possibly delay Mrs Molloy ? Well, well, how hard it is to get people to be punctual !” “ Oh, mamma, maybe they’ll meet us at Howth ; we had better set off. If they come here, they can be directed to fol- low us, you know. Do, pray, mamma, let us move.” “ Oh, my dear, we must send a messenger to Mr Sharpe. If he missed us, or took huff at our going without him (and you know he’s very tetchy), it would be such a dreadful in- convenience, for he has to supply the knives and forks, spoons and glasses, and he would think nothing of leaving us in the lurch, if he took it into his head ; and Mrs Molloy is so for- getful, that she might come without the roast beef, and never think of it until it would be missed at table. George, dear, will you desire John to step over to Mr Sharpe’s, and tell him that the company is assembled. And, Mr O’Brien, will you permit me to send your^seryant to Mrs Molloy with a similar message ?” “ Certainly, madam, with the greatest pleasure.” And now the little annoyances inseparable from all sublu- nary enjoyments, begin. “ John has received a severe hurt, my dear. In packing some bottles, one of them broke, and a piece of it has cut his wrist. I have sent him to the apothecary’s to get it dressed.” “ Mercy on us ! I hope he’s not seriously injured. He won’t be obliged to stay at home surely ?” “ I am afraid he must, my dear.” “ If he does, every thing will go wrong, he is such a careful creature, and so completely up to every thing on a sod party, and has every thing so orderly and regular, and all without fuss or hurry. Oh, dear ! we shall be sadly off with- out him.” Mr Sharpe was announced, and a slight, small, dapper little personage made his appearance. A physiognomist of the very least discernment must at once have pronounced him to be a satirical, irritable, genuine lover of mischief, for mischief’s sake — mirthful after his own fashion, and as merry as a grig upon a gridiron, when every face about him should be drawn to a half yard in length by some unforeseen annoyance, or petty disaster. He rubbed his hands, congratulating the ladies on the fineness of the day. “ Heavenly morning — fine road — Bay of Dublin will be seen to such advantage — sea so smooth — coast of Wicklow splendid — Killiney will look so bold” — talk — talk — talk ; he stunned every person with his extraor- dinary volubility. Mr O’Brien’s servant entered. “Please, ma’am, Mrs Molloy is coming.” Scarcely was the message delivered when the lady made her appearance. “ Oh, my dear Mrs Harvey, I hope I hav’nt kept you wait- ing long. I totally forgot that this was the day appointed for your party, until Sparks reminded me of it by calling me up.” “ Make no apologies, my dear madam ; we havn’t waited at all. Mr Sharpe has but just arrived, and our number is now complete. Have you every thing packed ?” “ Packed ! Why, do you think we’ll have rain ? — had I better get my cloak and umbrella ? But, sure, 1 can go in your carriage, and as 1 shan’t be exposed on an outside car, I won’t want them.” “ My dear Mrs Molloy, it is the beef I allude to. Is it packed ?” “The beef! What beef?” “ Why, dear me, you surely havn’t forgotten that a six- rib piece of roast beef was to be supplied by you ?” “I — declare — I — never — once — thought — of it. Well, now, that’s very odd.” Mr Sharpe’s countenance fell. The discovery had been made too timely to please him. “ What’s best to be done now? I can purchase beef some- where as we go along, and we’ll get it dressed at Howth, in some cabin or another.” “ Phwee — oo,” whistled Mr Robert O’Gorman, “ what the deuce would we do with ourselves for five or six hours, at the least, that such a piece would take to roast, without any thing to keep its back warm in an open cabin ? I’ll tel! you what, ma’am : give me the money, and I’ll get as much cold roast beef as you like, from Mulholland.” “ Who is Mulholland ?” “ Oh, ’tis no matter ; I’ll get the meat, if you want it.” “Very well, Mr O’Gorman, do so, and you’ll oblige me ; here is a guinea. But why not tell who Mulholland is ?” Mr O’Gorman bolted, without making any reply. Now, the fact of the matter was simply this, that Mulhol- land was a sort of second-hand caterer, who purchased the meat that was sent unused from the dining-hall of Trinity College, and supplied it again to such students as felt too economically inclined to attend commons, and thus save money from the parental allowances, for other, and better (?) uses. To this class did Mr O’Gorman sometimes belong. In a very short time he re-appeared. “You were not long, Mr O’Gorman; did you succeed in getting a suitable piece ?” “Suitable? If sixteen pounds will suit you, I have got that; and I gave him the change of the guinea,” addressing Mrs Molloy, “ for himself, ma’am, for his trouble in packing it, and the loan of the basket, which of course he can’t ex- pect in reason ever to see again. Nobody would bring home an empty basket.” “ The change of the guinea for himself! Why, Mr O’Gor- man, instead of giving him more than he asked, you should have cut him down in his price. The change of the guinea THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 35 for himself! Oh! gracious! did anyone ever hear of the like? Oh! dear me! the change for himself! Oh! dear!” and in a gentle repetition or two, in an under-tone, Mrs Molloy’s surprise died away, like a retiring echo ; for the bus- tle of departure claimed all attention now. It has been but too frequently remarked, that a party of pleasure is seldom wholly unembittered by pain, and our party was doomed not to be an exception to the rule ; although the point had been mooted, and the question discussed, at the first meeting (an evening party at Mrs Harvey’s), where the pre- liminaries were arranged, and it had been voted unanimously that our party should be pleasant, and agreeable, and happy, from the start to the return ; and, further, that nothing should go astray ; and that if any person should be disagree- able, he or she should be voted out ; with fifty other resolu- tions, that the secretary was unable to record, in consequence of the movers and seconders, the president and audience, se- cretary and all, talking rapidly and vehemently together, until order was suddenly restored by Mr O’Gorman (who had the loudest voice, and the knack of making himself heard above any uproar, acquired by a long and regular course of practice in the upper gallery of Crow-street theatre) shouting out, “ Order-r-r-r-r, ladies and gentlemen, order-r-r-r-r ! The rule of this society is, that not more than six shall speak at a time ; and 1 feel it to be my duty, madam, to call upon you, for the sake of regularity, to preserve this rule inviolate. This party of pleasure, madam, is to be a party of pleasure unlike all the parties of pleasure that have gone before it. Pleasure, madam, is to be the beginning, pleasure the middle, and pleasure the end of it ; and I shall conclude, madam, bv saying, that I have the pleasure of wishing that it may be so.” Mr O’Gorman unfortunately had not the celebrated wishing- cap on his head at the time. Mr, Mrs, and Miss Harvey, a maiden sister of Mr Harvey, Sirs Molloy, Mr Sharpe, Mr O’Brien, his mother and three sisters, Mr O’Donnell and his daughter, O’Gorman, Fitz- gerald, Sweeny, Costello, and two or three more College men, completed the muster roll of the party. The vehicles con- sisted of Mr Harvey’s and Mr O’Brien’s carriages, Mr O’Donnell’s jaunting-car, an outside jarvey that O’Gorman had brought, and Mr Sharpe’s gig. Poor John’s wrist had been so sadly hurt that he could not attend, and the gentlemen gave every assurance to Mrs Har- vey that he would not be missed by her, they would make them- selves so useful. Every thing was at length announced to be ready. A basket, covered with oiled silk, swinging conspicuously from the axle-tree of the gig, rendered it unnecessary to ask Mr Sharpe if he had all the requisites prepared ; and Mrs Har- vey, having cast the last scrutinizing glance around, gave the long-wished-for word to “take places.” Now, all this time there 'were four hearts bent upon one object, and four heads at work planning how to attain it. The youngest of the Misses O’Brien was the sprightliest girl of the party ; and although Miss O’Donnell might dispute the prize for beauty with her, the former was the most admired by the young men upon the present occasion, and Messrs O’Gorman, Fitzgerald, Sweeny, and Costello, had each re- solved to attach himself to her, if possible. The first mentioned, who was a general favourite, had con- trived most successfully to keep near her during breakfast, and pretty nearly to engross her attention during the subse- quent time that had elapsed previously to the discovery of Sirs Molloy’s forgetfulness, by telling her tales of College life, and adventures replete with wonders, that might have caused the renowned Sinbad the sailor himself, or the equally cele- brated Baron Munchausen, to stare, and bite the bitter nail of envy, while they could not withhold their meed of applause from one who was their master at the marvellous, and could give them lessons in the sublime art of invention. It was Bob’s anxiety to get on the road that made him ten- der his services in the supplying of the beef ; and the certainty that he had completely ingratiated himself with the young lady, by his stories, at which she had laughed most heartily, made him feel very little uneasiness at the prospect of a few minutes’ sepa- ration, especially when she knew that he had only absented himself for the purpose of expediting the arrangements that were to give him an opportunity of catering for her amusement for the remainder of the day. When he returned, and saw her surrounded by the other three, he resolved to let them go on quietly, and trusted to snatch her from them by some stra- tagem, just at the last moment. Now, it must be confessed that Miss Kate would have much preferred the rattling, noisy, lying, merry, mischievous scamp, as her companion, to any other, because she loved laughing, and he supplied her plentifully with food for mirth ; and she was very Avell inclined, and quite resolved within herself, to second any bold attempt that he might make to rescue her from the trio by which she was surrounded. Great was her chagrin to see that he took no manner of trouble about the matter, but apparently occupied himself w'ith the elder Miss Harvey. What a taste he must have! thought she, to attach himself to the old maid of the party ; and it was with some- thing of pettishness that she stood, or rather jumped up, when the order to move was given. Her glove fell. Fitzgerald and Costello stooped, or rather dashed themselves down from opposite sides at the same instant to secure the prize ; their heads came in contact, with a crash resembling that caused by two cracked pitchers being jolted together, and so loud as to astonish the hearers ; and they recoiled from the collision into a sitting posture, one under the table, and the other un- der the piano. When Xantippe, the wife of that great philosopher So- crates, had failed in her efforts to vex him by abuse, her last resource was to break some article of crockery upon his head : it is recorded that he coolly wiped his face, which had been deluged by the contents, merely saying, “ After thunder comes rain.” Now, I’d be bound that if we could ascertain what Socrates said to himself at the time, we should find that for all his smooth face and soft words he inwardly took some des- perate liberties with the heathen deities, and pitched Xan- tippe, crockery, and all the makers of it, to Pluto, and all the infernal gods, in a hurry. However, he kept his countenance, which is more than can be said of Frank Costello, or Dick Fitzgerald, or of Mr Sharpe, who nearly went into convul- sions with laughter ; indeed, to do him justice, his was not the only laughter, for no one could resist the excitement to risibility contained in the picture before them. At the first moment each of the gentlemen had uttered a loud exclama- tion savouring strongly of impiety ; then, immediately recol- lecting the presence of ladies, they muttered what might have been supposed by the charitable to be half-suppressed prayers, but that their countenances were strangely discordant with pious thoughts, for each with his hand on his head, his teeth set, his lips apart and tightly drawn, and his eyes glaring with pain and vexation, sat looking, or rather grinning, like a hyena, at the other. That keen sense of the ridiculous which always comes upon us so inopportunely, made them at length get up, and the condolences offered on all sides, in the most tender inflections of voice, but with countenances which but too plainly showed how great was the effort to suppress laughter, excited their anger against one another most terribly ; nor was it likely to be the more readily allayed by seeing Dan Sweeny walking off with the prize, the contention for which had caused their misfortune. It was with difficulty they could be kept from fighting. Leaving them to settle the matter as they pleased, Sweeny conducted the lady to her carriage, close to which a new scene awaited them. On the step of the hackney jaunting-car sat O’Gorman, with his left foot upon his right knee, alternately rubbing his shin very gently, and hugging the leg as if it was a baby, groaning, and screwing his face into the most hideous gri- maces. After the scene they had just witnessed, this was ir- resistible, and Miss Kate laughed long and heartily. Bob looked at her, made a more hideous grimace than before, groaned, rubbed more violently, and then giving himself a most ludicrous twist, grinned, rubbed, and groaned again. “ Why — ha-ha-ha! — Mr O’Gorman, what ha-ha-ha ! — has happened you ?” “ Oh ! ah ! oh ! may the d. , I beg your pardon. But, oh ! hif ! to the — och, I mean bad luck to all wood and iron ! Hif ! oh ! I attempted to jump up on this rascally step, when my foot slipped off, and down 1 came, scraping all the skin off my shin bone. Oh ! bad luck to it — to the step, I mean.” The manner in which he said this, made all who heard him laugh more, but he did not seem to be in the least degree dis- concerted ; and as to being angry, there was not a trace of it on his countenance. Sweeny, who prided himself upon being quite a ladies’ man, and who was just then immensely elated at having distanced all his competitors, but especially O’Gorman, whose retire- ment from the competition he considered to be a tacit acknow- ledgment of inferiority, offered a jesting sort of condolence to him, and recommended him strongly to rub the injured part 36 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. with vinegar, or whisky, or salt and water ; it might smart a little at first, to be sure, and make him grin and roar some- what, but it would he well in no time ! But in the midst of his badinage, Miss O’Brien missed her parasol, and he was obliged to run back to the drawing-room to look for it. As soon as he had disappeared within the hall door, O’Gor- man sprang to his feet, and, drawing the parasol from the breast of his coat, tendered it, and his arm, to the young lady, saying, with the greatest exultation, “ Hoaxed, by jingo ! alas ! poor Sweeny. Come, Miss Kate, your brother is so taken up with Miss O’Donnell, that he can’t attend to any thing, or any body. Never mind your mother ; she can’t bawl out at us, you know ; and if she attempted to scold, she’d be voted out. I’ve got Sharpe’s gig — come, jump up, and we’ll have such a day ! Oh ! but havn’t I done them all brown ! Hurrah for Howth, and the sky over it ! Oh ! you little darling,” added he, restraining himself with considerable difficulty from giving her a hug and a kiss, as she laughingly complied with his invitation, and seated herself with him in the gig, just as Sweeny returned, protesting himself unable to find the parasol, “ oh, it got tired waiting for you, and came ot itselt. But I say, Sweeny, capital receipt that ot yours tor sore shins; quite cured mine in a moment — first application. Hollo ! here, you will probably want a pocket handkerchief during the day ; I’ll lend you one and Bob threw him his own. “ I picked his pocket in the drawing-room,” said he, turning to his de- lighted companion ; “ 1 was determined that he should go back for something ; and here’s yours, which I secured also. Now, then, if we follow those rumbling machines, we shall be smoth- ered with dust, so we had better show them the way.” Chick, chick— and poor Mrs O’Brien could scarcely believe her eyes when she saw her daughter whirl past her in a gig with one of the most incorrigible scapegraces in the University. He took good care that they should not be recalled, for he was out of sight in a twinkling ; nor did the party get a view of him again until they had passed Clontarf, when they found him walking the horse quietly, in order that they might over- take him. But I must postpone detailing the subsequent events of that memorable day until the next number, having already occu- pied more than my share of space. Naisi. SUMMER FLOWERS, A citizen’s LAMENT.} Away with summer fiow’rs, Twine not the wreath for me, Unbind the myrtle from the rose, And pansy, emblem of repose, Far let them scattered be ; The best, the loveliest, let them part, Their very sweetness breaks my heart. Away with summer fiow’rs, Let sunshine cease to glow, Bring back the days of sombre hue, And lieav’n without a glimpse of blue, And earth in vest of snow. Then weave the green perfumed bough In fadeless verdure for my brow. To see the length’ning days, To feel the glowing hours, As step by step, the smiling spring Steals on her bright and glorious wing, And strews our path with flow’rs ; This may be joy, but me it sends Warnings of banishment to friends. Soon as the rose’s bloom Breaks up the social tie, And those whom winter gather’d round The cheering hearth, no more are found, But east and west they fly ; Some roam the mountain, some the deep, But, ah ! leave those at home to weep. ’Midst winter’s sullen blast, How many a friendly band Cheered the dark moments as they passed, And bid me think they fled too fast While circled hand in hand ; But summer breaks the charming spell, And makes me feel, I lov’d too well ! Now, ’midst the fairest glow, The scene with clouds is drear, And empty mansions crowd the street, No hand to beckon, eye to greet. Or friendly voice to cheer ; The colony of love is shaken, And summer leaves our hall forsaken ! Away, then, summer flowers ! Thou glowing rose, away ! Come let me wreathe the gloomy bowers With cypress bathed in stormy showers, Where sunbeams never stray ; But let the flow’r of snowy crest Impart its chillness to my breast. EQUIVOCAL GENTLEMEN. Equivocal Gentlemen ! Pray, who are they ? Why, they are rather a curious class of persons. But if you are in the habit of noting character, we rather think you must know them. They are to be seen in every city, and almost in every town. The equivocal gentleman has, in general manner and bear- ing, and, as far as a very limited exchequer will allow, in dress also, a curious smack of the real gentleman about him, of whom he is, altogether, a sort of amusing caricature. His pretensions are high, very high, and, conscious of the doubt- fulness of his claims, always noisy and obtrusive. He en- deavours to bully the world into respect for him. But it won’t do. When he turns his back, the world winks one of its eyes, and says, with a knowing smile, “ that’s a queer sort of chap.” It does’nt, in fact, know what to make of him — how to class him. It has, however, a pretty good notion that, with all the equivocal gentleman’s pretension, he has by no means an unlimited command of the circulating medium. And this is not an incorrect notion. Scarcity of funds is, in truth, at the bottom of all the equivocal gentleman’s diffi- culties, as, indeed, it is of almost all those of every body else. He, however, may be emphatically said to be born of a war- fare between his poverty and “ gentility.” It is, of course, in the matter of dress that the equivocal gentleman is most anxious to establish his claim to be consi- dered a genuine article ; and it is in this matter, too, that his peculiar position in the world is made most manifest ; dress being in his particular case, as it is less or more in all others, a strongly marked and faithful expression of character. The struggle here, then, to keep matters right, is dreadful. None but himself knows how dreadful — none but himself knows the thousand shifts and expedients he is compelled to have recourse to, to maintain appearances in this most im- portant and most troublesome department. First, of the hat. It is a merciless and unfeeling hat ; for it is obstinately hastening to decay, though it well knows that its sorely perplexed owner does not know where on earth to get another. See what a watching and tending it requires to keep it from becoming absolutely unfit for the public eye, as the headpiece of a gentleman ! Why, the watching and tending of a new-born infant is nothing to it. Consider how carefully it must be examined round and round every morning, that no new outward symptom of decay has made itself manifest. Consider the brushing, the smoothing down, the inking of corners and rims, the coaxing and wheed- ling, by softly squeezing it this way, and gently pulling it that, to induce it to keep as near as possible to its original shape. Nay, desperate attempts may sometimes be detected to make it assume yet a smarter form, in defiance of decay and di- lapidation. Then, there is the stock. Stitching and inking again, with careful daily supervision. Then there is But we need enlarge no further on this part of our subject. But, mark, reader ! every thing about the equivocal gentle- man is not in this state of seediness. He would not be the equivocal gentleman at all, if this were the case. Some of the particulars of his outward man are good — in fact, stylish — . and it is this incongruity that makes him out, that makes him what he is, and which so much puzzles you to class him when you see him. The equivocal gentleman always manages to have one or two of the component parts of his dress of unimpeachable quality, but never can manage to have the whole in this palmy state. There is always something wrong — something below THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 37 par; and, we may add, generally something outre, absurd, or extravagant. Perfect consistency and propriety in dress he never can attain, and perhaps would not, if he could; for one of the most marked features of his character is a craving after singularity, in the art and fashion of his habiliments. Overlooking himself what partial deficiencies there may be in this department of his entire man, and thinking that the world will overlook them too, the equivocal gentleman affects the “bang up.” He is not content with desiring to impress beholders with the idea of his being merely a respectable sort of person : he desires much more than this. They must take him, if not certainly for a lord, at least for some great per- sonage — for a — a— he does not himself, in fact, well know what — for a mysterious, indeterminate somebody, of myste- rious and indeterminate consequence. There are two or three points in which the equivocal gen- tleman displays a very remarkable degree of ingenuity. One of these consists in the dexterity with which he not only con- ceals defects of dress, but converts them into positive ele- gancies. Thus, if he have to button up for want of a clean shirt, he contrives, by the very smart way in which he does it, to make it appear not only to be matter of mere choice or fancy, but, in fact, by much the genteeler thing. But it is in the enacting of character that the equivocal gentleman particularly shines. Not. having either the cash or the credit necessary to en- able him te adapt his dress to his identity, he is compelled to adapt his identity to his dress. In other words, placing, for the reason alluded to, little or no influence over the shape, fashion, or quality of his clothes, but being obliged to conform to circumstances in this matter to a most unpleasant extent — - to wear, in short, whatever he can most conveniently get — he is driven to the expedient of adapting his character to the particular description of dress he maybe wearing at the time. Thus, if it is a short coat, he probably enacts the country gentleman, or sporting character ; if a braided surtout, then he is a military man ; if he is driven to hide the deficiencies of his other garments by a. cloak, he adds a cloth cap with tassels, frizzles up his whiskers, and comes forth a Polish count ; and so on of other varieties of dress. In person the equivocal gentleman is stout and robust., his age somewhere about forty. He is bushy-whiskered, and affects a swaggering, bold, off-hand manner, talks large to waiters, and looks with edifying ferocity on every body. This rabidness of disposition on the part of the equivocal gentleman proceeds partly from his habit of attempting to bully the world into a high opinion of his consequence, and partly from the irritation produced by a constant dread that the world suspects the true state of his case. It is thus partly affected, partly real. Being always miserably short of funds, the equivocal gen- tleman is necessarily much circumscribed in his enjoyments ; and this is particularly unfortunate, for he has a very keen relish for the good things of this life. He likes good living, good drinking, good every thing ; but cruel fate has denied them to him, except in very limited quantities, and on very rare occasions. If he even gets them at all, it is by mere chance, mere casual accident. Occasionally it is by an effort of ingenuity, through which he has contrived, by some mys- terious means or other, to get possession of a little of the cir- culating medium. And pray, then, what is the equivocal gentleman ? What is he in reality, and what does he do ? How does he support himself ? 'Why, friend, these questions are a vast deal easier put than answered. Just now, the equivocal gentleman is doing nothing — lite- rally and absolutely nothing. He was something or other at one time ; but at this moment, and for many years past, he has pursued no calling whatever. The equivocal gentleman, in short, is a gentleman of shifts and expedients. He has a little world of his own, in which he manoeuvres for a living. Being rather respectably connected, his friends occasionally remit him small sums, and these god-sends, few' and far be- tween, and his own ingenuity, are all he has to depend upon. The equivocal gentleman, notwithstanding the dashy ap- pearance he aims at, and the large style in which he speaks, is, we are sorry to say it, a bit of a rogue in grain, and a good deal of one in practice : he is, in short, somewhat of a scamp, partly from circumstances, and partly from the na- tural bent of his genius, which is ever urging him to take the shortest cuts towards the objects he desires to possess. He is, in truth, a sort of human bird of prey ; tailors, bootmakers, and lodging-house keepers, being his favourite quarries, and the class who, therefore, suffer most from his non-paying pro- pensities. On one or other of these he is ever and anon pouncing, and woe be to them if he once gets them within his clutches : he will leave his mark, be sure, if he does. The tailor, the bootmaker, and the lodging-house keener, again, knowing that he is their natural enemy — and as well do they know' him for this, as the small bird does the hawk — stand in great aw r e of him ; they have an instinctive dread of him, and put themselves in a posture of defence the moment they see him. Our equivocal gentleman, in truth, lives in a constant state of warfare similar to this with the whole world — not open hostility, perhaps, but lurking, secret aversion. The world looks shyly and doubtfully on him, and he looks fiercely and angrily on the world in return. Amongst the tw r o or three little foibles by which the equi- vocal gentleman is distinguished, is a rather urgent propen- sity to strong drink. He is, in fact, pretty considerably dis- sipated, as the florid or brick-red face on which his luxuriant whiskers vegetate, but too plainly indicates. He is not, in- deed, always drunk ; for his very limited command of means keeps him, on the whole, pretty sober ; but he gets drunk when he can, and no gentleman can do more, nor can more bo reasonably expected of him. The equivocal gentleman is a man of refined tastes, and hence it is that he patronizes the drama. He is a great play- goer. On such occasions he figures in the sixpenny gallery ; and here he has a difficult part to play, as difficult as any on the stage. He has to make it appear to the gods, who won- der to see so fine a gentleman amongst them, why he has come to such a place, and at the same time to parry the very na- tural conclusion, that it proceeds from a limited exchequer, which he must on no account permit to be presumed for a moment. The way he manages this very ticklish point is this ho assumes a look at once dignified and supercilious, which look is meant to impress you with the belief that his being in the shilling gallery, which he generally enters at the half-price, is a mere freak, a whim of one who could have gone to the boxes had he chosen — that he has come where he is, just to see what sort of a place it is, what effect the actors and the scenery have when seen from such a distance. To confirm this impression, the equivocal gentleman never sits down in the gallery : this would look like premeditated economy. He stands, therefore, during the whole time of the | performance, and stands aloof, too, from the ragamuffin au- : dience, with his arms folded on his breast, and an expression of awful majesty on his brow. Reader, do you know the equivocal gentleman now' ? We | are sure you do. That’s he there ! see — -that odd-looking per- sonage with the battered drab hat, the flashy surtout, the shabby stock, the fashionable vest crossed by a German silver chain, the questionable small-clothes, and the large patch on his left boot. IRISH PROVERBS. The proverbs and moral sayings of a nation have always been considered to possess a remarkable interest, not only on ac- count of the practical wisdom embodied in them, but for the insight which to a great extent they afford into the peculiar character and habits of thought of the people to whom thev belong. Wisdom, it is true, is essentially the same in all countries, but the expression of it must vary according to the temperament and modes of thinking which are found to characterise the people of different nations ; and hence the proverbs of every people have been deemed worthy of preser- vation, as well for purposes of comparison as for their own intrinsic value. If, however, there be any nation the proverbs of which remain almost wholly unknown to the people of the British islands generally, it is the Irish, of w'hose popular say- ings no specimens have ever been given in an English dress, except a collection of about eighty, which w r ere contributed to the first volume of the Dublin Penny Journal by our able and estimable friend Mr O’Donovan, who well observes, that “ a perfect list of the proverbs of any people is, as it were, an in- dex to the national character, or the elements of the moral notions, customs, and manners of a people.” A vast body of such characteristic popular wisdom still remains hidden in the obscurity of its original vernacular form, and we trust, that we shall render our readers an acceptable service in present* rss THE HUSH PENNY JOURNAL. jug me si From ame to time with translated portions, accom- panied by the original Irish, which we are equally anxious to preserve. 1. Te4]i|t n ))i)e rj4 bujjibe rqojt cojji ii4 “Dill curi) -olije pe4(t|t t:e4C be45 'oe4iiu lo)i) i)4 -ce 4(i n)0]t n* be434i) bj-6 Gentleness is better than violent anger. Compromising is better than going to law. A small house and a plentiful store Are better than a large house and little food. 2 . j 011)4-0 sloiji 45 1)646 -co beift rib T)e)iiic)OT) 4|t4 cejll 'cejne4i)t) 'cujrje le bionja'o 3lo)]t Sp4) , ce4i) -coi) cojft pel i) Too much talkativeness in a man . Brings his good sense into disrepute ; Because a man by a superfluity of words Only detracts from the force of truth. 3. U) 'C}Wjrr ) e'te 4t) ioc 4i) edU ip 'C] lojtije'oe 41) , o’e4c 4 riHAi) t)) 'C|10)fT]e'Oe 4t) C40fl4 4 l)0l4l)l) ’Tb) 'C|to)uje'De 4i) co Urjt) c)4il The lake is not incumbered by the swan, The steed is not incumbered by its bridle, 'j he sheep is not incumbered by its wool, Nor is the body incumbered by good sense. 4. ir,)l)T oloji 3^c Tip 45 4 TT)b)t) CU)-0 43i.it TPbCl* Se4|tb 5lojt 4t) -ce bjoy lo;i)H) bul)OpC]Ot)T) 450 Ubjl41)l) pe Sweet is the voice of every man Who possesses means and affluence ; But harsh is the voice of the indigent nma; Iiis language seems topsy-turvy. 5. !)4C bU4)t>e4|lt4 bj'D 1)4 -040)1)6 4)1 U)jt64yb4)6> lojl) ’T41) 114)5 TD4 l)0T)4t> -OjOb 30 TfieifiJC T41) lo r,) lu4)ce -corj c)ll 4t) ?iot 4l yu)}tjote -oepeo)! 1)4 4t) lii4)-ote4|t 3po)-ce rjo 41 ) i)40)de4i) le)i))b b)3 0)5 Flow much do people sorrow for their want of possessions, And the grave meanwhile filled with them often in the day ! Not sooner to the cemetery goes the emaciated invalid Than the robust and brave man, or the new-born infant. INTERESTING TRIAL. The following account of an extraordinary criminal trial which took place in Hertfordshire in the year 1628, we have extracted from Reilly’s Dublin News Letter of the 16th of August 1 740. It was published for the first time in London in the preceding year (1739) by Dr Rawlinson, who had dis- covered it among the papers of th® eminent lawyer, Sir John Maynard, formerly one of the Lords Commissioners of the Great Seal of England. “ The case, or rather history of a case, that happened in the county of Hertford, 1 thought good to report here, though it happened in the fourth year of King Charles the First, that the memory of it may not be lost by miscarriage of my papers, or otherwise. I wrote the evidence that was given, which I and others did hear ; and I wrote it exactly accord- ing to what was deposed at the trial, at the bar of the King’s Bench, namely, Johan Norkott, wife of Arthur Norkott, being murdered, the question was, How she came by her death ? The coro- ner’s inquest on view of the body, and depositions of Mary Norkott, John Okeman, and Agnes bis wife, inclined to find Johan Norkott felo de se ; for they informed the coro- ner and jury that she was found dead in her bed, the knife sticking in the floor, and her throat cut : That the night before she went to bed with her child, her husband being ab- sent, and that no other person after such time as she was gone to bed came into the house, the examinants lying in the outer room, and they must needs have seen or known if any stranger had come in. Whereupon the jury gave up to the coroner their verdict, that she was felo de se ; but after- wards, upon rumour among the neighbourhood, and their ob- servation of divers circumstances, which manifested that she did not, nor, according to those circumstances, could possibly murder herself, thereupon the jury, whose verdict was not yet drawn into form by the coroner, desired the coroner that the body, which was buried, might be taken up out of the grave, which the coroner assented to ; and thirty days after her death, she was taken up in the presence of the jury and a great number of the people : whereupon the jury changed their verdict. The persons being tried at Hertford assizes, were acquitted; but so much against the evidence, that Judge Hervey let fall his opinion that it were better an appeal were brought, than so foul a murder escape unpunished. And Pasena 4 Car., they were tried on the appeal, which was brought by the young child, against his father, grandmother, and aunt, and her husband Okeman. And because the evi- dence was so strange, I took exact and particular notice, and it was as follows : — After the manner above mentioned related, an ancient and grave person, minister to the parish where the fact was committed (being sworn to give evidence according to cus- tom), deposed, that the body being taken up out of the grave thirty days after the party’s death, and lying on the grass, and the four defendants present, they were required each of them to touch the dead body. Okeman’s wife fell upon her knees, and prayed God to show a token of her innocency, or to some such purpose ; her very words I have forgot. The appellees did touch the dead body ; whereupon the brow of the dead, which was before a livid and carrion colour (that was the verbal expression interminis of the witness), began to have a dew or gentle sweat arise on it, which increased by degrees till the sweat ran down in drops on the face ; the brow turned and changed to a lively and fresh colour, and the dead opened one of her eyes and shut it again ; and this opening of the eye was done three several times. She like- wise thrust out the ring or marriage finger three times, and pulled it in again, and the finger dropped blood from it on the grass. Sir Nicholas Hide, Chief Justice, seeming to doubt the evi- dence, asked the witness, Who saw this besides you ? Witness — I cannot swear what others saw ; hut, my Lord, (said he) I do believe the whole company saw it ; and if it had been thought a doubt, proof would have been made of it, and many would have attested with me. Then the witness observing some admiration in the audi- tors, he spoke further. My Lord, I am minister of the parish, and have long known all the parties, but never had any occasion of displeasure against any of them, nor had to do with them, or they with me, but as I was minister. The thing was wonderful to me ; but I have no interest in the matter" but as called upon to testify the truth 1 have done. This witness was a very reverend person, and, as I guessed, was about seventy years of age ; his testimony was delivered gravely and temperately, but to the great admiration of the auditory. Whereupon applying himself to the Chief Justice, he said : — My Lord, my brother, here present, is minister of the next parish adjacent, and I am assured saw all done that 1 have affirmed. Therefore that person was also sworn to give evidence, and did depose in every point — to the sweating of the brow, the change of its colour, opening of the eye, and the thrice motion of the finger, and drawing it in again. Only the first witness added, that he himself dipped his finger in the blood which came from the dead body, to examine it, and he swore he believed it was blood. I conferred afterwards with Sir Edmund Powell, barrister- at-law, and others, who all concurred in the observation. For myself, if I were upon oath, I can depose that these depositions, especially of the first witness, are truly reported in substance. The other evidence was given against the prisoners, namely, the grandmother of the plaintiff, and against Okeman and his wife ; that they confessed that they lay in the next room to the dead person that night, and that none came into the 39 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. house till they found her dead the next morning ; therefore, if she did not murder herself, they must be the murderers. To that end further proof was made. First— That she lay in a composed manner in her bed, the bed-clothes nothing at all disturbed, and her child by her in bed. Secondly — Her throat cut from ear to ear, and her neck broken ; and if she first cut her throat, she could not break her neck in the bed, nor contra. Thirdly — There was no blood in the bed, saving there was a tincture of blood on the bolster whereon her head lay ; but no substance of blood at all. Fourthly — From the bed’s head there was a stream of blood on the floor, which ran along till it ponded in the bend- ings of the floor to a very great quantity ; and there was also another stream of blood on the floor at the bed’s feet, which ponded also on the floor to another great quantity, but no continuance or communication of blood of either of these two places from one to the other, neither upon the bed ; so that she bled in two places severally. And it was deposed, turning up the mat of the bed, there were clots of congealed blood in the straw of the mat underneath. Fifthly— The bloody knife was found in the morning stick- ing in the floor a good distance from the bed ; but the point of the knife as it stuck was towards the bed, and the haft from the bed. Lastly — There was a print of the thumb and four fingers of the left hand. Sir Nicholas Hide, Chief Justice, said to the witness — How can you know the print of a left hand from the print of a right hand in such a case ? Witness— My Lord, it is hard to describe ; but if it please that honourable judge to put his left hand upon your left hand, you cannot possibly place your right hand in the same posture. Which being done, and appearing so, the defend- ants had time to make their defence, but gave no evidence to any purpose. The jury departed from the bar, and, returning, acquitted Okeman, and found the other three guilty ; who being seve- rally demanded what they could sav why judgment should not be pronounced, said, * Nothing ;’ but each of them said, * I did not do it, I did not do it.’ Judgment was given, and the grandmother and the hus- band executed ; but the aunt had the privilege to be spared execution, being with child. I inquired, did they confess any thing at their execution ; but they did not, as I was told.” JACK JOHNSTONE. The times are sadly changed in Ireland as regards the drama, and the enjoyments of its lovers, since the days when Jack Johnstone used to delight his thousands of hearers, in old “ Crow street,” with his melodious warblings of Irish melo- dies, and his never-to-be-equalled touches of Irish humour and merriment. It can never be questioned that he was the truest painter of Irish character that ever lived. There was no trait to be found throughout its extensive range, from the ac- complished gentleman to the unlettered peasant, that he was not equally master of, and which he did not depict with equal spirit and vividness ; and this always in such a way as to make us pleased with the picture of ourselves, and acknow- ledge its truth, while we laughed at its strange and often lu- dicrous peculiarities. There was nothing in Jack Johnstone’s personation that Irishmen would ever feel ashamed of, or that they would not willingly allow to go forth to the world at large as faithful delineations of their eccentricities and faults, as well as of their drolleries and virtues ; and hence not only is the memory of this genuine Irish comedian honoured by those of the last generation, who were his co temporaries, but his reputation as an actor has even descended with lustre to our own times. So should it for ever live ; and in this desire of contributing our humble assistance towards perpetuating his memory, we are induced to present our readers with a short biographical notice of his career, which we arc sure will not be displeasing to the young, while it will hardly fail to re- vive joyous recollections of happy days in the minds of our readers of more advanced years. Mr John Henry Johnstone was born at Tipperary in 1750, and was the son of a small but respectable farmer, having a large family. At the early age of 18 he enlisted into a regi- ment of Irish dragoons, then stationed at Clonmel, commanded by Colonel Brown. Being smitten with the charms of a neigh- bouring farmer’s daughter, Johnstone used to scale the bar- rack-wall after his comrades had retired to their quarters, for the purpose of serenading his mistress, having a remarkably sweet and flexible voice. He always returned, however, and was ready at parade the following morning. He was much esteemed throughout the regiment for a native lively turn of mind, and peculiarly companionable qualities. Two of his comrades (who had found out the secret of his nocturnal visi- tations) scaled the wall after him, and discovered him on his knee singing a plaintive Irish ditty beneath the window of his inamorata. They instantly returned to quarters, and were quickly followed by Johnstone. The serjeant of the company to which he belonged eventually became acquainted with the circumstance, but never apprised the colonel of the fact. Shortly after, Colonel Brown had a party of particidar friends dining with him, whom he was most anxious to entertain : he inquired what soldier throughout the regiment had the best voice, and the palm of merit was awarded by the serjeant- major to Johnstone. The colonel sent for him, and he at- tended the summons, overwhelmed with apprehension that his absence from quarters had reached his commander’s ears. He was soon relieved, however, on this point, and attended the party at the time appointed. The first song he sang was a hunting one, which obtained much applause, although he la- boured under great trepidation. The colonel said that he had heard he exoelied in Irish melodies, and bade Johnstone sing one of his favourite love songs. His embarrassment increased at this order; but after taking some refreshment, he sang the identical ditty with which lie had so often serenaded his mis- tress, in such a style of pathos, feeling, and taste, as perfectly enraptured his auditors. Having completely regained his self- possession, he delighted the company with several other songs, which all received unqualified approbation. The next day Colonel Brown sent for him and sounded his inclination for the stage. Johnstone expressed his wishes fa- vourably on the point, but hinted the extreme improbability of his success, from want of experience and musical knowledge. The colonel overcame his objections, and granted him his dis- charge, with a highly recommendatory letter to his particular friend Mr Ryder, then manager of the Dublin theatre, who engaged Johnstone at two guineas a-week for three years, which, after his first appearance in Lionel, was immediately raised to four (a high salary at that time in Dublin). His fame as a vocalist gathered like a snow-ball, and he performed the whole range of young singing lovers with pre-eminent eclat. Our hero next formed a matrimonial alliance with a Miss Poitier, daughter of Colonel Poitier, who had then the com- mand of the military depot at Kilmainham gaol. This lady being highly accomplished, and possessing a profound know- ledge of music, imparted to her husband the secrets of the science, and made him a finished singer. Macklin having the highest opinion of Johnstone’s talent, ad- vised him to try the metropolitan boards, and wrote a letter to Mr Thomas Harris, of Covent-garden, who, on the arrival of Johnstone and his wife, immediately engaged them for three years, at a weekly salary of £14, £16, and £18. Johnstone made his first appearance in London on the 3a October 1 "83, in his old character of Lionel, and made a complete hit, fullv sus- taining the ten years’ reputation he had acquired on the I)ublin stage. . After remaining several years at Covent-garden, and finding his voice not improving with time, he formed the admi- rable policy of taking to Irish parts, which were then but very inadequately filled. Iiis success was beyond example ; his native humour, rich brogue, and fine voice for Irish ditties, carried all before him. In fact, he was the only actor who could personate with the utmost effect both the patrician and plebeian Irishman. He next performed at the Haymarket, being one of those who remonstrated with the proprietors of Covent-garden in 1801, against their new regulations. In 1803, he visited his friends in Dublin, where martial law being then in force, on account of Emmett’s rebellion, the company performed in the day-time. On his return to London his wife died, and he afterwards married Miss Boulton, the daughter of a wine-merchant, by whom he had Mrs Wallack, who with her children succeeded to the bulk of his large property. In the records of the stage no actor ever approached Johnstone in Irish characters. Sir Lucius O’Trigger, Callaghan O’Bral- laghan, Major O’Flaherty, Teague, Tully (the Irish gar- dener), and Dennis Brulgruddery, were pourtrayed by him in the most exquisite colours. In fact, they stood alone for feli- city of nature and original merit. 40 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. ri i i iwi fi > *1(11—— — ■ ■ , ■ ■ Mr Johnstone died in his house in Tavistock-street, Covent- garden, on the 26th December 1829, at the advanced age of seventy-eight years, and his remains were interred in a vault under the church of St Paul, Covent-garden, near the eastern angle of the church. His will was proved in Doctors’-Com- mons, and probate granted under £12,000 personal property. Rumour gave Johnstone the credit of being worth £40,000 or £50,000. He left a gold snuff-box and a ring to each of his executors, Mr George Robins and Mr O’Reilly : a ring to his friend Mr Jobling, of the Adelphi ; and a ring to Mr Dunn, the treasurer of Drury-lane ; and as the latter gentleman was a staunch disciple of Isaac Walton, Johnstone left him all his fishing-tackle. To a female servant who nursed him during the last eight or ten years of his life, he bequeathed an annuity of £50 a-year. The remainder, with the exception of a legacy of £500 to Mrs Vining, was left to the children of his daugh- ter, Mrs Wallack. AMUSEMENTS— MUSIC. In every community there must be pleasures, relaxations, and means of agreeable excitement ; and if innocent ones are not furnished, resort will be had to criminal. Man was made to enjoy as well as to labour ; and the state of society should he adapted to this principle of human nature. France, especially before the revolution, has been represented as a singularly temperate country ; a fact to be explained, at least in part, by the constitutional cheerfulness of that people, and by the prevalence of simple and innocent gratifications, especially among the peasantry. Men drink to excess very often to shake off depression, or to satisfy the restless thirst for agree- able excitement, and these motives are excluded in a cheerful community. A gloomy state of society, in which there are few innocent recreations, may be expected to abound in drunk- enness, if opportunities are afforded. The savage drinks to excess because his hours of sobriety are dull and unvaried ; because, in losing the consciousness of his condition and his existence, he loses little which he wishes to retain. The labour- ing classes are most exposed to intemperance, because they have at present few other pleasurable excitements. A man who, after toil, has resources of blameless recreation, is less tempted than other men to seek self-oblivion. He has too many of the pleasures of a man to take up with those of a brute. Thus the encouragement of simple, innocent enjoy- ments, is an important means of temperance. These remarks show the importance of encouraging the efforts which have commenced among us, for spreading the accomplishment of music through our whole community. It is now proposed that this shall be made a regular branch in our schools ; and every friend of the people must wish success to the experiment. 1 am not now called to speak of all the good influences of music, particularly of the strength which it may and ought to give to the religious sentiment, and to all pure and generous emotions. Regarded merely as a refined pleasure, it has a favourable bearing on public morals. Let taste and skill in this beautiful art be spread among us, and every family will have a new resource. Home will gain a new attraction. Social intercourse will be more cheerful, and an innocent public amusement will be furnished to the commu- nity. Public amusements, bringing multitudes together to kindle with one emotion, to share the same innocent joy, have a humanizing influence ; and among these bonds of society per- haps no one produces so much unmixed good as music. What a fulness of enjoyment has our Creator placed within our reach, by surrounding us with an atmosphere which may be shaped into sweet sounds ! And yet this goodness is almost lost upon us, through want of culture of the organ by which this provision is to be enjoyed Dr Charming’s Address on Temperance. Churchyards. — Formerly (says Captain Grose) few per- sons chose to be buried on the north side of a church ; the original reason was this : in the times when the Roman Catho- lic religion prevailed, it was customary, on seeing the tomb- stone or grave of a friend or acquaintance, to put up a prayer for their soul, which was held to be very efficacious. As the common entrance into most churches was either at the west end or on the south side of the church, persons buried on the north side escaped the notice of their friends, and thereby lost the benefit of their prayers. This becoming a kind of refuse spot, only yery poor, or persons guilty of some offence, were buried there: persons who, actuated by lunacy, had destroyed themselves, were buried on this side, and sometimes out of the east and west directions of the other graves. This is said to be alluded to in Hamlet, where he bids the grave-digger cut Ophelia’s grave straight. The same was observed with re- spect to persons who were executed. Observe the yew-tree ; in many churchyards they are of a prodigious size. Some have supposed that yew-trees were planted in churchyards in order to supply the parish with bow staves, but more probably it was from the yew being an evergreen, and conveying an allusion to the immortality of the soul, and therefore consi- dered as a funereal plant. This reason is likewise given for the use of rosemary and rue ; but, probably, these were car- ried to prevent any infection from the open grave on a near approach to the coffin. Romantic Marriage. — William, the second Viscount Ash- brook, when very young, and residing with his family in the county of Kilkenny, was captivated with the beauty of an Irish peasant girl, named Elizabeth Ridge, who was in the habit of punting a ferry-boat across a stream in the vicinity of Castle Durrow. The love-sick youth took every oppor- tunity of enjoying the society of the fascinating water-nymph, but carefully concealed his passion from his parents. He held at that time an ensign’s commission in a regiment which was quartered in the neighbourhood, but he was as yet too young to think of matrimony ; nor was the object of his love either old enough, or sufficiently educated, to become his wife. She had been reared among the Irish peasants, had been un- used to shoes or stockings, was scarcely acquainted with the English language, and was w'holly uninformed in matters of the world ; yet the young ensign fancied, that, notwithstand- ing these disadvantages, he could perceive in her an aptitude of mind, and soundness of intellect, united with great sweet- ness of temper, in addition to her personal attractions. Un- der these circumstances, he conceived the romantic idea of placing her under the superintendence of some respectable female, capable of rendering her, through the influence of education, a suitable associate. The lovely ferry-girl was accordingly removed to the house of a lady, wthere our hero, who had meantime been promoted to the rank of captain, oc- casionally visited her, and marked from time to time, with all the enthusiasm of a romantie lover, her rapid progress in va- rious polite accomplishments. Elizabeth Ridge remained in this situation for three years, when the lapse of time, as w r ell as some domestic occurrences, enabled Captain Flower, in 1766, to reap the reward of his constancy and honourable conduct. And thus the blushing daughter of the Emerald Isle became ultimately the Viscountess Ashbrook, and lady of that castle beneath wffiose walls her early charms had, like the rays of the rising sun, beamed for a time unnoticed, only to become more effulgent and more admired. Ry the Vis- count she had several sons and daughters ; among the former, the present Viscount ; among the latter, the mother of the present Lady Wetherell. The Irish in the reign of Queen Elizabeth are represented by many as quite ignorant and barbarous. Read the letters of their chiefs to the Spaniards in the Pacata Hibernia, and judge for yourself. — Dr Browne, F.T.C.D. Irish Volubility. — A conversation wdth a young Irish- man, of good natural abilities (and among no race of men are those abilities more general), is like a forest walk ; in which, while you are delighted with the healthy fresh air and the green unbroken turf, you must stop at every twentieth step to extricate yourself from a briar. You acknowledge that you have been amused, but that you rest willingly, and that you w r ould rather not take the same walk on the morrow Landor. No man is free from fear ; he is not who says he never feels it ; he fears to be thought a coward ; and, whether w r e tremble before a sword or a supposition, it is alike fear ! The power of enjoying the harmless and reasonable plea- sures of life is not only essential to a man’s happiness, but an indication of several valuable qualities, both of the heart and the head, which can hardly exist without it. Printed and Published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin.— Agents London : R. Groombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row. Manchester: Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street. Liverpool: J. Davies, North John Street. Birmingham : J. Drake. Bristol : M. Bingham, Broad Street. Edinburgh: Fraser and Crawford, George Street. Glasgow : David Robertson, Trongate. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. f Number 6. SATURDAY, AUGUST 8, 1840. Volume I. THE RED MEN OF AMERICA.— First Article. It is a melancholy truth that this most interesting portion of the human race is rapidly disappearing from the surface of the earth. M ar, its murderous effects centupled by the de- structive weapons acquired from the white man — disease in new and terrible forms, to the treatment of which their simple skill, and materia medica, equally simple, are wholly incompetent — famine, the consequence of their sadly changed habits, of the intemperance and wastefulness, substituted by the insidious arts of the trader for the moderation and fore- sight of their happier fathers — the vices, in short, and the encroachments of civilization, all and each in its turn are blot- ting out tribe after tribe from the records of humanity ; and the time is fast approaching when no Red man will remain, to guard or to mourn over the tombs of his fathers. The conviction of this truth is become so deeply felt, that more than one effort has been made, and is making, to pre- serve some memento of this ill-treated people. We are not so much raising our own feeble voice in the service, as attempt- 42 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. ing a record of what others have done ; but so much has been effected, and so zealous have been the exertions made to rescue the memory, at least, of these dying nations from oblivion, that the space we have assigned to this notice will be taken up long before our materials are exhausted. The accuracy of the facts and statements we shall lay before our readers may in every case be relied on. Among the most devoted and persevering explorers of the Red man’s territory, is one from whose authority, and indeed from whose very lips, in many instances, we derive a great portion of the circumstances we are about to describe — .we allude to the celebrated George Catlin, whose abode of seven years among the least known of their tribes, and whose ear- nest enthusiasm in the task of inquiry which formed the sole object of his visit, together with his entire success in the pur- suit, have constituted him the very first authority of the day. We have, besides, consulted all the writers on this now en- grossing subject, but in most cases have afterwards taken the highly competent opinion just quoted, as to the accuracy of their descriptions — an opinion that has always been given with evident care and consideration. Mr Catlin has painted with his own hand, and from the life, no less than three hundred and ten portraits of chiefs, war- riors, and other distinguished individuals of the various tribes (forty-eight in number) among whom he sojourned, with two hundred landscapes and other paintings descriptive of their country, their villages, religious ceremonies, customs, sports, and whatever else was most characteristic of Indian life in its primitive state ; he has likewise collected numerous speci- mens of dresses, some fringed and garnished with scalp-locks from their enemies’ heads ; mantles and robes, on which are painted, in rude hieroglyphics, the battles and other prominent events of their owners’ lives ; head-dresses, formed of the raven’s and war-eagle’s feathers, the effect of wilich is strikingly warlike and imposing ; spears, shields, war clubs, bows, musical instruments, domestic utensils, belts, pouches, neck- laces of bears’ claws, mocassins, strings of wampum, tobacco sacks ; all, in short, that could in any way exemplify the habits and customs of the people whose memory he desired to perpetuate, have been brought together, at great cost and some hazard to life, by this indefatigable explorer — the whole forming a museum of surpassing interest, and which is daily attracting the people of London to the gallery wkerein it is exhibited. The most important of the North American tribes are the Camanchees, inhabiting the western parts of Texas, and numbering from 25,000 to 30,000 expert horsemen and bold lancers, but excessively wild, and continually at war ; the Pawnee-Picts, neighbours to and in league with the Caman- chees ; the Kiowas, also in alliance with the tw r o warlike tribes above named, -whom they join alike in the battle or chase ; the Sioux, numbering no less than 40,000, and inhabiting a vast tract on the upper waters of the Mississippi and Mis- souri rivei’3. Next come the Pawnees, a tribe totally distinct both in language and customs from the Pawnee-Picts, whose hunting-grounds are a thousand miles distant from those of the Pawnees ; this wild ana very warlike tribe shave the head with the exception of the scalp-lock (which they would hold it cowardly and most unjust to their enemy to remove), as do the Osages, the Konzas, &c. The Pawnees lost half their numbers by small-pox in 1823, but are still very nume- rous ; their seats are on the river Platte, from the Missouri to the Rocky Mountains. The Blackfeet, the Crows (their inveterate enemies), the Crees, the Assinneboins, occupying the country from the mouth of the Yellow Stone River to Lake Winnipeg, the Ojibbeways or Chippeways, holding the southern shores of Lake Superior, the Lake of the Woods, and the Athabasca ; the Flatheads, on the head- waters of the Columbia ; and the Cherokees, removed from Georgia to the upper waters of the Arkansas, are also important tribes ; as are the Muskogee or Creek Indians, recently transplanted from Georgia and Alabama to the Arkansas, seven hundred miles west of the Mississippi. The Seminolees are also in process of removal to the Arkansas, as are the Enchees, once a powerful tribe, but now merging into the above, and with them forming one people. Most of these tribes, as well as others that we have not room even to specify, have been reduced, by the different scourges before alluded to, in a manner frightful to contemplate. The Delawares, for example, have lost 10,000 by small-pox alone ; and from a large and numerous tribe, now reckon 824 souks only ! The Senecas, Oneidas, and Tuskaroras, once forming part of that great compact known as the “ Six Nations,” are now a mere name. The Kaskaskias, the Peorias, and the Piankeshaws, have fallen victims to the practice of drinking spirits, and to the diseases this fearful habit engenders, so that all are now reduced to a few individuals. Some tribes are totally extinguished ; — as, for example the hospitable and friendly Mandans, of whom even the traders themselves report that no one of them was ever known to destroy a white man. These afford a melancholy instance of the rapidity with which the extermination before alluded to is effected. In the year 1834, when Mr Catlin visited these warlike and spirited, yet kindly dwellers of the woods, their number was 2000 ; three years after, they were infected by the traders with small-pox ; and this, with certain suicides committed by individuals who could not survive the loss of all they loved, destroyed the whole tribe, some forty excepted, who were afterwards cut off by their enemies of a neighbouring tribe, so that at this moment not a Mandan exists over the whole wide continent, where, before the baleful appearance of the white man, his free ancestors ranged so happily. This is bad, but a still more melancholy element of decay is the habit of drinking spirituous liquors, which is daily gaining ground among these hapless Americans ; this produces an amount of crime and suffering that, even in our own country, could find no parallel ; not only is the excitable nature of the Red man stirred to actual madness by these atrocious poisons ; but because, unlike his brother of civilized countries, he depends on his own unassisted physical powers for the most immediate and pressing wants of life — no grazier or butcher, . no miller or baker, has he to provide for a time against impro- vidence on his part ; from no accommodating “ shop” can his wife gain credit for the moment — his family starves at once if his own resources are destroyed ; and an eloquent writer of the day has well remarked, that “it is dreadful to reflect on the situation of a poor Indian hunter, when he finds, he knows not why, that his limbs are daily failing him in the chase, that his arrow ceases to go straight to the mark, and that his nerves tremble before the wild animals it was but lately his pride to encounter.” We have been furnished by intelligent eye-wit- nesses •with fearful instances of wrong and outrage committed by the unhappy Indians on each other while under the influ- ence of the poison which we Christians — ah, woe for the pro- fanation !— have bestowed on our Red brothers ; but our limits do not permit their insertion. We call the native American, “ Indian,” in compliance with established custom ; but there is no propriety in the term as applied to these people, who call themselves “ Red men,” and nothing else. They are for the most part of ro- bust make and of fair average size, except the Esquimaux inhabitants of the extreme north, who are dwarfish, and the Abipones, natives of the southern extremity of this vast continent, who are of great height ; they have promi- nent features, high cheek-bones, and small deeply set black eyes ; their complexion is a cinnamon colour, varying in its shades, and esteemed handsome among themselves in propor- tion as it is dark, but with a clear, warm, coppery hue, which last they esteem an evidence of the divine favour, for they believe that the Great Spirit loved Iris Red children better than their white brethren, and so breathed a more vivid life into their veins ; a distinction of which the visible sign is the glow- ing complexion we have alluded to. The meaner vices are held in especial contempt among the yet uncontaminated Indians : slanderers, cowards, liars, misers , and debtors who refuse to pay when the means are in their power, are shunned as persons in whose society no respectable man should be seen. On the subject of debt, in particular, Indian notions differ widely from ours. Should his debtor be unable to meet his engagements in consequence of illness or want of success in the chase, he scrupulously conceals the inconvenience this may occasion, and is careful never to name debt in the defaulter’s presence. Rut, on the other hand, should the inability of the debtor proceed from indolence or intemperance, or should he be in- disposed to pay when his means permit, he is then character- ised as a “ bad man” — his friends gradually abandon him, he becomes an object of public contempt, and nothing could after this induce his creditor to accept from him even his just de- mand. He is no longer permitted to pay ; he has forfeited the privilege of the upright man, and must remain in the con- tempt into which he has sunk ; but such instances, it will be readily supposed, are extremely rare. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 43 Cowardice is not punished by loss of reputation alone in some tribes ; as, among the Kansas, if the coward be found incorrigible, he is destroyed. Te-pa-gee was a young war- rior of this tribe, who had been more than once charged with this fatal defect. He returned on a certain occasion with his brethren from an expedition that had been eminently success- ful, but in which he had himself behaved disgracefully. The whole tribe, except those who had lost relations, were engaged the next day in the usual rejoicings ; but Te-pa-gee, conscious that cold looks were upon him, had withdrawn from the public ceremonials, and seated himself sullenly on the trunk of a tree by the river side. Shortly after, the dances of the squaws and children having led them into his neighbourhood, the great mass of the tribe were again around him, when E-gron-ga-see, one of their wisest men and bravest warriors, came forth from the festive group, and the sports being suspended, he declared to the offender, in a voice audible to all, that his cowardice had forfeited his life. Te-pa-gee instantly bared his breast, and the avenger, drawing his knife from beneath his robe, plunged it deep into the culprit’s bosom. Another warrior of equal authority then addressed the people, expatiating on the neces- sity of punishing such crimes as that committed by T e-pa-gee, who had meanwhile died before them almost without a groan. This fact is related by an eye-witness, who does not, however, tell us whether the unhappy man’s constancy in death did not go far to convince his judges that his fault was rather a defect of nerve than the absence of power to endure. It is the custom of Indians, at war with each other to imi- tate the cries of various animals of the chase, for the purpose of luring unwary hunters into an ambush. Three young war- riors of the Ottawas being thus decoyed into a wood, two of them were shot and scalped ; the third ran for his life, without discharging his piece, setting up the yell of defeat as he ran. The men of his tribe were alarmed, and went instantly in pur- suit of the enemy, whom they could not overtake ; but on their return, they fell in with a hunting party of the same tribe, whom they fell upon by surprise and scalped. The usual re- joicings of the women and children took place on their return ; they were seated under the shade of broad trees to smoke with the old men, and Shembagah, the one who had escaped by running, went towards them with looks congratulating their success ; but no one deigned him a look, or a word of notice, and he had scarcely got among them before all rose and left the place. This punishment was too great for him to bear ; he left his people without saying a word or taking leave of any one, and was never more heard of, while the relater of this anecdote remained with the tribe. A girl of the Ottawas being taken prisoner by a party of the Kansas, was adopted into the family of a Kansas chief, and soon afterwards betrothed to his son, a youth named Moi-bee-she-ga, or the Sharp Knife. A few days before the espousals were to be solemnised, it happened that a party of the Mahaws came and fell upon the horses of the Kansas, which were grazing in a neighbouring prairie, and which they succeeded in carrying off ; they were detected in the act by some Kansas women who were gathering wood, and the warriors being' apprised, set off in pursuit. The old chief, now laden with many snows, was unable to accompany his warriors, whom Moi-bee-she-ga ought to have headed, but this last chose to remain with his bride. This so enraged his father, that he seized the arms which the recreant son shrank from using, and destroyed them before his face, declaring that Moi- bee-she-ga had become a squaw, and needed no arms. The Ottawa girl, equally shocked by the dereliction of her lover, to whom she had been warmly attached, refused to fulfil her en- gagement of marriage; and the delinquent, abandoned on all hands, was driven in disgrace from his people, and joined a party of the wandering Pawnees. The Indian is scrupulously exact in the performance of his engagements, and this the traders know so well, that they feel no apprehension, when, having delivered their goods to their Indian customer, they see him plunge into his trackless wil- derness with his purchase, and disappear amid wilds into which no civilized foot could follow him. They know that his first care will be to secure the game whose skin is to assist in the redemption of his promise ; and at the stipulated moment he is again seen to emerge from the forest, unconscious even that what we should call an unusual degree of confidence has been reposed in him, and guided only by his own pure and simple conviction, that a promise once given is a sacred thing, and to be redeemed at whatever cost. Lying and treachery are held in profound abhorrence ; we could relate very many facts in support of this assertion, but will confine ourselves to the two following ones only: — A dis- tinguished warrior of the Assinneboins accompanied Major Sanford to Washington in 1832, and being there, became ac- quainted with the more obvious details of every-day life among the civilized ; these he described to his people on his return, and was listened to for some time with respectful at- tention ; but at length the wonders he related surpassing their powers of belief, they decided that he had been taught by the white men to lie, and that in a manner so shameless as to make him a dangerous example to his younger hearers ; they then, after much solemn deliberation, concluded that he was unworthy to live, and the unhappy man was put to death ac- cordingly ; his protestations of innocence being regarded but as a deeper plunging into crime. Every thing connected with the dead is held sacred, but the mode of burial differs widely in different tribes. Some place the body dressed and armed with bow, quiver, tomahawk, &c, on the ground between flat stones set edge upwards, and cover it, first with similar stones, and afterwards with earth ; others bury at about two feet below the earth. Among the Mandans it was customary (alas for the necessity of that “was”) to lay their dead, well wrapped in skins, on high scaffolds, as prac- tised by the Parsees of Asia. After a sufficient lapse of time, the bones were gathered, and buried with solemn ceremonies, the skulls excepted, which were ranged in a circle within a larger one formed of buffalo skulls, and thither the Women belonging to the family of the deceased repair to soothe the de- parted with songs, to inform him how those he left behind are faring, and to feed him with their choicest dainties, dishes of which they leave behind at their departure. Mourning for the dead is expressed by certain modes .of paint, and among some tribes by cutting off locks of the hair. The sketch that accompanies this paper represents two war- riors, and a woman of the Sacs and Foxes, mourning over the tomb of Black Hawk, the celebrated leader of the war known as the Black Hawk War. A party of Ottawas and the Kansas having been at war, had met “to bury the tomahawk under the roots of the tree of friendship, and sit under its shadow to smoke the pipe of peace, and to" hear the birds sing” Some traders passed through their hunting-grounds, from whom they purchased whisky, and, heated by this, an Ottawa quarrelled with a Kansa ; but being reminded by their friends of the lately pro- mised peace, they desisted from all hostility, and both, with the whole party, soon after fell asleep. The Ottawa, awaking first, stabbed his sleeping adversary to the heart, and fled into the forest. When the whole party aroused themselves, they perceived by the arms of the murdered man that he had been taken at advantage, and the brother of the offender, ab- horrent of treachery, so foreign to Indian habits, at once de- clared his intention of pursuing the culprit . Nothing doubting his integrity, the aggrieved Kansas sat silently awaiting his return, which took place two hours after ; he had secured and now delivered up the murderer, who was immediately put to death. Dancing Dancing is an amusement which has been dis- couraged in our country by many of the best people, and not without reason. Dancing is associated in their minds with balls ; and this is one of the worst forms of social pleasure. The time consumed in preparation for a ball, the waste of thought upon it, the extravagance of dress, the late hours, the exhaustion of strength, the exposure of health, and the lan- guor of the succeeding day — these, and other evils connected with this amusement, are strong reasons for banishing it from the community. But dancing ought not therefore to be pro- scribed. On the contrary, balls should be discouraged for this, among other reasons, that dancing, instead of being a rare pleasure, requiring elaborate preparation, may become an every-day amusement, and may mix with our common intercourse. This exercise is among the most healthful. The body, as well as the mind, feels its gladdening influence. No amusement seems more to have a foundation in our nature. The animation of youth naturally overflows in har- monious movements. The true idea of dancing entitles it to favour. Its end is to realise perfect grace in motion ; and who does not know that a sense of the graceful is one of the higher faculties of our nature ? It is to be desired that danc- ing should become too common among us to be made the object of special preparation, as in the ball ; that members of the same family, when confined by unfavourable weather, 44 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. should recur to it for exercise and exhilaration ; that branches of the same family should enliven in this way their occasional meetings ; that it should fill up an hour in all the assemblages for relaxation, in which the young form a part. It is to be desired that this accomplishment should be extended to the labouring classes of society, not only as an innocent pleasure, but as a means of improving the manners. Why shall not gracefulness be spread through the whole community ? From the French nation we learn that a degree of grace and refinement of manners may pervade all classes. The philan- thropist and Christian must desire to break down the parti- tion walls between human beings in different conditions ; and one means of doing this is to remove the conscious awkward- ness which confinement to laborious occupations is apt to induce. An accomplishment, giving free and graceful move- ment, though a far weaker bond than intellectual or moral culture, still does something to bring those who partake it near each other Dr Charming'' s Address on Temperance. archdeacon of Kildare, was appointed to this see by the pro- vision of Pope Eugene IV, in 1432, and, having governed this see fourteen years, died in April 1446. P. THE DESOLATION OF SCTO. (1822.) A deep, a broken note of woe Rose from the Archipelago. The seaman, passing Scio by, Stood out from shore : the wailful cry That reached him on the waters blue Was more than man could listen to ; And when no more the death-cry came, The rising smoke, the sun-dimmed flame, The flashings of the scymitar, Told Scio’s slaughter from afar ! What demon governed your debates, Ye mighty Christian potentates, That Greece, the land of light and song. Should feel the Paynim scourge so long ? That Greece, for all the lore she gave, Should cry in vain, “ Save, Europe, save ! How could you let the gasping child Besmear with gore the mother wild ? How could ye let that wild one be The sport of wanton cruelty ? Or Beauty, from Dishonour’s bed, Swell reeking piles of kindred dead, Where mingled, in the corse-fed fires, The cindered bones of sons and sires ! But all is o’er — the storm hath passed, Nor oak, nor osier ’scaped the blast, Nor flow’ret of the loveliest dye — . All, all in one black ruin lie ! In one short day a People fall — • Their mansions make their funeral pall — . Their winding-sheets are sheets of flame — Their epitaphs, “ Shame, Europe, shame !” Inhuman deed ! Oh, murdered race ! To Turk, to Holy League disgrace ! Blush, Christian princes ! — heartless men Who rule the councils, ne’er again Look on the Cross !— you have its ban — • You crowned it with the Alcoran ! T. SEAL OF WILLIAM, BISHOP OF KILDARE. The prefixed woodcut represents an impression from the seal of one of the bishops of Kildare anterior to the Reformation, the matrix of which is in the possession of a gentleman in Dublin. The device exhibits three statues standing in canopied niches, of the florid Gothic or pointed style of architecture of the fifteenth century. The centre figure represents the Virgin and child, and the figures on each side appear intended to represent the patron saints of Ireland, Patrick and Brigid. Below the centre figure there is a smaller niche, containing a figure of another ecclesiastic, with his hands raised, in the attitude of prayer, and his arm supporting the pastoral staff. This figure, it is probable, is intended to represent St Con- lseth, the first bishop of Kildare, who was cotemporary with St Brigid, and said to have been the joint founder of that see. On each side of this figure is a shield, one of which bears the arms of France and England quarterly; the other, two keys in saltire, in chief a royal crown ; a device which, it is worthy of remark, constitutes the arms anciently and still borne by the archbishops of York, and the appearance of which in this seal may therefore not be easy to account for. The inscrip- tion reads as follows : — “ Sigillum WMmi del gracia Kyldarens cpi,” or, Sigillum Willie mi dei gratia Kyldarensis Episcopus (the seal of William, by the grace of God, Bishop of Kildare). As among the bishops of Kildare two of the name of V il- liam occur in the fifteenth century it may not be easy to determine with certainty to which of them this seal should be assigned; but there appears the greatest reason to ascribe n to the first, who, according to Ware, having been previously Patriotism. — Patriotism, or love of country, is a sentiment which pervades almost every human breast, and induces each individual to prefer the land of his birth, not because it is bet- ter than another country, but merely because it is his country. This sentiment may be illustrated by a variety of anecdotes. Many of the Swiss, on account of the poverty of their coun- try, are induced to seek military service in foreign lands. Yet, in their voluntary exile, so strong is their affection for their native hills, that whole regiments have been said to be on the point of desertion, in consequence of the vivid recollec- tions excited by one of their national songs. A French writer informs us that a native of one of the Asiatic isles, amid the splendours of Paris, beholding a banana-tree in the Garden of Plants, bathed it with tears, and seemed for a moment to be transported to his own land. The Ethiopian imagines that God made his sands and desei'ts, while angels only" were employed in forming the rest of the world. The Maltese, insulated on a rock, distinguished their island by the appellation of “ The Flower of the World.” The Javanese have such an affection for the place of their nativity, that no advantages can induce them, particularly the agricultural tribes, to quit the tombs of their fathers. The Norwegians, proud of their barren summits, inscribe upon their rix-dollars, “ Spirit, loyalty, valour, and whatever is honourable, let the world learn among the rocks of Norway.” The Esquimaux are no less attached to their frigid zone, esteeming the luxu- ries of blubber-oil for food, and an ice cabin for a habitation, above all the refinements of other countries. — Fireside Educa- tion, by S. G. Goodrich. If a man be gracious and civil to a stranger, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins them, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 45 THE SOD PARTY. PART II. In those days the favourite resort for parties of pleasure was the rocky shore of Howth, facing Killiney, and our party had selected a spot which was well known to two or three of them. It was a little hollow in the rocks, where the mould had collected, and was covered with a smooth close sod. Its form resembled a horse shoe, the open being to the sea ; and the rock descended at that side perpendicularly six or seven feet to the water. There was just room enough for the party to seat themselves comfortably, so that everyone could enjoy the seaward view. It was a considerable distance from the place where the vehicles should stop ; indeed, the hill inter- vened and should be crossed, so that it was no trifling matter to carry a large basket or hamper to it. O’Gorman resolved not to encumber himself with any thing that might divide his attention with his charming partner ; and, accordingly, when they had pulled up, calling to the driver of the jarvey, “ Here, Murphy,” said he, “ you’ll take charge of the basket that’s slung under the gig, and follow the rest when they’re ready.” “ Oh, to he sure, sir, sartinly,” was the reply, and away went Bob to show the scenery to Miss Kate, from various points quite unknown to her before, leaving the remainder of the party to settle matters as they pleased. Murphy’s assistance was required by the servants who were unlading the carriages first ; and each gentleman, taking a basket or bundle, and even the ladies charging themselves with some light articles, they set forward, leaving two or three heavy hampers to the servants’ charge. All having at length departed, except Mr O’Donnell’s ser- vant, who had been left in charge of the vehicles, and Murphy, who was to take the gig basket, the latter proceeded to un- strap it As he shook it in opening the buckles, some broken glass fell upon the road. “ Oh ! miallia murther ! what’s this ? My sowd to glory, if half the bottom isn’t out ov the bashket. Och hone, oh ! Masther Bob, bud you are the raal clip. By gannies, he’s dhruv till he’s dhruv the knives and forks clane through ; the dickens a one there’s left ; an’ as for the glasses, be my sowl he’d be a handy fellow that ud put one together. Oh ! marcy sa’ me ! here’s a purty mess. Musha ! what’s best to be done, at all at all ?” “ Take it to them anyhow,” answered his companion, “ and show it to them.” “ Arrah, what’s the use of hawkin’ it over the mountain? Can’t I jist go an’ tell what’s happened?” “ Take care you wouldn't have to come back for it,” said the other, “ an’ have two journies instead of one. Maybe they wouldn’t b’lieve you, thinkin’ it was only a thrick that that limb o’ th’ ould boy put you up to.” The prospect of a second journey, on such a hot day, not being particularly agreeable, Murphy took up the shattered basket and proceeded. Having yet two hours to spare, the party resolved to con- sume them by sauntering about until the hour appointed for dinner, which being come, and all having assembled at one point, near the Bailey, they proceeded together to the chosen spot, where they found Murphy awaiting them with a most rueful countenance. He had been vainly trying to invent some plausible excuse for his patron, as he dreaded that all the blame woidd be thrown upon Bob’s hard driving at setting out. “ The bottom’s fell out o’ the blaggard rotten ould bash- ket, ma’am, an’ the knives an’ forks has fell an the road.” “ Oh, well,” said Mr Sharpe (who did not seem to be either so astonished or angry as one might have expected), “give them a rub in a napkin ; a little dust won’t do them any harm.” “ Why, thin, the sorra a one o’ them there is to rub,” said Murphy, “ barrin’ this one crukked ould fork.” Despite his loss, Mr Sharpe could not refrain from laugh- ing when Murphy held up an article, which had certainly been packed for a joke, it was so distorted, one prong being tole- rably straight, but the other sticking out as if it was going to march. However, collecting himself, he asked sternly, “ Do you mean to tell me that all the knives and forks were lost upon the road?” “ Jist so, sir,” was the reply. “ The glass ; is it safe?” “ Brack, sir — all in smithereens ; sorra as much ov id to- gether as ud show what the patthern was.” “ And the spoons,” roared Mr Sharpe, as if the thought had only just struck him. “ Spoons ! sir. Oh, be my sowl you’d betther look for thim yourself ; here’s the bashket.” “ This is a costly party to me,” said Mr Sharpe, “ but it can’t be helped now ; so don’t let my loss cause any diminution of your pleasure or enjoyment.” Every one looked with perfect admiration at Mr Sharpe, surprised at his magnanimity, and Mrs Harvey thought that she must have altogether mistaken his character hitherto ; but she would not have thought so, had she known' that he had purposely procured a rotten basket, with the bottom partially broken, in which he had packed a quantity of broken glass, and in which he (of course) had not packed either spoons, knives, or forks, except the very one which Murphy had held up ; and it was to prevent examination or inquiry that he had been so voluble upon his arrival in the morning. But had his loss been, as the company supposed, real instead of fictitious, he must have been gratified, nay delighted, at the dismay which gradually spread itself over almost every countenance, at the prospect of having to eat a dinner -without knives, forks, or spoons, and to drink without glasses, or even cups. “ Gentlemen,” said Mr Harvey, “ have you got penknives with you ? I have forgotten mine.” So had every one else except Mr Sharpe. He would will- ingly hai r e kept it secret, but he knew that if he should at- tempt to use it himself, it would be seen ; so he made a virtue of necessity, and lent it to Mr Harvey for the purpose of carving the roast beef! The dinner was now nearly arranged, and the last basket, in which Mulholland had packed the roast beef, was opened. The remnant of an old college gown was first dragged forth, and Mr O’Brien’s servant, to whom the task was assigned, looked in, tittered, looked again, and then drew forth two long large ribs, with a piece of meat about the size of a cricket ball attached to the ends of them. Having laid them on the dish, he dipped again, and produced, with another titter, a shapeless lump of meat without any bone — (he would be a clever anatomist that could tell what part of the beast it had been). Another dip, and with a roar of laughter he raised and deposited on the dish four ribs, from which nearly every morsel of meat had been cut. “ What is the meaning of this, Mr O’Gorman ?” said Mrs Harvey, who was quite disconcerted at the turn things had taken, and was now seriously disposed to be angry. “ My dear madam,” said he, “it may look a little unsightly, but it is all prime meat, depend upon it. It was dressed yes- terday for the College dining-hall.” “ You don’t mean, surely, to call bare bones meat, sir?” “ My dear madam,” said Bob, “ you will find that there is as much meat without bone as will compensate. Mulholland is a very honest fellow in that respect.” Some laughed, some were annoyed, some were disgusted ; but by degrees hunger asserted its rights, and reconciled them a little, especially when O’Gorman pointed out how much easier it would be to carve the small pieces with a penknife, than if they had but one large one. “ Well,” said Mrs Harvey, “ I have long indulged the hope of having a pic-nic party so perfectly arranged that nothing should go astray ; and so far have I been from succeeding, that I really do think there never was a more unfortunate, irregular affair. I really do not know what to say, and I feel quite incompetent to preside. Mr O’Gorman, as you have the happy knack of making the best of every thing, I believe you are the person best qualified in this company to make the most of the matter, and we must rely on your ingenuity.” “ Thank you, ma’am. That is as much as to say, ‘ Bob, as’you have treated us to broken meat, and lost the knives and forks, you will please to carve !’ Well, nabocklish, this isn’t a round table, like Prince Arthur’s, for it’s little more than half round, and we have old Howth at the head, and old Neptune at the foot of it ; but, for the rest, we don’t stand upon precedence, and therefore I need not change my place, to preside. Mr Harvey, I’ll trouble you for the penknife — I beg pardon — the carver — hem ! and that specimen of antedilu- vian cutlery, the ‘ crukked ould fork.' Thank you — shove over the beef now. Ods marrow-bones and cleavers ! what a heap ! Gentlemen, you had better turn up your cuffs as a needful preliminary ; and, perchance, an ablution may also be neces- sary — you can get down to the water here, at this side.” As soon as the party had re-assembled, after having washed their hands, he again addressed them. “ Mr Sharpe, and Mr Harvey, will you please to drag that turkey asunder ? Mr O’Brien, will you tear a wing off that 46 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. fowl for Miss O’Donnell ? Fitz, gnaw the cord off one of those ale bottles ; draw the cork with your teeth, and send the bottle round. The corkscrew was with the knives.” “ Draw my teeth with the cork, you mean ; I had rather knock off the neck, thank you,” said Fitz, about to suit the action to the word. “ No, no,” cried Bob, “do you forget that we must drink out of the bottles ? Do you want the ladies to cut their pretty lips 'with the broken glass, you Mohawk ! Though, faith,” said he, in an under-tone, to his fair companion, “ I could almost wish such an accident to happen to some one that I know, that I might have an opportunity of exhibiting my courageous devotion, by sucking the wound.” “ A prize! a prize!” cried he, jumping up and running a little distance. He returned with five or six large Malahide oyster shells, that had been bleaching on the cliff, where they had been thrown by some former party. Two of them were top shells. “ Here,” said he, throwing one to Sweeny, “ is a carver for that ham ; make haste and put an edge on it, on the rock. Ladies, here are primitive drinking goblets for you. Miss O’Brien, the pleasure of a shell of wine with you.” “ I have put a very good edge on the shell,” said Sweeny, “ but I can’t cut the ham with it, it slides about so.” “ Psha ! take a grip of it by the shank, can’t you ? What are you afraid of, you omedhaun ? Hold it fast, and don’t let it slide. Costello, break up that loaf and send it round. Mr O’Donnell, will you have the goodness to hold one of these ribs for me. Oh, faith, finger and thumb work won’t do; you must take it in your fist, and hold it tight ; now pull — bravo ! Beau Brummell would be just in his element here. Be my sowl, as Paddy Murphy says, I think if he saw us, he’d jump into that element there to get away.” Mr Sharpe was now in his glory ; he had, with Mr Harvey’s assistance, torn up the turkey ; and seeing that Bob had de- cidedly the worst job at the table, ho asked him for beef. Mr Harvey joined in the joke, and put in also ; but their man was too able for them. “ As you are in partnership in the turkey business, in which you have been so successful,” said he, “ you had better con- tinue so, in the general provision line,” handing them a piece sufficient to satisfy two, and prevent them from calling again. “ Bill” (to one of the college men), “ here’s a shell for you to cut the crust of that pie, and help it. Jem” (to another), Miss Kate O’Brien washes for some of that chicken that you are trying to dislocate, as gently as if you were afraid of hurting it, or greasing your fingers.” “ What part?” said Jem. “ A little of the soul, if you please,” said Kate, with a ma- liciously demure face. “ Here it is for you, Miss Kate, soul and body and he handed it to her. “ The mirth and fun (now) grew/ fast and furious.” No water fit for drinking could be procured, and the conse- quence was, that the ale, porter, and wine, were swallowed too abundantly by the gentlemen. Songs were called for, and O’Gorman was in the midst of the “ Groves of Blarney,” when Costello shouted out, “ A porpoise! a porpoise !” Up jumped the whole party, and up also jumped the table- cloth, which Mr O’Donnell and Mr Sharpe had fastened to their coats or waistcoats. They sat directly facing the opening to the water, with Mrs Harvey between them ; so that when, by their sudden start up, they raised the cloth, it formed an inclined plane, down which dishes, plates, bottles, pies, bread, and meat, glided, not majestically, but too rapidly, into the sea. Then, oh ! what a clamour ! Above the jingling of broken bottles and plates, the crash of dishes, and the exclamations of the gentlemen, arose the never-failing shriek of the ladies. And then came a pause, whilst they silently watched the last dish as it gracefully re- ceded from their view. “ Oh ! faith,” said Mrs Harvey (surprised by her emotion into using a gentle oath), “ I think it is time to go home now.” “ Faith,” said O’Gorman, “ it is time to leave the dinner- table at all events, since the things have been removed ; but as to going home, we have so little to carry, or look after, besides ourselves and — hie — the ladies, that I think, with all respect to Mrs Harvey, we may — hie — take it easy. I wish I could get a drink of water to cure this hie — hiccough ; for I am certain, Mss O’Brien, I need not assure you — indeed I can appeal to you to bear witness — hie — that it was the want, not the quantity of liquid, that has brought it on.” The “ want,” however, had made Bob’s eyes particularly and unusually luminous ; nor did Kate take his proposition “ to launch all the hampers and baskets, after their recent contents, into the sea,” to be any additional proof of his self- possession ; and when, with a caper and whoop, he sent Mul- holland’s basket to the fishes, her suspicions that he was slightly elevated became considerably strengthened. “ Mrs Harvey,” said Mr Sharpe, “ you think your party unfortunate. I have been upon a great many parties of this kind, and I assure you I have seen far more unpleasant affairs — (Gentlemen, here are a few bottles of wine that have escaped the watery fate of their unhappy companions). Now, the very last party that I was on last season, three or four of the gentlemen quarrelled (pass the wine if you please), and one of them, in the scrimmage, was knocked over the rocks into the sea.” “ Mercy on us, Mr Sharpe ! was he drowned ?” “ Why, no, but his collar-bone was broken, and his shoul- der dislocated. But a worse accident happened in coming home.” “ What was it ?” “ Poor Singleton had come, with his wife and two nieces, in a job carriage; the driver got drunk, and overturned the whole concern, just where the road branches off down to the strand; they rolled over the cliff, and fell about twenty feet; the horses were both killed, and the whole party dreadfully injured, barely escaping- with life. Then, the quarrel after dinner (by which Jones got his collar-bone broken) led to a duel on the following morning, in which one of the parties, Edwards, fell ; and his antagonist, young O’Neill, got a bullet in his knee, which has lamed and disfigured him for life. Pass the wine, gentlemen.” “ No! no ! no!” screamed Mrs Harvey, on whom the above delectable recital had had the desired effect, and who was worked into a desperate state of terror, “ no more wine, gen- tlemen, if you please. Come, ladies, we must return at once, before evening closes in.” Each lady being perfectly satisfied that the gentleman who had fallen to her lot would keep sober, whatever others might do, demurred to the early retreat ; but Mrs Harvey was too much frightened at the prospect of returning with gentlemen and drivers drunk, not to be determined ; and, accordingly, with much growling, and the most general dissatisfaction, the party broke up. “ I am done with pic-nics — I’ll never have any thing to say to one again,” said the disappointed directress. “ There never was any affair more perfectly arranged, never was so much care taken to have things regular. I never proposed to myself such enjoyment as I expected this day.” “ My dear Mrs Harvey,” said O’Gorman, to whose coun- tenance the last four or five shells of wine had imparted an air of the most profound wisdom, “ my dear Mrs Harvey, ‘ the whole art of happiness is contentment.' This is the great secret of enjoyment in this life — this is the talisman that clothes poverty in imperial robes, and imparts to the hovel a grandeur unknown to the halls of princes — this is the true philosopher’s stone, for which alchymists so long have sought in vain, that converts all it touches into gold — this is the cos- metic that beautifies the ill-favoured wife, and the magic wand that bestows upon the frugal board the appearance of sur- passing plenty — this is the shield of adamantine proof, on which disappointment vainly showers its keenest darts— this is the impregnable fortress, ensconced in which, v'e may boldly bid defiance to the combined forces of sublunary ills — and whether it be announced from the pulpit or the cliff, by the dignified divine or the college scamp ; be it soothingly whispered in the car of the deposed and exiled monarch, or tendered as comfort to the discomfited authoress of a pic-nic, it still retains, in undiminished force, its universality of ap- plication” Here Mr Sweeny facetiously gave him a slap on the crown of the hat, which drove it down, and stuck it gracefully over his eye, thereby breaking the thread of his discourse. He then addressed the fair Catherine ; but all his eloquence and profundity were unavailing to induce her to return with him in the gig. She would listen to nothing but the carriage, and as room could not be made for him inside, he mounted the box, leaving the gig to any one that pleased to have it. Nor was it long untenanted. Frank Costello and Bill Nowlan mounted together, and were found in it next morning fast asleep, in the stable-lane behind Mr Sharpe’s house, the horse having found his way home when left to his own guidance. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 47 The remainder of the party arrived as safely, but some- what more regularly, in the evening of their eventful day, and all dissatisfied except Mr O’Gorman, and Naisi. STREET TACTICS. You, most respectable reader, who owe no man any thing that you are not able and willing to pay, may know nothing of the tactics alluded to in the title of this paper. But there is, you may depend upon it, a pretty numerous class of the community to whom these tactics are quite familiar, and who practise them to a greater or lesser extent every day of their lives. Street tactics, let us define the term, is the art or science of avoiding all persons on the streets, and all places in the streets— shops, for instance — whom and which, for particular reasons of your own, you are desirous of eschewing. The art is thus one of deep concernment to the whole of that numerous and respectable body known by the generic name of “gentlemen in difficulties.” This term, however, is one of very extensive signification, and includes various de- scriptions of gentlemen as well as difficulties ; but on the pre- sent occasion we mean to confine ourselves to one particular class — the gentlemen whose difficulties arise from their hav- ing more creditors than crowns — the gentlemen who have contrived to surround themselves with a large constituency of the former, and who cannot by any means contrive to get hold of an adequate supply of the latter— the gentlemen who are sufficiently respectable to get into debt, but not sufficiently wealthy to get out of it. The reader can have no idea how difficult a matter it is for a gentleman of this description to work his way through the streets, so as to avoid all unpleasant encounters ; how serious a matter it is for hi m to move from one point of the city to another. To him the streets are, in fact, as difficult and dan- gerous to traverse as if they were strew'ed with heated plough- shares, or lined with concealed pitfalls. He cannot move a hundred yards, unless he moves warily, without encountering somebody to whom he owes something, or passing some shop where his name is not in the most savoury odour. It is, then, the manoeuvring necessary to avoid these dis- agreeables that constitutes street tactics, and confers on the gentleman who practises them the character of what we would call a street tactician. This person, as already hinted, when he moves at all, must move cautiously, and must consider well, before he starts, which is his safest course ; which the course in which he is least likely to encounter an enemy in the shape of a creditor, and which will subject him to running the gauntlet of the fewest number of obnoxious shops. The amount of manoeuvring required to accomplish this is amazing, and the ingenuity exhibited in it frequently very remarkable. When on the move, the street tactician is obliged to be con- stantly on the alert, to have all his eyes about him, lest an enemy should come upon him unawares. This incessant vigi- lance keeps him always wide awake, always on the look-out, and makes him as sharp as a needle. Even while speaking to you, his keen and restless eye is roving up and down the street to see that no danger is approaching. Like the training of the Indian, this incessant vigilance im- proves his physical faculties wonderfully, especially his vision, which it renders singularly acute. He can detect a creditor at a distance at which the nearest friend, the most intimate acquaintance of that person, could not recognise him : he can see him approaching in a crowded street, where no other eve but his own could possibly single him out. Gifted with this remarkable power of vision, it is rare that the street tactician is taken by surprise, as it affords him time to plan and effect his escape, at both of which he is amazingly prompt and dexterous. As the great object with the street tactician in moving from one point of the city to another is not the shortest but the safest course, he is necessarily subjected to a vast deal of traverse sailing, and thereby to enormous increases of dis- tance, being frequently obliged to make the circuit of half the town to get at the next street. His way is thus most par- ticularlv devious, and to one who should watch Ins motions } o 7 without knowing the principles on which he moves, would ap- pear altogether incomprehensible. Here he crosses a street wfith a sudden dart, there he turns a corner with a slow and stealthy step ; now he walks deliberately, now as if it were for a w'ager. Again he walks slowly ; then comes a sud- den brush : it is to clear some dangerous spot in which an enemy is lurking in ambuscade — the shop door of a creditor. Now lie cuts down an alley; now hesitates before he emerges at the opposite end ; now darts out of it as if he had been fired from it, like a shell from a mortar. And thus, and thus, and thus he finally completes his circuitous and perilous journey. It is fatiguing and laborious work, but it must be done if he would avoid being worried to death. Besides that ever watchfulness, that sleepless vigilance that distinguishes the street tactician, there is about him a degree of presence of mind not less worthy of special notice. It is by this ready fortitude and coolness of temper that he is en- abled, even when in what may be called the immediate presence of an enemy, to devise and execute with promptness and deci- sion the most ingenious expedients for avoiding personal con- tact that enables him, when within twenty yards of the foe (when so near that a less experienced hand, one of less steady nerve, would inevitably fall into the clutches of his dun, and who would at once be given up for lost by any on-looker) to effect a retreat, and thus avoid the crave personal — in so cool and masterly a way, that the enemy himself shall not know that he has been shirked, but shall be deceived into a belief that he has not been seen, and that the pretext, or pretexts, under cover of which the street tactician has evaded him, has or have been true and natural. This is a difficult point to manage; but old hands can do it admirably, and, when well done, is a very beautiful manoeuvre. The skilful street tactician never exhibits any flurry or agi- tation, however imminent his danger may be : it is only green- horns that do this. Neither does he hurry or run away from an enemy w'hen he sees him. This would at once betray malice prepense, and excite the utmost wrath of the latter, who, the moment he got home, wmuld put his claim into the hands of his lawyer ; a proceeding which he must by no means be provoked into adopting. The skilful street tactician takes care of this, then, and studies to effect his retreats in such a way as to excite no sus- picion of design. He does, indeed, take some very sudden and abrupt turns down streets and up lanes when he sees an enemy approaching; but he does it with so unconscious a look, and with such a bona fide air, that neither you nor his credi- tor would for a moment suspect any thing else than that he was just going that w r ay at any rate. This operation requires great command both of muscle and manner, and can be suc- cessfully performed only by a very superior practitioner. To the street tactician, carts, carriages, and other large moving objects, are exceedingly useful auxiliaries as covers from the enemy, and the dexterity and tact with which he avails himself of their aid in effecting a “ go-by,” is amazing. By keeping the cart, carriage, or other body in a direct line between him and the foe, he effects many wonderful, many hair-breadth escapes. The chaise or cart is in this w r ay, and for this purpose, a very good thing, but the waggon of hay, slow' in its motion, and huge in its bulk, makes the best of all protecting covers. With a waggon of hay moving along wfith him, and a very little manoeuvring on his own part, the expert tactician could traverse the whole city without the risk of a single encounter. But his having such an accompaniment for any length of time, is of course out of the question. He must just be content to avail himself of it when chance throws it in his w r ay, and be thankful for its protection throughout the length of a street. We have heard experienced street tacticians, men on wfiiose skill and judgment we w r ould be disposed to place every reliance, say, that it is a very absurd practice to run across a street to avoid a shop, and to pass along on the opposite side. Such a proceeding, they say — and there is reason and common sense, as well as scientific knowfiedge, in the remark — only ex- poses you more to the enemy, by passing you through a larger space of his field of vision — by - giving him, in short, a longer, a fuller, and a fairer view r of you. Far better, they say, to walk close by his window at a smart pace, when the chances are greatly in favour of your passing unobserved. This way of giving a shop the “go-by” requires, indeed, more courage, more resolution than the other, being, cer- tainly, rather a daring exploit ; but w r e are satisfied, that, like boldness of movement in the battle-field, it is, after all, the least dangerous. C. 48 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. DEATH OF CATHAL, THE RED-HANDED O’CONOR. (As recorded in the Annals of the Four Masters, translated by Mr O’Donovan.) A.D. 1224 In the spring of this year, a heavy and an awful shower of strange rain fell on a part of Connaught, viz. Hy- Maine in Hy- Diarmada, and other places, which pro- duced virulent infections and diseases amongst the cattle of these territories, as soon as they had eaten of the grass upon which the shower had fallen. The milk of these cattle, also, when partaken of by the inhabitants, caused various inward diseases among them. It was but natural that these ominous signs should appear this year in Connaught, for they were the foreboding heralds of a very great loss and calamity, which fell this year upon the Connacians, namely, the death of Cathal the Red-handed, son of Torlogh More O’Conor, and King of Connaught, who had been the chief scourge of the traitors and enemies of Ireland ; who had contributed more than any other man to relieve the wants of the clergy, the poor, and the indigent, and into whose heart God had infused more good- ness and greater virtues than adorned any other cotemporary Irish prince ; for, from the time of his wife’s death to the time of his own death, he had led a chaste and virtuous life. It was in his time, also, that tithes were first lawfully paid in Ire- land. This honourable and upright king, this discreet, pious, just-judging warrior, died on the twenty-eighth day of sum- mer, on Monday precisely, in the habit of a Grey Friar, in the monastery of Knockmoy ; which monastery, together with its site and lands, he himself had previously granted to God and the monks ; and was interred in that monastery with ho- nour and respect. EELS. Their snake-like aspect and other reptile attributes (observes Professor Wilson, in a work recently published, entitled “ The Rod and the Gun”), no doubt tend to form and perpetuate the prejudice which many otherwise humane-minded men cherish towards these insidious fishes. They move on land with great facility, and with a motion resembling that of serpents. They have even been seen to leave fresh-water lakes during the night in considerable numbers, apparently for the purpose of preying on slugs and snails among the dewy herbage. They abound in many continental rivers, and are caught in immense numbers in those which empty themselves into the Baltic, where they form a considerable article of trade. It is stated that 2000 have been caught at a sweep in Jutland, and 60,000 have been taken in the Garonne by one net in a single day. The habits of these fishes in relation to breeding, migra- tion, &c, are still but obscurely known. “ That eels migrate towards brackish water,” observes Mr Jesse, in his Gleanings in Natural History, “ in order to deposit their ova, I have but little doubt, for the following reasons : From the month of November until the end of January, provided the frost is not very serious, eels migrate towards the sea. The Thames fishermen are so aware of this fact, that they invariably set their pots or baskets with their mouths up stream during those months, while later in spring and summer they are set down stream. The best time, however, for taking eels, is during their passage towards the sea. The eel-traps, also, which are set in three different streams near Hampton Court (the contents of which at different times I have had opportu- nities of examining), have invariably been supplied with eels sufficiently large to be breeders, during the months I have mentioned. This migratory disposition is not shown by small eels ; and it may therefore be assumed that they remain nearly stationary till they are old enough to have spawn. I have also ascertained that eels are taken in greater or lesser num- bers during the months of November or December, all the way down the river to the brackish water. From thence the young eels migrate, as soon as they are sufficiently large and strong to encounter the several currents of the river, and make their way to the different contributary streams. I have also been able to trace the procession of young eels, or, as it is here called, the eel-fair , from the neighbourhood of Black- friars’ Bridge, as far up the river as Chestrey, although they probably make their way as far, or farther than Oxford. So strong, indeed, is their migratory disposition, that it is well known few things will prevent their progress, as even at the locks at Teddington and Hampton the young eels have been seen to ascend the large posts of the flood-gates, in order to make their way, when the gates have been shat longer than usual. Those which die stick to the posts ; others, which get a little higher, meet with the same fate, until at last a suffi- cient layer of them is formed to enable the rest to overcome the difficulty of the passage. A curious instance of the means which young eels will have recourse to, in order to perform their migrations, is annually proved in the neighbourhood of Bristol. Near that city there is a large pond, immediately adjoining which is a stream ; on the bank between these two waters a large tree grows, the branches of which hang into the pond. By means of these branches the young eels ascend into the tree, and from thence let themselves drop into the stream below, thus migrating to far distant waters, where they increase in size and become useful and beneficial to man. A friend of mine, who was a casual witness of this circum- stance, informed me that the tree appeared to be quite alive with these little animals. The rapid and unsteady motion of the boughs did not appear to impede their progress.” ANECDOTE OF SHERIDAN. Sheridan and Kelly were one day in earnest conversation close to the gate of the path which was then open to the public, leading across the churchyard of St Paul’s, Covent Garden, from King street to Henrietta street, when Mr Hol- loway, who was a creditor of Sheridan’s to a considerable amount, came up to them on horseback, and accosted Sheridan in a tone of something more like anger than sorrow, and com- plained that he never could get admittance when he called, vowing vengeance against the infernal Swiss, Monsieur Fran- cis, if he did not let him in the next time he went to Hertford street. Holloway was really in a passion. Sheridan knew that he was vain of his judgment in horse-flesh, and without taking any notice of the violence of his manner, burst into an excla- mation upon the beauty of the horse which he rode — he struck the right chord. “ Why,” said Holloway, “ I think I may say there never was a prettier creature than this. You were speaking to me, when I last saw you, about a horse for Mrs Sheridan ; now, this would be a treasure for a lady.” “ Does he canter well ?” said Sheridan. “ Beautifully,” replied Holloway. “ If that’s the case, Holloway,” said Sheridan, “ I really should not mind stretching a point for him. Will you have the kindness to let me see his paces ?” “To be sure,” said the lawyer ; and putting himself into a graceful attitude, he threw his nag into a canter along the market. The moment his back was turned, Sheridan wished Kelly good morning, and went off through the church-yard, where no horse could follow, into Bedford street, laughing immode- rately, as indeed did several of the standers-by. The only person not entertained by this practical joke was Mr Hollo- way Reminiscences of Michael Kelly. Maid-Servants and their “ Friends.” — Every master and mistress in the United Kingdom knows what a maid-ser- vant’s friend is. Sometimes he is a brother, sometimes a cousin (often a cousin), and sometimes a father, who really wears well, and carries his age amazingly ! He comes down the area— in at the window — or through a door left ajar. Sometimes a maid-servant, like a hare, “ has many friends.” The master of the house, after washing his hands in the back kitchen, feels behind the door for a jack-towel, and lays hold of a “ friend’s” nose. “ Friends” are shy : sometimes a foot- man breaks a friend’s shins while plunging into the coal-cellar for a shovel of nubblys. We speak feelingly, our own abode having been once turned into a friends’ meeting-house — a fact we became aware of through a smoky chimney ; but a chimney will smoke when there is a journeyman halier up it Kidd’s Journal. Wisdom cannot be obtained without industry and labour. Can w r e hope to find gold upon the surface of the earth, when we dig almost to the centre of it to find lead and tin, and the baser metals ! Printed and Puoiished every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin.— Agents -.—London : It. Groombridgb, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row. Manchester: Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street. Liverpool: J. Davies, North John Street. Birmingham: J. Drake. Bristol: M. Bingham. Broad Street. Edinburgh: Eraser and Crawford, George Street. Glasgow : David Robertson, Trongate. JOURNAL. I A Number 7 SATURDAY, AUGUST 15, 1840. Volume 1. REMAINS AT MONAS TERBOICE, COUNTY LOUTH. To the observing and imaginative traveller, our island must j present a great number of peculiarities of aspect which ■will not fail to excite his notice, and impress themselves in- delibly upon his mind. The scantiness of wood — for its na- tural timber has nearly all disappeared— and the abundance of water, are two of the characteristics that will most strike him ; and, next to these, the great extent of prospect usually afforded to the eye in consequence of the undulating character of its surface. Sparkling streams are visible everywhere, and shining lakes and noble rivers come into view in rapid suc- cession ; while ranges of blue mountains are rarely wanting to bound the distant horizon. The colours with which Nature has painted the surface of our island are equally peculiar. There is no variety of green, whether of depth or vivid bright- ness, which is not to be found covering it ; they are hues which can be seen nowhere else in equal force ; and even our bogs, ■which are so numerous, with all their mutations of colour, now purple, and anon red, or brown, or black, by their vi- gorous contrasts give additional beauty and life to the land- scape, and assist in imparting to it a sort of national indivi- duality. Our very clouds have to a great degree a distinc- tive character — the result of the humidity of our climate ; they have a grandeur of form and size, and a force of light and shadow, that are but rarely seen in other countries : they are Irish clouds — at one moment bright and sunny, and in the next flinging their dark shadows over the landscape, and in- volving it in gloomy grandeur. It is in this striking force of contrast in almost every thing that we look at, that the pecu- ! liarity of our scenery chiefly consists ; and it appears to have stamped the general character of our people with those con- trasting lights and shades so well exhibited in our exquisite and strongly-marked national music, in which all varieties of sentiment are so deeply yet harmoniously blended as to pro- duce on the mind effects perhaps in some degree saddening, but withal most delightfully sweet and soothing. A country marked with such peculiarities is not the legitimate abode of the refined sensualist of modern times, or the man of artifi- cial pleasure and heartless pursuits, and all such naturally remain away from it, or visit it with reluctance ; but it is the proper habitation of the poet, the painter, and, above all, the philanthropist ; for nowhere else can the latter find so extensive a field for the exercise of the godlike feelings of benevolence and patriotism. Yet the natural features of scenery and climate which we have pointed out, interesting as all must admit them to be, are not the only ones that confer upon our country the peculiar and impressive character which it possesses. The relics of past epochs of various classes; the monuments of its Pagan times, as revealed to us in its religious, military, and sepul- chral remains ; the ruins of its primitive Christian ages, as exemplified in its simple and generally unadorned churches, and slender round towers ; the more splendid monastic edifices of later date, and the gloomy castles of still more recent times — these are everywhere present to bestow historic in- terest on the landscape, and bring the successive conditions and changes of society in bygone ages forcibly before the 50 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. mind ; so that an additional interest, of a deep and poetical nature, is thus imparted to views in themselves impressive from their wild and picturesque appearance. So perfect, in- deed, is this harmony of the natural and artificial character- istics of Irish scenery, so comprehensively do both tell the his- tory of our country, to which Nature has been most bountiful, and in which, alas ! man has not been happy, that if we were desirous of giving a stranger a true idea of Ireland, and one that would impress itself on his mind, we should conduct him to one of our green open landscapes, where the dark and ruined castle, seated on some rocky height, or the round tower, with its little parent church, in some sequestered valley, would be the only features to arrest his attention ; and of such a scene we should say emphatically, This is Ireland ! And such a scene is that which is presented by the ruins represented in our prefixed illustration. Passing along the great northern road from Drogheda to Dundalk, and about four miles from the former, the traveller will find himself in an open pastoral country, finely undulating, thinly dotted with the cottages of the peasants, and but little adorned by art. On one side, to his left, he will see a little group of ruins, with a lofty but shattered round tower, giving’ index of their age and character. These are the ruins of the long since celebrated religious establishment of Monaster- boice, one of the most interesting groups of their kind in Ire- land. They consist of two small churches, a round tower, and three most gorgeously sculptured stone crosses, standing in the midst of a crowd of tombs and head-stones of various ages. Both the churches are of great antiquity, though, as their architectural features clearly show, of widely separated ages — the larger one exhibiting the peculiarities of the eccle- siastical structures of the twelfth century, and the smaller those of a much earlier date. Both are also simple oblongs, consisting of a nave and choir ; and the round tower appears to be of coeval architecture with the earlier church. The tower, which is of excellent construction, is built of the slatey limestone of the surrounding hills, and is divided into five stories by belts of stone slightly projecting. The upper story has four oblong apertures, and the lower ones are each lighted by an aperture having an angular top. The doorway, which faces the south-east, has a semicircular arch, and is con- structed of chiselled freestone : it is of the usual height of five feet six inches, by one foot ten inches in breadth, and is six feet from the present surface of the ground. The circum- ference of the tower is fifty-one feet, and its height is one hun- dred and ten ; but its original height was greater, as a consi- derable portion of its top has been destroyed by lightning. In these churches and this tower Monasterboice has nothing which may not be found in many other early religious founda- tions in Ireland ; but in the magnificence of its sculptured stone crosses it may be said to stand alone. They are the finest of their class in the country ; but, as we shall make them the subjects of distinct notices, with illustrations, in our future numbers, it is not necessary for us to enter into a more particular description of them here. Monasterboice, or, as it is called in the Irish language, Mainistir- buite — that is, the monastery of Buite, or Boetius — owes its origin to a celebrated bishop and abbot of this name who flourished about the close of the fifth century, and who is said to have been a disciple of St Patrick : according to our ancient annalists, he died on the 7th of December 522. Of its subsequent history but little is preserved, beyond a few scattered records of the deaths of several of its abbots and professors anterior to the twelfth century, of whom the cele- brated poet, antiquary, and historian, Flann, was the most distinguished, and whose death is thus recorded in the Annals of the Four Masters : — “ 1056. Flann of the Monastery, lecturer of Monasterboice, the last fountain of knowledge of the Irish, in history, poetry, eloquence, and general literature, died on the fourth of the calends of December (28th November), of whom it was said, 4 Flann of the great church of sweet Buite, The piercing eyes of his smooth head were modest ; The godly man of Meath was ho of whom we speak ; The last professor of the country ef the three Finns was Flann.’ A considerable number of historical poems by this distin- guished man have descended to our times, of which a list is given in O’Reilly’s Irish Writers ; but his more valuable re- mains are his Synchronisms of the Irish Kings, with the Eastern and Roman Emperors, and of the Christian Provin- cial Kings of Ireland, and the Kings of Scotland of the Irish race, with the Chief Monarehs of Ireland. Of these works, which are of inestimable value to the Irish and Scottish histo- rian, perfect copies are preserved in the MS. Book of Lecan, in the library of the Royal Irish Academy. The notices in our Annals of the other distinguished men connected with Monasterboice are of little interest ; but as they have never been properly collected together, we think them worthy of publication, for the use of the Irish topogra- phical historian, to whom we trust our Journal will become a valuable repertory of authorities : 722. Ailchon, of Monasterboice, died. 769. Cormac, the son of Ailliolla, Abbot of Monasterboice, was drowned in the Boyne. 766. Dubdainber, the son of Cormac, Abbot of Monaster- boice, died. 800. Cuanna, Abbot of Monasterboice, died. 836. Flaithri, Abbot of Monasterboice, a Bishop and An- chorite, died. 844. Muireadhach, the son of Flann, Abbot of Monaster- boice, died. 853. Radgus, the son of Maicniada, Abbot of Monaster- boice, was drowned in the Boyne. 864. Colga and Aodh, two Abbots of Monasterboice, died this year 875. Maolpatrick, the son of Ceallach, Abbot of Monaster- boice, died. 881. Dunadach, the son of Cormac, Abbot of Monaster- boice, died. 887. Fothaidh, Abbot of Monasterboice, died. 922. Muireadhach, the son of Donall, Abbot of Monaster- boice, chief beadsman to all the men of Bregia, youths, clerks, and the Stewart of Patrick’s people, from Sliabh Fuaid (the Fews Mountain) to Leinster, died. 933. Maolbrigid, Abbot of Monasterboice, died. 965. Dubdaboirenn, Abbot of Monasterboice, died. 1004. Donall, the son of Macniadha, Abbot of Monaster- boice, a Bishop and Holy Senior, died. 1039. Macniadha, a Bishop, and Abbot of Monasterboice, died. 1059. Donall, the son of Eodhossa, Abbot of Monaster- boice, died. 1067. Echtigern, the son of Flann, Aircinneach of Monas- terboice, died. 1117. Eog*an, the son of Echtigern, Abbot of Monaster- boice, died. These notices, extracted from the Annals of Ulster, and of the Four Masters, will show the great antiquity of the Abbey of Monasterboice, as well as the distinguished rank which it held among the religious establishments of Ireland previous to the occupation of the ancient kingdom of Meath by the English, after which period it disappears from history. The following records from the same authorities relate to its general history : — 968. Monasterboice and Lan Lere were plundered on the Danes by Donall, King of Ireland, and he burned three hun- dred and fifty of them in one house. 1097. The Cloictheach (viz. round tower belfry) of Monas- terboice, containing books and several other valuables, was burned. This last notice, and many others of the kind which occur in our Annals, are of great value in showing the original uses of our round towers, as set forth in Mr Petrie’s Essay on the Round Towers of Ireland, now in course of publication. In concluding these notices of a spot so long the abode of the piety, art, and learning of remote times, we may add, that in its present deserted and ruined state it is a scene of the deepest and most solemn interest ; and the mind must indeed be dull and earthly in which it fails to awaken feelings of touching and permanent interest. Silence and solitude the most profound are impressed on all its time-worn features ; we are among the dead only ; and we are forced, as it were, to converse with the men of other days. In all our frequent visits to these ruins we never saw a living human being among them but once. It was during a terrific thunder-storm, which obliged us to seek shelter behind one of the stone crosses for an hour. The rain poured down in impetuous torrents, and the clouds were so black as to give day the appearance of night. It was at such an aw'ful hour, that a woman of middle age, finely formed, and of a noble countenance, entered the cemetery, and, regardless of the storm raging around, flung herself down upon a grave, and commenced singing an Irish lamen- tation in tones of heart-rending melancholy and surpassing THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL, 51 beauty. This wail she carried on as long as we remained ; and her voice coming on the ear between the thunder-peals, had an effect singularly wild and unearthly: it would be fruitless to attempt a description of it. The reader, if he know what an Irishwoman’s song of sorrow is, must imagine the effect it would have at such a moment among those lightning-shat- tered ruins, and chanted by such a living vocal monument of human woe and desolation. We subsequently learned on inquiry that this poor crea- ture’s history was a sad one ; she was slightly crazed, in con- sequence of the death of her only son, who had been drowned ; and her mania lay in a persuasion, which nothing could remove, that he was not lost, but would yet return to her to bless her, and close her long-weeping eyes in peace. P. THE RED MEN OF AMERICA. SECOND ARTICLE. We could relate many instances of the gratitude with which Indians repay a kindness, and of their firmness in friendship, but our limits restrain us. We must besides admit, that they are equally resentful of injury as mindful of favours, and persecute an enemy with as much constancy as they cherish a friend. Mr Catlin has preserved the portrait of a Man- dan chief, named Mah-to-toh-pa, or the Four Bears, whose life affords many singular illustrations of the above truths. We have room for one only. His brother had been sur- prised while asleep by a Riccaree, who left the spear with which he had murdered the sleeping man in the wound, and boasted of what he had done. The Four Bears took pos- session of the spear, preserved it carefully, with the blood of his brother encrusted on its point, and swore to cover that stain with the heart’s blood of the Riccaree. Many moons elapsed, many snows even -went, by, and the Four Bears had not yet found the much desired opportunity of revenge. At length the culpability of his enforced delay became too heavy a reproach, and he resolved on seeking the Riccaree in his distant home, to do which he had to steal his way through his enemy’s country for hundreds of miles ; a task, the difficulty of which can be appreciated only by those wffio know the watch- fulness of Indian habits, and the vigilance of those whom he had to circumvent. But “ when Greek meets Greek,” we all know what “ comes in this case, however, “ diamond- cut-diamond” were perhaps the more appropriate metaphor : let our readers settle that point. The Four Bears accom- plished his task ; he had traversed many a weary plain, had threaded many a tangled forest, swam many a river ; but at length he stood, famished and outworn, before the village of his enemy. This was surrounded by a stockade, but he overcame that with little difficulty. It was night, but the dwelling of the offender was known to him, and en- tering it, he sat down before the fire, over which hung a pot containing food, which the provident squaw had set to simmer through the night. The family were in their beds, which consist of skins stretched on low frames, and ranged around the walls of the hut. The Riccaree, the object of the Mandan’s visit, was also on his couch, with his arms close beside him, as is the custom. But he was not asleep ; the flame as it rose fitfully was reflected from his glittering eyes, which rested, but with no particular interest, on his visitor. The latter, conscious that his then exhausted strength was not equal to the duty he came to perform, sat collected within himself for a certain time ; he then took part of the food that filled the pot, and ate in such measure as he thought advi- . sable. This done, he lighted his pipe, and sat to smoke it. The squaw meanwhile had asked her husband what man it was who was reposing at their hearth. “ He is a hungry man, for thou seest he is eating ; what matter for the rest ?” was her husband’s reply, and the uninvited guest concluded his meal without interruption. Was the Mandan shaken by what we feel to be the most touching appeal of this deep confidence to his better sympathies ? He scarcely felt that it was one. Among Indians, hospitality is neither offered nor accepted as a matter of favour, but of right, and of course ; nor would he have replied to such an appeal could he have felt it. He believed himself to be in the performance of a most solemn duty, and would have scorned all vacillation as weak- ness. Nor shall we be just ourselves if we lose sight of this in our abhorrence of his deed. The pipe of the Mandan exhausted, he adjusted his raiment for departure ; he rose, collected his force, sprang on his un- suspecting host, whom he stabbed to the heart with the spear already named, then scalped him, and, springing from the hut, was out of the village, and deep in a neighbouring water- course, by the time that his enemies’ dogs were upon him ; again, by many a night march and day of hunger and suffer- ing, he arrived in his village, his conscience set at rest by the act at which we shudder. Mr Catlin, who knew this chief intimately, relates many stories of his bravery and general elevation of character, but we have room for the tale of his death only. In the year 1837, Mr Catlin had left the friendly Mandans some three years, when the small-pox was carried among them by the traders ; the whole family of the Four Bears perished by this disease wife, child, not one was left him ; he stood alone in his deso- lation, and gathering the corpses together, he covered all with skins, after the manner of his people ; the songs for the dead then performed, he seated himself by the mound he had raised, which he addressed from time to time in the most touching terms of endearment, as each individual composing the mourn- ful group rose to his memory. This continued through nine days and nights, during all which he took neither food nor sleep, and on the tenth he was himself a corpse. The native American is deeply imbued with religious feel- ing ; no Indian who maintains a fair character in his tribe is without some place of retirement for worship and meditation ; a lonely tree, a nook in the bank of a stream, the hollow of a rock, are frequently selected for this purpose ; nor is the habit confined to such tribes as have no fixed religious cere- monies ; it was practised by the Mandans and others, many of whom possessed oratories such as we have just described, in addition to their “medicine” or “mystery lodges,” which may be called their public temples. The Osages, Kansas, and other tribes west of the Mississippi, never fail to implore the blessing of the Great Spirit on breaking up their encamp- ments, and they return thanks devoutly for the food they have found, and the preservation they have experienced, on arriving at the end of their journey. Thanks and praises are also pub- licly offered at every new moon, at the commencement of the buffalo hunts in spring, and at the ingathering of the corn ; at which latter period a feast is held, called the corn feast : over this, among some tribes, the oldest woman presides. The Minatarrees boil a large kettle full of the new corn in presence of all the people, four medicine men, painted with white clay, dancing round the kettle until its contents are well boiled ; these are next burnt to ashes as an offering to the Great Spirit ; the fire is then extinguished ; new fire is immediately created by rubbing two sticks together ; with this they cook the corn for their own feast, and the remainder of the day is spent in festivity. Dances are also performed to the Great Spirit on various occasions, as among the Ojibbeways on the first fall of snow ; this is danced in snow-shoes. All believe in a future state of existence— in the reward of the good by an eternal residence in pleasant and plentifully supplied hunting grounds beyond the great waters — and in the punishment of the wicked by transformation into some loathsome beast, reptile, or insect, and by banishment to barren, parched, and desolate regions, the abodes of bad spirits, for a period proportionate to the en- ormity of their guilt. Prayers are also offered to the evil spirit in deprecation of his enmity, but on none of these ceremonies is attendance compelled ; that Indian is, however, less respected, who is known constantly to absent himself from all. The “ medicine man” of the Indians is at once prophet, priest, and physician ; he has sometimes great influence. The ceremony by which this dignity is attained among the Sioux, is one involving no little suffering. The candidate for this honour has innumerable splints of wood driven through the most sensitive parts of his flesh, and being suspended by some of these to a pole, with his medicine bag in his hand, he is ex- pected to keep his eyes steadily fixed on the sun from its rising to its setting, when he is taken down, and entitled to be called a medicine or mystery man for the remainder of his life ; but he has to make ceaseless efforts for the support of his charac- ter, since the failure of either his cures or his prophecies ren- ders him liable to universal contempt. Almost every family has its medicine or mystery bag, which consists of a beaver or otter skin curiously ornamented ; this contains the medicinal stores and smaller consecrated articles of the family : it is considered a great disgrace to sell or other- wise part with an article once consecrated, and the medicine bag is always held sacred and inviolate to every hand but that of its owner. When a warrior of the Sac and Fox tribe falls 52 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. in battle, bis widow suspends bis mystery bag on tbe pole be- fore his tent, and sits herself within the lodge ; the warriors, returned from the battle, and adorned with the scalps they have taken from the enemy, then assemble before the lodge ; they dance to the medicine bag of their lost brother, and throw presents to his widow, of such articles as they think may best console her for her loss. The Indian dwelling is much varied in its form and manner among the various tribes ; the Pawnees, for example, live in lodges thatched with prairie grass, and which are not unlike immense bee-hives. The Sioux, the Camanchees, the Crows, and others inhabit- ing a vast tract on the upper waters of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and extending to the base of the Rocky Mountains, have moveable tents formed of buffalo skins richly ornamented, according to Indian notions of ornament, and fastened to poles sometimes twenty-five feet high ; some of these tents will shelter eighty persons, and require from thirty to thirty-five buffalo Skins to cover them. The Riccarees, Mandans, &c. are, or were, lodged in vil- lages fortified by strong stockades eighteen feet high ; their huts are formed of poles covered closely and smoothly with earth, and this in process of time becomes so compact and hard, that men, women, and children, recline and play on their tops. It has been sometimes asserted that the Indian people have a common language, but this is not the case ; scarcely any two of their nations between whom no intercourse exists, possess a language understood by both, but this inconvenience is ob- viated by a “ language of signs,” so effective and eloquent that by this every Indian is enabled to communicate with his brother of whatever nation or tribe, and hence perhaps has arisen the supposition that all speak a common language. The mode of writing among Indians is entirely hieroglyphic, and is of course liable to wide misconstruction ; but they lay down maps with no mean degree of accuracy, and the chiefs wear the boundaries of their hunting-grounds traced on their robes ; a counterpart being kept in the public lodge among such other records as the nation may possess, and these are referred to if any dispute arise among neighbouring tribes. Their manufactures are of course few and simple. Stones are cut into pestles and mortars, tomahawks, knives, pipes, &c. ; pottery is formed for domestic purposes from the clays furnished by all parts of their country ; mats are woven from grass or rushes, and blankets from the hair of the buffalo. These articles are mostly the work of the women, who with the children plant, cultivate, and gather in the crops, collect wild rice and pash-e-quah, a large bulbous root, in form like the sweet potato and in taste like the chesnut, but more juicy. Nuts of many sorts, several kinds of plums, osage oranges, gooseberries, strawberries, and many sorts of grapes, are also collected in their season. Besides this, the women dress buffalo skins, procure wood and water, and in some tribes fetch home the game which the hunter, having tracked and killed, then leaves to their further disposal. Beaver and other skins, belts of wampum, and coloured shells ground to an oval form, serve as coin ; but the most important wealth of the Indian is in his horses and dogs, which assist him in the chase, and of which some possess great numbers. Many tribes of Indians are exceedingly bold and expert horsemen, the Camanchees more particularly, many of ■whom perform feats of dexterity on their wild horses that would astonish our boldest equestrians. These men are often seen to throw themselves on one side of their horses, to avoid the arrows of an enemy or the attack of an enraged buffalo, in such a manner that the extremity of one foot only seems to hold by the animal, and that while he continues to move at full speed ; nay, some have been even known to shoot arrows while in that position, the tenure of which is altogether incon- ceivable to the European rider. Their weapons for hunting are lances five or six feet long, and tipped with stone or the bone of some animal, and bows with arrows similarly pointed. The buffalo is sometimes hunted by men who have partially concealed their persons in the skin of the white wolf, and who creep to within shot of their game by favour of this disguise ; for the buffalo, accus- tomed to the white wolf, and safe from his attack unless, when, separated from the herd, he becomes the prey of a pack, permits the approach of the Indian thus masked, the latter being careful to keep to leeward of his game, whose scent is very acute. Indians sometimes drive whole herds of buffalo, elk, and deer, into impassable ravines or to the brink of precipices, when they slaughter as many as they may need ; but none were ever destroyed wantonly before the introduction of whisky ; whereas at this time whole herds are killed merely for their skins, the flesh being left to decay on the prairies ; and this, by depopulating the hunting-grounds, induces famine, and is another cause of Indian suffering and final extinction. Buffaloes are often destroyed by the panther ; solitary indi- viduals sometimes fall a prey to a pack of wolves ; others perish in the burning prairies, that awfully peculiar feature of the American solitudes ; a few are drowned every season in attempting to cross the ice of rivers not firmly frozen ; but the principal element of their destruction is in the rapacity of the trader ; and it has been calculated that the activity of this last-named agent will ensure the extermination of this most valuable creature within a very short period of time. The education of the Indian child is an object of the most profound interest, not only to his own family but to the whole tribe. He is taught to love his country and tribe, to contemn falsehood, to reverence age, to be modest and silent ; he is strictly enjoined to reward a kindness, but also to avenge an injury ; to aid and guard a friend, but also to injure, by every means in his power, and relentlessly to persecute, an enemy ; to abhor theft, unless it be practised on the property of an enemy, when it is called highly meritorious. The sports of youth are watched attentively by their elders, and all evi- dences of cowardice, meanness, &c., are followed by the needful discipline. The Indian usually retains his mother’s name until he has entitled himself, by some remarkable act of prowess, endurance, &c., to choose one for himself, or been distinguished by some appellation bestowed by the tribe. Some of these “ names” are sufficiently amusing, as, for example, “ He who jumps over every one,” “ The very sweet man,” “ The man of good sense,” “ No fool,” “ The bird that goes to war,” “ He who strikes two at once,” &c. The names of women are not always inelegant. Take as a specimen of In- dian taste in this matter, “ The bending willow,” “ The pure fountain,” “ The sweet-scented grass.” Others are scarcely so complimentary, as, “ The female bear,” “ The woman who lives in the bear’s den,” “ The creature that creeps,” &c. The constancy with which an Indian endures tortures, is among the best known traits of his character, but his power of enduring labour has been less insisted on ; nay, it has been denied by those who despair of the civilization of the race, or who believe that its destruction is a consequence inevitable to the white man’s progress ; but those who so judge know little of our Red brothers. We could adduce many facts in proof of this, were our space not wholly exhausted ; but we must defer . these, as well as the account we had purposed giving of the very extraordinary religious ceremonies practised among some of the tribes. We may, however, possibly return to the Subject at some other time. THE IRISH FIDDLER, BY W. CARLETON. What a host of light-hearted associations are revived by that living fountain of fun and frolic, an Irish fiddler ! Every thing connected with him is agreeable, pleasant, jolly. All his anec- dotes, songs, jokes, stories, and secrets, bring us back from the pressure and cares of life, to those happy days and nights when the heart was as light as the heel, and both beat time to the exhilarating sound of his fiddle. The old harper was a character looked upon by the Irish rather as a musical curiosity, than a being specially created to contribute to their enjoyment. There was something about him which they did not feel to be in perfect sympathy with their habits and amusements. He was above them, not of them ; and although they respected him, and treated him kindly, yet was he never received among them with that spontaneous ebullition of warmth and cordiality wdth which they welcomed their own musician, the fiddler. The harper, in fact, belonged to the gentry, and to the gentry they were willing to leave him. They listened to his music when he felt disposed to play for them, but it only gratified their curiosity, instead of en- livening their hearts — a fact sufficiently evident from the cir- cumstance of their seldom attempting ‘to dance to it. This preference, however, of the fiddle to the harp, is a feeling ge- nerated by change of times and circumstances, for it is well known that in days gone by, when Irish habits were purer 53 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. older, and more hereditary than they are now, the harp was the favourite instrument of young and old, of high and low. The only instrument that can be said to rival the fiddle, is the bagpipe ; but every person knows that Ireland is a loving- country, and that at our fairs, dances, weddings, and other places of amusement, Paddy and his sweetheart are in the habit of indulging in a certain quiet and affectionate kind of whisper, the creamy tones of which are sadly curdled by the sharp jar of the chanter. It is not, in fact, an instrument adapted for love-making. The drone is an enemy to sentiment, and it is an unpleasant thing for a pretty blushing girl to find herself put to the necessity of bawling out her consent at the top of her lungs, which she must do, or have the ecstatic words lost in its drowsy and monotonous murmur. The bagpipe might do for war, to which, with a slight variation, it has been applied ; but in our opinion it is only fit to be danced to by an assembly of people who are hard of hearing. Indeed, we have little doubt but its cultivation might be introduced with good effect as a system of medical treatment, suitable to the pupils of a deaf and dumb institution ; for if any thing could bring them to the use of their ears, its sharp and stiletto notes surely would effect that object. The fiddle, however, is the instrument of all others most essential to the enjoyment of an Irishman. Dancing and love are very closely connected, and of course the fiddle is never thought of or heard, without awakening the tenderest and most, agreeable emotions. Its music, soft, sweet, and cheerful, is just the thing for Paddy, who under its influ- ence partakes of its spirit, and becomes soft, sweet, and cheerful himself. The very tones of it act like a charm upon him, and produce in his head such a bland and delightful in- toxication, that he finds himself making love just as naturally as he would eat his meals. It opens all the sluices of his heart, puts mercury in his veins, gives honey to a tongue that was, Heaven knows, sufficiently sweet without it, and gifts him with a pair of feather heels that Mercury might envy ; and to crown all, endows him, while pleading his cause in a quiet corner, with a fertility of invention, and an easy unembarrassed assurance, which nothing can surpass. In fact, with great respect for my friend Mr Bunting, the fiddle it is that ought to be our national instrument, as it is that which is most closely and agreeably associated with the best and happiest impulses of the Irish heart. The very language of the people themselves is a proof of this ; for whilst neither harp nor bag- pipe is ever introduced as illustrating peculiarities of feeling by any reference to their influence, the fiddle is an agreeable" in- strument in their hands, in more senses than one. Paddy’s highest notion of flattery towards the other sex is boldly ex- pressed by an image drawn from it, for when he boasts" that he can, by honied words, impress such an agreeable delusion upon his sweetheart as to make her imagine “ that there is a fiddler on every rib of the house,” there can be no metaphor con- ceived more strongly or beautifully expressive of the charm which flows from the tones of that sweet instrument. Paddy, however, is very often hit by his own metaphor, at a time when he least expects it. When pleading his cause, for in- stance, and promising golden days to his fair one, he is not unfrequently met by, “Ay, ay, it’s all very well now; you’re sugary enough, of coorse ; but wait till we’d be a* year married, an’ maybe, like so many others that promised what you do, you’d never come home to me widout ‘ hangin’ up your fiddle behind the door ” by which she means to charge him with the probability of being agreeable when abroad, but morose in his own family. Having thus shown that the fiddle and its music are mixed up so strongly with our language, feelings, and amusements, it is now time to say something of the fiddler. In Ireland it is impossible, on looking through all the classes of society, to find any individual so perfectly free from care, or, in stronger words, so. completely happy, as the fiddler, especially if he be blind, which he generally is. His want of sight circumscribes his other wants, and, whilst it diminishes his enjoyments, not only renders him unconscious of their loss, but gives a greater zest to those, that are left him, simple and innocent as they are. He is. in truth a man whose lot in life is happily cast, and whose lines have fallen in pleasant places. The phase of life, which is presented to him, and in which he moves, is one of innocent mirth and harmless enjoyment. Marriages, wed- dings, danced, and merry-makings of all descriptions, create the atmosphere of mirth and happiness which he ever breathes. With the dark designs, the crimes, and outrages of mankind, he has nothing to do, and his light spirit is never depressed by their influence. Indeed, he may be said with truth to pass through none but the festivals of life, to hear nothing but mirth, to feel nothing but kindness, and to communicate no- thing but happiness to all around him. lie is at once the source and the centre of all good and friendly feelings. By him the aged man forgets his years, and is agreeably cheated back into youth ; the labourer snatches a pleasant moment from his toil, and is happy ; the care-worn ceases to remember the anxieties that press him down ; the boy is enraptured with delight, and the child is charmed with a pleasure that he feels to be wonderful. Surely such a man is important, as filling up with enjoyment so many of the painful pauses in human misery. He is a thousand times better than a politician, and is a true philoso- pher without knowing it. Every man is his friend, unless it be a rival fiddler, and he is the friend of every man, with the same exception. Every house, too, every heart, and every hand, is open to him ; he never knows what it is to want a bed, a dinner, or a shilling. Good heavens ! what more than this can the cravings of a human heart desire! For my part, I do not know what others might aim at ; but I am of opinion that in such a world as this, the highest proof of a wise man would be, a wish to live and die an Irish fiddler. And yet, alas ! there is no condition of life Avithout some remote or contingent sorrow. Many a scene have I Avitnessed connected with this very subject, that would Avring the tears out of any eye, and find a tender pulse in the hardest heart. It is indeed a melancholy alternative that devotes the poor sightless lad to an employment that is ultimately productive of so much happiness to himself and others. This alternative is seldom resorted to, unless when some poor child — perhaps a favourite — is deprived of sight by the terrible ravages of the small-pljx. In life there is scarcely any thing more touching than to AA-itness in the innocent invalid the first effects, both upon himself and his parents, of this woeful privation. The utter helplessness of the pitiable darkling, and his total depen- dence upon those around him — his unacquaintance with the relative situation of all the places that were familiar to him — his tottering and timid step, and his affecting call of “ Mammy, where are you?” joined to the bitter consciousness on her part that the light of affection and innocence will never spar- kle in those beloved eves again — all this constitutes a scene of deep and bitter sorrow. When, however, the sense of his bereavement passes away, and the cherished child groAvs up to the proper age, a fiddle is procured for him by his parents, if they are able, and if not, a subscription is made up among their friends and neighbours to buy him one. Ail the family, with tears in their eyes, then kiss and take leave of him; and his mo- ther, taking him by the hand, leads him, as had been previously arranged, to the best fiddler in the neighbourhood, Avith Ax hom he is left as an apprentice. There is generally no fee required, but he is engaged to hand his master all the monev he can make at dances, from the time he is proficient enough to play at them. Such is the simple process of putting a blind boy in the way of becoming acquainted with the science of melody. In my native parish there were four or five fiddlers — all good in their xvay ; but the Paganini of the district Avas the far-famed Mickey M‘Rorey. Where Mickey properly lived, 1 never could actually discover, and for the best reason in the Avorld — he Avas not at home once in twelve months. As Colley Cibber says in the play, he Avas “ a kind of a here-and-thereian - — a stranger noAvhere.” This, however, mattered little ; for though perpetually shifting day after day from place to place, yet it somehow happened that nobody ever Avas at a loss where to find him. The truth is, he never felt disposed to travel incog, because he knew that his interest must suffer by doing so ; the consequence was, that wherever he Avent, a little nucleus of local fame ahv ays attended him, which rendered it an easy matter to find his whereabouts. Mickey was blind from his infancy, and, as usual, owed to the small-pox the loss of his eyesight. He Avas about the middle size, of rather a slender make, and possessed an intel- ligent countenance, on Avhich beamed that singular expression of inward serenity so peculiar to the blind. His temper was sxveet and even, but capable of rising through the buoyancy of his OAvn humour to a high pitch of exhilaration and enjoyment. The dress he wore, as far as I can remember, Avas always the same in colour and fabric — to wit, abroAvn coat, a sober-tinted cotton waistcoat, grey stockings, and black corduroys. Poor Mickey ! I think 1 see him before me. his head erect, as the heads of all blind men are, the fiddle-case under his left arm, and his hazel staff held out like a feeler, exploring with expe- 54 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. rimental pokes the nature of the ground before him, even although some happy urchin leads him onward with an exult- ing eye ; an honour of which he will boast to his companions for many a mortal month to come. The first time I ever heard Mickey play was also the first I ever heard a fiddle. Well and distinctly do I remember the occasion. The season was summer — but summer ivas summer then— and a new house belonging to Frank Thomas had been finished, and was just ready to receive him and his family. The floors of Irish houses in the country generally consist at first of wet clay ; and when this is sufficiently well smoothed and hardened, a dance is known to be an excellent thing to bind and prevent them from cracking. On this occasion the evening had been appointed, and the day was nearly half ad- vanced, but no appearance of the fiddler. The state of excite- ment in which I found myself could not be described. The name of Mickey MTlorey had been ringing in my ears for God knows how long, but 1 had never seen him, or even heard his fiddle. Every two minutes I was on the top of a little emi- nence looking out for him, my eyes straining out of their soc- kets, and my head dizzy with the prophetic expectation of rapture and delight. Human patience, however, could bear this painful suspense no longer, and I privately resolved to find Mickey, or perish. I accordingly proceeded across the hills, a distance of about three miles, to a place called Kilnahushogue, where I found him waiting for a guide. At this time I could not have been more than seven years of age ; and how I wrought out my way over the lonely hills, or through what mysterious instinct I was led to him, and that by a path too over which I had never travelled before, must be left unrevealed, until it shall please that Power which guides the bee to its home, and the bird for thousands of miles through the air, to disclose the principle upon which it is ac- complished. On our return home I could see the young persons of both sexes flying out to the little eminence I spoke of, looking eagerly towards the point we travelled from, and immediately scampering in again, clapping their hands, and shouting with delight. Instantly the whole village was out, young and old, standing for a moment to satisfy themselves that the in- telligence was correct ; after which, about a dozen of the youngsters sprang forward, with the speed of so many ante- lopes, to meet us, whilst the elders returned with a soberer but not less satisfied manner into the houses. Then commenced the usual battle, as to who should be honoured by permission to carry the fiddle-case. Oh ! that fiddle-case ! For seven long years it Avas an honour exclusively allowed to myself, whenever Mickey attended a dance any where at all near us ; and never was the Lord Chancellor’s mace — to which, by the way, wifh great respect for his lordship, it bore a considerable resemblance— carried with a prouder heart or a more exulting eye. But so it is — “ These little things are great to little men.' “Blood alive, Mickey, you’re welcome !” “ How is every bone of you, Mickey? Bedad we gev you up.” “ No, we didn’t give you up, Mickey; never heed him; sure we knew very well you’d not desart the Towny boys— whoo !— Fol de rollol!” “Ah, Mickey, won’t you sing ‘There was a wee devil come over the wall?’ ” “ To be sure he will, but wait till he comes home and gets his dinner first. Is’t off an empty stomach you’d have him to sing ?” “ Mickey, give me the fiddle- case, won’t you, Mickey?” “ No, to me, Mickey.” “ Never heed them, Mickey : you promised it to me at the dance in Carntaul.” “ Aisy, boys, aisy. The truth is, none of yez can get the fiddle-case. Shibby, my fiddle, hasn’t been well for the last day or two, and can’t bear to be carried by any one barrin’ myself.” “ Blood alive ! sick is it, Mickey ? — an’ what ails her"?” “ Why, some o’ the doctors says there’s a frog in her, an’ others that she has the cholic ; but I’m goin’ to give her a dose of balgriffauns when I get up to the house above. Ould Harry Connolly says she’s with fiddle; an’ if that’s true, boys, maybe some o’ yez won’t be in luck. I’ll be able to spare a young fiddle or two among yez.” Many a tiny hand was clapped, and many an eye was lit up with the hope of getting a young fiddle ; for gospel itself was never looked upon to be more true than this assertion of Mickey’s. And no wonder. The fact is, he used to amuse himself by making small fiddles of deal and horse-hair, which he carried about with him as presents for such youngsters as he took a fanev to. This he made a serious business of, and carried it on with an importance becoming the intimation just given. Indeed, I remember the time when I watched one of them, which I was so happy as to receive from him, day and night, with the hope of being able to report that it was grow- ing larger ; for my firm belief was, that in due time it would reach the usual size. As we went along, Mickey, with his usual tact, got out of us all the information respecting the several courtships of the neighbourhood that had reached us, and as much, too, of the village gossip and scandal as we knew. Nothing can exceed the overflowing kindness and affection with which the Irish fiddler is received on the occasion of a dance or merry-making ; and to do him justice he loses no op- portunity of exaggerating his own importance. From habit, and his position among the people, his wit and power of re- partee are necessarily cultivated and sharpened. Not one of his jokes ever fails — -a circumstance which improves his humour mightily ; for nothing on earth sustains it so much as knowing, that, whether good or bad, it will be laughed at. Mickey, by the way, was a bachelor, and, though blind, was able, as he himself used to say, to see through his ears better than an- other could through the eyes. He knew every voice at once, and every boy and girl in the parish by name, the moment he heard them speak. On reaching the house he is bound for, he either partakes of, or at least is offered, refreshment, after which comes the ecstatic moment to the youngsters : but all this is done by due and solemn preparation. First he calls for a pair of scissors, with which he pares or seems to pare his nails ; then asks for a piece of rosin, and in an instant half a dozen boys are off at a break-neck pace, to the next shoemaker’s, to procure it ; whilst in the meantime he deliberately pulls a piece out of his pocket and rosins his bow. But, heavens ! what a ceremony the opening of that fiddle-case is ! The manipulation of the blind man as he runs his hand down to the key-hole — the turning of the kev— the taking out of the fiddle — the twang twang — and then the first ecstatic sound, as the bow is drawn across the strings ; then comes a screwing ; then a delicious saw or two ; again another screwing — twang twang— and away he goes with the favourite tune of the good woman, for such is the etiquette upon these occasions. The house is immediately thronged with the neighbours, and a preliminary dance is taken, in which the old folks, with good-humoured violence, are lite- rally dragged out, and forced to join. Then come the con- gratulations— “ Ah, Jack, you could do it wanst,” says Mickey, “ an’ can still ; you have a kick in you yet.” “Why, Mickey, I seen dancin’ in my time,” the old man will reply, his brow re- laxed by a remnant of his former pride, and the hilarity of t he moment, “but you see the breath isn’t what it used to be wid me, when I could dance the Baltehorum Jig on the bottom of a ten-gallon cask. But I think a glass o’ whisky will do us no harm afther that. Heighho ! — well, well — I’m sure I thought my dancin’ days wor over.” “ Bedad an' you wor matched any how,” rejoined the fiddler. “ Molshy carried as light a heel as ever you did ; sorra a woman of her years ever I seen could cut the buckle wid her. You would know the tune on her feet still.” “Ah, Mickey, the thruth is,” the good woman would say, “ we have no sich dancin’ now as there was in my days. Thry that glass.” “ But as good fiddlers, Molshy, eh ? Here’s to you both, and long may ye live to shake the toe ! Whoo ! bedad that’s great stuff. Come now, sit down, Jack, till I give you your ould fa- vourite, ‘ Canute Soogah.’ ” These were happy moments and happy times, which might well be looked upon as picturing the simple manners of country life with very little of moral shadow to obscure the cheerful- ness which lit up the Irish heart and hearth into humble hap- piness. Mickey, with his usual good nature, never forgot the younger portion of his audience. After entertaining the old and full-grown, he would call for a key, one end of which he placed in his mouth, in order to make the fiddle sing lor the children their favourite song, beginning with “ Oh ! grand-mamma, will you squeeze my wig?” This he did in such a manner, through the medium of the key, that the words seemed to be spoken by the instrument, and not by himself. After this was over, he would sing us, to his own accompaniment, another favourite, “ There was a wee devil looked over the wall,” which generally closed that portion of the entertainment so kindly designed for us. I T pon those moments I have often witnessed marks of deep THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 55 and pious feeling, occasioned by some memory of the absent or the dead, that were as beautiful as they were affecting. If, for instance, a favourite son or daughter happened to be removed by death, the father or mother, remembering the air which was loved best by the departed, would pause a moment, and with a voice full of sorrow, say, “ Mickey, there is one tune that I would like to hear ; I love to think of it, and to hear it ; I do, for the sake of them that’s gone — mv darlin’ son that’s lyin’ low : it was he that loved it. His ear is closed against it now; but for his sake — ay, for your sake, avourneen machree — we will hear it wanst more.” Mickey always played such tunes in his best style, and amidst a silence that was only broken by sobs, suppressed moanings, and the other tokens of profound sorrow. These gushes, how- ever, of natural feeling soon'passed away. In a few minutes the smiles returned, the mirth broke out again, and the lively dance went on as if their hearts had been incapable of such affection for the dead— affection at once so deep and tender. But many a time the light of cheerfulness plays along the stream of Irish feeling, when cherished sorrow lies removed from the human eye far down from the surface. These preliminary amusements being now over, Mickey is conducted to the dance-house, where he is carefully installed in the best chair, and immediately the dancing commences. ] It is not my purpose to describe an Irish dance here, having done it more than once elsewhere. It is enough to say that Mickey is now in his glory ; and proud may the young man be who fills the honourable post of his companion, and sits next him. He is a living storehouse of intelligence, a travelling- directory for the parish— the lover’s text-book — the young woman’s best companion ; for where is the courtship going on of which he is not cognizant ? where is there a marriage on the tapis, with the particulars of which he is not acquainted? He is an authority whom nobody would think of questioning. It is now, too, that he scatters his jokes about ; and so correct and well trained is his ear, that lie can frequently name the young man who dances, by the peculiarity of his step. “ Ah ha ! Paddy Brien, you’re there ? Sure I’d know the sound of your smoothin’-irons any where. Is it thrue, Paddy, that you wor sint for down to Errigle Keerogue, to kill the clocks for Han McMahon ? But, nabuklish ! Paddy, what’ll you have?” “ Is that Grace Reilly on the flure ? Faix, avourneen, you can do it ; devil o’ your likes I see any where. I’ll lay Shibby to a penny trump that you could dance your own namesake — the Calleen clhas dhun, the bonny brown girl — upon a spider’s cob- web, widout breakin’ it. Don’t be in a hurry, Grace dear, to tie the knot ; I’ll wait for you.” Several times in the course of the night a plate is brought round, and a collection made for the fiddler : this was the moment when Mickey used to let the jokes fly in every direc- tion. The timid he shamed into liberality, the vain he praised, and the niggardly he assailed by open hardy satire ; all ma- naged, however, w ith such an under-current of good humour, j that no one could take offence. No joke ever told better than i that of the broken string. Whenever this happened at night, j Mickey would call out to some soft fellow, “ Blood alive, Ned j Martin, will you bring me a candle? — I’ve broken a string.” j The unthinking young man, forgetting that he was blind, would j take the candle in a hurry, and fetch it to him. “ Faix, Ned, I knew you wor jist. fit for’t ; houldin’ a candle j to a dark man ! Isn’t he a beauty, boys ?— look at him, girls — as cute as a pancake.” It is unnecessary to say, that the mirth on such occasions was convulsive. Another similar joke was also played off by him against such as he knew to be ungenerous at the collection. “ Paddy Smith, I want a word wid you. I'm goin’ across the counthry as far as Ned Donnelly’s, and I want you to help me along the road, as the night is dark.” “ To be sure, Mickey. I’ll bring you over as snug as if you wor on a clane plate, man alive !” “ Thank you, Paddy; throth you’ve thedaeeney in you; an’ kind father for you, Paddy. Maybe I’ll do as much for you some other time.” Mickey never spoke of this until the trick was played off, after which, he published it to the whole parish ; and Paddy of course was made a standing jest for being so silly as to think that night or day had any difference to a man who could not see. Thus passed the life of Mickey M‘Rorev, and thus pass the lives of most of his class, serenely and happily. As the sailor to his ship, the sportsman to his gun, so is the fiddler attached to his fiddle. His hopes and pleasures, though limited, are full. His heart is necessarily light, for he comes in contact with the best and brightest side of life and nature; and the consequence is, that their mild and mellow lights are reflected on and from himself. I am ignorant whether poor Mickey is dead or not ; but I dare say he forgets the boy to whose young spirit he communicated so much delight, and who often danced with a buoyant and careless heart to the pleasant notes of his fiddle. Mickey MTtorey, farewell ! 'Whether living or dead, peace be with you ! There is another character in Ireland essentially different from the mere fiddler — I mean the country dancing-master. In a future number of the Journal I will give a sketch of one who was eminent in his line. Many will remember him when I name Buckram- Back. THE PASSING BELL. BY J. U. U T . With its measured pause, and its long-drawn -wail, The minster bell swings on the gale, And saddens the vale with its solemn toll, That passeth away like a passing soul — Pulse after pulse still diminishing on, Till another rings forth for the dead and gone. The minute-sound of that mourning bell Is the lord’s of the valley — the rich man’s knell : While it sw-ells o’er his lawns and his woodlands bright, He breathes not, hears not, nor sees the light : On the couch of his ease he lies stiff and wan — In the midst of his pomp he is dead and gone. The pride hath passed from his haughty brow* — . Where are his plans and high projects now ? Another lord in his state is crowned, To level his castles with the ground ; Respect and terror pass reckless on — His frowns and favours are dead and gone. Had he wisdom, and wealth, and fame, Mortal tongue shall forget his name : Other hands shall disperse his store — Earthly dream shall he dream no more : His chair is vacant— his way lies yon. To the formless cells of the dead and gone. Passing bell, that dost sadly fling Thy -wailing wave on the air of spring. There is no voice in thy long, wild moan, To tell where the parted soul is flown, To what far mansion it travels on — . While thou tollest thus for the dead and stone. Yet, bell of death, on the living air Thy tones come bound from the house of prayer— They speak of the Valley of Shadow-, trod On a path once walked by the Son of God, W hose word of promise inviteth on, Through the gate unclosed for the dead and gone. Current Coin of China — The only coin made in China is the tchen, or cash, as it is called in Canton. It is composed of base metal, having the date and reigning emperor’s name stamped on it. According to Gutzlaff, they had coins of this description a thousand years before our era. It is nearly as large as an old shilling. There is a square hole in the centre, to admit of a number of them being strung on a bamboo. From seven to eight hundred of these, according to the ex- change, may be had for a Spanish dollar. Silver is the com- mercial medium ot barter ; it is not coined, but passes by weight, after being purified, when it is called sycee silver. It is then cast into lumps of one tael, or Chinese ounce, each, the value of which in English money is about six shillings. When decimal parts are required, it is cut. Spanish dollars are current in Canton, and they are also cut when required for lesser portions. Whenever one of these gets into the pos- session of a Chinese, he stamps his name on it ; hence in a short time the Spanish marks become quite obliterated, and then they are called chop dollars, and are melted into sycee silver. Gold is like any other article of trade, and is not used as a medium of barter. — Dr Fulton’s Travelling Sketches in Various Countries . 56 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. EXTRAORDINARY ANOMALY. BERNARD CAVANAGH. In the hope that the narration of the following singular cir- cumstances may attract the attention of medical and scien- tific men towards its extraordinary subject, we lay it before the readers of the Irish Penny Journal : — Bernard Cavanagh is about twenty-four years of age, and now living - with his parents at nearly a mile distant from the little town of Swineford, county Mayo. The parents are respectable, of reputable character, and in comfortable cir- cumstances. They assert— -indeed they have made affidavits before a magistrate of the county — that for nearly the last four years he has existed without tasting - sustenance of any kind. They state also that from the 2d September 1836 to the ‘2d July 1840, he neither spoke nor rose from his bed except to allow it to be arranged, during which operation he never opened his mouth ; and this portion of the statement is borne out to a considerable extent by the fact of his having been visited frequently, and at various periods, by persons of high respectability as well as of the lower class, on all which occa- sions he was observed invariably in the same position, with bis hands on his breast and his eyes fixed on the window. The night before he betook himself to bed, he knocked at the door of the priest’s house, and stated that he wished to communicate something to him ; but the reverend gentleman declined admitting him, in consequence of tire lateness of the hour, saying that he could impart whatever he wished to state on the morrow. “ But I will not be here to-morrow,” responded Cavanagh ; and he was right : the next day he took to his bed. In the interval between September 1836 and the present sea- son, public attention on a limited scale was occasionally di- rected towards Cavanagh. But the report of his utter and continued abstinence from food was treated as a monstrous fable by every one at any distance from his immediate locality, and the extraordinary allegations respecting him were begin- ning to fade from genera! recollection, when, to the utter asto- nishment of every one in his neighbourhood, he arose from bed and recovered his speech and powers of moving about ; since which time he continues, according to the accounts, without sustenance in any shape, and has been visited by thousands of persons from various quarters. In boyhood, Cavanagh’s education extended barely as far as the acquirement of reading and writing ; but he constantly ex- hibited strong marks of religious enthusiasm, often proceed- ing to Meelick chapel (about three miles from his residence) to one mass, and then attending another at his own parish chapel of Swineford. It is said, too, that he at one time con- structed a sort of rude building for his private devotion in the open fields, and repeatedly went to prayers at meal-times in his father’s house, contenting himself with one meal in the day, as if preparing himself for his total fast. Accordingly, since resuming his speech and motion he haunts the chapei at all hours by day and night, continuing for hours together appa- rently in private prayer, and generally attended by a large concourse of the peasantry, whom he addresses by fits and starts, and many of whom are naturally, under the circum- stances, beginning to deem him not a human being at all, but a shadow. He seems not inclined to speak much, though he states he has had “ high visions.” His reply to the clergymen respect- ing his revelations and fasting, is, that he is fed by the Word ; that he is not at liberty to detail Ins visions for the gratifica- tion of man ; and that no one should judge lest he be judged. Cavanagh is about the middle height, of a grave emaciated countenance ; his motions are quite unembarrassed, and his voice is sonorous and distinct when he speaks, which is still but seldom, as he seems to utterly disregard his visitors, what- ever their rank. As we said before, he continues daily to draw thousands of the peasantry around him, who eagerly watch every word that falls from his lips, as they place implicit faith in the assertion that he has lived without any description of food for the last four years, and of course regard him as something entirely beyond the pale of ordinary humanity. We are, however, not so easy of belief in a case so much at variance with the ordinary regulations of nature ; at the same time that we are free to admit that it is hard to conceive what motive the young man or his parents could have for carrying on such an im- position, as the latter endeavoured at first to conceal the matter altogether, and, in the next place, have repeatedly re- fused money offered by their respectable visitors, though, in fact, their means are a good deal diminished by the hospitality extended to each successive guest ; while a young sister, who has constantly attended Cavanagh since he has lain and fasted according to the statement, persists in declaring, with the strongest appearance of innocence and belief in the truth of her own assertion, that it was impossible he could have tasted any thing during any part of that time unknown to her, and that he never had. * That a person of narrow intellect and strong devotional propensities should be seized with a religious monomania, and that to a being of a weak mind and a debilitated frame strange visions should occur, is- perfectly comprehensible ; but that the frail materials of the human frame, which needs the nou- rishment of food as much as the flower requires sunshine and moisture, should endure for such a period without support, is so unprecedented in all the records of mankind, and so con- tradictory to the general laws of nature, that it would require the most powerful proofs indeed to convince the intelligent mind of its truth. We therefore again express our strong hope that this slight sketch may produce the effect of having Cavanagh’s case submitted to the test of eminent medical skill — a test to which the parents profess their entire willing- ness to assent, and thus a case of the grossest imposition be detected, and thousands of simple beings disabused, or one of the most extraordinary of nature’s anomalies be clearly ascertained and exhibited. A. Scene in the Theatre at Leghorn. — My time passed delightfully while I remained in Leghorn. The Russian fleet was at anchor in the Bay, commanded by Admiral O’Dwver, a distinguished seaman, and an Irishman by birth. The Sto- races and myself often went on board his ship, and were de- lighted by hearing the Russians chaunt their evening hymn. The melody is beautifully simple, and was always sung com- pletely in tune by this immense body of men. There was at the same time in the harbour a privateer from Dublin, called the Fame, Captain Moore: he and his first officer Campbell were Irishmen, and had a fine set of Irish lads under them. When Storace’s benefit took place, the officers and crew who could be spared from their duty, to a man (and a famous sight it was) marched to the theatre, and almost filled the par- terre. At the end of the opera, Storaee sang the Ii'ish bal- lad “Molly Astore,” at the conclusion of which, the boat- swain of the Fame gave a loud whistle, and the crew in a body rose and gave three cheers. The dismay of the Italian part of the audience was ludicrous in the extreme. The sailors then sang “ God save the King” in full chorus, and w'hen done, applauded themselves to the very skies: nothing coidd be more unanimous or louder than their self-approbation. —Re- miniscences of Michael Kelly. Truth. — Truth is the foundation of virtue. An habitual regard for it is absolutely necessary. He who walks by the light of it has the advantage of the mid-day sun ; he who would spurn it, goes forth amid clouds and darkness. There is no way in which a man strengthens his own judgment, and acquires respect in society so surely, as by a scrupulous re- gard to truth. The course of such an individual is right on and straight on. He is no changeling, saying one thing to- day and another to-morrow. Truth to him is like a moun- tain landmark to the pilot : he fixes his eve upon a point that does not move, and he enters the harbour in safety. On the contrary, one who despises truth and loves falsehood is like a pilot who takes a piece of drift-wood for his landmark, which changes with every changing wave. On this he fixes his at- tention, and, being insensibly led from his course, strikes upon some hidden reef, and sinks to rise no more. Thus truth brings success ; falsehood results in ruin and contempt Dr Channing. Gaming. — I look upon every man as a suicide from the moment he takes the dice-box desperately in his hand ; and all that follows in his fatal career from that fatal time is only sharpening the dagger before lie strikes it to his heart Cum- berland. Printed and Published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office ot the General Advertiser. No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dub- lin. — Ageivs:— It. Giioombridge, Panyer Alley. Paternoster Row, Lon- don. Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester. C. Davies, North John Street. Liverpool. J. Drake. Birmingham. M. Bingham, Broad Street, Bristol. Fraser and Crawford, George Street, Edin- lnrgh. David IIobertson, Trongate, Glasgow. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 8. SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, 1840. Volume I. THE HOWTH The bold and nearly insulated promontory called the Hill of Howth, which forms the north-eastern terminus of the Bay of Dublin, would in itself supply abundant materials for a topo- graphical volume — and a most interesting work it might be made. For the geologist, botanist, and naturalist, it has an abundant store of attractions, while its various ancient monu- ments of every class and age, from the regal fortress, the sepulchral cairn, and the cromleac of Pagan times, to the early Christian oratory, the abbey and the baronial hall of later years, would supply an equally ample stock of materials for the antiquary and the historian. With all, or most of these features, w r e propose to make our readers somewhat familiar in our future numbers ; but our present purpose is only to give some account of one of its most recently erected structures — the singularly picturesque and beautiful lighthouse, which we have attempted to depict in our prefixed illustration. The Baily lighthouse, as it is popularly called, is situated at the eastern extremity of Howth, on a nearly perpendicular rock, whose vertex is elevated one hundred and ten feet above high-water mark. This rock, which Is nearly insulated, is' the terminus of a long and narrow peninsula of still higher altitude, which stretches out into the sea from the eastern end of the promontory, and whose cliffs are equally precipitous on both sides, so that the most striking and romantic views of the light- LIGHTHOUSE. house can be had from various points, in some commanding the horizon-bound sea, and in others the Bay of Dublin, with all its delightful sceneries of wooded country and mountain ranges. The view' which we have chosen for our illustration is taken from the northern side of this peninsula, that presented from the other side having been already published in several popular works ; but w r e trust that this view will not be deemed less striking or picturesque; and we are of opinion that a more romantic subject of its kind is not to be found in the empire. The lighthouse is itself an object of great interest and beauty, and is constructed according to the most approved models of modern times. Its form is that of a frustrated cone, supporting a lantern which exhibits a fixed bright light. The illumination, according to the system now generally adopted by the Trinity-house, is produced by a set of reflectors ground to the parabolic form, in the foci of which twenty large oil lamps are placed : an outer gallery, lightly but securely railed, surrounds the dome. Connected with the building on its east side, there is a large room, which opens by folding doors on a platform, and where an excellent telescope is kept, by means of which the shoals wdiich obstruct the entrance to the bay may be distinctly observed — namely, the great Kish, and the Bonnet and Burford banks, which are links of the chain extending along the "Wicklow and Wexford coasts, and called 58 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. the Irish grounds. These, though not visible, are distinctly marked in stormy weather by the surf, which breaks over them with uncommon violence, and form a dangerous obstruction to the approach to the bay. The Baily lighthouse was erected by the Ballast Board of Dublin in 1814, previous to which time the Howth light, as it was commonly called, stood on a hill considerably more to the north, and at an elevation of more than three hundred feet above sea level. This circumstance of its great elevation, led, however, to its being abandoned, and the erection of the Baily lighthouse in its place, as it was found to be frequently in- volved in clouds and mist, while lower stations were clear and well defined. The Baily lighthouse is a spot of no less antiquarian than icturesque interest. Its name, which is cognate with the Latin allium, is derived from an ancient circular stone fortress which encircled the apex of the rock, and of which consider- able remains existed previous to the erection of the present buildings. This great keep was fortified by three earthen walls, with deep intervening ditches placed at the entrance to the narrow peninsula, and by extending from one side of it to the other, cut it off completely from the promontory. These works still remain, though in a very ruinous state ; yet they are sufficiently distinct to mark their purpose, and to convey a good idea of the style of military defensive works in use in extremely remote times. They will be found marked on the Ordnance map. In the popular traditions of Howth, these works — like most others in Ireland, the real origin of which has been forgotten — are ascribed to the Danes, a remnant of whom, after the battle of Clontarf in 1014, were supposed to have fortified themselves in this peninsula, till they were carried off in their vessels. But such tradition is wholly opposed to history, and the works themselves exhibit sufficient evidences of its fal- lacy ; they belong to a much earlier age, being nothing less than the remains of Dun-Criomthan (pronounced Dun-Criffan), the fortress of Criomthan Nia-nair, who, according to our ancient histories, ascended the throne of Ireland in the year 74, and who, after being dethroned, died in this fastness in the year 90, after a reign of sixteen years. His sepulchral cairn — crowning the summit of Sliabh-Martin, the highest pinnacle of the ancient Bin-edair — is still to be seen. A century or two more will wholly obliterate these remains of the once powerful prince and warrior Criomthan; but his celebrity belongs to history, and will not thus pass away. It was in the third year of his reign that Agricola fortified the bounds of the Roman empire in Britain from the incursions of the Piets and Irish, the latter, it is said, led by the monarch Criomthan himself, who, according to our annalist, returned to Ireland, loaded with spoil, as thus stated in the record of his death in the Annals of the Four Masters: — “ Criomthan Nia-nair, sixteen years monarch of Ireland, died, after his illustrious foreign expedition. It was from that expedition he brought home the noble spoils ; the golden cha- riot, the golden chess-board studded with three hundred spark- ling gems, and the ceth-criomtlian, which was a parti-coloured shirt, interwoven with gold. He also brought with him a battle-giving sword, having various figures of serpents en- ? raved upon it, and inlaid with gold ; a shield embossed with right silver ; a spear which gave an incurable wound ; a sling from which no erring cast could be thrown ; two hounds linked together by a chain of silver ; together with many other valu- able rarities.” How long after this period Dun-Criomthan existed as a fortress, it would perhaps be impossible now to ascertain, but from the following record in the Annals above quoted, it would appear to have been preserved at least for six centuries : — “ A. C. 646. The battle of Dun-Criomthan was gained by Conall and Ivellach (co-monarchs of Ireland), the two sons of Maolcobha, over Aongus, the son of Donall. Aongus was killed in this battle, as was also Cathasach, the son of Donall, his brother.” These notices, which have not hitherto appeared in an Eng- lish form, of a highly interesting historical remain, not pre- viously identified by the antiquarian topographer, will, it is hoped, impart a new interest to the Baily of Howth ; but, in- dependently of such claims on our attention, its singular pic- turesqueness should have made it long since not only more familiarly known to the visitors of our capital, but also to ourselves. P. JOHNNY HALFACRE ; OR, THE VALUE OF TIME. BY MARTIN DOYLE. Statesmen and professional men, whether occupying stations of eminence, or struggling to attain them, duly estimate the importance of time : they know the value of an hour too well to mis-spend it. The lawyer of high practice, during the term sea- son, steadily pursuing his laborious studies, and determined to overcome every difficulty in his pursuit of professional rank and wealth, rises early, and borrows from the night so many of those hours which are spent in rest and sleep by men of less mental activity, that he leaves himself but a very contracted measure of time for those essential purposes. As to dining out with friends at this period of care and labour, he rarely ventures to indulge in such a recreation ; or if he does on some very particular occasion, such is the discipline of his mind, such the strength of his self-denying habits, that he can rise from the table at a prescribed moment, and with a cool lawyer- like head apply to his nocturnal labours as if there had been no interruption of an exciting nature. The physician— I do not mean him who is regularly called out of church, or from the social party, by his servant, under the pretence of a pressing call, but the real and laborious prac- titioner, to whom minutes are money and fame — will not idle away an hour ; neither will the sober steady shopkeeper, until he has realized an independence, absent himself from his coun- ter as long as there is a reasonable chance of a customer drop- ping in ; nor the operative mechanic, who has to finish his piece of work within a prescribed time, and who will contrive to do it even in despite of all the petty interruptions to which he is liable. Time is proportionally valuable to the meanest peasant who possesses a cabbage garden, and if properly estimated and applied, will add to his comforts in a degree of which, he who is habitually uncalculating and unthrifty in this respect can have but little notion. This I am anxious to impress upon the class of labourers, many of whom I hope can read what I write, for in them I take an especial interest, probably because they are the least cared for of any class in the community. Some of them perhaps will say, with a show of reality, “ If our time were to bring us in such profits as the counsellor and the doctor make, we would be busv too, and no one would see us standing idle, sitting on a ditefi side, or smoking and coshering by the fire- side, or talking to the neighbours, of a wet day, in a torge. If we could be coining guineas as easily as the likes of them makes the money, sitting in their soft chairs, and never doing a hand’s turn of work that would tire their limbs, we would ; but what could we make, after our regular day’s work, if we can get that same, out of a bit of a garden, that -would better us any thing to signify ?” Now, 1 shall show them by actual facts what they could in many cases do. Johnny Halfacre is a little farmer, whom I occasionally see, and who, being in no way connected with me, nor even con- scious that I am particularly observing him, goes on in his own way, without any hint or encouragement from me, or indeed from any one else, as far as I can perceive. Johnny two years ago had not as much land as would cor- respond with his name, which is really genuine ; he had for several previous years but a rood, including the site of his house, and a shed for a pig, and some poultry ; but this rood produced more than half an acre usually does with many, and entirely by his good management and judicious application of time. Johnny had exactly five shillings a-week, paid in full every Friday evening, from his employer, for Johnny never had time to be sick, far less to be drunk, and always avoided broken days, by contriving in-door work, at Mr B.’s, in wet wea- ther ; his wife, who had two children, washed occasionally for a neighbour’s family, thus adding two shillings and sixpence each week to their income, and the contribution of additional suds to the dunghill ; but in other respects they had no ad- vantage over other labourers. Their own little garden added greatly to the support of the family, by judicious cropping and excellent management. Johnny had every year some drills of very early ash-leaved potatoes put down in January, if possible, which he either sold at a very high price in sum- mer at a neighbouring town, or consumed as he found most economical ; and his early sowing of potatoes was far better than the more common practice of the Irish cottier, who leaves his garden uncropped with them until March or April, with THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 59 the view of obtaining a more abundant crop (but of inferior quality) at a late season, when they might be purchased at a mere trifle, and that, too, without the advantage of a second crop of any description to succeed them. Johnny had too much sense for this : he began to dig his dish of potatoes for dinner in the first or second week in July, when his neighbours were half starving, or paying exorbitantly for oatmeal and old potatoes ; and as he dug out his crop, he either sowed tur- nips, with a little ashes and a sprinkling of dung, or planted borecole for the winter ; generally he had some of both, for he found turnips good for his own table in winter, and profitable for the support of some poultry, of which I shall take notice soon. He had also every variety of common kitchen vegeta- bles in small patches, continually changing places, and thus improving the soil ; he had, besides, two hives of bees ; and for the sake of the straw, as well as for rotation, and the sup- port of his pig and poultry, a little rye, vetches, or clover. Johnny, however, only worked in the garden in the evening, after his ordinary day’s work, or, in summer, at sunrise ; yet there never was a weed to be seen in it, for they never had time to grow : by using the hoe for a few moments now and then, they were always kept down, and every waste blade and briar and useless sod around the hedge which enclosed it, was carefully pared and burnt for manure. He had -worked in the large garden of a gentleman who kept an English gardener, who had taught Johnny the use of a sprang in preference to a spade for turning up the earth, especially when too hard for the latter implement ; and though the handle was short, and, according to my own notion, fa- tiguing to the back, the fact was, that Johnny soon preferred it for dispatch and correctness of operation to the long-handled spade which all my other neighbours use. When he cut his own rye or other corn, the ground was usually so hard that a broad spade could not enter it: but Johnny quickly turned it up and broke it with his sprong, and then completely pulve- rized it with what the Englishman called a beck, a three-forked hoe, which, acting like the long tines of a harrow, loosened and rendered the whole perfectly fine, while it brought any latent roots of couch (or scutch grass) that might have escaped on former occasions, to the surface. Johnny’s various vegetables greatly assisted his house- keeping. He had often a good bowl of soup, flavoured with leeks, onions, carrots, &c, made with the least conceivable portion of meat, but thickened with barley, properly shelled, and prepared like French barley, but at only one-third of the price of that which is sold under such denomination in the shops ; and his family always breakfasted on porridge, or coarse bread of their own baking, with or without milk, ac- cording to circumstances — for Johnny at this time had no cow — sometimes washed down with a cup of tea, and more generally in winter with a mug of light and good table beer, which the Englishman taught Johnny to brew at Mr B.’s brew-house. Half a bushel of malt, with a quarter of a pound of hops, produced ten gallons of unadulterated beer which could not be bought any where, and the grains (given to his pig) fully counterbalanced the cost of fuel. Even at this time he killed a pig every year, and never wanted a small supply of salt meat for his cabbage or beans, which with this combination of flesh went farther in this way towards the ac- tual supply of his dinner, and sometimes of his supper too (for any remainder of the dinner was heated and peppered up for the supper, with the addition of a broken loaf, or a skillet full of potatoes), than can be imagined by the poor man who has never cultivated his garden in the same manner — whose cabbages are of little value from want of bacon, and whose allotment, producing but one crop instead of two each year, is thus of but half its proper value to him ; besides, with him potatoes succeed potatoes continually, until the ground becomes sick of yielding them. But, further, Johnny Halfacre’s garden, in which he seldom ceased from doing something in the summer evenings as long as daylight lasted, greatly aided in supporting his pig at that time when food is so dear and scarce for swine. The tops of blossoming bean-stalks (by the plr eking off of which the crop is improved) and other vegetable waste, besides vetches and rye — the latter both in the green and ripe state — gave him sufficient food to keep the pig in fair order, with a little help from other sources ; and the pig, by being always well littered, and supplied with this food, gave a return in most ex- cellent manure, which with other sources of a similar kind, and the economical distribution of crops, supplied the entire garden with fertilizing matter. What the other means of providing manure were, ought to be mentioned, for the man’s system is of such easy application that it only requires to be stated in order to be followed. For two or three evenings in the summer before last, I per- ceived Johnny Halfacre without his coat, rolling a wheel- barrow frequently from an adjacent common to a corner of his garden separated from the road by an old weather-beaten paling. When I had leisure to see what he had been doing at this time, I found that he had marked off an oblong space for four geese and a gander, which he had bought from Bridget Gozzard at rather a high price, partly for the sake of their powerful manure, which, combined with other substances, is good for stimulating the growth of vegetables, as well as for the profit which he expected to realize by rearing goslings for the market. Johnny was aware that fat green geese are worth from six to ten shillings each, in the very early season in the great English markets, and are also profitable if reared for the stubbles at Michaelmas ; and he did not see why he and his industrious wife should not realise a profit as well as English housewives by the breeding of such poultry, when a steam-packet and a rail-road could take them off even to Lon- don in a few hours. Cocks and hens would ruin his own garden, and bring him into disputes with his neighbours — he had the advantage of a run on the common for geese — there was a pond of water near his house — and therefore he gave them and ducks the preference. He first built his back wall two feet and a half high and ten feet in length, with the sods from the common, and then put down ten upright stakes in front, every pair answering for the jambs of each compart- ment, with a board stretching the whole length across, and which formed the front suoport of his rustic roof ; from this board he laid rafters to the top of the back wall, and having first inter-woven some small branches of a tree through these rafters, he laid as many scraw-s (thinly pared grassy sods) as secured the whole roof from rain. The jambs were then con- tracted to a narrow opening, for the sake of shelter and warmth, by more sods laid one over the other. By this simple process of construction he formed a separate chamber for each bird, with a yard in front six feet broad and ten long, and with an opening through the paling at the road side, by which the inmates could go in and out at their plea- sure. His rye assisted in feeding them, and he also culti- vated grey peas for them, which are excellent for fattening ; and with cabbage and lettuce leaves, the pods of beans, and other green food, he afterwards kept them in high condition ; and in the succeeding year, when other young geese were dying of disease, occasioned by want of shelter, and from starvation, his were thriving. And to the credit of this worthy man and Iris Avife I must mention, that the feather-plucker was indignantly sent aw ay from his door whenever he came round for the execrable pur- pose of plucking the geese alive. Johnny’s wfife would as soon have let him pull out the hairs of her own head, as give up one of her birds to his barbarous hands ; and the consequence was, that while their neighbours’ geese were miserably crawling about, Avith draggling and mutilated wings and smarting bo- dies, until many of them died, in their miseries invoking as it w r ere in their dying screams shame and curses on their unfeel- ing owners, Johnny Halfacre’s geese strutted about on the common, with an independent and unconstrained step, as if conscious of their security from the tortures to Avhich their fel- lows had been doomed. HOW JOHNNY HALFACRE BECAME A LITTLE FARMER. If it be true, and it unquestionably is, that “ he who des- piseth small things, shall fall by little and little,” the con- verse is, I think, no less so — that he who pays attention to little matters will rise by degrees. Mr B. having narrowly observed Johnny’s general good conduct and extreme industry as a common labourer, put him in possession, two years ago, of a field adjoining his cottage and garden, which contains about six statute acres, and Avhich fortunately was in good condition. Johnny at first Avas afraid to accept the tempting offer, at which any other labourer Avould have jumped, on the sincere and modest plea that he had no capital for such a weighty speculation. He did not Avish to grasp at more than he could properly manage ; but Mr B. set him at ease, by telling him that he considered health, industry, and skill, sufficient capital for Johnny to possess, as he himself Avould not only build a barn, cow- sheet, ass-house, and pig-styes, but put the boun- dary fence into perfect order (according to the frequent 60 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. practice of British landlords), and lend Johnny a sum suffi- cient for the purchase of every thing necessary to give him a good start, charging him only five per cent on the advances. Mr B., who in riding over his property often “went by the field of the slothful,” which “was all grown over with thorns and nettles that covered the face of it, and the stone wall whereof was bryken down,” wished to render Johnny an exemplar of superior management to other tenants. I shall not trouble the reader with all the details of Johnny’s management during the two last years, but shall very briefly notice those particulars of husbandry which are new to my countrymen of the same class. He has not subdivided the field, nor does he intend to do so, as he values every foot of it too much for such waste. He does not keep a horse, nor will he do so, unless his holding be increased ; but he keeps a don- key and a well-constructed cart. As yet he has no cow, not having his land in sufficiently clean order for laying down any part of it with grasses ; but he has two yards full of pigs, which he keeps for the sake of the rich manure they supply. I do not advocate his system altogether, but merely relate the most striking features of it. His pig-yards are very commo- dious, and well arranged for weaning, fattening, &c ; and his Stock now consists of a sow with ten young ones in one yard, and six store pigs in another. These are in fine condition — fed on vetches, rye (of which the grain is now, July 20, ripe), and wash, consisting of pollards and water ; their food next week, and for some time after, will be beans, ripe and unripe, according to their successive stages. These pigs are now ten months old, and have never been outside their yard, nor do they seem to be (compared with pigs of the same age which have had the run of the common) injured by confinement. Being always highly littered in the yard, having the sleeping chamber kept perfectly clean, and being abundantly fed, they sport about the straw, and seem quite contented. But with- out such care and comfort young swine will certainly not thrive in imprisonment. Johnny will fatten up these pigs in October for sale in No- vember, with barley-meal, pollards, toppings, and potatoes ; and judging from his success last year under similar circum- stances, they will weigh (at the age of fourteen months) nearly two cwt. each. He does not intend to sell any of his ten young ones until they shall have been fattened in the same way ; but their mother will be put up as soon as possible after they shall be weaned. He does not expect to realize any ready money by rearing and fattening them ; when sold, his stock will merely pay for their keep — he considers the large quantity of valuable manure a sufficient return. He has hired a labourer to work with him, and will incur but little expense for horse-labour, as he and his assistant together are able to dig an acre very deeply in ten days ; and he considers one such digging equal to three light ploughings; and from his experience of the last year, he is of opinion that spade-husbandry is far cheaper than that which is effected by the plough. As he reaps his vetches and rye for the pigs, he cuts out the stubbles With a bean-hoe for litter ; and for the perfect cleansing of the ground before he digs it up, he collects the stubbles and clears them from earth with a little harrow drawn by the ass, and will pursue the same plan with all his stubbles. Last year he cut and bound half an acre of wheat himself with a fagging-hook, which I have described in my Cyclopaedia, in one day ; and he and his labourer intend to cut down an acre this year in the same way. I could enumerate many other particulars of this man’s ex- cellent husbandry — such as burning the clay of headlands for manuring his turnip-crop and cabbage seedling beds — but I fear to be tedious, and therefore shall only add, that Johnny Halfacre is a true exemplification of the sacred proverb, that “the soul of the diligent shall be made fat.” He is always diligent (not only in seed-time and harvest, but all the year round), but never so busy with his field or garden crops as to choke the seed of God’s word in his heart, and render that unfruitful by sloth or negligence. As far as I can judge, he does not permit his worldly to supersede his eternal interests ; and as he knows the value of the present time, so does he estimate a right the infinitely superior import ance of that which is future. Idleness The worst vices springing from the worst prin- ciples — the excesses of the libertine, and the outrages of the plunderer — usually take their rise from early and unsubdued idleness. ^Farr's Discourses on Education. LIFE AND ITS ILLUSIONS. « Lean not on Earth — ’twill pierce thee to the heart — A broken reed at best, but oft a spear, On whose sharp point Peace bleeds, and Hope expires.” Yocng. We are but Shadows ! None of all those things, Formless and vague, that flit upon the wings Of wild Imagination round thy couch, When Slumber seals thine eyes, is clothed with such An unreality as Human Life, Cherished and clung to as it is ; the fear, The thrilling hope, the agonizing strife, Are not more unavailing there than here. To him who reads what Nature w'ould pourtray, What speaks the night? A comment on the day. Day dies Night lives — and, as in dumb derision, Mocks the past phantom with her own vain vision 1 Man shuts the Volume of the Past for aye— A blind slave to the all-absorbing Present, He courts debasement, and from day to day His wheel of toil revolves, revolves incessant ; And well may earth-directed zeal be blighted ! And well may Time laugh selfish hopes to scorn 1 He lives in vain wdiose reckless years have slighted The humbling truth which Penitence and grey Hairs teach the Wise, that such cold hopes are born Only to dupe and to be thus requited ! How many such there be !— in whom the thorn Which Disappointment plants festers in vain, Save as the instrument of sleepless pain — Who bear about with them the burning feeling And fire of that intolerable word Which, inly searching, pierceth, like a sword, The breast whose wounds thenceforward know no healing ! Behold the overteeming globe ! Its millions Bear mournful witness. Cycles, centuries roll, That Man may madly forfeit Heaven’s pavilions, To hug his darling trammels : — Yet the soul, The startled soul, upbounding from the mire Of earthliness, and all alive with fears, Unsmothered by the lethargy of years Whose dates are blanks, at moments will inquire, “ And whither tends this wasting struggle ? Hath The living universe no loftier path Than that we toil on ever ? Must the eye Of Hope but light a desert ? Shall the high Spirit of Enterprise be chilled and bowed And grovel in darkness, reft of all its proud Prerogatives ? Alas ! and must Man barter The Eternal for the Perishing — but to be The world’s applauded and degraded martyr, Unsouled, enthralled, and never to be free ?” Ancient of Days ! First Cause ! Adored ! Unknown ! Who wert, and art, and art to come ! The heart Yearns, in its lucid moods, to Thee alone ! Thy name is Love : thy word is Truth ; thou art The fount of Happiness — the source of Glory — Eternity is in thy hands, and Power— Oh, from that sphere unrecognised by our Slow souls, look down upon a world which, hoary In Evil and in Error though it be, Retains even yet some trace of that primeval Beauty that bloomed upon its brow ere Evil And Error wiled it from Thy Love and Thee ! Look down, and if, -while human brows are brightening In godless triumph, angel eyes be weeping, Publish thy will in syllables of lightning And sentences of thunder to the Sleeping ! Look down, and renovate the waning name Of Goodness, and relume the waning light Of Truth and Purity ! — that all may aim At one imperishable crown— the bri ght Guerdon which they who by untired and holy Exertion overcome the world, inhei’it — The Self-denying, the Peaceable, the Lowly, The truly Merciful, the Poor in spirit ! So shall the end of thine all-perfect plan At length be realised in erring Man. M THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 61 DONNYBROOK. Verily, Donnybrook fair is, to all intents and purposes, “ dead and gone for the modern wretched assemblage of hungry- looking cattle, dogs’-meat horses, measly swine, and forlorn- looking human creatures, obliged to content themselves with staring at the exterior of the show-booths, for want of the means to visit the interior, no more resembles the Donnybrook of the past, than a troop of the old “ bulkies,” armed with their Arcadian crooks, and helineted with their old woollen night- caps, resembled a squadron of lancers. Alas ! alas ! how every thing is altered ! No longer does the quiet citizen dread the approach of Trinity Sunday ; no longer does he think it necessary to barricade his windows, and postpone exterior painting for a week or two, in order to save his glass and the decorator’s labour from the nocturnal industry of the gentle College students. The students never mustered in much force at Donnybrook, because it unluckily came during the long vacation ; but there were enough at any time to kick up a shindy or scrimmage (by modern innovators called “ a row”), for, between those who resided in town, and such as for various reasons kept the vacation within the College walls, a pretty decent muster could, upon an emergency, be called together. It was upon the 26th of August — isn’t it strange that I should recollect the day of the month, though I forget the year ! — that Bob O’Gorman, Dan Sweeny, Dick Hall, and a few other under-graduates of T.C.D., resolved to go to the fair and have a spree. Dick was a little, delicate, effeminate-looking “ould crab,” and so smock-faced that he would easily pass for a girl, and a rather good-looking one, if dressed in female attire. But Dick’s effeminacy was confined to his looks, for his muscular power far exceeded that of any man an inch or two more in stature, or a stone more in weight. He was a per- fect master of the small-sword, had no match at single-stick ; and woe to the unhappy wretch who fell under the discipline of his little bony fists, for he was an accomplished amateur in the science of pugilism, then but little known and less prac- tised than subsequently by gentlemen. On the present occasion it was resolved that Dick should sustain the character of a girl, and much fun was antici- pated from the punishment that the remainder of the party would inflict upon any presumptuous individual who should dare to molest the modest fair one. At the end of the double range of tents called “ Dame- street,” was one called “ the Larkers and as this was uni- formly crowded by citizens of Dublin, it was scarcely possible for any one, residing but for a month in town, not to be recog- nised by some person present, who immediately passed the name of the new-comer round, and he was surprised (if a raw one) to hear himself addressed by name, by persons whom he never saw in his life before. It was at the entrance of this tent that a countryman stood, attired in the usual large frieze over-coat (which, from its being worn in summer as well as winter, might lead a stranger to suppose that there seldom or never is a hot day in Ireland), and accompanied by a pretty, bashful-looking girl, apparently fresh from the “interior.” After gaping for a considerable time, some gentlemen, amused by the wonder- ment that he exhibited, and probably somewhat touched by his companion’s charms, called to him to “ come in.” With some reluctance he accepted the invitation, and, fearful of in- truding upon the “gintlemin,” seated himself awkwardly upon the end of a form ; up it tilted, and down he went, to the great delight of the beholders. Having gathered himself up, he reseated himself more firmly, placing “ Biddy” near him, she having declined all offers of other accommodation pressed on her by the company. Paddy O’Neill (the name by which he announced himself), having been pretty well plied with punch, had grown very voluble, and seemed to be beginning to feel himself quite at home, had told many queer stories, and made his entertainers laugh very heartily, when two elderly gentlemen, closely muffled, entered rather stealthily, and sliding over, suddenly seated themselves behind Paddy. Biddy, who had been hitherto quite silent, answering every compliment or remark addressed to her only with a smile, gave Paddy a nudge, and whispered something into his ear, that caused liim to turn and gaze at the new arrivals. “ Arrah, thin, Docthor M , agrah, who’d ha’ thought o’ meetin’ you here?” said he, addressing one of them, who sprang at the mention of his name, as if he had sat on the point of a stray nail ; he and his companion Dr H- , both senior fellows of Trinity College, having disguised themselves, as they thought effectually, for the purpose of seeing, for the first time in their lives, the fair, and the ftin of it, without being recognised in such an uncanonical assemblage. With this ob- ject they had avoided exposing themselves to the risk of walk- ing down the tent, but had merely slipped in to reconnoitre from behind the shelter of the frieze-coated customer, who now, so inopportunely and innocently, had announced the name of one of them. “ Hold your tongue, sir !” said Dr M. ; “ you mistake me, sir. “ Arrah, docthor darlint, sure iv I mistake ye, ye need’nt get into sich a comflusthration about id ; bud sure I know ye too well to mistake ye. Sure, aint I the boy that had the misforthin to dhrop yer honor’s riverince into the bog-hole, whin ye wint out to make believe ye were snipe shootin’, down at Colonel Thrench’s, last Candlemas was a twelmonth.” “ I don’t know you, sir !” roared the doctor in an agony, hoping by his ferocity to overawe the countryman into silence ; but Paddy had taken too much punch to notice the tone, and seemed incapable of entertaining or following up more than one idea at a time, and the one now before him was that of forcing himself, will he nill he, upon the recollection of the worthy doctor. “ Ye don’t know me ! — well, listen to that ! — ye don’t know me! — oh, well, iv that does’nt flog! Arrah, thin, maybe ye don’t recollect the bog-hole that ye wanted me to carry ye over, an’ ye war so mortial heavy that my fut slipped, an’ I had the luck to fall aji my face, jist at the very edge iv the slush, an’ ye pitched right over, head foremost, into the very middle iv id ; an’ iv id was’nt for the good luck that yer legs stuck out, jist the laste taste in life, by which I got a hould iv ye, sure would’nt ye be lost intirely ? An’ don’t jye” “ Hold your tongue, you infernal scoundrel r roared the enraged doctor, who saw that every eye was fixed upon him, and every one’s attention drawn to the spot, from the eager- ness of manner and stentorian voice of Paddy, whose remi- niscence had produced a roar of laughter. Escape, too, was utterly hopeless, for the tent had been filling, and the door- way was blocked up by those who were pressing forward from the outside to get a view of the speaker. “Hold your tongue, sirrah ; you mistake me for some one else. I never was thrown into a bog-hole in my life.” “ Oh ! pillelieu ! meellia murther ! listen to that — as iv anv one that iver seen Docthor M — ov Thrinity College could iver mistake him agin ; bud sure Docthor H — there ’ill may be help out yer mimory [Dr H — gave a writhe, for he had hoped to have escaped, at least] ; sure he was at the colonel's whin ye war brought home in the muck.” This announcement of the names and address of both the unfortunate betrayed, was received with a shout, whilst Paddy’s earnestness to free himself from the charge of having blundered, increased every moment, and reminiscence followed reminiscence, each in a louder tone than the preceding, until his argument became a perfect shout, whilst the unluckv S.F.T.C.D.’s strove to out-bellow him with their denials, and the audience laughed, shouted, and danced with glee at the fun. “ I protest,” bawled Dr H — , “ that I do not know Colonel Trench. You mistake, my honest man; I never was at his place in my life. My friend here, Dr M — , knows him, and has been there often ; but I have not, I assure you.” “ Oh ! you ass,” bellowed Dr M — , “ what do you acknow- ledge my name for ? ’Tis no wonder they call you ‘ Leather- head H— .’ ” A renewed roar followed this piece of blundering recrimina- tion. “ Never at Colonel Thrench’s ! — not you ! — oh ! ye desavin’ ould villain !” screamed the hitherto silent Biddy. “ Not you ! — Do ye know me ! — do ye ! — do ye ! ! — Do-o-o-o-o ye ! ! !” every repetition of “ do ye ” being" louder and longer than the last, until she finished in a terrific long shriek, squeezing her hands together upon her knees, and stamping alternately with her feet, with a rapidity that gave the effect of a shake to her voice. “ I do protest and declare,” shouted the worthy doctor, “ that I never, to my knowledge, saw' your face before.” “ Arrah, Biddy, avourneen, is this the ould Turk that ye tould me about, bud would’nt mintion his name, that was so' imperaut to vo ? Scraub his face, the ould thief ! and let me THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL B2 see iv he dar purvint ye, my darlin’. Tache him to behave himself to unpurtected faymales !” Biddy, who seemed quite inclined to forestall her com- panion’s orders, had sprung upon the unlucky doctor before the sentence was half finished. He strove in vain to shake her off; she clung to him like a wild-cat, screaming, shriek- ing, scolding, biting, scratching, and tearing, until at length she maddened him past all endurance by pulling two handfuls of hair successively out of the little that remained on his skull, for which he repaid her with two furious blows. The spectators, who had hitherto looked on, and merely laughed at the entire affair as an excellent joke, had under- gone a change of sentiment upon hearing the inuendo con- tained in Paddy’s last speech ; and, no longer considering the old gentlemen as a pair of innocents amusingly “ blown,” they now looked upon them as a pair of wicked old profligates, worse than young ones ; and one, more zealous than the rest, shouting out “ shame ! to strike the girl,” stretched Hr H — with a blow. Hr M., irascible at all times, now lost all self-possession, and, unable to reach his friend’s new assailant, turned furiously upon the cause of all his woe, and bestowed a shower of blows with his stick upon Paddy, before the latter had time to bring his cudgel to parry them. lie soon recovered himself, however, and from defendant quickly became assailant. Many of the bystanders indignantly called out, “ Murder the ould villain — knock out his brains, Paddy. That’s right, Biddy ; flitther him !” and several proceeded to give a helping hand to the good work ; but others thought it w r as a shame for a whole lot of people to fall upon two, and in their love for jus- tice they ranged themselves alongside the reverend doctors, shouting, “fair play’s a jewel!” The fight thickened, volun- teers joining either rank every moment, in the laudable en- deavour to keep up the balance of power. Biddy had quitted her grip of the doctor, and was now, to the surprise of those who had time to look about them (and they were few), en- gaged in the endeavour to wrench a stick out of the hands of a huge hulk of an Englishman, who, having merely gone to see the fun at Honnybrook, without the most remote idea of join- ing in a fight, could not be persuaded of the necessity of giving his stick, as he did not intend to use it himself, to one who did, and that one “ a female !” At first he laughed ; but he was quickly obliged to put forth all his strength to retain it, and, whilst twisting about, he caught a stray blow that floored him ; he fell against a table, which of course over- set ; the confusion increased, when a shout suddenly arose, “ Hurrah for Hr M — ! Hurrah for Hr H — ! College to the rescue ! — Trinity ! — Trinity !” At the well-known war-cry of the students, several changed sides ; those who had just been defending the doctors now turned upon them, whilst many of their late assailants ranged themselves on their side. Tbe citizens, thinking that the number of students must be small, rushed to the spot, to pay off sundry old scores ; but one would imagine that the cry of “Trinity! Trinity!” which resounded on all sides, was a sort of spell, or incantation, that raised spirits from the earth, so many voices responded to the call. The unfortunate doctors, who had just expected nothing short of utter annihilation, felt their spirits rise at the pro- spect of aid and rescue, and bellowed with might and main, “ Trinity! Trinity!” and in a few minutes they were the nucleus of a fight in which the whole fair had joined. “ The poliss ! — the poliss ! — here come the bloody po- liss !” was now the cry ; and the horse police dashed into the mob with their customary ardour, their spurs fastened in their horses’ flanks causing them to plunge, and bite, and kick most furiously, and laying about them with their swords, cutting at every thing and every one within their reach ; luckily they did not know the sword exercise, and, therefore, when they struck with the edge, it was only by accident. In a jiffy, the reverend seniors, caught in the very act of shouting “ Trinity !” were handcuffed, as were also the Englishman, who got a blow of a sabre from a policeman that nearly took off his ear, for attempting to expostulate ; Paddy, who sub- mitted quietly ; and Biddy, after a severe tussle, in which she reefed one policeman’s face, and nearly bit the thumb off another. They were all put together into a jingle, and con- ducted by a mounted escort to town ; the police hurrying them for fear of a rescue, by keeping continually whaling the driver with the flats of their swords, and prodding the horse with the points, which so enraged the jarvy, that when he got near the corner of Leeson-street, Stephens-green, where two or three hundred of his brethren were assembled, having whipped his Rosinante into a gallop, he drove against a brewer’s dray, by which his traces were smashed, his horse set free, the jingle locked fast, and he, springing off his perch, shouted out, “down with the bloody poliss !” In an instant the mob rushed upon them. Paddy and Biddy, with an alacrity and agility truly astonishing, sprang from the lofty vehicle, plunged into the crowd (where there were plenty of willing hands to free them from the handcuffs), and escaped. Nor were the worthy doctors slow in following their example, the only prisoner that remained being the be- wildered Englishman, who suffered “ only” a three months’ incarceration in his majesty’s jail of Newgate for going to see Honnybrook, and the fun at it, his sentence having been mercifully mitigated, in consideration of its being his first offence ! “ Well,” said Hr H — , when he went with his head ban- daged up, a shade over his right eye, and about twenty bits of sticking plaster stuck over his face, to visit Hr M — (who was unable to leave his bed for a week), “ well, what a fool I was to be persuaded by you to go to Honnybrook fair ! what a pretty exhibition we would have made at the police office this morning ! Was it not most fortunate that we made our escape ?” “ I have been thinking,” said (or rather groaned) Hr M — , “ who that scoundrelly country fellow could be. I never fell into a bog in my life — that was all a lie ; and still the black- guard’s face was familiar to me.” “ I think he was very like that scapegrace Robert O’Gor- man, only that he had light hair ; and though I could take my oath I know nothing of that infamous little wretch that they called Biddy, yet I do think I have seen her face before — . hum” — “ Could it have been that he disguised himself, eh ! I’ll inquire into it, and if he did, by” — “ I think,” my dear M — , “ you had better let it alone ; the less ice say about it the better. You know we really led the fight — that’s a fact that can’t be denied ; though it sur- prises me how we were hooked into it.” A rustle at the door, followed by a loud knock, announced that the newspaper had been thrust into the letter-box, from which Hr H — immediately extracted it ; and as he glanced over the page, the following paragraph met his eye. It was headed “ Bisgraceful and fatal riot at Honnybrook “ It is with mingled feelings of indignation, horror, and con- tempt, that we feel bound, in discharge of our imperative, onerous, and painful duty to the public, to give publicity to one of the most astounding, frightful, and overwhelming facts which it has ever fallen to our lot, as faithful journalists, to record. The peaceable, gentle, and innoxious inhabitants of the village of Honnybrook, and the casual visitors who sought a little innocent recreation at the fair now being holden, were yesterday evening thrown into a state of the utmost alarm, confusion, and dismay, by a barefaced attempt to carry off by brutal force a young girl from the guardianship and protec- tion of her brother It appears that they had gone into a tent to rest and refresh themselves (having probably over-exerted their light fantastic toes), when their savage assailants (re- specting whose rank and station various rumours are afloat, which for the present we forbear from mentioning) rushed upon them, and endeavoured to force her away. The indig- nant bystanders interfered to prevent the outrage, when will it, can it be believed ? our pen trembles, and a cold thrill runs through us as we write it ! — the worse than Indian war-whoop, the yell of the collegians, was raised, and their numbers would in all human probability have succeeded, but for the timely interference of the police, to whose humanity, promptitude, and forbearance, upon the trying occasion, too much praise cannot be given. The riot was not quelled until the military were called out, and by three o’clock this morning all was again quiet. Up to the time of going to press we had only heard of sixteen lives being lost. Second Edition — We stop the press to announce that no lives have been lost ; but Sir Patrick Bunn’s, the Meath, and Mercer’s hospitals, are crowded with wounded. N.B. The soldiers were not called out. Third Edition. — Hr Fitzgerald has just informed us that there are no wounded in either Sir Patrick’s, the Meath, or Mercer’s.” “ Well,” said Hr II — , “if they are not there, we at least know where some of them are.” Naisi. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 63 WHAT IS THE USE OF WATER? Why is it that of the whole surface of this globe, we may consider that three-fourths are covered by water, and that only one-fourth is in a condition to be permanently inhabited by human beings ? Is there any great object in nature served by this ? Is there any law of nature which would prevent the proportion being one-fourth water to three-fourths land, or even less water ? In fact, what after all is the great use of water upon the large scale in nature ? First of all, although three-fourths of the globe are now covered with water, there is no reason to suppose that it has been always so. On the contrary, it is quite certain that the proportion between land and water has changed very much and very frequently ; that the whole continent of Europe was at one time the bed of an immense sea, when probably there was a great continent where the Pacific Ocean is now spread ; that even Old Ireland was once not merely what Admiral Yorke wished her to be, forty-eight hours under water, but probably many thousand years in that condition; and that the great tract of limestone which occupies all the centre of the country, is nothing more than a collection of the skeletons of shell-fish, her first inhabitants, which by time and pressure have been converted into the hard material of which we build our houses, and which we burn into lime. There is thus no particular reason why there should be three times as much water at present as land, but it is easy to show that water on the great, as well as on the small scale, is of paramount importance in nature. Water is a portion of the food of all living beings. In the case of animals, the bodies from whence they derive nutriment are so varied and so complex, that to illustrate the peculiar part which water plays in each, would occupy too much space. In all our drinks, even in ardent spirits, there is a very large quantity of water, and our solid food very seldom contains less than nine-tenths of its weight of water. The living body is even less solid. A man weighing 150 lbs. would, if perfectly dried, weigh not more than 10 lbs., the other 140 lbs. being water. It is to the existence of this quantity of water that we owe the elasticity, the softness, and pliability of the differ- ent portions of our frame, the animal tissues being, when dry, hard and brittle as dry glue. The nutrition of vegetables furnishes a beautiful and simple example of the use of water in nature. The body of the ve- getable, the proper wood, may be considered as being com- posed of water and of charcoal; and hence, when we heat a piece of wood until we decompose it, the water is expelled, and carbon or charcoal remains behind. In order to grow, a plant must therefore get water and charcoal in a form fit for its use, that is, in such a form as it can make food of, and di- gest them. For this, the carbon is supplied in the carbonic acid which the air contains, and the water in the state of vapour which the air contains also, and which is continually descending under the form of dew and rain to moisten the leaves and the roots of the plants, when it has been absorbed into the ground. All the water which is absorbed by plants is not assimilated, or digested; a great part is again thrown out by the surface of the leaves ; for, precisely as the air which an animal expires from the lungs in breathing is loaded with va- pour, so is there a process of perspiration from the surface of the leaves, which are the lungs of plants. For the forma- tion of substances which are peculiar to certain plants, other substances are required as food, thus, most plants require nitrogen, which is accordingly furnished abundantly in at- mospheric air; others must have access to sulphur, in order to flourish; but this depends, as it were, upon particular branches of manufacture in which the plant is engaged ; for its own support, for making wood, and the tissue of its leaves and ves- sels, it uses only water and carbonic acid. ybe conversion of water into steam or invisible vapour by boiling, is one of the best known facts in science ; but by a little attention we can observe that this change takes place at almost ail temperatures, although much less rapidly. Thus, if a little water be laid in a plate, it is soon dried up, and wet clothes, by being hung up in the air, are very soon completely dried. Even below the temperature at which water freezes, it still evaporates ; and thus, when a fall of snow is succeeded by a continued frost, the snow gradually disappears from the fields without having melted, evaporating while yet solid. From the surface of ail the water of the globe, therefore, there is continually ascending a stream of watery vapour ; but as the proportion of sea is so much greater than that of land, we may look upon the ocean as being the source of the watery vapour of the air upon the large scale. Now, watery vapour is lighter than air, and hence the vapour, as soon as formed, ascends in the air like a balloon, until it arrives at a part of the air which is of its own specific gravity. The air in these higher regions is extremely cold, and the va- pour can no longer maintain itself under the form of invisible steam : it is condensed, and would immediately fall back to its source as rain or hail, but for a singular property which it acquires at the moment of being vaporized. When water evaporates, it becomes highly electrified, and could attract a feather, or other light bodies, like a stick of sealing-wax which has been rubbed briskly on a woollen cloth. Now, the vapour which passes off is electrified also ; and while in this state of electricity, it, on arriving at the colder regions of the air, cannot condense, to form liquid water. The minute par- ticles of the water repel each other too violently, in virtue of their electricities, to form drops, but they constitute the great loose collections of clouds which diversify so much the ap- pearance of our sky. The clouds being thus highly electrical, and being very light, are attracted by the tops of mountains and high lands, or by elevated buildings ; and, giving off their electricity, the particles of water coalesce, to form drops which descend as rain. In this country the air is so damp that in ge- neral the discharge of the electricity of the clouds takes place quietly and silently ; but in summer, and in dry climates, it produces the vivid flashings and injurious effects of the light- ning, and the re-echoed rattle of the thunder-clap. When water is cooled, it diminishes in bulk like other bodies ; but at a particular temperature it deviates from the general law of contraction, and by doing so, becomes, perhaps, the most striking example of providential design that is to be met with in inorganic nature. Cold water is specifically heavier than warm water, in consequence of the contraction it has undergone, and hence will sink in it, as water would sink in oil. Now, if w r e consider the surface of a lake exposed to the cooling action of a wintry wind, the water which is first cooled becomes heavier, and, sinking to the bottom, is replaced by the warmer water, which floats up to the top ; there is thus a current established of cold water descending and of warmer water rising up. This continues until all the water in the lake has been cooled down to the temperature at which its specific gravity is greatest, which is about 40 degrees, or about eight degrees above the point at which it begins to freeze. The action of the cold wind continuing, the water at the surface is still further cooled ; but now, in place of contracting, it expands — instead of becoming heavier, it becomes lighter, and remains floating upon the surface. It is then still further cooled, and finally its temperature being reduced to 32 degrees, it freezes, and a layer of ice is formed on the surface of the lake. This ice, and the cold water next it, are impermeable to heat : it actually serves as a blanket to the water at 40 degrees which is below", preventing the escape of the heat, and retaining it at that temperature, sufficient for the purposes to which it is sub- servient ; for at the temperature of 40 degress, the life and enjoyments of all the various tribes of animals and vegetables which reside permanently under the surface of the water are perfectly secured, at least for a very considerable time ; the water holding dissolved a quantity of oxygen for the animal respiration, and the vegetables living on the carbonic acid which is formed by the respiration of the fish. On the ap- proach of spring, the warmer air, and the rays of the more elevated sun, act directly on the surface of the ice, and each portion of water formed by melting, becoming heavier, sinks, so as to expose the ice itself to the source of heat. Thus the ice is rapidly dissolved, and after a few days the lake throws off its wintry aspect altogether. Now, if water did not possess this peculiarity of being heaviest at the particular temperature of 40 degrees — if it contracted according as it was cooled, up to the moment of freezing, as almost all other liquids do, what would be the result ? The cold wind acting on the surface of the lake, and the water be- coming heavier by being cooled, the circulation would continue until all the water had been cooled to the point at which it freezes. The ice would then form indifferently in all portions of it, at the bottom and in the centre, as well as on the sur- face ; and by the continued action of the source of cold, the wind, the whole mass of water in the lake would be frozen into a solid block of ice. The watery sap in the vessels of the aquatic plants, the blood in fishes and other animals inhabit- ing the water, would be equally frozen, and all these living beings consequently killed. Further, on the approach of sum- 64 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. mer, by the first heating action of the air and sun, a layer of ice, of a few inches thick upon the surface, would be melted, but the water thus produced would, by being impenetrable to heat, prevent the great body of ice below from being affected. Just as, in reality, the cold water at the surface prevents the warmer water below from being cooled, so then it would pre- vent the colder ice below from being warmed ; and hence the heats of summer passing over without the melting process extending beyond a few feet in depth, the first cold days of the next winter would solidify all again. In every country, therefore, where at present water is frozen at all in winter, we should have there established the reign of perpetual frost. By the presence of such large masses of ice, the temperature of the ground would be so much reduced, that, in place of the rich herbage of our meadows, and the luxuriant produce of our corn-fields, we should have our coun- try yielding a scanty support to wandering herds of deer, in the mosses and lichens that could be scraped up from beneath the snow. The oaks, the beeches, the horse-chesnuts, which give such beauty to our sylvan scenery, would disappear, and the monotony of wildernesses of the Scotch fir and of the spruce would be varied only by patches of stunted birch. The countries nearer the tropics would be gradually brought into the same condition, by the depression of their mean tempera- ture ; and thus, in a short time after water had ceased to possess this peculiar property, the whole surface of the globe would be reduced to the condition of which we now happily only read in the tales of the arctic voyagers ; and all commerce, manufac- tures, and civilization, would be banished from the earth. Of such value is this little peculiarity of water ! A property of water, -which, however, unlike the former, it shares with all other liquids, is, that when it freezes it gives out a large quantity of heat ; and that conversely, in order that ice may melt, it must obtain, from some other source, a quan- tity equally considerable. Consequently, water freezes and ice melts very slowly ; and that it should melt thus slowly, is of essential importance in animated nature. If in spring or summer, when vegetable life is in activity, -when the develope- roent of leaves, of flowers, and fruit, is at its greatest energy, and all the vessels of the plant are distended with its nutritious juices, were it suddenly exposed to cold, the sap -would be frozen, and by the expansion of the ice the vegetable tissues torn to pieces, and the plant killed. In the thin extremities, as in the leaves, such is the effect of the frost of a single night ; but as the fluids, yielding but gradually up their latent heat, solidify very slowly, the injury does not extend so far as to be beyond the remedial powers of the plant itself. In another way, however, the peculiar latent heat of water is of still more importance. If there was no large collection of water on the globe, the change of seasons would be amazingly more rapid and more remarkable than they at present are. A change in the direction of the wind, the alteration which a few weeks should effect in the position of the sun, would transfer us from the depth of the severest colds of winter to the summer heats. These colds and heats would also be much greater than they at present are, and an approximation to this actually occurs in countries far distant from the sea. The central districts of Europe and of Asia have what are termed continental cli- mates to distinguish them from ours, which is called insular. Their summers are hotter, their winters are much colder, and the spring and autumn seasons of passage, which with us might be said to occupy most of the year, are in those coun- tries of only a few weeks’, or even a few days’, duration. In fact, when on the cessation of summer the first cold winds tend to bring on the winter, and to bind up our lakes in frost, the first portion of water frozen becomes, by giving up its latent heat, a source of warmth which tempers the chilly air, and retards its action on the remainder. The water freezes thus very slowly. The vegetables, and certain classes of ani- mals, feeling the cold of winter thus gradually coming on, pre- paid to meet it without injury. The motion of the sap in the one, that of the blood in the other class of living beings, be- comes slower, and, dropping its leaves and fruit, the tree re- tains but its firm trunk, within which its energies are preserved for the ensuing season ; whilst the hedgehog, the viper, the frog, and other animals, retire to their hiding-places, and in a state of almost lifeless stupor remain until the warmth of the succeeding spring calls them to renewed existence. In the formation of the insular climate which we possess, another power of water, however, equally or perhaps more influential, can be traced. There issues continually from the j pcean at the equator, gs the earth revolves, a current of water i i.i'f.'i' mmi. J i. mi.) 1 ,, 1 , .'■i'.'ubii, 1 : ,L-.. — ^ — - ■ considerably warmer than that which bathes our shores. This current becoming sensible first in the Gulf of Mexico, is called the Gulf Stream ; it passes obliquely across the Atlantic, float- ing on the colder water of the ocean, which tends in a direc- tion nearly opposite to replace it, and thus diffuses over the coasts of North America and Europe the heat which it had absorbed within the torrid zone. The northerly winds, which would bring down a sudden winter on us, are therefore tem- pered by passing over the warmer surface of the ocean ; whilst the hot winds from the south, which on the approach of spring might make too premature a change, expend, in passing over the great expanse of sea, a portion of their heat ; and thus the transition in both directions is rendered more gradual and harmless. These are but a few of the important duties which are al- lotted to -water in its place in nature. It in other respects presents an equally interesting subject of examination, and it is one to which we shall return. From its value as the great agent of nutrition to the vegetable world, and the necessity of a supply of it to animals ; from its power in modifying the ap- pearance and structure of a country, changing land into sea, and elevating banks >yhere deep water had been before, the philosophers of old looked upon water as the origin of all earthly things, as being above all others the element of nature. It is not so : water is not an element. Among other won- ders which chemistry has taught us, -we have learned of what water is composed ; and on another occasion we shall describe the way in which its elements may be obtained. K. Celebration of the Fourth of July in New York. — On this day, the anniversary of American independence, all creation appeared to be independent ; some of the horses par- ticularly so, for they w r ould not troop “ in no line not nohow.” Some preferred going sideways, like crabs; others went back- wards, some would not go at all, others went a great deal too fast, and not a few parted company with their riders, whom they kicked off just to show their independence. And the women were in the same predicament : they might dance right or dance left ; it was only out of the frying-pan into the fire, for it was pop, pop ; bang, bang ; fiz, pop, bang ; so that vou literally trod upon gunpowder. The troops did not marcli in very good order, because, independently of their not knowing how, there was a good deal of independence to contend with. At one time an omnibus and four would drive in and cut off the general and his staff from his division ; at another, a cart w-ould roll in and insist upon following close upon the band of music ; so that it was a mixed procession — generals, omni- bus and four, music, cart-loads of bricks, troops, omnibus and pair, artillery, hackney-coach, &c. “ Roast pig” is the fa- vourite “independent” dish, and in New York on the above day are “ six miles of roast pig,” viz. three miles of booths on each side of Broadw ay, and roast pig in each booth 1 Rockets are fired in the streets, some running horizontally up the pave- ment, and sticking into the back of a passenger ; and others mounting slanting-dicularly, and Paul- Prying into the bed- room windows on the third floor or attics, just to see how- things are going on there. On this day, too, all America gets tipsy.. — Captain Marry att s Diary in America. Irish Dramatic Talent. — Difference of taste makes it difficult, if not impossible, to say w-hich is the best comedy in the English language. Many, how r ever, are of opinion that there are three which more particularly dispute the palm — namely, “ She Stoops to Conquer,” “ The School for Scandal,” and “ The Heiress and it is remarkable that the authors of these three beautiful productions were all Irishmen — Gold- smith, Sheridan, and Murphy. — Literary World. The Moe.ning The sweetness of the morning is perhaps its least charm. It is the renewed vigour it implants in all around that affects us — man, animals, birds, plants, vegeta- tion, flow-ers. Refreshed and soothed with sleep, man opens his heart ; he is alive to Nature, and Nature’s God, and his mind is more intelligent, because more fresh. He seems to drink of the dew like the flowers, and feels the same reviving effect Illustrations of Human Life. Printed and Published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin. — Agents: — London: R. Groombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row. Manchester: Simms and Diniiam, Exchange Street. Liverpool: J. Davies, North John Street. Birmingham: J. Drake. Bristol: M. Bingham. Broad Street. Edinburgh: Fraser and Crawford, Georgs Street. Glasgow : Davip Robertson, Trongate. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 9. SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 1840. Volume I. LEIGHLIN-BRIDGE AND The ancient Bridge and Black Castle of Leighlin-Bridge, seated on “the goodly Barrow,” must be familiar to such of our readers as have ever travelled on the mail-coach road between Carlow and Kilkenny, for it is a scene of much pic- turesque beauty, and of a character very likely to impress itself on the memory. These are the most striking features of the town called Leighlin-Bridge, a market and post town, situated partly in the parish of Augha and barony of Idrone-East, and partly in the parish of Wells and barony of Idrone-West, in the county of Carlow, six miles south from the town of that name, and forty-five miles S.S.W. from Dublin. This town contains about 2000 inhabitants, and is seated on both sides of the Barrow; the bridge, which contains nine arches, dividing it into nearly equal portions : that on the east side consists of 178 houses, and that on the w r est of 191, being 369 houses in all. The parish church of Wells, the Roman Catholic chapel, and a national school-house, are on the Wells side of the river, as is also the ruined castle represented in our illustration. To the erection of this castle the town owes its origin. As a position of great military importance to the interests of the first Anglo-Norman settlers in Ireland, it was erected in 1181, either by the renowned Hugh de Lacy himself, or by John de Clahull, or De Claville, “to whom De Lacy gave the mar - shallshipp of all Leinster, and the land between Aghavoe and Leighlin ” THE BLACK CASTLE. From a minute description of the remains of this castle given by Mr Ryan in his History and Antiquities of the County of Carlow, a work of much ability and research, it appears that it w r as- constructed on the Norman plan, and consisted of a quadrangular enclosure, 315 feet in length and 234 feet in width, surrounded by a wall seven feet thick, with a fosse on the exterior of three sides of the enclosure, and the river on the fourth. Of this wall the western side only is now in existence. The keep or great tower of this fortress, repre- sented in our sketch, is situated at the north-western angle of the square, and is of an oblong form, and about fifty feet in height. It is much dilapidated ; but one floor, resting on an arch, remains, to which there is an ascent by stone steps, as there is to the top, which is completely covered over with ivy, planted by the present possessors of the castle. At the other, or southwvest angle of the enclosure, are the remains of a lesser tower, which is of a rotund form and of great strength, the walls being ten feet thick. It is still more dilapidated than the great keep, and is only 24 feet high, having a flight of steps leading to its summit. The present name of the town, however, is derived from the bridge, which w r as erected in 1320 to facilitate the intercourse between the religious houses of old and new Leighlin, by Mau- rice Jakis, a canon of the cathedral of Kildare, whose memory as a bridge-builder is deservedly preserved, having also erected the bridges of Kilcullen and St Woolstan’s over the Liftey, 66 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. both of which still exist. Previously to the erection of this bridge, the town was called New Leighlin, in contradistinction to the original Leighlin, a town of more ancient and ecclesi- astical origin, which was situated about two miles to the west, and which was afterwards known by the appellation of Old Leighlin. The erection of this bridge, by giving a new direc- tion to the great southern road, led rapidly to the increase of the new town and the decay of the old one, whose site is only marked at present by the remains of its venerable cathedral church. In addition to the Black Castle and the bridge already no- ticed, Leighlin-Bridge had formerly a second castle, as well as a monastery, of which there are at present no remains. The former, which was called the White Castle, was erected in 1408 by Gerald, the fifth Earl of Kildare : its site, we be- lieve, is now unknown. The monastery was erected for Car- melite or White Friars, under the invocation of the Virgin Mary, by one of the Carews, in the reign of Henry III., and was situated at the south side of the Black Castle. After the suppression of religious houses, this monastery, being in the hands of government, was in 1547 Surrounded with a wall, and converted into a fort, by Sir Edward Bellingham, Lord Deputy of Ireland, who also established within it a stable of twenty or thirty horses, of a superior breed to that commonly used in Ireland, for the use of his own household, and for the public service. The dispersed friars did not, however, remove far from their original mansion when dispossessed of their tenements ; they withdrew to a house on the same side of the river, about two hundred yards from the castle ; and an estab- lishment of the order was preserved till about the year 1827, when it became extinct, on the death of the last friar of the community. As the English 1 settlement here became very insecure to- wards the close of the fourteenth century, and was peculiarly exposed to the hostile attacks of the native Irish, who con- tinued powerful in its immediate vicinity, a grant of ten marks annually was made by King Edward III. in 1371, to the Prior of this monastery, for the repairing and rebuilding of the house, which grant w r as renewed six years afterwards ; and in 1378, Richard II., in consideration of the great labour, burden, and expense which the Priors had in supporting their house, and the bridge contiguous to it, against the king’s enemies, granted to the Priors an annual pension of twenty marks out of the rents of the town of Newcastle of Lyons, which grant he confirmed to them in 1394, and which was ratified by his successors Henry IV. and V. in the first years of their reigns (1399, 1412), the latter monarch ordering at the same time that all arrears of rent then due should be paid. In the civil wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the possession of Leighlin-Bridge and its castle became an object of much importance to the combatants on both sides. In 1577, when the celebrated chieftain of Leix, Rory Oge O’More, rose in rebellion, among other depredations he burned a part of the town of Leighlin-Bridge, and endeavoured to get pos- session of its castle, which was then feebly garrisoned under the command of Sir George Carew, constable of the fort and town. With the slender force of seven horse, as it is stated by Hooker, but under the cover of night, Carew made a sally on his assailants, numbering two hundred and forty, who, be- ing taken by surprise, lost many men, and the remainder for a time fled. Having soon however discovered the extremely small force by which they had been attacked, they rallied, and in turn became the assailants, pursuing Carew’s party to the gate of Leighlin-Bridge Castle, and some of them even enter- ing within its walls ; but by the bravery of the garrison they were soon expelled. Carew had two men and one horse killed, and every man of his party was wounded. The rebels lost sixteen men, among whom was one of their leaders, which so discomfited them that they retired, leaving one-half of the town uninjured. In the great rebellion of O’Neil, at the close of the reign of Elizabeth, the castle of Leighlin-Bridge was repaired and gar- risoned for the Queen, though the surrounding country was laid waste by the Kavanaghs. In the beginning of the suc- ceeding reign (1604), the site of the castle, together with that of the monastery, &c. &c, were granted by the king to George Tutchett, Lord Awdeley, fo be held of the crown for ever in common soccage. In the great rebellion of 1641, the castle of Leighlin-Bridge was garrisoned for the confederate Catholics, in 1646, with one hundred men, under the command of Colonel Walter Bag- naH i it was here also that in 1647 the Marquis of Ormond assembled his forces, to attack the republicans, who had got possession of Dublin; and he rested his forces here in 1649. It was, however, surrendered to the parliamentary forces un- der Colonel Hewson in the following year, soon after which the main army under Ireton sojourned here for a time, and plun- dered the surrounding country- Since this period, Leighlin- Bridge has enjoyed the blessings of peace, and has made those advances in prosperity which follow in its train. Its market is on Monday and Saturday amply supplied with corn and but- ter, &c, and it has four well-attended fairs, on Easter Monday, May 14th, September 25th, and December 27th. Much beau- tiful scenery and many interesting remains of antiquity exist in its immediate vicinity. P . IRISH MUSIC. The following song on the harp of our country has been sent to us by our friend Samuel Lover, the painter, poet, musician, dramatist, story- writer, and novelist of Ireland, for it is his pride to be in every thing Irish ; and for this, no less than for his manly independence of character and sterling qua- lities of heart, we honour him. It cannot be said of him as of some of our countrymen at the other side of the water, that he is ashamed of us ; and we are not, and v r e feel assured never shall be, ashamed of him. We may remark that these verses owe their origin to an examination of Bunting’s delightful “ Ancient Music of Ire- land” — a work of which we have already expressed our opinion in our first number — and are adapted to be sung to the first melody in that collection, “ Sit down under my protection.” We may also add, that it is the intention of the poet, when he prints the music and words together, to dedicate them to Mr Bunting, as a memorial of his gratitude for the services ren- dered to Ireland in the preservation of her national music — . services which, as the author says, “ will make his name be remembered amongst our bards.” SONG. BY SAMUEL LOVER. Oh, give me one strain Of that wild harp again, In melody proudly its own, Sweet harp of the days that are gone ! Time’s wide- wasting wing Its cold shadow may fling Where the light of the soul hath no part ; The sceptre and sword Both decay with their lord, But the throne of the Bard is the heart ! And hearts, while they beat To thy music so sweet, Thy glory shall ever prolong, Land of honour, and beauty, and song ! The beauty whose sway Waked the bard’s votive lay, Hath gone to eternity’s shade ; While, fresh in its fame, Lives the song to her name, Which the Minstrel immortal hath made ! Proud harp, of wild string, Where thy sweetness did ring O’er the silence of other lands. By the magic of minstrel hands, Too oft did its wail Load with sorrow the gale O’er the land that was made to be free ; But, Isle of the West, Raise thy emerald crest, Songs of triumph shall yet ring for thee. Poverty — Poverty has in large cities very different ap- pearances. It is often concealed in splendour, and often in extravagance.. It is the care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest. They support them- selves by temporary expedients, and every day is lost in con- triving for to-morrow. When you intend to marry, look first at the heart, next at the mind, then at the person. Pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man to find in others and to overlook in himself,— jQhnwn, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. HUMBUG. If the reader’s attention is now called to it for the first time, he will be rather surprised, we dare say, to find how much humbug is incorporated with our social system. It will rather surprise him to find, as a little reflection will certainly enable him to do, that humbug forms, in fact, the cement by which so- ciety is held together ; that it pervades every department of it, fills up all its crevices and crannies, and, in truth, permeates its very substance. We, in short, all humbug one another ; that’s beyond all manner of doubt. Don’t we every day write cards and letters beginning with “My dear, or My very dear sir,” and ending with, “ Yours sin- cerely, truly, &c. & c.,” knowing, in our conscience, that in ninety-nine instances out of the hundred — always excepting cases where a man’s interest is concerned— we do not care one straw for these very dear sirs — not one farthing although they were six feet below the ground to-morrow. Suppose an intimation card of the death of one of these very dear sirs, or of some “ good friend” or intimate acquaintance, waits us on our arrival home to dinner. “Guess who’s dead?” says some member of our family, run- ning towards us with joyful anticipation of our perplexity. “ Can’t say, indeed,” reply we. “ Who is it ?” “ Mr G’Madigan.” “ Ah, dear me, poor fellow, is he dead ? Very sudden, very unexpected Is dinner ready ?” What is the civility of the landlord and his waiters but humbug ? What the smirking, smiling, ducking and bowing of the shopkeeper, but humbug ? What his sweet and gentle “ yes, sirs,” and “no, sirs,” and “proud to serve you, sirs,” but humbug ? You are not goose enough to believe for a mo- ment that he is serious, that he has either the least regard or re- spect for you. Not he ; he would not care a twopence although you were hanged, drawn, and quartered before his shop-door to-morrow, except, perhaps, for the inconvenience of the thing. What is the civility of the servant to his employer but hum- bug ? Do you imagine for a moment that that man who, hat in hand, is looking up to you with such a respectful air — looking up to you as if you were a god — as if his very exist- ence depended on your slightest breath — do you imagine for a moment, we ask, that he has in his heart that deference for you that he would make you believe ? that he conceives you to be so very superior a being as his manner would imply ? Not he, indeed. Depend upon it, it is all humbug ; humbug all. And if you saw or heard him when he feels secure that you can do neither the one nor the other, you would speedily be convinced that it is. But it is in the wheel- within-wheel of social life, the do- mestic circle, in what are called the friendly relations of life, that the system of humbug assumes, perhaps, its most decep- tive character. See what a loving and friendly set of people are gathered together around that dinner table ! See how blandly, how affectionately they look on each other ! How delighted they are with one another — with mine host and hostess in particular ! Why, they would die for them — die on the spot. They would go any length to serve one another. See that shake of the hand, how cordial it is ! that smile, how affectionate ! how -winning ! how full of kindly promise ! Now, do these people in reality feel the smallest interest in each other’s welfare? Would they make the slightest sacri- fice to serve one another ? Not they, indeed. If you doubt it, try any one of them next day ; try any of your “ dear friends” if they will lend you a pound or five, as the case may be. Until you do this, or something like it, depend upon it you don’t know your men ; no, nor your women either. “ Oh ! but,” says the moralist, “ mere civility, my good sir, mere civility ; absurd idea to suppose that every man to whom you are civil should have a claim also on your purse.” “ But in the case of a ‘ dear friend,’ Mr Moralist, or inti- mate acquaintance — eh ? — for it is of them only that I speak. Surely they might do something for you.” “ Oh ! that as it may be. But as a general rule” “ Then all this cordiality of greeting, this affectionate shaking of hands, these sweet smiles and sweeter words, are ail to go for nothing ? They are to be understood as meaning nothing.” “ Certainly.” “ Then we are perfectly agreed — it is all deception.” “ Oh ! you may call it what you please.” “ Thank you. Then with your leave I shall call it humbug. It is not a very elegant word, but it is pretty expressive.” 61 But, lo ! here comes a funeral. See how grave and melan- choly these sable-clad gentlemen look. Why, you would ima- gine that under that dismal pall lay all the earthly hopes of every individual present, that every heart in the solemn train, was well-nigh broken. All this is very becoming no doubt, and it would scarcely be decorous to go either singing or laughing along the streets on such an occasion, when carrying the poor remains of mortality to its last resting-place. But it’s humbug, nevertheless — humbug all ! Not one of these sorrowing mourners, excepting perhaps one or two of the nearest relations, cares one twopenny piece for the defunct. Not one of them would have given him sixpence to keep him from starving. Notwithstanding, however, the very general diffusion of humbug, it may be classed under regular heads, and we rather think this would not be a bad way of illustrating it. We shall try ; beginning with THE MILITARY OR HEROIC HUMBUG. My brave fellow soldiers, we are now on the eve of encoun- tering the enemy. See, there he stands in hostile array against you. He thinks to terrify you by his formidable ap- pearance. But you regard him with a steady and a fearless eye. Soldiers ! the world rings with the fame of your deeds. Your glory is imperishable : it will live for ever. Regardless of wounds and death, you have ever been fore- most where honour was to be won. Recollect, then, your ancient fame, and let your deeds this day show that you are still the same brave men who have so often chased your ene- mies from the field ; the same brave men who have ever looked on death as a thing unworthy a moment’s consideration — on dishonour as the greatest of all evils. Band of heroes, advance ! On, on to victory, death, wounds, glory, honour, and immortality ! (Hurra, hurra, General Fudge for ever! — lead us on, general, lead us on!) Lead ye on, my brave fellows ! Would to heaven my duties would permit me that enviable honour ! But it would be too much for one so unworthy. Alas ! I dare not. My duties call me to another part of the field. I obey the call with reluctance. But my confidence in your courage, my brave fellows, enables me to trust you to advance yourselves. On, then, on, my band of heroes, and fear nothing ! (General raises his hat gracefully, bows politely to his “ band of heroes,” and rides off to a height at a safe distance, from which he views the battle comfortably through his telescope.) THE LITERARY HUMBUG — THE AUTHOR’S. In putting this work into the hands of the public, the author has not been influenced by any of those motives that usually urge writers to publication. Neither vanity, nor the desire of gaining what is called a name, has had the slightest share in inducing him to take this step ; still less has he been influ- enced by any sordid love of gain ; he looks for neither praise nor profit. His sole motive for writing and publishing this book has been to promote the general good, by contributing his mite to the stock of general information. The author is but too well aware that the merits of his work, if indeed it have any at all, are of a very humble order; that it has, in short, many defects : but a liberal, discerning, and indulgent public, will make every allowance for one who makes no pretension to literary excellence. The author may add, that part of the blame of his now ob- truding himself on the public rests on the urgent entreaties of some perhaps too partial friends. THE PUBLISHERS’ HUMBUG. The publishers of this new undertaking have long been of opinion that anew and more efficient course of moral instruc- tion w r as wanted, to raise the bulk of mankind to that stan- dard of perfection which every Christian, every good member of society, must be desirous of seeing attained. It is with the most poignant regret they have marked the almost total failure of all preceding attempts of this kind. How much it has pained them — how much they have grieved to see the inadequacy of the supplies of knowledge to the in- creasing wants of the community, especially alluding to the working and lower classes generally, whose interests they have deeply at heart, they need not say : but they may say, that they anticipate the most triumphant success in their present efforts to supply the desideratum alluded to. The publishers may add, that as regards the undertaking they are now about to commence, profit is with them but a se- condary consideration. Their great object is to promote the 68 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. general good by a wide diffusion of knowledge, and a liberal infusion of sound and healthy principle. If they effect this, their end is gained. The work, on which no expense will be spared, will be sold at a price so low as to leave but. a bare remuneration for workmanship and material — so low, indeed, that a very large demand only can protect the publishers from positive loss. But it is not the dread of even the result that can deter them from commencing and carrying on a work undertaken from the purest and most disinterested motives. THE CRITICAL HUMBUG. A more delightful work than this, a work more rich and racy, more brilliant in style or more graphic in delineation, it has rarely been our good fortune to meet with. Every page bears the stamp of a master-mind, every sentence the impress of genius. What a flow of ideas ! What an outpouring of eloquence ! What a knowledge of the human heart with all its nicer in- tricacies ! What an intimacy with the springs of human action ! What a mastery over the human passions ! Ay, this is indeed the triumph of genius. The author of this exquisite production writes with the pen of a Junius, and thinks with the intellect of a Bacon or a Locke. His language is forcible and epigrammatic, his rea- soning clear and profound ; yet can nothing be more racy than his pleasantry when he condescends to be playful — nothing more delicately cutting than his irony when he chooses to be satirical— nothing more striking or impressive than his ratio- cination when he prefers being philosophical. We confidently predict a wide and lasting popularity for this extraordinary production. Indeed, if we are not greatly mistaken, it will create quite a sensation in the literary circles of Europe. PATRIOTIC HUMBUG. My country, oh ! my country ! it is for thee, for thee alone, I live ; and for thee, my country, will I at any time cheerfully die — (Who’s that calling out fudge?) Nearest my heart is the wish for thy welfare. To see thee happy is the one only desire of my soul, and that thou mayest be so, is my constant prayer. Night and day dost thou engross my thoughts, and all, all would I sacrifice to thy welfare ! My private interests are as dust in the balance — (Who’s that again calling fudge ? — turn him out, turn him out) — -My private interests are as dust in the balance ; and shame, shame, oh ! eternal shame to the sordid wretch, unworthy to live, who should for a moment prefer his individual aggrandisement to his country’s good. Perish his name — perish the name of the miserable miscreant ! Wealth ! what is wealth to me, my country, compared to thy happiness ? Station ! what is station, unless thou, too, art advanced ? Power ! what is power, unless the power of doing thee good ? Oh, my country ! My country, oh ! — (Oh ! oh ! oh ! from various parts of the house.) The patriot sits down, wiping his patriotic forehead with a white hand- kerchief, amidst thunders of applause. Before going farther with our Illustrations— indeed we don’t know whether we shall go any farther with them at all or not, as we rather think we have given quite enough of them — before going farther, then, with any thing in the more direct course of our subject, we may pause a moment to remark how carefully every one who comes before the public to claim its patronage, conceals the real object of his doing so. How re- mote he keeps from this very delicate point ! He never whis- pers its name— never breathes it. How cautiously he avoids all allusion to his own particular interest in the matter ! From the unction with which he speaks of the excellences of the thing he has to dispose of, be it what it may, a Dutch cheese or a treatise on philosophy, the enthusiasm with which he dwells on them, you would imagine that he spoke out of a pure feel- ing of admiration of these excellences. You wmuld never dream — for this he carefully conceals from you — that his sole object is to get hold of as much of your cash as he can ; the Dutch cheese or the treatise on philosophy being a mere instrument to accomplish the desired transfer. It is rather a curious feature this in the social character : every thing offered for sale is so offered through a pure spirit of benevolence, either for the public good or individual benefit ; nothing for the sake of mere filthy lucre, or the particular interest of the seller — not at all. He, good soul, has no such motive — not he, indeed. We said a little while since that we doubted whether we would give any farther illustrations of the great science of humbug. We have now made up our minds that we shall not. Although we could easily give fifty more, it is unnecessary. We confess, however, to be under strong temptations to give “ the candidate’s humbug” — to exhibit that gentleman doing over the constituency, making them, whether he be whig or tory, swallow the grossest fudge that ever was thrust down an unsuspecting gullet ; but we refrain. We refrain also, in the meantime, from giving what we would call “ the liberty and equality humbug together with several other humbugs equally instructive and edifying. And now we think we hear our readers exclaim of ourselves, what a humbug ! By no means, gentle readers ; there are exceptions to every general rule. We have sketched the great mass of mankind, but we have no doubt that there are some truly sincere per- sons— few' indeed — in all the classes we have sketched ; and we trust that we ourselves shall be reckoned amongst the number. C. ANCIENT IRISH LITERATURE, NUMBER I. The ancient literature of Ireland is as yet but little known to the world, or even to ourselves. Existing for the most part only in its original Celtic form, and in manuscripts acces- sible only to the Irish scholar resident in our metropolis, but few even of those capable of understanding it have the oppor- tunity to become acquainted with it, and from all others it is necessarily hidden. We therefore propose to ourselves, as a pleasing task, to make our literature more familiar, not only to the Irish scholar, but to our readers generally who do not possess this species of knowledge, by presenting them from time to time with such short poems or prose articles, accom- panied with translations, as from their brevity, or the nature of their subjects, will render them suitable to our limited and necessarily varied pages — our selections being made without regard to chronological order as to the ages of their compo- sition, but rather with a view to give a general idea of the several kinds of literature in which our ancestors of various classes found entertainment. The specimen which we have chosen to commence with is of a homely cast, and was intended as a rebuke to the saucy pride of a woman in humble life, who assumed airs of conse- quence from being the possessor of three cows. Its author’s name is unknown, but its age may be determined, from its language, as belonging to the early part of the seventeenth cen- tury ; and that it was formerly very popular in Munster, may be concluded from the fact, that the phrase, Easy, oh, woman of the three cow's ! [50 fiei'6 4 bl)e4t) T)4 T>T > |TJ Tt)bo] has become a saying in that province, on any occasion upon which it is desirable to lower the pretensions of proud or boastful persons. P. B621M L121 WH) 2t)BO. peio a Bean na ccpi mbo Qp co Bolachc nd bi ceann t)o conaipc meipi, gan ^ 6 , 6 ean ip ba od rno a beann. Hi maipeann paioBpiop 00 jndic t>o neac nd cabaip caip 50 mop Chu jac an ceaj ap gac caoB 5o peio a Bean na ccpi mbo. Sliocc Go jam moip pa 2t)umam Q nimreacc do ni clu 001 B Cl peolca gup leigeaoap piop 5o peio a Bean na ccpi mbo. Clann gaipce rigeapna an Chldip G mmceacc pm ba la leom Sgan puil pe na cceacc 50 bpar, <5o peio a Bean na ccpi mbo. tOomnall 6 Oun-buioe na long O’SuilleaBdin nap cim glop peac £up cuit pan Spain pe cloioeam go peio a Bean na ccpi mbo. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 69 O’Ruaipc ip ^Daguioip oo bi La i n-Gipinn na Ian beoil Reac pern $up imuijan Dip, go peio a bean na ccpi mbo. S?ol ^Ceapbuill do bl ceann vas so strengthened and used as a fortress in the remotest historic times, may be inferred from its most ancient Celtic name — Rinn-duin, the point of the Dun or Fort, by which it is still known in the Irish language, though commonly anglicised Randown, and more generally called St John’s. It is men- tioned by this name in the following record in the Annals of the Four Masters at the year 115G “ There occurred a great fall of snow and a frost in the winter of this year, so that the lakes and rivers of Ireland were frozen over. The frost was so great that Roderick O’Conor was enabled to have his ships and boats carried on the ice from Blein GaUle on the Shannon (at Lough Ree) to Rinn-duin.” 01 the earlier history of this fort, however, which was doubt- less but an earthen one, no accounts are preserved, though it may be safely conjectured that it was seized on and used as a stronghold by the Danish King Turgesius in the ninth cen- tury, as it appears certain from our annals that he had a strong fastness and harbour for bis ships upon Lough Ree. But, be this as it may, we learn from another record hi the Annals above quoted, that Rinn-duin was used as a fastness by the first Anglo-Norman invaders of Ireland as early as the close of the twelfth century, when they were forced to seek safety in it after a defeat which they had sustained in a battle with Cathal Carrach O’Conor, the "son of Roderick and King of Connaught. The passage is as follows : — “ A. D. 1199. John de Couroy, at the head of the English of the North, and the son of Hugh de Lacy, at the head of the English of Meath, marched to Kilmaeduach to aid Cathal the Red-handed O’Conor. Cathal Carrach, at the head of T4 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. the Connacians, gave them battle. The English of Ulidia and Meath were defeated with such slaughter, that of their five battalions only two survived, and these were pursued from the field of battle to Rinn-duin on Lough Ree, in which place John was hemmed in. Many of his English were killed and others drowned, for they had no mode of effecting their escape but by crossing the lake in boats.” It was not, however, long after this event till the English, taking advantage of the civil wars which raged in Connaught between the sons of Roderick and the sons of Cathal the Red- handed, got the peninsula of Rinn-duin into their own hands, and, fortifying it in their own more skilful manner, erected the noble castle, the ruins of which still remain, and form the subject of our prefixed illustration. The erection of this cas- tle is thus recorded in the Annals of the Four Masters : — “ A. D. 1227. Hugh, the son of Roderick O’Conor, and William de Burgo, marched with a great army to the north of Connaught, burned Inis Mcadhoin, plundered the country as they passed along, and took hostages. Geoffry Mares (or de Marisco), and Turlogh, the son of Roderick O’Conor, marched with an army into Magh Aoi (county of Roscom- mon), erected a castle at Rinn-duin, and took the hostages of Siol-Muireaclhaigh.” It was at this period also that the lower portion of the pen- insula was artificially insulated as an additional protection to the castle, by a broad ditch, still to be seen, though no longer filled with water, and which is connected with a beautiful little harbour for boats, called Safe Harbour, immediately beneath the castle. But though, as we have shown, the peninsula of Rinn-duin was thus fortified by the English, it was not till the power of the O’Conors was still more broken by their own divisions, that the former were able to keep permanent possession of it. From a subsequent record in the Annals of the Four Masters, we find it shortly after in the possession of Turlogh O’Conor, the son of Roderick, who had been set up by the English in opposition to his cousin and rival Felim, the son of Cathal the Red-handed, and by whom he was ultimately slain. This record gives a curious picture of the mode of warfare of the time, and is worth presenting to our readers in full : — “ A.D. 1236. Felim, the son of Cathal the Red-handed, returned to Connaught after his banishment, being invited thither by some of the Connacians, namely, by O’ Kelly, O’Flynn, the son of Hugh, who was son of Cathal the Red- handed O’Conor, and the son of Art O’Melaghlin, all forming four equally strong battalions. They marched to Rinn-duin, where Brian, the son of Turlogh (O’Conor), Owen O’Heyne, Conor Boy, the son of Turlogh, and Mac Costelloe, had all the cows of the country; and Felim’s people got over the enclosures of the Island ; and the leaders and sublead- ers of the army drove off each a proportionate number of the cows, as they found them on the way before them ; and they then dispersed, carrying off their booty in different di- rections, and leaving only, of the four battalions, four horse- men with Felim. As Brian, the son of Turlogh, Owen O’Heyne, and their troops, perceived that Felim’s army was scattered, they set out quickly and vigorously with a small party of horse, and many foot soldiers, to attack Felim and his few horsemen. Conor Boy, the son of Turlogh, came up with the son of Hugh, who was the son of Cathal the Red- handed, and with his party ; and mistaking them for his own people, he fell by Roderick, the son of Hugh, who was the son of Cathal the Red-handed. Felim (the king) strained his voice calling loudly after his army, and ordering them to re- turn to oppose their enemies. Many of the host were killed by Felim upon the island ; and outside the island were slain many bad subjects, and perpetrators of evil, as they all were, excepting only Teige, son of Cormac, who was son of Tomal- tagh M'Dermott.” Our records are too scanty to enable us to trace the history of this castle and its various possessors with any clearness or consecutive order. It may, however, be inferred from the subsequent annals that it fell into the hands of Felim O’Conor after the attack above stated, aud also that he kept posses- sion of it till his death in 1264. During this period, though harassed by the De Burgos or Burkes, and still more by factious rivals of his own race, he usually preserved at least the sem- blance of peace with the English monarch, and had more than once his hereditary patrimony of five cantreds of land in Ros- common secured to him by royal charters. Upon one of those occasions the scene of conference between the representatives of the British monarch and the Connaught king was the Cas- tle of Rinn-duin, as thus stated in the Annals of the Four Mas- ters : — “ A. D. 1256. A lord justice arrived in Ireland from Eng- land, and he and Hugh O’Conor (the son of Felim) held a conference at Rinn-duin, when a peace was established be- tween them, on condition that while the lord justice should retain his office, no part of the province of Connaught should be taken from O’Conor.” By the death of Felim, however, the house of O’Conor received a blow which it never thoroughly recovered ; for, though his son Hugh, who succeeded him in the government, inherited to the full extent his father’s energy and valour, if not his prudence, he was less successful in his enterprises, and his death in 1274 gave additional strength to the English interest in Connaught. From a record in the Annals of the Four Masters it appears that the Castle of Rinn-duin was in the possession of the English settlers some years before his death, for it is stated at the year 1270 that “ The castle of Ath-Angaile, the castle of Sliabh-Lugha, and the castle of Cill Caiman, were demolished by O’ Conor ; Roscommon, Rinn-duin, and Uillin-Uanach, were also burned by him.” ' From this period forward the Castle of Rinn-duin appears to have been permanently garrisoned by the English, and its his- tory can be traced only in the English records. In the great roll of the pipe, 1 Edward I. (1273), among the disbursements of John de Saundford of the escheats and wards of the Lord the King, it is stated that £12 18s was paid to Geoffry de Geneville, chief justice of Ireland, for the re-edification and repairs of the Castle of Rendon ; and also that 45 shillings were paid to Master Rico le Charpentier (or the carpenter) for 40 stone and 5 pounds of steel for the construction of a certain mill at the same place. Again, in the account of the expenses of the same Geoffry de Geneville, from Wednesday next after the Assumption of the Virgin, anno 1 Edward I., to Michaelmas, 2 Edward I. (1273 to 1274), the following- item occurs : — . “ For the Castle of Rendon, to pay for the garrison and other necessaries £439 0 8j” So in the account of Robert de Uftord, chief justice of Ire- land, of all receipts, expenses, &c, delivered by Adam de Wet- tenhall into the Exchequer, from Christmas to Michaelmas, 4 Edward I. (1276), among the items are allowances for supplies of victuals for the garrison of Ren-duin, the construc- tion of a mill, and other works of a new construction, the repairing of a fosse there, &c. Again, in the accounts for the following year, 1277, the following item occurs : — . “To Richard de Marisco, for works in the fosse and castle of Rendon £7 10 0” And in the pipe roll of the 8th Edward I. there are similar accounts of disbursements for repairs to this fortress. These notices are perhaps of little general interest, but they afford conclusive evidences of the ancient importance of this fastness, and the value set upon its possession as neces- sary to the support of the English interests in Connaught. The same records preserve the names of three of its consta- bles, viz : — Walter le Enfant was constable in 1285-87. Richard Fitz- Simon Fitz-Richar was constable, with the annual fee of £40, in 1326. John de Funtayns was constable, with the same fee, in 1334. It appears that during the reigns of the first three Edwards, Rinn-duin became the seat of a town of some importance ; and it was also the seat of a parish church and two monastic esta- blishments, of which one was a priory for Knights Hospital- lers, or for Cross-bearers, which, according to Ware, was said to have been founded in the reign of King John, and, as some writers say, by his express command. Be this, however, as it may, Philip de Angulo, or Costelloe, was a great benefac- tor to it in the reign of Henry III., if not actually, as it is probable, its founder. I rom the Annals of the Four Masters we learn that the ce- lebrated Irish historian and topographer John More O’Dugan died, “ among the monks ot John the Baptist,” in this monas- tery in 1 372. He was the hereditary antiquary of Hy Maine, or O Kelly s country, and author of the topographical and historical poem reciting the names of the principal tribes and districts in Meath, Ulster, and Connaught, with the names of the chiefs who presided over them at the close of the twelfth century, as well as of several other works of great value which have descended to our times. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 75 In 1305, the Prior of this abbey sued Odo, the Prior of Athlone, for the advowson of the vicarage of the church of RandoAvne. — JRol. P. JB. T. JVo. 52. The other abbey is said to have been founded under the invocation of the Holy Trinity for Praemonstre Canons, by Clarus Mac Moylin O’Maolchonry, Archdeacon of Elphin, about the year 1215. Of all these structures, as well military as religious and domestic, there only remain at present deserted and time- worn ruins, but these ruins are of great interest, and speak most eloquently of the past. The most important feature amongst them is the castle, which occupies a rocky eminence, rising abruptly from the water on the shore of the small inlet called Safe Harbour, in which it may be presumed that the armed vessels employed upon Lough Ree found security un- der the walls of the fortress. This castle is well described by Mr Weld, in his excellent Survey of Roscommon, as being built nearly in the form of the letter P, the tail of the letter being short in proportion, and occupied by a spacious apart- ment for banqueting or assembly. In the head of the letter, next the upright stem, is placed the keep, a lofty, massive, and before the use of artillery, impregnable structure : it has a court before it to the east, which was defended along the curve by a strong wall, with banquette and parapet, and ditches of great depth, on the outer side. The line repre- sented by the stem of the letter, stretching in a direction across the point, is in length above two hundred and forty feet, and is protected at its base by that great artificial fosse which insulated this lower portion of the peninsula and the castle as already stated, but which is now nearly dry, the level having been altered by the rubbish which has fallen into it from the ruins. Nearly in the centre of this line appear the remains of abutments, both on the castle and outer side of the fosse, marking the site of the draw-bridge, and opposite to a small gateway in the castle wall. “ The keep, ’ Mr Weld observes, “ as beheld both on the land side and from the lake, presents a very imposing mass, its outer walls being entire, and its great tower rising to a very considerable elevation : but the edifice on the land side appears almost shapeless, owing to the extraordinary luxuriance of the ivy with which it is overrun, originating from two vast flatted stems which spring up over the base of the walls, just over the long fosse. I had the curiosity to measure them, and found the one to be four feet six inches, and the other seven feet five inches broad, presenting, though with many sinuosities, an undivided face of bark, from side to side, and still growing with great vigour. I cannot call to recollection having seen a more vast and uninterrupted mass of ivy foliage. The great tower is about fifty feet broad next the fosse : in the upper story, traces of windows appear through the ivy, and of small watch-towers at the angles. Like the other great castles of the country, it was evidently destroyed by vio- lence ; and nothing short of the powerful effects of gunpowder could have cast down the prodigious fragments of masonry which stand insulated in the inner court. The view of the castle is extremely pleasing from the water, and more particu- larly so, when the sheltered harbour beneath its walls receives a little fleet of the beautiful sailing pleasure-boats which are used upon this lake, the gaiety of whose ensigns and painted sides forms a remarkable contrast to the sombre tints of the ancient ivied walls, and the grey rocks on which they repose.” A short distance to the east of the castle, the remains of a round watch-tower, as it would appear to be, crown the sum- mit of a promontory which is the highest point of the peninsula. Its diameter within is about fourteen feet, and the walls are four feet thick. The entrance and the window opposite to it face the water, and command most pleasing views up and down the lake. The window, surmounted by a flat rounded arch, about seven feet in height, is more spacious than such as are usually seen in a building of this kind, and affords ample light to the chamber. The ground between this promontory and the eminence occupied by the castle in low and marshy, and water probably once flowed over it. In addition to the fosse already described, the castle, and indeed the whole peninsula, was further protected by a great wall which crossed from one side to the other. According to Mr Weld’s measurements, this wall is 564 yards in length from water to water, its distance from the castle-fosse being 700 yards. “ Nearly in the middle of it is an arched gate- way, with its defences still tolerably entire, twenty-four feet deep, and presenting a front of twenty-one feet : between this gate and the water at either side there are square towers, at unequal intervals of from sixty to ninety yards, advanced about thirteen feet beyond the line of the Avails, and being in breadth about fifteen feet : in the interior the dimensions are about eight feet six inches. These towers doubtless afforded stations for the archers, and also facilitated the access to the parapet and banquette of the Avail. Whether there ever had been a fosse on the outer side, I am unable to say ; the pro- bability is, that there Avas ; but if so, the ground has been levelled, and the rank luxuriance of vegetation has obliterated its lines. The building of the Avail, however, appears in many parts to have been hastily executed, and cement to have been sparingly used, yet it still remains a most interesting monu- ment of the military works of past ages.” Of the ecclesiastical edifices of Rinn-duin, but small remains exist, and as their names are lost to tradition, it is difficult now to identify them with certainty. The principal ruin, which is situated near the draAv-bridge over the great fosse, on the land side, is most probably the church erected in the commencement of the thirteenth century, and dedicated to the Holy Trinity. Neither windows nor dooi-Avays exist to give any idea of its style, but its walls are in sufficient preser- vation to shoAV the form and dimensions of the building. Like most important Irish churches it consists of a nave and choir ; the nave is sixty feet long and twenty-four feet wide, the choir thirty-three feet long and eighteen vnde. This church, it maA r be presumed, st ood in a conspicuous part of the town ; but not a vestige no\V remains of any other edifice, either ecclesi- astical or domestic, betAveen the castle and the fortified Avail across the isthmus. The rude remains of the other ecclesiasti- cal buildings are situated on the outer side of the fortified Avail, and are connected with a burial-ground still much used ; but there is nothing in these remains worthy of particular notice. A desire to supply, as far as in our power, a chasm in our local histories, has induced us to extend our notice of the re- mains of Rinn-duin to a greater length than that usually allotted to our topographical papers, the history of these re- mains having been hitherto involved in great darkness. Dr Ledwich, in his account of the castle, written for Grose’s An- tiquities of Ireland, briefly states that there are no memorials of its structure ! And even Mr Weld, the latest writer Avho has described this locality, remarks, that “as to its past his- tory, it is involved in a mysterious and perhaps noAv impe- netrable obscurity." By the publication, for the first time, of much matter hitherto locked up in manuscript records, we have, as Ave trust, thrown no small additional light on the history of these interesting remains ; and we have only to add, that for the documents which we have used, we are in part in- debted to the kindness of Sir W. Betham, and still more to that of our friend Mr O’Donovan, who has allowed us the use of his translation of the unpublished Annals of the Four Masters. P. A VENETIAN DIDDLER. When in Venice, I had but two zecchinos left wherewith to fight my Avay through this Avicked w'orld. My spirits for the first time deserted me : I never passed so miserable a night in ray life, and in shame of my “ doublet and hose,” I felt very much inclined to “ cry like a child.” While tossing on my pilloAv, hoAvever, I chanced to recollect a letter which my landlord of Bologna, Signor Passerini, had given me to a friend of his, a Signor Andrioli ; for, as he told me, he thought the introduction might be of use to me. In the morning I went to the Rialto coffee-house, to which I was directed by the address of the letter. Here I found the gentleman who was the object of my search. After reading my credentials very graciously, he smiled, and requested me to take a turn with him in the Piazza St Marc. He Avas a fine-looking man, of about sixty years of age. I remarked there was an aristocratic manner about him, and he wore a very large tie-Avig, well poAvdered, with an immensely long tail. He addressed me vrith a benevolent and patronizing air, and told me that he should be delighted to be of service to me, and bade me from that moment consider myself under his protection. “ A little business,” said he, “ calls me aAvay at this moment, but if you Avill meet me here at two o’clock, we will adjourn to my cassino, where, if you can dine on one dish, you will perhaps do me the favour to partake of a boiled capon and rice. I can only offer you that ; perhaps a rice soup, for which my cook is famous ; and it may be just one or tAvo little things not worth mentioning.” A boiled capon — rice soup — other little things, thought I — • 1 6 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. manna in the wilderness ! I strolled about, not to get an ap- petite, for that was ready, but to kill time. My excellent, hospitable, long-tailed friend was punctual to the moment; I joined him, and proceeded towards his residence. As we were bending our steps thither, we happened to pass a luganigera’s (a ham-shop), in which there was some ham ready dressed in the window. My powdered patron paused, —it was an awful pause ; he reconnoitred, examined, and at last said, “ Do you know, Signor, I was thinking that some of that ham would eat deliciously with our capon : — I am known in this neighbourhood, and it would not do for me to be seen buying ham. But do you go in, my child, and get two or three pounds of it, and I will walk on and wait for you.” I went in of course, and purchased three pounds of the ham, to pay for which I was obliged to change one of my two zecchinos. I carefully folded up the precious viand, and re- joined my excellent patron, who eyed the relishing slices with the air of a (jovrmand. ; indeed, he was somewhat diffuse in his own dispraise for not having recollected to order his ser- vant to get some before he left home. During this peripatetic lecture on gastronomy, we happened to pass a cantina, in plain English, a wine-cellar. At the door he made another full stop. “ In that house,” said he, “ they sell the best Cyprus wine in Venice — peculiar wine — a sort of wine not to be had any where else ; I should like you to taste it ; but I do not like to be seen buying wine by retail to carry home ; go in yourself ; buy a couple of flasks, and bring them to my cassino ; nobody hereabouts knows you, and it won’t signify in the least.” This last request was quite appalling ; my pocket groaned to its very centre ; however, recollecting that I was on the high road to preferment, and that a patron, cost what he might, was still a patron, 1 made the plunge, and, issuing from the cantina, set forward for my venerable friend’s cassino, with three pounds of ham in my pocket, and a flask of wine under each arm. I continued walking with my excellent long-tailed patron, expecting every moment to see an elegant, agreeable residence, smiling in all the beauties of nature and art ; Avhen, at last, in a dirty miserable lane, at the door of a tall dingy-looking house, my Maecenas stopped, indicated that we had reached our journey’s end, and, marshalling me the way that I should go, began to mount three flights of sickening stairs, at the top of which 1 found his cassino : it was a little Cas, and a deuce of a place to boot ; in plain English, it was. a garret. The door was opened by a wretched old miscreant, who acted as cook, and whose drapery, to use a gastronomic simile, was “ done to rags.” Upon a ricketty apology for a table were placed a tattered cloth, which once had been white, and two plates ; and pre- sently in came a large bowl of boiled rice. “ Where’s the capon ?” said my patron to his man. “ Capon !” echoed the ghost of a servant ; “ the ” “ Has not the rascal sent it ?” cried the master. “ Rascal !” repeated the man, apparently terrified. “ I knew he would not,” exclaimed my patron, with an air of exultation, for which I saw no cause. “ Well, well, never mind, put down the ham and the wine; with those and the rice, I dare say, young gentleman, you will be able to make it out. I ought to apologise, but in fact it is all your own fault that there is not more ; if I had fallen in with you earlier, we should have had a better dinner.” I confess I was surprised, disappointed, and amused ; but as matters stood, there was no use in complaining, and accor- dingly we fell to, neither of us wanting the best of all sauces— appetite. I soon perceived that my promised patron had baited his trap with a fowl to catch a fool ; but as we ate and drank, all care vanished, and, rogue as I suspected him to be, my Ion o-- tailed friend was a clever witty fellow, and, besides tell- ing” me a number of anecdotes, gave me some very good ad- vice ; amongst other things to be avoided, he cautioned me against numbers of people who in Venice lived only by duping the unwary. I thought this counsel came very ill from him. “ Above all,” said he, “ keep up your spirits, and recollect the Venetian proverb, ‘ A hundred years of melancholy will not pay one farthing of debt.’ ” — Reminiscences of Michael Kelly. Poets often compare life to the sea ; and the truth is, that, however bright the surface may be, they are both ot them, whenever analysis is used, salt water . APOLOGUES ANI) FABLES, IN PROSE AND VERSE, FROM THE GERMAN AND OTHER LANGUAGES. (Translated for the Irish Penny Journal.) No. III.— THE STORY OF THE OLD WOLF. i. Sir Isegrim, the "Wolf, was grown old. The years that had passed over his head, too, had brought with them changes hardly to be expected in a wolf at any season of life. All his fierceness and ferocity were gone ; he was no longer the slayer of sheep and terror ot shepherds : no ; he had lost his teeth, anil was now a philosopher. To superficial observers, perhaps, the alteration in his character might not have been very obvious ; but he himself knew that he was no more what, he had been that his lupuline prowess had departed from him. He resolved accordingly on showing mankind what a reforma- tion had overtaken him. “ One of my brethren, said lie, once assumed the garb of a lamb, but ho w as still a w olt at heart. I reverse the fable ; I seem outwardly a wolf, but at heart' I am a lamb. Appearances are deceptive; whatever prejudices may be excited against me by my exterior, with which I was born, and for which I am not accountable, I have that within which passeth show. I trust that I feel an exem- plary horror for the blood-thirstiness of my juvenile instincts, and ‘the savage revellings of my maturer years. I am deter- mined, therefore, to accommodate my way of life in future to the usages of society — to march with the spirit of the ago — to cut no more throats — to become in short quite civilized— and set an example which may have the effect of eventually bring- ing all the wolves of the forest into the same reputable posi- tion as my own.” Full of these thoughts, and possibly some others, which he kept to himself, lie set out upon a journey to the hut of the nearest shepherd, which he soon reached. “ Shepherd,” said he, “ I have come to talk over a little matter with you, personal to myself. You have been long the object of my esteem ; I entertain a special regard for you ; but you requite my esteem and regard with suspicion and hatred. You think me ‘a lawless and sanguinary robber. My friend, you labour under a deplorable prejudice. What have I done, at least for many years back, worse than others ? 1 he head and front of my offending is that I cat sheep. Suppose so : must not every animal cat some other animal ? 1 have the misfortune to be subject, like all quadrupeds (as well as bi- peds), to hunger. Only guarantee me from the attacks of hunger ; and upon my honour, Shepherd, I will never even dream of pillaging your fold. Give me enough to eat, and you may turn your dogs loose, and sleep in security. Ah ! Shep- herd, believe me, you do not know what a gentle, meek, slcek- tempered animal I can become when I have got ivhat I think enough.” “ When you have got what you think enough !” retorted the Shepherd, who had listened to this harangue with visible impa- tience ; “ ay, but when did you ever got what you thought enough? Did Avarice ever think it had got enough? No: you would cram your maw as the miser would his chest, and when both were gorged to repletion, the cry would still be, More ! More ! Go your way ; you are getting into years ; but I am even older than you ; and your cajolery is wasted. Try somebody else, old Isegrim !” ii. I see that I must, thought the Wolf; and prosecuting his journey farther, he came to the habitation of a second shep- herd. “ Come, Shepherd !” he began stoutly, “ I have a proposal to make to you. You know me, who 1 am, and how 1 live. You know that if I choose to exert my energies, 1 can dine and sup upon the heart’s blood of every sheep and lamb under your care. Very well : now mark me ; if you bestow on me half a dozen sheep every twelvemonth, I pledge you my word that I will look for no more. And only think what a fine thing it will be for you to purchase the safety of your entire flock at the beggarly price of half a dozen sheep !” “ Half a dozen sheep !” cried the Shepherd, bursting into a derisive laugh ; “ why, that’s equal to a whole flock !” “ Well, well, I am reasonable,” said the Wolf; “give me five.” “ Surely you are joking,” said the Shepherd. “ Why, if I THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 77 were in the habit of sacrificing to Pan, I don’t think I should offer him more than five sheep the whole year round.” “ Four, then, my dear friend,” urged the Wolf, coaxingly ; “ you won’t think four too many ?” “ Ah,” returned the Shepherd, with a sly glance from the corner of his eye, “ don’t you wish you may get them ?” The selfish scoundrel, how he mocks me ! thought the Wolf. “ Will you promise me three, or even two ?” “ Not even one — not the ghost of one !” replied the Shep- herd, emphatically. “ A pretty protector of my flock I should prove myself, truly, to surrender it piecemeal into the claws of my inveterate enemy! Take yourself off, my fine fellow, before you chance to vex me !” hi. The third attempt generally creates or dissipates the charm, cogitated Isegrim. May it be so in this present instance ! As he mentally uttered this ejaculation, he found himself in the presence of a third shepherd. “ Ah ! my worthy, my excellent friend,” cried he, “ I have been looking for you the whole day. I want to communicate a piece of news to you. You must know that I have been struggling desperately of late to regenerate my character. The enormity of my past career, haunted as it is with phan- toms of blood and massacre, is for ever before my eyes, and humbles me — oh, dear ! how much nobody can guess. * I have grown very penitent, and very, very soft-hearted altogether, Shepherd.” Here Isegrim hung his head, overcome for a mo- ment by his emotions. “ Still, Shepherd, still — and this is what I want you to understand — I find I can make after all but slight progress by myself. I go on smack smooth enough for a while, and then my zeal flags. I require encouragement and sympathy, and the companionship of the good and the gentle, who could give me advice, and point out to me the path of rectitude continually. In short, you see, if — if you would be but generous enough to allow a sheep or two of enlightened principles to take a walk out with me occasionally, in the cool of the evening, along some sequestered valley, sacred to phi- losophic musings, I feel that it would prove of the greatest advantage to me, in a moral and intellectual point of view. But ah ! I perceive you are laughing at me : may I ask whe- ther there is any thing in my request that strikes you as ridiculous ?” “ Permit me to answer your question by another,” said the Shepherd, with a sneer. “ Pray, Master Wolf, how old are you ?” “ Old enough to be fierce enough,” exclaimed Isegrim, with something of the ferocity of old days in his tone and eye ; “ let me tell you that, Master Shepherd.” “ And, like all the rest you have been telling me, it is a lie,” was the Shepherd’s response. “ You would be fierce if you could ; but, to your mortification, you are grown imbecile you have the will, but want the power. Your mouth betrays you, if your tongue don’t, old deceiver ! Yet, though you can bite no longer, you. are still, I dare say, able to mumble ; and on the whole, I shouldn’t fancy being a sheep’s head and shoulders in your way just now. What’s bred in the bone will never come out of the flesh, says the proverb ; and I believe vnu are one of the last animals one could expect to falsify it. I’ll take right good care to keep you at crook’s length, my crafty neighbour ; make yourself certain of that !” IV. The wrath of the Wolf was excessive, but after some time it began to subside. Mankind, it was evident, at least the pas- toral portion of them, did not appreciate as they ought the dawn of intelligence among the lupuline race — the first faint efiorts of the brute intellect to attain emancipation from ig- noiance and sav ageism. However, he would trv again. Per- severance might conquer destiny. The Great, thought he, are not. always thus unfortunate. Certainly it should not be so in my case. Ha ! here we are at the door of another shep- herd, and methinks a man of a thoughtful and benevolent aspect. Let us see how we shall get along with his new crookslnp. So he began: “ How is this, my dear friend?” he asked; you seem rather depressed in spirits. Nothing unpleasant, i nope ?— no domestic fracas, or thing of that sort— eh ?” ‘‘ N 'V’ returned the Shepherd, sighing, “but I have lost, my faithful dog— an animal I have had for years— and I shall never be able to supply his place. I have been just thinking what a noble creature he was.” “ Gadso ! that’s good news !” cried the Wolf— “ I mean for myself — ay, and on second thoughts, let me add for you too. Shepherd. You have me exactly in the nick of time. It’s just the nicest thing that could have happened !” “ What do you mean ?” cried the shepherd. “ Nicest thing that could have happened ! I don’t understand you.” “ I’ll enlighten you, my worthy,” cried Isegrim in high spi- rits. “ What would you think? I have just had the blood- iest battle you can imagine with my brethren in the forest; they and I quarrelled upon a point of etiquette ; so I tore a dozen and a half of them to pieces, and made awful exam- ples of all the rest. The consequence is, that the ivhole of the brute world is up in arms against me ; I can no longer herd with my kind ; for safety sake I must make my dwelling among the children of men. Now, as you have lost your dog, what can you do better than hire me to fill his place ? Depend upon it, I shall have such a constant eye to your sheep ! And, as to expense, I shall cost you nothing ; for as employment, and not emolument, is my object, I shall manage to live on a mere idea — in fact, I don’t care whether I eat or drink ; I’ll feed upon air, if you only take me into your service !” “ Do you mean to say,” demanded the Shepherd, “ that you would protect my flock against the invasions of your own bre- thren, the wolves?” “Mean to say it ! I’ll swear it,” cried Isegrim. “ I’ll keep them at such a distance that no eye in the village shall see them ; that their very existence shall become at length matter of tradition only ; so that people shall think there is only one Wolf— that’s myself — in the world !” “ And pray,” asked the Shepherd, “ while you protect mv sheep against other wolves, who will protect them against you ? Am I to suppose that though you hold the place of a dog, you can ever forget that you inherit the nature of a wolf? And if I cannot suppose so, should I not be a madman to employ you ? What ! introduce a thief into my house that he may forestall by his own individual industry the assaults of other thfeves cm my property ? Upon my word, that’s not so bad ! I wonder in what school you learned such precious logic, Master Isegrim ?” “ You be hanged !” cried the Wolf in a rage, as"he took his departure ; “ a pretty fellow you are to talk to me of schools, you who were never even at a hedge-school !” v. “ What a bore it is to be superannuated !” soliloquized the Wolf. “ I should get on famously, but for these unfurnished jaws of mine and he gnashed Ids gums together with as much apparent fervour as if he had got a mouthful of collops be- tween them. “ However, I must cut my coat according to my cloth. ‘’Tis notin mortals to command success.’” With which quotation from an English poet, Sir Isegrim made a halt before the cottage of a fifth shepherd. “ Good morrow, Corydon,” was his courteous greeting. The accosted party cast his eyes upon Isegrim, but made no reply. “ Do you know me, Shepherd ?” asked the Wolf. 1 erhaps not you, as an individual,” said the Sheoherd. “ but at least I know the like of you.” I should think not, though,” suggested Isegrim. “ I should think you cannot. I should think you never saw the like of me, Corydon.” “ Indeed !” cried Corydon, opening his eyes ; “ and why not, pray ?” “Because, Corydon,” answered Isegrim. “ I am a singular sort of wolf altogether— marvellous, unique, like to myself alone. I_am one of those rare specimens of brute intellectuality that visit the earth once perhaps in three thousand years. My sensibilities, physical and moral, are of a most exquisite or- der. 1 o give you an illustration — I never could bear to kill a sheep ; the sight of the blood would be too much for my nerves ; and hence, if I ever partake of animal food, it can only be where life has been for some time extinct in the natu- ral way. I wait until a sheep expires at a venerable old age, and then I cook him in a civilized manner. But why do I mention all this to you ? I’ll tell you frankly, my admirable friend. . My refined susceptibilities have totally disqualified me for living in the forest, and I want a home under your hos- pitable roof. I know that after what I have said you cannot refuse me one, for even you yourself eat dead sheep ; and I pro- test most solemnly that I will dine at your table.” “ And I protest most solemnly that you shall do no such thing,” returned the Shepherd. “ You eat dead sheep, do you ? Let me tell you that a wolf whose appetite is partial to dead sheep, may be now' and then persuaded by hunger to 18 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. mistake sick sheep for dead, and healthy sheep for sick. Trot off with your susceptibilities elsewhere, if you please. There’s a hatchet in the next room.” VI. Have I left a single stone unturned to carry my point ? demanded the Wolf of himself. Yes, there is a chance for me yet. I have it ! And full of hope he came to the cottage of the sixth shepherd. “ Look at me, Shepherd !” he cried. “ Am I not a splendid quadruped for my years ? What’s your opinion of my skin?” “ Very handsome and glossy indeed,” said the Shepherd. “ You don’t seem to have been much worried by the dogs.” No, Shepherd, no,” replied Isegrim, “ I have not been much worried by dogs, but I have been and am worried, awfully worried, Shepherd, by hunger. Now, the case being so, as you admire my skin, you and I shall strike a bargain. I am grown old, and cannot live many days longer : feed me then to death, cram me to the gullet, Shepherd, and I’ll bequeath you my beautiful skin !” “ Upon my word !” exclaimed the Shepherd. “ You come to the person of all on earth most interested in compassing your death, and you demand of him the means to enable you to live. How modest of you ! No, no, my good fellow, your skin would cost me in the end seven times its worth. If you really wish to make me a present of it, give it to me now. Here’s a knife, and I’ll warrant you I’ll disembarrass you of it before you can say Trapstick.” But the Wolf had already scampered off. VII. “ Oh, the bloody-minded wretches !” he exclaimed, “ give them fair words or foul, their sole retort to you is still, the hatchet ! the cleaver ! the tomahawk ! Shall I endure this treatment ? Never ! I’ll return on my trail this moment, and be revenged on the whole of the iniquitous generation.” So saying, he furiously dashed back the way he had come, rushed into the shepherds’ huts, sprang upon and tore the eyes out of several of their children, and was only finally subdued and killed after a hard struggle, during which he managed to inflict a number of rather ugly wounds upon his captors. It was then that a venerable shepherd of five score years and ten, the patriarch of the village, spoke to them as follows: — “ How much better, my friends, would it have been for us if we had acceded at first to the terms proposed by this reckless destroyer ! Whether he was sincere or not, we could have easily established so vigilant a system of discipline with re- spect to him that he should not have had it in his power to injure us. Now, too late, we may deplore the evil that we cannot remedy. Ah, believe me, my friends, it is an unwise policy to drive the vicious to desperation : the hand of the outcast from society becomes at last armed against all man- kind ; he ceases after a season to distinguish between friends and enemies. Few, perhaps none, are so bad as to be utterly irreclaimable ; and he who discourages the first voluntary efforts of the guilty towards reforming themselves, on the pre- tence that they are hypocritical, arrogates to himself that dis- crimination into motives which belongs alone to the Supreme Judge of all hearts, and becomes in a degree responsible for the ruinous consequences that are almdst certain to result from liis conduct.” M. TO KATHARINE. BY J. U. U. Believe not I forget thee : not for one Dark moment have I been thus self-divided From that deep consciousness which is for ever The light of all my thoughts ; it were to lose My own existence— a chill blank in life : For all is colourless when love deserts The heart— sole centre of all joy and woe ; Whose light or gloom all nature wears. Believe My breast still weary till it turns to thee, The load-star of its constant faith — unchanged By distance or by tune. For thee it cares : For thee its joys are treasured up untasted, As scattered sweets which the home-loving bee Hoards for its mossy dwelling- far away. THE JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE. The Jerusalem artichoke affords a plentiful supply of winter food for sheep and cattle, and is highly serviceable in situa- tions where, owing to the unfitness of the soil, or a deficiency of manure, turnips, carrots, mangold wortzel, or potatoes, can be cultivated only to a small extent. Mr MoreWood, in the “ History of Inebriating Liquors,” p. 399, thus treats of the advantages attending its cultivation: — “ In some parts of the north of France the root of the Jerusalem artichoke ( Helianthus tuberosus ) has been introduced for the purpose of distillation. The wash from this vegetable is found to yield a very pure strong spirit, which resembles that obtained from the grape more than any substitute that has hitherto been tried. As the root grows readily in Great Britain, and might be cultivated abundantly, it would be well to try the experiment here, as we have no medium spirit between genuine French brandy and the fiery produce of grain sold under the denominations of gin and whisky. In Ireland the cultivation of this plant would be attended with great advantage, since it thrives well in a boggy soil ; and in a country like it, where there are so many unreclaimed and waste lands, its culture would be a profitable speculation, for while the roots would afford a fine material for distillation, the tops would yield more fodder than the same space of ground, if sown with ordinary grain.” In Scotland this plant is only to be found in the gardens, the agriculturists of that country being, it would seem, as yet unacquainted with its value as a fodder. According to Mr Tighe, in the “ Survey of Kilkenny,” p. 342, it has been par- tially introduced into that county. He says, “ The Jerusalem artichoke has been tried as a food for sheep by the Rev. Dr Butler ; he found them very fond of the roots, which agreed well with them ; the quantity produced in ground without manure was calculated to be at the rate of one hundred barrels per acre (a barrel is five bushels or twenty stones). Being very hardy plants, they will thrive in a poor soil with- out any manure, and are extremely productive : pigs may be fed with them as well as sheep ; and as horses are said to be fond of the tops, it is surprising that their use in agriculture has not been more general. One advantage attends their cultivation — they are not liable to be stolen like turnips, cab- bage, young rape, and similar plants ; they are not with more difficulty extirpated from ground than potatoes, though this had been objected to them, and will perish soon when the field is laid down with grass.” EARLY STRUGGLES OF MEN OF GENIUS. ANECDOTE OF ROOKE, THE COMPOSER. We do not know if it be stated in the Life of Sir Walter Scott that several years previous to his death he had proposed to write a work on the early difficulties to which the most illus- trious men of genius in the British islands had been subjected, but it is within our own knowledge that during his visit to Ire- land he avowed this intention, and for this purpose collected facts relative to our own most distinguished countrymen, some of which were obtained from ourselves. Such a work, as that great man would have written it, would be of inestimable value ; and it is deeply to be lamented that the difficulties in which his own latter years were involved should have pre- vented him from undertaking it. We have been reminded of this interesting fact by the following anecdote, which has been communicated to us by a friend, illustrative of the early diffi- culties with which one of our most eminent countrymen had to contend, and from which he succeeded in extricating himself, no less by persevering energy of mind, independence of spirit’, and propriety of conduct, than by the possession and cultiva- tion of talents of the highest order — we allude to the author of the opera of “ Amilie, or the Love Token.” We give the anecdote in our friend’s own words : “ William M. Rooke, the composer of the delightful music of ‘ Amilie, an opera which has spread his musical fame far and wide, had in early life to contend for years, in his native city, Dublin, against difficulties which would have broken the spirit oi any one, save a man endowed with the strongest men- tal powers : indeed, many men of great talents have sunk under trials which the genius and perseverance of Rooke have at length overcome, placing him at his present height of celebrity as a British composer. None can so truly estimate his merits as those who are aware of the hard fortune of hia early days, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 79 and what he had to struggle against previous to his visiting London in 1821. In reference to these struggles, the following singular fact may not prove uninteresting to those fond of the marvellous ; ancl had not the circumstance occurred in my presence, I should have doubted its truth : — One morning during the summer of 1818, I called at Hooke’s lodgings, and on entering the room found him in a state of great dejection. * How are you, Billy ?’ said I (my usual salute). * As well as a man can be,’ he replied, ‘ who has not yet had his breakfast, and who has not a farthing in his pocket to procure one.’ This was at eleven o’clock. At the very moment that this reply was ut- tered, our eyes were attracted by a light piece of paper, which for a short time floating over our heads, finally settled upon the floor ; and our astonishment may be imagined on disco- vering it to be a bank note ! It would not be easy to describe my feelings. I gazed on the object intently, scarcely believing it a reality, although I could plainly see the prominent features of its value — Thirty Shillings ! We bath remained for some minutes motionless, except that our eyes were cast alternately from the object of our wonder to the various parts of the room, seeking a cause for so unexpected but welcome a visitor. This apparent mystery, however, was soon explained. Some months previous, Rooke had missed a thirty-shilling note, and sup- posed it to have been stolen from him. On the morning of my call he had been seeking some manuscript music stowed away in a press near the wnndow, the upper sash of which was down; and in his search the long-lost note had thus been exposed to a strong current of air, which ultimately dislodging it from its place of concealment, restored it to its owner at a moment when it was so much wanted. When last in London, during an evening’s chat with my friend, casting our thoughts back upon old times and circum- stances, I brought to his recollection the fact here related, the singularity of which principally rests upon the strange chance of the mislaid note re-appearing at such a time and in such a manner ; and I question whether, in all its rambles before or since, the said thirty-shilling note ever came to hand so opportunely.” B. W. THE NATURE OF WATER. We concluded a previous notice of some of the uses to which water is subservient in nature, by mentioning that modern science had fully proved the incorrectness of the ancient idea of the elementary nature of water ; and that by the processes which chemistry places at our disposal, we are now able to resolve water into its elements, or, having obtained these ele- ments from other sources, to cause them to unite, and to pro- duce water in combining. In the present article we shall point out the manner in which this may be accomplished, and de- scribe some properties and uses of water which the space at our disposal did not allow us to notice before. Water consists in great part of the substance to which is due the power the atmosphere possesses of supporting life and combustion, and of which we have formerly spoken under the name of oxygen. Every nine ounces of water contain eight ounces of oxygen, the remainder being made up of another and very peculiar substance, termed hydrogen. Hydrogen is a gas, invisible, colourless, and transparent, and consequently in all external characters precisely like the air we breathe. But it differs from it very much in other respects. If a lighted candle be placed in hydrogen gas, the candle is extinguished, for hydrogen does not support combustion, but the gas itself takes fire, where it mixes with the air, and burns with a pale yellowish flame, scarcely visible in broad day-light. Hence hydrogen is in its properties the very reverse of oxygen : it burns, which oxygen does not ; oxygen supports combustion, which hydrogen cannot do. When hydrogen burns with oxygen, w r ater is always formed. Now, to decompose water it is only necessary to act upon the principle of hydrogen being a combustible substance. All substances are not equally combustible ; that is to say, they do not burn or combine with oxygen with equal facility or quick- ness. Thus charcoal is more combustible than iron, iron is more combustible than copper, and copper than gold or silver, whilst phosphorus is still more combustible than char- coal. Now, oxygen will combine with any of these combus- tible substances ; but if it have a choice, it will take that which is most combustible — that which it likes best. And even if the oxygen be already T united with one body, and that another more combustible be brought into action on it, it will leave the former, and attach itself altogether to the latter substance. The combustibility of hydrogen is about equal to that of iron. It is inferior to carbon and to many other bodies ; but it is superior to that of copper, silver, gold, and others. If, therefore, w r e take water in the state of steam, and bring it into contact with red-hot charcoal or coke, the oxygen of the water goes to the most combustible body, and the hydrogen is set free. In this way charcoal may be made to burn bril- liantly without air, but not without oxygen. A red-hot bit of charcoal burns in steam, because it decomposes the water ; it takes the oxygen, and turns the hydrogen out, which asstiming the form of gas, maybe collected by means of peculiar chemical apparatus. Iron and hydrogen are, as mentioned above, about equally combustible : in fact it depends upon the degree of heat, which is the more combustible. If the iron be bright red, it decomposes water, taking away the oxygen ; but if it be only dull red, then hydrogen is the more combustible ; and if there be a compound of oxygen and iron ready formed (oxide of iron, rust), the hydrogen will decompose it, and water being formed, the iron will be set free. If, therefore, a gun barrel be laid across a fire, and heated to bright redness, and a little w r ater be poured into it at one end by means of a tun- dish with a stop-cock soldered to it, hydrogen gas wall issue from the other end, and may be burned, or collected for va- rious purposes. Hydrogen gas may be prepared more easily by other pro- cesses, which do not show, however, so clearly the fact of its being derived from the decomposition of the water. The pro- perty which iron acquires at a bright red heat may be given to it without any heat, by means of some oil of vitriol (called in the language of chemists, sulphuric acid). Iron quite cold will decompose water, if the water be previously mixed with some sulphuric acid. The oxygen goes to the iron, which dissolves, and the liquor contains green copperas. The metal zinc, which is now so very much used in the arts, may also be em- ployed with sulphuric acid and water to decompose w r ater, and it gives a purer hydrogen gas than iron, the latter metal con- taining always a little charcoal, which mixes with the hydrogen and contaminates it. In all of these processes, although the water is decomposed, yet we obtain only one of its elements ; the other, the oxygen, remaining combined with the iron, the charcoal, or the zinc. We may, however, produce the separation of water into its elements, so as to exhibit both. This is done by passing a current of electricity from the apparatus termed tne galvanic battery, through the w r ater. One of the grandest and most fruitful discoveries ever made in chemistry was that by Sir Humphry Davy, who proved that electricity possesses the power of separating compound substances into their elements ; and by that means he succeeded in decomposing numerous bodies which had resisted all processes known before that time, and obtained new substances of a simple nature, and of most curious and important propei’ties. To decompose water by means of electricity, the wires from the galvanic battery are made to dip into a little cup of water, and over each wire there is hung a bell-shaped vessel, inverted, full of water. When the current passes, pure oxygen gas is disengaged from one wire, and pure hydrogen gas is liberated at the other, and being received as the bubbles rise in the bell-glasses, the gases are collected for use. So much for the separation of water into its elements ; the production of water by the union of its elements is still easier. The simplest -way to show this is to take a little bottle, and put into it the zinc, water, and sulphuric acid, by which the hydrogen is to be obtained, to fit to the mouth of the bottle a cork, through which passes a little glass or metal tube, end- ing in a fine jet. The gas may be set on fire as it issues from the jet, and by holding a cold plate or a tumbler over the flame, and at a little distance, a copious dew of water will be deposited upon it, which after a few moments will increase so much as to run into large drops. This water is formed by the hydrogen gas combining as it burns with the oxygen of the air. Hydrogen gas in burning produces very little light : one cause of this is, that the product of combustion-formed water being in a state of steam, there is no solid substance in the flame ; and it appears to be always true that no bright light can exist without a solid material. In order to produce a great light wdth the flame of hydrogen gas, it is only necessary to place a wire or a bit of flint, or any solid substance, in the flame, The solid immediately becomes intensely bright, and 80 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. by using lime or magnesia, which are peculiarly fitted for the purpose, a light so intense as to be only surpassed by the noon-day summer sun, may be obtained. This lime light has been introduced for experiment into lighthouses, and has been particularly serviceable in the trigonometrical surveys of these kingdoms, in consequence of which it is generally known as the Drummond light, from the eminent philosopher whose recent melancholy loss every Irishman must deplore. The heat produced by the flame of hydrogen is thus most in- tense ; substances which are inattackable by the strongest furnaces melt like wax in the jet of oxygen and hydrogen, and in the Drummond light the lime appears gradually to evaporate. A mixture of hydrogen and oxygen, or of hydrogen and air, may be thus set fire to by a candle ; and when previously mixed, a terrific explosion is produced. Persons should there- fore be very cautious how they perform experiments with hy- drogen, as even skilful chemists have occasionally suffered severely from accidents of this kind. When a young person makes hydrogen for the first time, he is naturally curious, and hastens to satisfy himself by seeing that it burns : he applies the candle before all the common air has been expelled from the apparatus, and the mixture inside being still explosive, the flame passes back, and the whole is shattered into pieces with the noise and violence of a bombshell. At the same time, therefore, that we would be happy if this article induced many of our young readers to satisfy themselves of the com- position and decomposition of water by actual experiment, yet we trust they will do so prudently, and with the guidance of some older person who has previously seen how chemical apparatus are employed. If a wide tube of glass be held over the jet of burning hy- drogen gas, a very curious result is produced : a powerful musical sound is heard, which changes according as the jet is moved up and down in the tube. The nearer the jet is to the orifice, the graver, the higher up in the tube it is, the more acute, is the sound heard. The cause of this is, that the flame, which to the eye appears uniform and continuous, is in reality a number of very small explosions of mixed air and gas. These succeed one another so rapidly that the intervals of darkness which intervene are not perceived, and the quantity of gas which explodes is too small to produce any audible noise ; but on bringing a tube, the air in which is capable of vibrating with the same quickness as the little explosions are produced, the air is thrown into vibrations which reach the ear, and produce the peculiar musical tone. With a selection of gas jets and tubes a variety of notes may be pro- duced, so great that a musical instrument has been constructed by their means. Hydrogen gas is the lightest substance in nature, and it is consequently used to fill balloons, by which men have been carried to a height in the air much exceeding that of the lof- tiest mountains. When balloons were first made use of, they were of the kind which are now termed fire-balloons : the bag of the balloon was open at the bottom, and in the car was a furnace, the chimney of which terminated at the aperture of the balloon. The hot air and gases generated by the burning of the fuel in the furnace ascending into the bag, expelled the heavier cold air, and a sufficient power of rising was thus obtained, by the difference between the weight of the heated and of the cold air, to enable the balloon to take up a very considerable weight. Hydrogen gas being, however, at least ten times as light as the hot air, was much more convenient, as it required only a much smaller balloon ; and the unfortu- nate death of the most remarkable experimenter of the fire- balloon, Pilatre de Rozier, contributed also very much to show their great danger, and prevent their being used. Although many persons had proposed from time to time to ascend by means of balloons filled with heated or rarified air, or with hydrogen gas, it was reserved for the brothers Mont- golfier of Lyons to realize this bold and singular idea. These brothers had originally been destined to science, but on the death of an elder brother who had been an extensive paper maker at Lyons, they abandoned their former pursuits to con- tinue the manufacture. They made large paper balloons, which, whether filled with hydrogen gas or heated air, as- cended, and one brother ascended to a small height at Lyons. On introducing their invention to the notice of the public and the royal family at Paris, the greatest enthusiasm was excited, and personages of the highest rank accompanied the adventu- rous brothers in their aerial voyages. Pilatre de Rozier, then director of tUe king’s museum, devoted himself completely to the improvement of the new art of the navigation of the air ; and after having ascended from Versailles frequently, and gained a considerably greater height than any of his predeces- sors, he resolved to cross the British Channel, and pass from France to England in a fire-balloon. He ascended from a village about half way between Calais and Boulogne, on Sep- tember the 16th, 1784, with a gentleman of the town as a com- panion ; and having attained a considerable height, was car- ried by the favourable wind over the sea in his proper course. The balloon howover continuing to rise, got into a current of air in an opposite direction, and was brought again over the land ; at this moment the spectators on shore were horrified to observe that the balloon, half lost in the clouds, was on fire, and after a moment the car was observed to fall. The remains of the car and of the unfortunate aeronauts, in whom scarcely a vestige of human form could be traced, were found in a field on the road to Abbeville ; and a stone bearing the simple in- scription of the fate of Pilatre de Rozier and his companion marks to the present day the place, close by the road-side, where the bodies were inhumed. The substitution of hydrogen or of coal gas for the fire- balloon, has deprived aerial navigation of its greatest dangers. No good means of steering or tacking a balloon having been discovered, the art has not yet fulfilled the expectations that were at first formed of it : the balloon is at the mercy of the winds ; and although the voyagers travel in ease and safety, and often with rail-road speed, yet as it cannot be foretold in what direction the balloon must go, voyages in the air have been as yet only an exciting and not very dangerous amuse- ment. K. The Theatre.— I approach a subject, on which a great variety of opinion exists, and that is the theatre. In its pre- sent state the theatre deserves no encouragement. It is an accumulation of immoral influences. It has nourished intem- perance and all vice. In saying this, 1 do not say that the amusement is radically, essentially evil. I can conceive of a theatre which would be the noblest of all amusements, and would take a high rank among the moans of refining the taste and elevating the character of a people. The deep woes, the mighty and terrible passions, and the sublime emotions of genuine tragedy, are fitted to thrill us with human sympa- thies, with profound interest in our nature, with a conscious- ness of what man can do, and dare, and suffer, with an awed feeling of the fearful mysteries of life. The soul of the spec- tator is stirred from its depths, and the lethargy in which so many live is roused, at least for a time, to some intenseness of thought and sensibility. The drama answers a high purpose when it places us in the presence of the most solemn and striking events of human history, and lays bare to us the human heart in its most powerful, appalling, glorious work- ings. But how little does the theatre accomplish its end ! How often is it disgraced by monstrous distortions of human nature, and still more disgraced by profaneness, coarseness, indelicacy, low wit, such as no woman, worthy of the name, can hear without a blush, and no man can take pleasure in without self-degradation ! — Dr Charming on Temperance. Consecrated Irish Bells. — Consecrated bells were for- merly held in great reverence in Ireland, particularly before the tenth century. Cambrensis, in his Welsh Itinerary, says. “Both the laity and clergy in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, held in such great veneration portable bells, and staves crook ’t at the top, and covered with gold, silver, and brass, and similar relics of the saints, that they were much more afraid of swear- ing falsely by them than by the gospels, because from some hidden and miraculous power with which they were gifted, and the vengeance of the saint, to whom they were particularly- pleasing, their despisers and transgressors are severely pun- ished.” Miraculous portable bells were very common; Giral- dus speaks of the Cumpana fugitiva of O’Toole, chieftain of Wicklow ; and Colgan relates, that whenever St Patrick’s portable bell tolled, as a preservative against evil spirits and magicians, it was heard from the Giants’ Causeway to Cape Clear, from the Hill of Howth to the Western shores of Con- nemara. — Har diman' s Irish Minstrelsy. Printed and Published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office ot' the General Advertiser, No. C, Church Lane, College Green, Dub- lin. — Agents: — R. Groomhuidge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, Lon- don. Simms and Diniiam, Exchange Street, Manchester. C. Davies, North John Street. Liverpool. J. Drake, Birmingham. M. Bingham, Broad Street, Bristol. Fraser anil Crawford, George Street, Edin- burgh. David Robertson, Trongate, Glasgow, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 11. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 1840. Volume I. CLONTARF CASTLE, There are few things that afford us a higher pleasure than to observe our metropolis and our provincial cities and towns, despite of adverse circumstances, increasing in the number and splendour of their public buildings, for they are sure evi- dences of the advance of civilization, with its attendant train of arts, amongst us, and that we are progressing to the rank and dignity of a great nation. Yet we confess we enjoy a still higher gratification when we see springing up around us great architectural works of another class — those erected by individuals of the aristocracy as residences for themselves and those who are to come after them. Such architectural works are not merely interesting from the gratifications they afford to the feeling of taste, and the epic dignity and beauty which they contribute to landscape scenery, but have a higher inte- rest as pledges to the nation that those who have erected them have a filial attachment to the soil which gave them birth, and which supplies them, whether for good or evil, with the means of greatness ; and that they are not disposed to play the part of unwise and ungrateful children. To us it little matters what the creed or party of such individuals may be ; however they may err in opinions, their feelings are at heart as they should be. The aristocrat of large means, who is re- sident not from necessity but from choice, and who spends a COUNTY OF DUBLIN. portion of his wealth in the adornment of his home, is rarely, if ever, a bad landlord. Desii’ing to see art and nature combine to produce the sentiment of beauty in the objects immediately about him, he cannot willingly allow it to be associated with the unsightly and discordant emblems of penury and sorrow'. To be indifferent about the presence of such accompaniments w r ould be an anomaly in human character, and only an excep- tion proving the general rule. It is this class of men that w f e want — men who seek happiness in their legitimate homes, and the diffusion of blessings among those to w'hom it is their duty to be protectors — lovers of the arts of refined society, not the gross and generally illiterate pursuers of field sports, which, by hardening the heart towards the low r er animals of crea- tion, prepares it for reckless indifference to the w r ants and sufferings of our fellow men. Had we more of such patriots — more of such domestic architectural buildings starting into existence, evidencing as w'ell their refined tastes and habits as the sincerity of the love they bear their native land, we should soon see the face of our country changed, and peace and hap- piness smiling around us. We do not, how'ever, indulge in any feelings of despondence for the future. Very many beau- tiful creations of the architectural art have recently been erected in Ireland, and w r e have little apprehension that they 82 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. will not increase in number till our island shall rival any other portion of the empire in the possession of such charac- teristic features of civilization and beauty. Cheered by such pleasing anticipations, we shall endeavour to the best of our ability to make our readers familiar with the architectural styles of the chief residences of our nobility and gentry, as well as with the general features of the scenery in which they are situated ; and, as a commencement, we have selected the seat of the Vernons — the recently re-erected Castle of Clontarf. The name of this locality, which is situated on the northern shore of the Bay of Dublin, and about two miles from the city, must at least be familiar to most of our readers, being memorable in history as the scene of the most national and best contested battle ever fought in Ireland, when in 1014 the monarch Brian Boru obtained a decisive victory over the united forces of the Danish and Norwegian invaders of the British islands, assisted by the Irish troops of a recreant King of Leinster. This name signifies in English the lawn or recess of the bull, being formed from two Celtic words, cluain, a lawn or pastoral plain, and tarbh, a bull ; the latter appella- tion expressing its contiguity to one of the two great sand- banks of the bay, now called the North and South Bulls, from the similitude of the sounds produced by the breaking of the sea upon their shores, to the roar of animals of that denomi- nation. As it is stated that a church or monastery -was founded here as early as the year 550, it is probable that this name is of ecclesiastical origin, and that the site of that ancient church is still marked by the present parish one from which it was derived. But, however this may be, immediately after the settlement of the Anglo-Normans, the lands of Clontarf and Santry, constituting one knight’s fee, were granted by Hugh de Lacy, Lord of Meath, to one of his followers, named Adam de Feipo, or as the name is now written, Phepoe, by whom, as is generally supposed, the Castle of Clontarf was erected, and its lands created a manor. This manor, as well as its cas- tle, appears, however, to have passed very soon after into the possession of the Knights Templars, by whom a com- mandery of the Order, dependent upon their splendid estab- lishment at Kilmainham, was placed here. Upon the sup- pression of the Templars, their manor of Clontarf was granted, in 1311, to Richard de Burgo, Earl of Ulster, the religious edifices upon it remaining in the king’s hands as a royal house ; and in 1326, Roger le Ken had a grant of the premises in Clon- tarf, which he had heretofore occupied at will, to hold hence- forth to him and the heirs of his body. Towards the close of the same century, however, in obedience to the Pope’s decree in reference to the lands of the Templars, the manor passed into the possession of the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem, on which Clontarf became a preceptory of that Order, and a chief seat of the Grand Prior of Kilmainham. It seems somewhat probable, however, that the descendants of Roger le Ken still continued to hold the manor as lessees of the Hospitallers till the dissolution of the Order, as, immediately previous to that event, on an inquisition taken, the Prior of Kilmainham was found seised of the manor, rectory, tithes, and altarages of Clontarf, subject, however, to a lease made in the year 1538 to Matthew King (a corrupted form per- haps of the name Ken) of all the town and lordship, with the appurtenances, and also the pool of Clontarf, and the island lying to the west side thereof, and all the said rec- tory, tithes, &c. to endure for nine years. In this demise it was provided that the lessee should repair the manor-house and maintain a sufficient person to administer all sacraments to the parishioners at their proper charges. On the suppres- sion of the monastic order in the thirty-second year of Henry the Eighth, Sir John Rawson, the Prior of Kilmainham — a very distinguished man, who had at various periods held the office of Treasurer of Ireland — having, with the consent of his Chapter under their common seal, surrendered the hospi- tal with its dependencies into the King’s hands, he was cre- ated Viscount of Clontarf in 1541, on a representation made to his majesty by the Lord Deputy, with a pension of five hundred marks, in right of which dignity he sat in the parlia- ment of that year. In the year 1600, the manor, territory, tithes, town, and lordships of Clontarf, as enjoyed by the Priors of Kilmain- ham, were granted by Queen Elizabeth to Sir Geoffry Fenton, who had filled the office of Secretary of State for Ireland ; and on his death in 1608 these premises were further assured to his son Sir William, who had a confirmation of this manor in 1637, under the commission for the remedy of defective titles. Yet it appears that very shortly aftenvards, the manor, however acquired, was again in the possession of a member of the King family ; for, on the breaking out of the rebellion of 1641, the town, manor-house, &c. of Clontarf, then the pro- perty of Mr George King, were burnt by Sir Charles Coote as a punishment for the supposed participation of that gentle- man in a plunder made of a cargo from a vessel which lay there, by Luke Netterville and his adherents. King was shortly afterwards attainted, a reward of £400 offered for his head ; and his estates, comprising this manor, Flollybrook, and the island of Clontarf, containing, as stated, 961 acres statute measure, were bestowed by Cromwell on Captain John Bake- well, who afterwards sold the estate to John Vernon, a scion of the noble Norman family of the De Vernons, and from whose brother the present proprietor descends. In 1660, Colonel Edward Vernon, the son of John Vernon, passed patent for this manor in fee, together with all anchor- ages, fisheries, creeks, sands and sea-shores, wrecks of the sea, &c. ; which right was saved in subsequent acts of parlia- ment, and still remains to his successors. And in 1675, the king further enlarged the jurisdictions, tenures, and courts of this manor, with a grant of royalties (royal mines excepted), power to empark three hundred acres, with free warren, pri- vilege of holding two fairs, one on the 10th of April and the other on the 16th of October, with customs, &c. These fairs have, however, been long discontinued. We have thus briefly traced the origin, and succession of proprietors of this castle and manor, as immediately connected with the subject of our prefixed illustration ; but our limits will not allow us to touch on the general history of the loca- lity on the present occasion. Of the original castle erected here in the twelfth century, a square tower, connected with additions of the sixteenth and subsequent centuries, was preserved as a residence for the pro- prietors of the manor till the year 1835, when the present noble structure was commenced from the designs and under the superintendence of the late William Morrison, Esq., the most eminent and accomplished architect whom Ireland has pos- sessed within the present century. With the good feeling as well as refined taste for which this admirable artist was so dis- tinguished, his first desire in the re-edification of this castle was to preserve as far as possible the original buildings ; and while he increased their extent in the necessary additions to them, to preserve and restore them as much as possible to what might be supposed to have been their original state. But it was found impracticable to do so. The foundations were found to have sunk, and a nearly total re-erection was therefore ne- cessary ; yet, in the new edifice, attending to the historical associations connected with a spot so interesting, he so de- signed it as to exhibit with historical accuracy w r hat might be supposed to have been the forms and features of the ancient buildings, and thus make it a consistent commentary on and illustration of the past history of its locality. With these remarks, which were necessary to insure a just appreciation of the intention of the architect in the diversified character which he has given to this architectural composition, we may describe it generally as a structure in its character partly military, partly domestic, and to a certain extent eccle- siastical. Its grand feature is a tower in the Norman style of the twelfth century, which ascends to the height of seventy feet, or with a smaller tower which is placed behind it, eighty feet : it has turrets at its angles, and its windows as well as its interior are enriched with decorations in harmony with its architectural style. Connected with this tower, and placed on its west side, is the principal portion of the domestic build- ings, which present the purest specimen, perhaps, of Tudor architecture to be found in Ireland. The entrance to this range is placed beneath a small but lofty tower, beneath which a vestibule leads into a spacious and lofty hall, fifty- one feet by twenty, which presents much the appearance of a Gothic church, the walls being panelled, and painted to imitate dark oak. This hall is floored with Irish oak polished, and its roof is supported by principals springing from richly ornamented corbels, or pendants— its beauty being much in- creased by gilded bosses with which it is studded, and which, sparkling among the dark tracery, have a singularly rich effect. The cornice is also richly ornamented, and presents at inter- vals similar gilded bosses. But the imposing feature of this great chamber is a magnificent staircase of oak, placed at its eastern end, which leads, by two return flights, to a gallery crossing the hall, and communicating with the principal bed- chambers, and which would serve for an orchestra on occasions THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 83 of festivity. At the other end of the hall are doors leading into the drawing-room, dancing-room, and library ; and in the centre of this end is placed a beautiful chimney-piece of black marble, surrounded by a canopy of carved oak, the enrich- ments of which are in that peculiar style which characterises the ornaments of Tudor architecture, containing the single and double rose, stars, and other badges of that period. The hall is lighted by five stained glass windows of an ecclesi- astical character, and level with the gallery ; and on these windows are blazoned the arms of the families with whom the Vernons have intermarried, comprising some of the highest of the English and Irish nobility. Of the external architecture of this portion of the building some correct notion may be formed from our illustration, which exhibits the style of the gables and oriel or bay windows which are placed both on its southern and western sides ; and we may justly apply to the whole of this range the description given by Chaucer in his imaginary palace of “ pleasaunt regarde “ The chamberis and parlers of a sorte, With bay windows goodlie as may be thought, The galleries right wele y wrought, As for dauncinge and otherwise disporte.” Branching from the northern and eastern sides of the great toAver, extensive ranges of building contain the servants’ apartments, and an extensive suite of inferior bed-rooms, and the tower itself contains a study, and above it a nursery, over which, again, a leaded platform with parapets commands most extensive and diversified prospects of the surrounding country. The preceding description will, we fear, convey but an im- perfect idea of the plan of this interesting structure, nor will our illustration, which only gives a representation of its south- ern front, give more than a general idea of the architectural character of a building, the great merit of which, next to the beauty and chronological accuracy of its details, consists in the number of picturesque points of view Avhich it affords, from the irregularity of its plan and the variety of its outlines. We shall only add a few words in respect to its locality. The Castle of Clontarf is situated in a distinct rich in pas- toral beauty, and at the head or northern extremity of the village of the same name, -which consists of a single but wide street composed of houses of a respectable class, and extending from it in a right line to the sea. It is surrounded by forest trees of great age and grandeur, through which by vistas are obtained views of the bay and the mountain scenery of the southern shore. Upon the whole, w r e may truly say of this structure that its beauty is no less striking than its moderate size and preten- sion are in happy proportion to the rank and means of its oivner ; nor is it a lesser merit, that— unlike too many of the lordly residences in Ireland — the close propinquity of its situation to the village of which he is lord, is characteristically expressive of the confidence and kindly familiarity which should ever exist between the proprietor and the community holding under him. Nor is it again a lesser merit, that — unlike most of the mansion-houses to which avc have alluded— it is not enclosed by churlish and prison-like walls of stone, excluding it from the public eye, and indicating but too truly the cold and heart- less selfishness of their owners, AA'hich Avould not alloAv to the many even the passing enjoyment of a glimpse of the gran- deur and beauty which they claim as their own. P. A Woodex Glass Goblet. — The first night of the “ Stratford Jubilee” in Dublin, Robert Mahon had to sing the song of the “ Mulberry Tree,” the music composed by C. Dibdin senior, the Avords of AA T hich begin Avith “ Behold, this fair goblet was carved from the tree Which, oh! my sweet Shakspeare, was planted by thee.” He walked on, and began the song, holding out in his hand a fine cut-glass rummer. The other performers, who Avere also on, looked at him and his fair glass goblet “ carved from a tree” Avith fivonder. The audience took the absurdity, and much mirth and loud hissing followed. The play over, Mahon had the folly to insist upon it he was right: “’Tis true,” he said, “the property-man did stand at the Aving with a wooden cup in his hand, which he wanted to thrust into mine ; but could I appear before the audience Avith such a rascally vulgar Avooden mether ? — no ; I insisted he should that instant go and fetch me an elegant glass rummer, and here it is J” — O'Keefe's Recollections. CUTTING OLD FRIENDS. One of the most difficult things a person has to do, who is getting ahead of the friends of his earlier and less prosperous years in the race of fortune, is to rid himself of these friends — to get quit of persons whose want of success in the world renders them no longer fit associates. The thing is not easily done, for you have to maintain appearances. You have to repel them gradually and gently, and in such a manner as to be able to defy them to lay any particular act of rudeness, any positive act of repulsion, to your charge. To manage the thing adroitly, therefore, requires some genius and a good deal of tact. The difficulty of accomplishing this great manoeuvre in a prosperous career, is much increased by the circumstance that as you advance your ancient cronies throng the thicker and closer around you. They in fact cling and cluster about you like so many bees, and with impertinent looks of glee seek to express their satisfaction Avith your prosperity. Now, it is a most desirable thing to get quit of these gen- try — to have them brushed off. But it would be rude to do this with the fly-flap and the strong hand. You must get rid of them by more tact and management. And after you have got rid of them, that is, driven them from personal contact as it were, you have to continue to keep them at a proper dis- tance. No easy matter this, for somehoAV or other the obtuse creatures, your poor former acquaintance, will not see, Avhat you see very distinctly, that you are now quite a superior sort of person to them, and that they are no longer fit to be ranked amongst your friends. This the perverse, duil-Avitted felloAvs will not see. And, more provoking still, no degree of ad- vancement in the Avorld on your part, no acquisition of wealth, Avill induce one of them, whatever you yourself may think to the contrary, to contemplate you with a AA’hit more respect than they did when you Avere one of themselves. They insist on considering you merely as having been more fortunate than themselves — not a bit better or a bit cleverer. Let us remark here, that the successful in the world are stout deniers of the doctrine of chances. They maintain that there is no such a thing as luck ; while the unsuccessful, again, are firm believers in the doctrine, and insist on it that not only is there such a thing as luck, but that luck is everything. The successful man’s vanity prompts him to attribute his prosperity solely to his talents and merit — the unsuccessful man’s self-love to deny that the want of these qualities has been his hindrance. Hence the conflicting opinions of the two on this curious subject. Then, where lies the truth? We suspect between. From a good deal of experience in the science of “ cutting” under the circumstances alluded to in this paper — we shall not say whether as cutters or cuttees — we have flattered ourselves that Ave could throAV out a few hints that might be found useful to gentlemen Avho are getting on in the world, and who are desirous of ridding themselves of their earlier and poorer friends. Under this supposition we offer the feAv following remarks : — . For some time after you have started on the prosperous career on which you have luckily fallen, continue to smile and bow towards your old friends as formerly ; and when a'ou meet them accidentally (let this be, hoAveveiq as seldom as vou possibly can), shake hands with them as cordially as ever. You may even venture to remark, accompanying such remark with an expression of regret, that they are prodigious stran- gers now. But this is not quite safe ground, and we by no means advise its general adoption. Conducting yourself in this Avay, your old friends will never suspect that there is al- ready a change working at your heart — a secret operation as yet known only to yourself. By and bye, throw the least, the very least thing of distance into your greeting : let your smile be apparently as cordial as formerly, but let there now be a slight expression of the slightest degree possible of coolness, of an indefinable some- thing or other in your general manner of a repulsive charac- ter : take care, however, that it be indefinable — that it be of a description that cannot be named. This new feature in your bearing will probably startle the more shrewd and observant of your former friends : but never mind that — it is precisely the impression you desire to make. It is even possible that some of them may express by their manner towards you a feeling of irritation at your new mode of treating them. Meet it by an expression of surprise at their conduct, and by increased coolness. There is noAv good 84 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. ground for a quarrel — not open hostility, of course, but the warfare of distant looks and haughty salutations. Improve it to the utmost, and wonder what the fellows mean. Observe that the whole of this nice process of dissolving former associations is carried on without one angry or offen- sive word being said on either side — without the slightest approach to an overt act of hostility ; you, particularly, being as bland as ever. The whole is effected by look and manner alone. To the gentleman who is rising in the world there are few things more offensive than the familiarity of old acquaintance- ship when presented in the shape of notes and letters. Your old friends, still obstinately overlooking your advancement in the world, will in all probability continue to write to you when they have occasion to do so, in the free-and-easy way of former days. They will even sometimes so far forget them- selves and you as to address you in a jocular strain. This must be instantly put down. Do it by brief and grave replies ; take no notice of their jokes, and never attempt an approach to one in return. This in time will cure them : if not, you must have recourse to stronger measures. You must either not answer at all, or administer some decided dampers. Should any of your former friends seek your patronage — a very probable case — take an early opportunity, while doing him some trifling service, of letting him feel sensibly your relative positions, all~the while, however, exhibiting towards him the most friendly dispositions. But let him ever and anon feel the bit gently — let him feel that he has got somebody on his back. Begin as soon as possible to lecture him in a gentle way — all for his own good of course. Your character of patron gives you a right to do this ; and under this guise you can say the most cutting things to him without affording him the slightest ground for complaint. Under this guise you can address the most insulting language to him, and defy him to take it amiss. If he should, however, you can without any difficulty prove him to be one of the most ungrateful monsters that ever lived. You were doing all you could for him, and when you ventured to advise him — having nothing but his own good at heart — he chose to take offence at you, and to resent the friendly advice you gave him. Such an ungrateful dog ! As few men can stand such treatment as that above alluded to long, we can venture to promise you that by a steady course of proceeding in the way we have pointed out, you will soon clear your hands of your old friends. C. THE DIVORCED,* A TRANSLATION FROM THE MOLDAVIAN. “ Ah ! what a fatal gift from Heaven is a too sensitive heart I” — Rousseau. What is that yonder shimmering so ? Can it be swans ? Can it be snow ? If it were swans they would move, I trow, If it were snow it had melted ere now. No : it is Ibrahim Aga’s tent — There- lies the warrior, wounded and spent. Mother and sisters tend him there Night and morn with busiest care ; His wife alone — through shame or grief — Stays away from the suffering Chief. Wherefore, as soon as his illness was gone, Wrote he thus to the Sensitive One — “ Go thy way from my house and hearth, And bide with the mother that gave thee birth.” Sad was Ayoob at the sudden word ! It pierced her tender heart like a sword. Hark ! the sound of a charger’s tramp— Ibrahim, then, is come from the camp ! So she fancies, and, in her despair, Thinks she will scale the turret-stair, And dash herself down from the castle-wall, When, lo ! her two little daughters call — “ It isn’t our father, mother dear ! This is our uncle, Djaffar-al-Meer.” Turning around, the weeping mother Flings her arms about her brother — “ Oh, brother ! that this black day should arrive ! Oh, how can I leave these helpless five ?” But, cold and wordless, as one who has yet To study Compassion, or feel Remorse, The brother draws forth, all shiningly set In silk and gold, the Brief of Divorce, * The incidents of this narrative are founded on fact. And sternly he states the Law’s command — That again she return to her kindred and land, Free once more to dispose of her hand. The mother’s heart felt breaking, for now All hope was buried ; — she could not speak — . She kissed her two little boys on the brow, And her two little girls she kissed on the cheek, While the babe in the cradle — unconscious child ! — . Held out its diminutive arms, and smiled ! The iron Djaffar would wait no more — His barb was pawing the earth at the door : “ Up, woman !” he cried — and they galloped away, And reached their home by the close of day. But there not long she pined alone, For, barely a week was over and gone When many a suitor came to sue ; Kapitans, Beys, and Agas too, Came to see her and staid to woo. And Djaffar saw that the richest of all Was the noble Khadi of Nourjahaul. Afresh for sorrow were hourly shed The bitter tears of the mourner then : “ I pray thee, brother,” she sadly said, “ Give me not in marriage agen ! My broken heart would cease to beat Should I and the children chance to meet.” But Djaffar was ever the Man of Steel — The morrow, he vowed, should see her a wife ! “ Then, hear me, brother ! — thy sister’s life Hangs upon this her last appeal ! Write to the Khadi thus, I entreat — - ‘ Health from Ayoob to her lordly lover ! ‘ Send, she prays thee, a veil to cover ‘ Her sorrowful figure from head to feet, ‘ Lest, while passing the Aga’s door, ‘ Her children greet her as heretofore.’ ” The letter was sent, and the veil came home ; And by noon on the morrow the bride was arrayed ; And a gorgeous train and cavalcade Set out for the Khadi’ s palace-dome. They journeyed till sunset purpled the sky, And now, alas ! her trial is nigh — Her trial is nigh, her bosom is swelling ; They come within sight of Ibrahim’s dwelling They near the gates — ah, well-a-day ! Her children cannot mistake their mother — “ Mamma ! Mamma ! ah, don’t go away !” They cry, and their voices drown one another. That mother groaned in her ivretchedness ! “ Live long !” she said, “ my Lord and Master ! Mayest thou ever defy Disaster ! May thy shadow never be less ! Bid, I implore thee, the cavalcade wait A moment in front of the Aga’s gate, While I go into the house, and leave Some gifts with my little ones, lest they grieve.” Silently then, like a ghost from the tombs. She enters once more the remembered rooms, Gives to her sons little gold-laced boots, Gives to her daughters little kapoots,* And leaves with the babe in the cradle-bed Some toys and a basket of sugar-bread. Now', the desolate father was standing apart, And he marked that she neither spake nor sighed, And Agony wrung his manly heart — “ Come, come to me, hither, my children !” he cried, For I see that your mother’s bosom is grown Colder and harder than marble stone.” But, as soon as Ayoob heard Ibrahim speak, And saw her children turning away, She fell on the floor without a shriek, And without a stir on the floor she lay ; And the funeral- waiters of Islambol Were chanting ere night the hymn for her soul.f M. * Cloaks. t I he popular notion that the Mohammedans deny immortality to the souls of women is altogether a mistake, as will be apparent to any one who takes the trouble of looking through the Koran. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 85 OROHOO, THE FAIRY MAN, A REMINISCENCE OF CONNAUGHT. Were we to believe the chronicles of our grandmothers, Ire- land at one period was held in fee-simple by witches, warlocks, white ladies, fairies, and leprahauns ; the earth, the air, and the sky, were peopled by them ; every crumbling and desolate cabin on the sterile moor or common was tenanted by a witch ; while the margins of our beautiful loughs, the bosoms of our silent and sequestered glens, the recesses of our romantic mountain valleys, the echoing walls of every mouldering edi- fice, and the mystic circle of each rude hill- forth, were the cho- sen habitations of unearthly beings. Nor was this belief held by the uneducated alone ; many who moved in respectable situations in society were infected by it ; and otherwise sensible and -well-informed people on this head were deaf to the voice of reason and the dictates of com- mon sense, and would as soon doubt the truth of Holy Writ as the existence of supernatural agency ; and so interwoven was the superstition in the social system, that no event could happen poor mortality from the cradle to the grave, in which the good people were not implicated for good or evil. Did the head or a member of a leading family die, the wail of the ban- shee was sure to be heard in the twilight. Was a favourite child smitten with disease, the beautiful, the beloved one w r as believed to be changed for a squalling, ravenous, and decrepid starveling. Did your cattle pine, or was your dairy not pro- ductive, your cows were either elf-shot or bewitched. Was the wife of your bosom snatched away in her bloom, in the most interesting though dangerous moment of her existence, the fairies were whispered to be the authors of your misfor- tune to have spirited her off, and to have left in her stead a wooden substitute. Well do I remember the thrill of fear, mingled with a degree of pleasurable awe, with which I listened some forty years since to the narratives of a venerable aunt, who was lingering out the evening of her existence at my father’s fireside — her only occupation being, rocking the cradle and keeping the youngsters from mottling their shins. She was an experienced dame, and withal pious, but would as soon doubt her own identity as that of witches and fairies, and her memory was well stored with instances of their interference. These I then believed most implicitly, particularly as in many of them “the family ” was concerned. She could relate how her grandfather one morning detected a hare in the act of milking one of his cow r s, which he fired at and wounded, and on tracking the blood, discovered it to flow from the thigh of an old crone who inhabited a neighbouring hovel. She also could tell how' an elder brother had surprised a leprahaun in the act of making shoes for the gentle people — could describe his dress minutely, and how he had escaped captivity by making a feint with his awl at my uncle’s eye, and causing him to wdnk when in the very act of seizing him, and thereby marred his fortune. She also knew' a child which was taken from its mother’s arms at night, but luckily was missed before he could be conveyed through the key-hole, and on the outcry of the bereaved parent, was dropped “ with a whack” on the floor uninjured. It never occurred to her that probably the child had rolled out of the bed accident ally. There was another tale often related by her, which it would be worse than heresy to doubt, as she knew' the parties intimately. An honest man named John M‘Kinstrey, who resided near Maheraveely, in the county Monaghan, was once compelled to leave his warm bed in “the witching time of night,” on a certain pressing occasion, and ride post-haste for a w r orthy dame whoso assistance was indispensable. While returning with the “ how'dy” safely stowed on an ample pillion behind, he heard the strokes of an axe reverberating through a neigh- bouring wood, and voices in conversation. Curiosity prompted him to draw up and listen, when he distinctly heard the ques- tion asked, “ What are you doing to-night ?” and to his dis- may the answer was responded, “ I’m making a wife for Jack M‘Kinstrey.” “Faith,” said Jack, “ you’ll make no wife for me, my man — I’ll do very w r ell with the one I have and giving his good beast the spur, regardless of the neck, bones, or outcry of his freight, he never drew rein until he had his better half clasped in his arms, where he held her in a death’s-grip until the crisis was over, and thus baulked the fairies. Thus w r as the whole system of society pervaded by the idea of supernatural influence ; and the consequence was an unde- finable dread and fear, hanging like the sword of Damocles over the heads of all, and embittering existence. ’Tis true the evil was only imaginary, but not on that account the less hurtful ; for, being a mental malady, it was the more difficult to be counteracted or eradicated, and often led to real anxiety and distress, as in the case of M‘Kinstrey, whose ideas being full of witchcraft and fairy freaks, never reflected that the noise and voices he had heard might be a practical joke of some of his neighbours, and in consequence suffered all the suspense and trouble incident to real danger. But the diffusion of useful knowledge and the dissemination of sound education among all classes, has latterly effected a mighty change in the intellectual powers of the people. Such reveries as those referred to, though sometimes used to “adorn a tale,” are now unheeded; and there are few indeed who would harbour for a moment in sincerity the absurd idea of evil agency. There may be, ’tis true, some exceptions — a few old women may be still haunted by the sprites of other days, and in some remote districts a belief in witchcraft cer- tainly prevails, ingrafted by early prejudices, and fostered and kept alive by the practices of knaves, who profess to avert the effects by counter-charms, and live, like many others, on the credulity of the public ; but, generally speaking, the thing is defunct — gone to the moles and the bats. But there is an exception. In several districts in Ireland, in Connaught especially, an idea is very prevalent that it is in the power of evil-disposed persons to deprive their neighbours of their milk or butter. This is said to be done in various ways, the most usual being the use of a corpse hand, which is kept shrivelled and dried to stir the milk and gather the butter. Another plan is to follow the cows on a May morning, and gather the soil which drops from between their cloots. Another, by collecting the froth which forms on a stream running through their pasture, and milking your own cow on it. Indeed, the means used are represented to be so simple, that the very absurdity of the matter is its own refutation. Yet it is believed in, and that firmly; and in order to prove that such is the case, and also expose the trickery and leger- demain by which some knaves succeed in throwing dust in the eyes of the natives, I will relate an occurrence in which I was concerned ; and to open the matter fully in all its ramifi- cations, windings, and train of circumstantials, I trust I will be pardoned if I enter into a rather minute detail, the rather as I confess I was for a short time myself almost inclined to cre- dit its existence — in short, believed myself the dupe of a fairy man. Some time since I resided in the neighbourhood of the “ plains of Boyle,” a celebrated pasture country, and was the possessor of a cow whose milk and butter were plentiful in quantity and excellent in quality, and materially contributed to the comforts of my family. She was a beautiful and a gentle creature ; and I flattered myself that in her I possessed the foundress of a numerous herd, and the germ of a profitable and extensive dairy. As before observed, the idea -was very prevalent there that it was in the power of evil-disposed persous to deprive you of your milk and butter, and I heard many complaints of the kind ; the general voice fastened the imputation on a woman who lived in the vicinity, who was locally termed “ the Hawk,” and certainly the fire of her eye and the sharpness of her beak justified the appellation : she was a comely middle-aged person, in rather easy circumstances, her husband being a small farmer ; but he lay under the suspicion of being concerned in a murder some time before. She was a reputed witch, and the entire family were disliked and avoided. One morning in the month of January, I was informed that a woman had come into my kitchen, who occupied herself in watching the motions of the family, without stating her busi- ness. On going down, I found her well dressed and well looking, but with a very sinister cast of countenance. On asking if she wanted me, she said she had heard I was in want of some geese, and that she had q few to dispose of. “ How 86 , THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. many ?” said I. “ A goose and a gander,’’ she replied. “ How much do you want for them ?” ‘GSeven-and-sixpence.” “ Seven-and-sixpence !” I exclaimed in surprise, as the usual price then was from one shilling to One-and-sixpence each. “ Why, how many have you ?” as 1 realjy thought I had made a mistake in the number. “ A goose and a gander,” said she. “ And do you suppose me to be a goose. to give such a price as that?” said I. “ Oh !” said she* “ they are good geese, and only I wish to serve you, I would not offer them at all.” “ Indeed! I am much obliged by your good wishes,” said I ; “ but as I think you want to impose upon me, you must take your geese to another mai’ket, for I will not have them at any price, and the sooner you take yourself off the better.” She got highly offended, muttered something about my being sorry for refusing them, and went away in high dudgeon ; and after she was gone, I found it was “ the Hawk” who had favoured me with the visit. On the same morning, a gang of strollers, consisting of tin- kers, chimney-sweeps, a brace or two of beggars, and a piper, had pitched their tent on the road side, a short distance from my residence; the members of the party had distributed themselves over the surrounding district in pursuit of their various avoca- tions ; it also happened to be churning-day, and my wife hav- ing set her vessels in order, was proceeding with her lacteal operations favourably — the milk had cracked, the butter was expected — when the sound of music was heard ; the piper attached to the party had come to give us a specimen of his skill ; he favoured us with a few Connaught planxties, was duly re- warded, and departed. Shortly after he was gone, two buxom baggages, brown and bare-legged, with cans in their hands, kerchiefs on their heads, and huge massive rings on their fin- gers, came and demanded an alms. They were told there was nothing then ready, on which one of them asked a drink. “ I have nothing to offer you but water,” said my wife, “ until the churning’s done.” “Well, water itself,” said she; on getting which, she took a sup or two, put the remainder in her can, and went off ; and, strange as it may seem, my butter went too. And from that day in January until May eve fol- lowing, not a morsel had w r e from our beautiful Brownie. As I did not put any faith in witchcraft, I was willing to at- tribute this to some natural cause affecting the cow, though the milk showed no perceptible change in either quantity or quality ; neither did she exhibit any symptoms of ailment or disorder, except that she began to cast her hair. She was well sup- plied with good fodder, comfortably lodged, and well attended, and every possible care taken of the milk, but all to no pur- pose ; the butter was not forthcoming ; and for my incredulity I was laughed at by my neighbours. “ Your cow is bewitched, v ’ cried they; “and you may as w r ell throw chaff against the wind, as think you will get your butter back, till you get the charm.” Some said “ the Hawk” had it, some that the gipsy took it away in her can, and others that it followed the piper. Be that as it may, I had to eat my bread butterless, and brood over my loss, without even the comfort of common condolence. Various were the counter-charms recommended for my adoption. “ Send for Fraser the Scotchman from beyond the Lough,” said one; “he fears neither man nor fiend, and he will surely get it.” “ Send for ‘ the Hawk,’ and clip a bit off her ear,” said another. “ Let them keep their mouths full of water, and never speak w'hile they are churning,” said a third. In short, I found there were as many ways of getting it back, as there were of losing it — all equally simple, and probably as efficacious. Thus matters continued until the early part of the month of April, when one morning a man called, who desired to see me. I found him a light, active, ’cute-looking fellow, low in stature and spare in habit, but sinewy, well set and -well knit, and regularly smoke-dried. He wms pretty well clad in frieze, cord breeches, and yarn stockings and pumps ; his caubeen on one side, a cutty in his mouth, and a certain jaunti- ness in his air, and crafty audacity in his look, which seemed to say, “ I’d have you to know I’m a clever fellow.” “ So,” said he at once without preamble, “ so you’ve lost your butter.” “Yes,” said I, “ ’tis certainly gone.” “ Well, if you like, I’ll get it for you. Mv name is Oro- iioo (O’Hara); I live at Sliev Bawn — the people call me the Fairy man — I can find things that’s stole — and I keep the garvally.” ■* Indeed !” said I : “ why, you must be a clever fellow : but can you get my butter?” Not a doubt of it,” said he, “ if it is in the country.” I had heard of the garvally before, which wms described as “ a crooked thing like the handle of an umbrella, covered with green baize.” It was formerly in much repute for swearing on ; “ and a terrible thing it wms, for if you swore falsely and it round your neck, your mouth would turn to the back of your head, or you’d get such a throttling as you’d never get the better of.” It had latterly, however, lost much of its vir- tue, or rather of its fame, by an unbelieving vagabond yoking it on and swearing to a manifest falsehood, without suffering any visible inconvenience. But to return to Grohoo. lie made no stipulation ; but requiring a deep plate, some water and salt, with a little of the cow’s milk, he commenced by desiring my wife and me to stand forward. He then asked our names, if I was the owner of the cow, how long I had had her, if that woman was my wife, when we had lost our butter, and if we suspected any person for taking it. To these que- ries I answ-ered as was’ necessary ; but to the last I replied, I did not believe in witchcraft. “ Don’t you believe in fairies ?” he asked. “ Scarcely,” said I. “ No matter,” said he; “ maybe before I’m done you will believe in them.” He then in a very solemn manner poured some water into the plate at three several times, thus— “ In the name of the Father,” a drop ; “ in the name of the Son,” ditto ; “ in the name of the Holy Ghost,” ditto. He added the milk in the same manner, and then sprinkled in the salt, using the same formula. He now stirred round the mixture three times with his finger, repeating the words as before, and desired us to do the same. To this I demurred, for I did not wish. to evince any faith in the proceeding, by taking an active part ; but he combated my scruples by asking “was it not done in a good name ?” Certainly for so far I saw nothing very objectionable, and my wife feeling no scruple on the subject, at their joint persuasion I did as directed. He next made the sign of the cross over the plate with his hands, and, waving them over his head, cut several curious figures in the air, at the same time muttering an unintelligible jargon I could not understand, but which, as I could catch a sound or syllable, bore a close affinity to what is called bog Latin. Gradually he became much excited ; he raved like a demon, stamped with his feet, and threatened with his fists : now his tones were those of supplication or entreaty, anon of abjuration or command ; while his eye seemed fixed upon and to follow the motions of some to us invisible being, with which he appeared to hold converse. Suddenly he gave an unearthly scream, as if in an agony of terror and perturbation, and, holding up his hands as in the act of warding off a threatened danger, he retreated backwards round the room, pursued, as it seemed, by an implacable enemy. Gradually he regained the spot he had left, turned himself to the four cardinal points, making the sign of the cross at each turn, dipped his fingers in the mixture, devoutly blessed himself, anointing his fore- head, shoulders, and breast, regained his self-possession, raised his hands and eyes in an attitude of fervent thankful- ness to heaven, wiped the perspiration which profusely streamed from his brow with the cuff of his coat, gradually recovered his breath, and from a state of the greatest possible excite- ment became calm and collected. Now, this wms all acting, to be sure, but it wms inimitably done, and I confess, even armed as I wms with unbelief, it made a very powerful impression on me. I acknowledge I did not feel at all comfortable. I did not like the idea of being in the same room with the evil one, who to all appearance was chasing my friend the conjuror round and round it. I felt an indescribable sensation of dread creeping over me, and, if I mistake not, there were a few drops of perspiration on my brow ; and my hair, of which I have not a superabundance, to my apprehension began to get stiff and wiry. My wife, too, clung closely to my side for protection, and the agitation of her mind was evident by the audible action of her heart, which in that case beat only responsive to my own. Having taken breath, he asked for a ribbon, which he passed over his forehead and round his head, and, bringing the ends in front, knotted it over his nose ; then twining it round his fingers in the manner children call a cat’s cradle, he knelt down and peered through it attentively into the mixture, which I imagined at the moment fermented and sent up a blue vapour. After gazing a few seconds in this manner, “ Aha !” said he, “ she is not far off’ that has your butter ; bring me a lighted candle,” wdtich on being brought he placed in the plate. “ Now,” said he, “ both of you kneel down; do 87 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. as I do, and say as I say, and well have her here directly.” “ No,” said I decidedly, “ we will not.” I thought we had gone far enough, and was convinced that if what we were engaged in was not an unholy act, it was at least a piece of gross deception, and I would notTl**mtenance it by any further participation. - “ Why,” exclaimed he, “ don’t you want to get yburbutter?”- “ Yes,” said I, “ I would like to have my butter, But I don’t choose to resort to a charm to obtain it.” “ No doubt this is a charm,” said he, “but it. is done irt“a good name ; and I have done it before for as good as - ever you were.” “ So much the worse,” I replied ; “ that holy name should never be profaned in such a manner, and I am sorry any per- son would be so wicked or so foolish as to encourage you in your tricks. I neither like you nor your proceedings, and the sooner you. go about your business the better.” He started to his feet in a passion, blew out the candle, seized the plate, and attempted to throw the contents into the fireplace ; but my wife, who did not wish her hearth to be wet, took it from him and laid it past. He fumed and stormed, said I let him take a great deal of trouble on my account, and insisted on proceeding ; but I was determined, and, being con- siderably chafed and annoyed by the transaction, I again ordered him off, and left him. In a few moments I heard the noise of a violent altercation and scuffle, and I was loudly called on. I hastened to the scene of contention, and found my wife holding Ordhoo by the neck, and preventing his departure. “ What’s a}! this ,?” I ex- claimed. “ This fellow,” said she, “ when he was going, took alive coal out of the grate, and told me to take care of my children.” This he stiffly denied, until confronted by the servant, and I threatened to give him up to the police as an impostor, when he quailed, and acknowledged that he had said so, but that he meant.no harm by it. “ And sure,” said he, “there’s no harm in bidding you mind them ; for if your cow was hurt, so may your childre. You’re not treating me well,” he continued; “ I came at the bidding of a friend to do you a good turn, and asked nothing for it, and now you’re putting me out ; you’ll be glad to see me yet, though. But take my advice : never throw out your Sunday’s ashes until Tuesday morning, and always sweep your floor in from the door to the hearth.” And away he went. My heart now beat easy, for I thought we had fairly got rid of the fairy man ; but I was to be still further mystified and bewildered. On examining the plate over which he had per- formed his incantations, we found the contents to be thick, yellow, and slimy, with a red sediment like globules of blood at the bottom. This seemed extraordinary, as I certainly watched him closely, and did not see him put any thing into the plate but milk, water, and salt. The month now drew near a close, alid our bread was still butterless. This often caused the morsel to stick in the throat of my poor dear partner, who felt none of the scruples of conscience with which I was affected, and firmly believed her cow was bewitched. “ Here we are day after day losing our substance, and might have it only for your squeamishness in not letting the fairy man finish his job.” Thus she would argue, and hesitated not to call me a fool, nay, a downri ght ass ; and indeed my neighbours were much of the same opinion : one of them, a respectable farmer’s wife, was particularly per- tinacious. “ My Robin,” said she one evening, as they were harping on the old string, “ my Robin was down in Sligo, and he heard that if you got the coulter of a plough, and made it red-hot in the fire, while you were churning the butter would come back ; or if you chose to churn on Sunday morn- ing before the lark sings, you will surely get it.” “ Tempt me no more with your spells or Sabbath-breaking ; I will have none of them,” said I, impatiently ; “ I will never barter my peace of mind for a pound of butter, if I should never eat a morsel. But, in truth, my peace of mind was gone, for the continual urging and yammering I was subjected to made me heartily sick, and I inwardly resolved to sell the cow the first oppor- tunity, and so end the matter. On May eve, in the afternoon, I had occasion to leave home for a short time, and on my return was rather surprised to find all the windows closed and the door locked against me. I knocked and called for admittance, but received no answer ; and hearing the noise of churning going on within, “fast and furious,” the truth flashed across my mind ; and lamenting my wife’s credulity, I retired t-o the garden to await the result, In a short time she came running out like one demented, clap- ping her hands and screaming, “ Oh 1 we’ve got the butter, we’ve got the butter !” and on going in I found a coulter phiz- zing and sparkling at a white heat in the fire, an ass’s shoe (which had been found a few days previously) under the churn, my worthy neighbour aforesaid standing over it, panting and blowing from the exertions she had made on my behoof, and Wiping the dew-drops from her really comely countenance, and in the churn, floating like lumps of gold in a sea of silver, as fine a churning of butter as ever we were blessed with Well, I own I was staggered, and being triumphantly asked, “Now, is there no witchcraft or virtue in a red-hot coulter ?” I could scarcely muster up courage to utter “No.” In vain I protested the butter came back because “ Brownie” got back to her pasture, in consequence of the change in her feeding, from dry fodder to the mellow and genial produce of spring, as the loss at first was owing to the transition from grass to hay. ’Twas to no purpose to argue thus : all else were positive it was otherwise ; but whether the virtue was in Orohoo’s incantations, the efficacy of the red-hot coulter, the influence of the ass’s shoe, or the tremendous pommelling the milk was subjected to on the occasion, no one could ex- actly say. A few days after, I conversed on the subject with an intel- ligent person, a herd in charge of an extensive stock farm. After hearing my story to an end, he indulged in a hearty laugh at my expense. “ Faith,” said he, “ I took you for a sensible man, and did not suppose you would credit such folly.” “ I’d as soon believe my mother was a bishop,” said I, “ as put any faith in it some time ago. But how can I get over the chain of circumstantial evidence ? — not a link of it wanting. First, ‘ the Hawk’ coming with her seven-and- sixpenny geese, then the gipsies and the piper, and losing my butter just then.” “ ’Tis very easy,” said he, “ to ac- count for it. In the first place, you took your cow from grass and fed her on hay.” “ Yes, but she had plenty of winter cabbage, and we gave her boiled potatoes.” “ Just the thing ; cabbage is good for plenty of milk, but not for butter. I’ll engage you gave her the potatoes warm.” “ Yes.” “ And she got a scour?” “Indeed she did, and her hair fell of.” “ So I thought. And afterwards she got in good condition ?” “ Yes.” “ r two centuries after. For the Irish, taking advantage < fie consternation attendant on the death of the chief officer oi e crown in that province, crossed the Bann in unexampled i- bers, and after a protracted struggle, in which they were joined by some of the degenerate English, succeeded at length in recovering the whole of the territory conquered by De Courcy, with the exception only of Carrickfergus in An- trim, and a portion of the county of Down, which the Savages with difficulty succeeded in holding after being expelled from their former possessions at the point of the sword. It was during this struggle that the battle to which we have allot d was fought at Antrim. The story is told at considerable length and with much quaintness by Hollinshed ; but wan: of space obliges us to present it to our readers in the more con- cise though still very characteristic language of Cox : — “ About this time lived Sir Robert Savage, a very consi- derable gentleman in Ulster, who began to fortifie his house w r ith strong walls and bulwarks; but his son derided his fa- ther's prudence and caution, affirming that “ a castle of b s was better than a castle of stones,” and thereupon the os 1 n- tleman put a stop to his building. It happened that this bra e man with his neighbours and followers were to set out ag Inst a numerous rabble of Irish that had made incursions into . territories, and he gave orders to provide plenty of good against his return ; but one of the company reproved hi: doing so, alleging that he could not tell but the enemy i t eat what he should provide ; to which the valiant old g - man replied, that he hoped better from their courage, U if it should happen that his very enemies should come to .is house, ‘ he should be ashamed if they should find it vrfifi of good cheer.’ The event was suitable to the bravery ( i fi e undertaking : old Savage had the killing of three thousav the Irish near Antrim, and returned home joyfully to su; Sir Henry Savage’s “castles of bones” were found in ■ :- cient in the end to resist the multitudes of the Irish; i the English colonists, as we have mentioned, notwithstanding their victory at Antrim, were finally obliged to cede th ley of the Six-mile-water to the victorious arms of the < " - Hugh-Buide, whose representative, the present Earl O’ : fi, still holds large possessions in the territory thus recovered by his ancestors. With respect to the origin of the place, there is little to be said beyond the fact, that, like that of most of our pro ti- dal towns, it was ecclesiastical. The only remnant < e ancient foundation is the round tower, which still stand in excellent preservation about half a mile north of the town. The name is properly “ Aen-druim” signifying “the single hill,” or “ one mount.” A CHAPTER ON CURS. Without doubt I am a benevolent character: the g: • ' o gratuitous to my nature is unknown: I never take o ice where no offence is given. Hence, on most animals I fink with complacency — for most animals never intermeddle v.fifii my comfort — and on only a few with antipathy, for only n n,v so behave as to excite it. High up on the list of the latum _ I was going to say at the very top, but that pestering, 1- nacious fly impudently alighting, through pure mischief : i, on the tickle-tortured tip of— but he’s gone — no, he’s b fi there now I have him under my hat at last — tut ! he' out again under the rim — up with the window and away wii fi I .. ! At the head, then, ay, at the very head — how my grieve u come crowding on my brain !— I unhesitatingly place that thrice-confounded breed of curs, colleys, mongrels, or ' - ever else they may be called, with which the rural region of this therein much-afflicted country are infested. The mfifi of my humanity— yea, I may say the cream, for such it was h me — has in respect to them been changed to very gall — r i ’ mitigable hostility has possessed me, which— did not the s -s of the wofully-remembered salting, scrubbing, scarifying. i frying (to say nothing of two months’ maintenance of iv pital establishment of poultices and plasters), to whir better leg was twice submitted, counsel me to mingle <1 tion with my ire — would absolutely make me turn Don Quixote for their extirpation. Let flighty philosophers frolic as they list with the flimsy THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 91 p : asies no optics save their own can spy — let political e- mists prate about public problems, till other people’s are nearly as addled as their own — let flaming patriots ; und and placid placemen promise this, that, and t’other, us -ievous burdens or great concessions; but let men of sen give heed to things of substance — let them exclaim with me, “ Out upon all abstract gammon — out upon all squabbling a at what we can only hear, but neither see nor feel, taste nor smell — bodily boons — real redress — and first and fore- re t, ‘ to the lamp-post’ with the curs !” I have suffered more a t heir teeth, both in blood and broad-cloth, than all the bene- f : us I have ever received at the hands of any government v l balance. The inviolable independence of British sub- j T forsooth! the parental guardianship of the constitution, the security for life and person — faugh ! — away with the big inanities, so long as a peaceful pedestrian cannot take an airing ai - :>"g a highway, much less adventure on a devious ramble, with ut exposing person and personalities to the cruel mei’cies of a tribe of half-starved tykes issuing from every cabin, scrambling over every half-door, and almost throttling them- selves in their emulous ambition to be the first to tatter the ill-. ■ . red wight who has stumbled on their haunts. Let no one urge in their behalf that they are faithful to the misguided r:i who own them : so much the worse, since in their small sy m, fidelity to one must needs manifest itself in malice, haired, and uncharitableness to every creature else, dead or alive. No, there is no redeeming trait — they are curs, essen- t’a ly biting, barking, cantankrous, crabbed, sneaking, snarl- iu treacherous, bullying, cowardly curs, and nothing else. '1 , under all circumstances, I undertake to maintain against ; i gainsayers, though at the same time I am free to confess that I write under considerable excitement, having just re- t :-d from the country (whither — besotted mortal not to be < it with the flag-way of a street, and the scenery of brick ; mortar — I had repaired, forsooth, for air, exercise, and r 1 sketching) with a couple of new coats, to say nothing of t r ;ers, curtailed beyond recovery, a bandaged shin smart- yond desciflption, and a host of horrid hydrophobic fore- b gs consequent thereon. It chanced that in an evil hour ide an engagement with an ailing friend, whose house was ; : :e in what I may emphatically term a most canine locality, v l eh constrained me to make several calls upon him. Unhap- pil t was only approachable by one road, the sides of which we: here and there dotted with a clutch of cabins, in each of ' Vch was maintained a standing force of the aforesaid pests. Thi s ambushed defile, about three miles in length, dire necessity cc jelled me to traverse thrice, and never did general more con iderately undertake a march through a hostile country, or i enemy more vigilantly guard a pass therein, than did I r. d they respectively. On each and all of these occasions have I debated with myself whether I should not fetch a secure i h sinuous compass through the fields, even with the addi- 1 i m of a few miles and other discomforts to my walk ; but as i — with honest, though, as I look upon my leg, with me- ]:: .‘holy pride I write it — did my pluck preserve me from so cl: -aceful a detour. What! my indignant manhood would exclaim, shall I, one of the lords of the creation— shall I, who I ve dared and have accomplished so and so — recalling some most notable exploits by flood and field, in crossing the inel and cantering in the Park — shall I, one of her majesty’s IT : subjects, a grand jury cess-payer and a freeholder to la be driven from the highway which I pay to support, and t ' ' ;ed to skulk like a criminal from view, scramble over walls flutter through swamps, daub my boots, rend mayhap ; ghts, and risk other contingencies, and all by reason of , vile scrubs? No, perish the thought! — though their : . ' be Legion, and their nature impish, I will fa.ee them, ay, an I write the fear of me upon their hides too, if they dare me — that I will. Thus spoke the man within me, as I : y griped my cane; and if, as I cooled, an occasional ; ing of the calves of my legs in fancied supposition of a nserted therein, betokened aught like quailing, I recalled rough’s saying on the eve of battle, “ How this little 1; trembles at what this great soul is about to perform!” a - i felt that I too was exemplifying that loftiest courage in v.i ’ h the infirmity of the flesh succumbs to the vigour of the I eided by some such discipline to run the gauntlet, and in a st ate of temper alternating between war and peace, inclining, a • I remarked, strange contradiction ! to the former when the 1. r was in prospect, and to the latter when the former, I proceeded in guarded vigilance. “ Hope deferred maketh the heart sick,” no doubt, but in my case evil deferred doth often- times as much. The substantial presence of danger for me, before its fearful imminence — the real onset of a canine crew, before the terrible suspense of passing the open den in which haply they lay wait, the shrill gamut of attack splitting your ear worse in apprehension than in action. But attention ! yonder is the first position. Egad ! I’m in luck to-day ; the coast seems clear, and — the pacific now prevails amain — poor devils, I won’t make any ruction. “ Ever follow peace If you’d live at ease,” saith the tuneful proverb, and I’ll pass inoffensively if I can. Ay, i’faith, I may well say if I can, for if my eyes are worth a turnip, yonder is an outpost stretched before that sty. No, I’m wrong, it is a young pig — worthy little fellow, would I had the craft of Circe to change every cur in the land into your similitude ! A grunt before a snarl, a snore before a snap any day. But what am I gabbling about ? — there is evil at hand indeed, for yonder is a lurching devil squatted behind that stone, and no mistake. But softly : he seems asleep, and I may perchance steal past unnoticed — about as probable, my present experience assures me, as that you could ring my well-bred friend Piggie without an acknowledgment— he is sole sentry, and if I can but bilk him, I’ll do. A ain hope — he is waking, he is giving a preparatory stretch to his limbs and to his jaws, and, miserable sinner that I am ! I’m in for it. But there is yet a single chance — I’ll try the magic of the human eye : there is wonder-working majesty, they say, in it. Did I not myself see Van Amburgh’s brutes blench before it ? — am not I too a man ? — ay, and I’ll let them see it. Whereupon, with the most astounding corrugation of my brows I could accomplish, I fixed my grim regards upon the cur, expecting to see him sneak in awe away as I drew nigh. But, alas ! for the majesty of man, in a pinch like this let me tell him it is but a sorry safeguard — the veriest whelp in the land will bandy surly looks, amd haply something worse, in its despite : a cud- gel or a “hardy,” I now say, on such an emergency, before the most confounding countenance that ever frowned beneath a diadem. The foe, then, recking but little my display of the tremendous, gave a fierce alarm, while in the vehemence of his wrath he described three circles, his hind legs being the cen- tre, which brought the whole posse of aids and abettors fast and furious into view. And now commenced the fray in ear- nest : beleaguered on every side, my blood, not to speak boast- fully, rose with the great occasion : my tongue gave vigorous utterance to my fury, and my cane swept gallantly from right to left and from left to right, though trom the wariness with which, ’mid all their fuss and clamour, the war was waged by my assailants, it was but seldom that a shrill yelp piercing through the din announced its collision with flesh and blood. Never was man more thoroughly put to it. As I made a dash forward upon one, my unprotected rear was promptly invested by another : my only security lay in the rapidity of my evolu- tions, and considering I am a man five feet five in height and fifteen stone in weight, I fairly take credit to myself for per- formances in this line, which poor Joe Grimaldi himself were he alive could not eclipse. But a man’s sinews are not of steel, nor are his lungs as tough as a pair of bellows, and under my extraordinary exertions I speedily began to think of va- cating a field whereon nothing but a barren display of prowess without satisfaction was to be reaped. Accordingly, all my craft in strategy was put in practice, and by a most dexterous combination of manoeuvres — now advancing, now receding, now stooping as if to seize a stone (incomparable among expedients in canine encounters), for the road here of course was as bare of them as a barn-floor, and now feigning to fling it — I at length contrived to draw the battle from their own ground, and their pugnacity being inversely as their distance from home, had the relief, for by this time I was blowing like a grampus, of seeing them retire in detachments, giving vol- leys in token of triumph and defiance so long as I remained in view. This brisk affair concluded with the loss only of a mouth- ful or two of my coat-tails, and the gain of a few trifling trans- parencies in the legs of my trousers — thank my boots, I have not to add in those of my person — I proceeded to the scene of my next “ passage at arms,” about half a mile off. So ruffled was I that at first, after a few score peghs and puffs restora- tive, I bustled bravely on, desiring nothing so much as an opportunity of wreaking my wrath on some of the odious race, to which purpose I providently deposited a few pretty pebbles in my pocket. 92 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. But I am pre-eminently a reasoning man, in whom the reign of passion is but brief, and discretion had so far recovered its rightful ascendency as I drew nigh the next “ picket,” that I began to think it more prudent, more benevolent I mean, to bottle up, or repress I should say, my indignation, and try what the “gentle charities,” a benign demeanour and a plea- sant salutation, might avail in the way of securing a peaceful transit. With this aim I threw a prodigious amount of amia- bility (if somewhat more than I felt, Heaven forgive the hypo- crisy) into my countenance, and accompanied a few familiar fillips of my finger with a most honied, and, as I thought, cap- tivating phraseology of address, to a sinister-faced wretch who lay recumbent on the nearest threshold. But it would not do : up bounced the vile ingrate with obstreperous bay ; his myrmidons were forthcoming on the instant, and in a jiffey I, a grave, reserved, and middle-aged man, a short, stout, and not very well-winded man, was in the melee once more, yerk- ing my heels out fore and aft, whacking right and left, puffing, blowing, and altogether cutting such uncouth capers as verily it shames me now to think upon. Whether or not it was that my resentment, and proportionably thereto my prowess, were aggravated by the flagrant ingratitude displayed, I distributed my “ dissuaders” on this occasion with such distinguished em- phasis as well as science, as speedily to create a considerable diversion in my favour, and make more than one repentant sin- ner yelp out “ devil take the hindmost,” in such vigorous style as to bring a bevy of grandam fogies in wrath from their chim- ney corners. “ An’ what are yees abusin’ the poor craythurs for, that wouldn’t harm nobody in the world at all at all, barrin’ a pig or so ? It’s a wonder yees been’t ashamed to treat the poor dumb (!) brutes that way, that niver did an ill hand’s turn to us nor one belonging to us, an’ it’s longer we’re acquaint with them than you. Come here, Trig — come here, Daisy— -in there, Snap — down there, Peerie,” and so forth. Recrimina- tion on such opponents was out of the question ; and this brush over in rather creditable style, I made all speed from the united clamour of the offended crones and their injured inno- cents. The next sore point I happily passed in the company of an iron-nerved, long-thonged carman, whom I providently en- gaged in conversation at the crisis. This fellow minded them no more than if they had been so many sods of turf, nor in truth did they, having probably tasted erewhile the crusty quality of such a customer, pay much regard to him, although not a few ill-favoured glances were cast askew at my poor self, as under his lee I stoutly stumped along ; and some ill-sup- f ressed growls and spiteful grins gave me to understand that owed my safety solely to my company. A jolly beggarman — alack-a-day ! that I should ever stand in need of such a convoy — to whose nimble fictions I gave ear for the nonce with singular philanthropy, was my next protector, and a sixpence paid for the safe conduct, at which rate I am pretty confident, •had he seen how matters lay, he would have offered to trudge it at my elbow far enough, for the sturdy rogue cared not a snuff for them had they been twice as numerous ; and in a few seconds after, I saw him with a flourish of his duster enter a hut in the midst of them all. But it is needless to dive any farther into the budget of ad- ventures which then and there befell me, except to mention, as a sort of set-off, a notable retaliation that I right happily achieved on one of my tormentors. After a scuffle, contested on both sides with considerable toughness, I was retiring from a sort of drawn battle, when I espied a short-legged, long-backed, crook-knee’d, lumpish-looking rascal scuttling along through a field at a prodigious pace. He had heard the well-known gathering-note when at a distance with some turf-cutters in a bog, and, eager for sport, namely, a pluck at my inexpressibles, lost no time in making for the scene. The affair was, however, over before he arrived upon the ground ; but determined that his “ trevally” should not be for nought, he gave me immediate chase up the road, reserving his fire as if intent on close combat alone, and altogether showing such an earnest business-like way with him, as made me set him down as a singularly crabbed customer. On he came at a rate that soon left me nothing for it, was I ever so much dis- inclined, but to face about and stand at bay. Hereupon, however — so conversant with currish character was I now be- come a much increased ostentation of action upon his part, accompanied with a much diminished rate of progression, and a most superfluous discharge of barks, let me into a gratifying little secret. “ Ha, my gentleman,” thought I, “ is this the way the land lies ? You’re not just so stout a hero as you would fain be thought ; and as, i’faith, I have no notion of being made sport of by such small ware as you, I’ll just try if I cannot give you a lesson worth the learning.” With that I again showed him my heels, which relieved him of his rather awk ward suspense, and, turning round a corner, dexterously managed in a few moments to have my lad ensconced in a pretty angle, with a deep pool behind him, and a high stone wall on either side. Even in the height of my triumph and wrath, I could not help noticing the extraordinary mutations the out- witted ettercap underwent at this astounding juncture. The last yelp perished incomplete : a dismal wonder-what-ails-him bewilderment, horror, cowardice, despair, supplied a sort of prelibation of “ the condign” my injured honour and outraged rights craved in expiation. Before him I flourished my cane in a fashion that made the very thought of contact therewith terrible— behind him lay the expectant plunge-bath of which he, in common with all his tribe, entertained a most hydro- phobic horror. Thrice he seemed to contemplate an eruption, and thrice my waving weapon turned him to the watery gulf behind, and in mortal misery he appeared to balance their respective terrors. A cogent persuasive delivered rearward in handsome style, created a partial preponderance in favour of the latter. One paw was passed over the fearful brim ; a timely reiteration sent the other after ; the avenging rod was upraised to give the grand finale, when his outstretched tail suggested a device, which I rapturously seized on to prevent that gradual fulfilment of inevitable fate which the cowardly caitiff seemed to meditate. In the fervour of my career I even laid hands on this appendage of my once so dreaded foe, and swinging him aloft, to give him a proper elevation, as well as a momentary view of the murky abyss to which a few aerial evolutions were to bring him, dismissed him by a most right- eous retribution to his fate. A gurgling yelp announced the crisis of the plump, and a few moments after, snorting and kicking, wriggling and splashing, in a perfect frenzy of amaze, the culprit emerged, and made w'ay like mad for the bank. Tempering justice with mercy, with a noble magnanimity I allowed him to scramble up to the road, which he did with most astonishing alacrity, and, without even a shake to his bedraggled coat, or more than a glance of horror at myself, scurried homeward at a rate with which even his pursuit could not compare : he never troubled me again. With this beautiful illustration of retributive justice — oh, that I could but make it universal ! — I will -wind up the relation of my misfortunes and feats on this plaguy but memorable day, which I have selected — may my vanity be pardoned — as exhibiting myself, though I say it who should’nt say it, in rather a distinguished point of view, as being devoid of certain humiliating circumstances with which on most other occasions my lot was accompanied, and as being at the same time sufficient, without wanton trifling with my own feelings and those of others, to make the resentment of all who are susceptible of sympathy with their kind burn fierce against these pestiferous persecutors of our race. I have said enough to show, that if we care to maintain that native supre- macy which these contumacious rebels make but light of ques- tioning, if we wish to rescue our order from the disgrace and contumely from such vile sources cast upon it, the time for action, systematic, conjoint, national action, has now arrived. “ Union,” say the sages of the rostrum with admirable discern- ment, “ Union is strength.” Let us act on the profound dis- covery ; let combination be the order of the day ; let the cry of “ Down with the cynocracy!” ring resistless through the land ; let pistol pellets and pounded glass be in every one’s possession ; let the legislature be simultaneously bombarded ; let the squire whose game is incontinently gobbled up in em- bryo, the wayfarer whose person and all that hangs thereon is supinely compromised, the philanthropist who would aug- ment human happiness, the humanist who would diminish dumb-brute suffering, the vindicator of the pig, the cat, the donkey, and all the tribe of cur-bebitten animals, ay, even the friends (if such besotted beetleheads there be) of the de- tested breed themselves, who hold it better “ not to be” than “ to be” in semi-starvation, in mangy malevolence, in spiteful ugnacity, in the perpetual distribution of snarls, bites, and arks, and receipt of cuffs, kicks, and cudgels — let all and every of these great and various parties agitate, agitate, agi- tate, petition, petition, petition, that such comprehensive mea- sures as the enormity of the case demands be forthwith adopted for the correction, abatement, or abolition of this national scourge, by taxation, suspension, submersion, decapi- tation, or deportation, as to the “ collective wisdom” may most advisable appear. A Man. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 93 IUOJ5I) H21 S62H521. POEM OF THE CHASE. There are many poems of great beauty and interest in the Irish language, several of which have become known to the English reader through the medium of a translation. Of those poems there is a particular class known to Irish scho- lars by the name of the “ Fenian Tales” — an appellation which they derive from Finn, or Fionn, the son of Cumhail (the Fin- gal of Macpherson), and his heroes the Fionna Eironn. Fionn, renowned for his martial exploits, flourished about the beginning of the third century, under Cormac,* of whose forces he was the commander-in-chief. He has been to the Milesian bards what King Arthur was to the Britons, the theme of many a marvellous achievement and poetic fiction. Oisin, his son, was equally celebrated as a warrior and a poet ; and of him it might be said, as of Achilles, iEschylus, Alfred, Camoens, Cervantes, and many another, that “ one hand the sword and one the harp employed.” Numerous poems have been ascribed to him ; but there is no proof that he has a legitimate claim to any composition extant. As for the im- postures of Macpherson, they have been sufficiently exposed ; and no one who has taken pains to investigate the subject, or who has the least knowledge of Irish history, antiquities, or language, will pretend that he is worthy of the slightest cre- dence. The date and origin of the Fenian Tales, from which he drew many of the materials of his centos, are altogether uncertain. It may seem, however, not unreasonable, from slight internal evidence, to conjecture that some of them may have been composed soon after the introduction of Chris- tianity, though they must since have suffered many changes and modifications. t In few countries, if in any, did the Chris- tian religion win its way more easily than in Ireland ; and yet it can scarcely be supposed that its triumph became universal without some reluctance on the part of the people, whose habits it condemned, and to whose superstitions it was stre- nuously opposed. It attempted to produce such a complete revolution in their tastes and occupations, that it would be surprising had not various objections been started to its re- ception. The quiet and devotion of the monastic life formed a melancholy contrast to the spirit-stirring excitements of the chase, and to those games of strength and skill in which the heroes of the Ossianic age delighted. They who rejoiced in the clash of arms, in the music of hounds and horns, and in the feast and the revel, could have small taste for the chiming of bells in the services of religion, for the singing of psalms, and still less for fasting — the waster gaunt and grim, That of beauty and strength robs feature and limb. The bards, it may well be imagined, who were always not only welcome but necessary guests at all the high festivals of the chiefs and princes, would be among the first to lament a change of manners by which their pleasures and honours were abridged or abolished ; and to give more effect to their complaint, as well as to conceal its real authors, they put it into the mouth of Oisin, their great master, by poetic licence, though in violation of chronology. They ascribed to him those •sentiments which they thought he would have expressed, had he really been the contemporary of Saint Patrick. { At the same time it must be admitted, that in the Poem of the Chase at least, such a description of the creative power of the Deity is given by the saint, as is worthy of a Christian missionary, * Cormac Ulfada, 1 grandson of “ Con of the hundred battles.” He reigned forty years, and was honoured as a wise statesman and a philosopher . f The reader who feels an interest in this subject, and in the Ossianic controversy, is referred to the essays by the Rev. Dr. Drummond and Mr O’Reilly in the fifteenth volume of the Transactions of the Royal Irish Aca- demy. In the Transactions of the Hiberno-Celtic Society Mr O’Reilly observes, that “ many beautiful poems are extant that bear the name of Oisin, but there are no good reasons to suppose that they are the genuine compo- sitions of that bard. If ever they were composed by Oisin, they have since suffered a wonderful change in their language, and have been interpolated so as to make the poet and St Patrick contemporaries, though the latter did not commence his apostolic labours in Ireland until the middle of the fifth cen- tury, when by the course of nature Oisin must have lain in his grave about one hundred and fifty years.” Since this paper was sent to the press, the author has been assured by a most competent Irish scholar that there are manuscript poems attributed to Oisin not less than a thousand years old in the Library of the Dublin Uni- versity. It is much to be wished, for the honour of ancient Irish literature and for the light which these poems may throw on some dark and disputed topics of Irish history, that they may before long be properly analysed and presented to the public. 1 Thus Horace exposes the arts of the parasites and fortune-hunters of Home in a dialogue between Tiresias and Ulysses. though he is obliged to succumb to the stern indignation of the “ Warrior Bard.” Leaving the further consideration of this subject for the present, I proceed to give an analysis of the Poem of the Chase, from which the reader may be enabled in some degree to judge how far Spenser is justifiable in affirming that the poems of the Irish bards “ savoured of sweet wit and good invention.” The poem commences by Oisin asking St Patrick if he had ever heard the tale of the chase ; and on receiving an answer in the negative, accompanied with a request that it may be told truly, he feels indignant at the suspicion that he or any of the Fionna Eironn could ever deviate from the strictest veracity, and retaliates by declaring how much he prized his former friends, whose virtues he records, beyond Patrick and all his psalm-singing fraternity. Patrick, in reply, exhorts him not to indulge a strain of panegyric which borders on blasphemy, and extols the power of that great Being by whom all the Fenian race had been destroyed. The mention of his friends’ extinction calls forth a fresh burst of indignation from Oisin, and leads him to compare the pleasures of the days gone by with the melancholy occupations of psalm-singing and fasting. Patrick requests him to cease, and not incur the impiety of comparing Finn with the Creator of the uni- verse. Oisin replies in a style more indignant, and after reciting a number of the glorious exploits of the I enians, asks by what achievements of Patrick’s Deity they can be matched. The saint, justly shocked by such daring, accuses him of frenzy, and tells him that Finn and his host have been doomed to liell-fire by that God whom he blasphemes : but this only provokes Oisin to make a comparison between Finn’s genero- sity and the divine vengeance ; and as for himself, it is a suffi- cient proof of his sanity that he allows Patrick and his friends to wear their heads. Patrick, as if tacitly admitting the va- lidity of his argument, pays him a compliment, and requests him to proceed with the promised tale. Oisin complies, and informs him that while the Fenian heroes were feasting in the tower of Almhuin, Finn having withdrawn from the company and spied a young doe, pursued her with his two hounds Sceolan and Bran as far as Slieve Guillin, where she suddenly disappeared. While he and his hounds are left in perplexity, he hears a sound of lamentation, and looking round espies a damsel of surpassing beauty, whom he accosts, and with friendly solicitude asks the cause of her grief. She replies that she had dropped her ring into the adjoining lake, and adjures him as a true knight to dive into the water to find and restore the lost treasure. He complies, and succeeds ; and while hand- ing her the ring, is suddenly metamorphosed into a withered old man. Mean time the absence of their chief begins to create some fears for his safety in the breasts of the Fenians. Caoilte expresses his apprehension that he is irrecoverably lost, when bald Conan, the Thersites of the Fenian poems, rejoicing at the idea, boasts that he will in future be their chief. The Fenians having indulged in a laugh of scorn to hear such arro- gance from one they contemned, proceed in quest of Finn, and discover the old man, wffio whispers in the ear of Caoilte the story of his strange metamorphosis. Conan, on hearing it, waxes valiant, and utters some bitter reproaches against Finn and the Fenians. He is rebuked by Caoilte ; but still conti- nuing to vituperate and boast, he is answered at last by the sword of Osgar. The Fenians interfere, and having put an end to the strife, and learned the cause of Finn’s misfortune, they search the secret recesses of Slieve Guillin, and at length find the enchantress, who presents a cup to Finn, of which he drinks, and is restored to his former strength and beauty. Miss Brooke, a lady to whose genius and taste Irish litera- ture is greatly indebted, has given a translation of this poem in her “ Reliques of Irish Poetry,” published in 1788. Every Irish scholar is bound to speak with respect of her patriotic literary labours, and the present writer would be among the last to pluck a single leaf from the chaplet which adorns her brows — neque ego illi detrahere ausim Hserentem capiti multa cum laude coronam — H or. Not from her head shall I presume to tear The sacred wreath she well deserves to wear. — Francis. To Miss Brooke is due the well-merited praise of having been the first to introduce the English reader to a knowledge of these compositions. But that province of translation into 1 which she led the way is open to all, and no one has a right 94 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. to claim it as his exclusive property. Chapman translated Homer: he was followed by Hobbes, Hobbes by Pope, Pope by Cowper, Cowper by Sotheby. Who will be the next com- petitor in this fair field of fame ? How many translators have we of Virgil, of Horace, of Anacreon, and of all the most eminent Greek and Latin poets, each advancing a claim to some kind of superiority over his rivals ? Would that we had more such honourable rivalship in translations from the Irish ! Miss Brooke has been faithful to the sense of her originals ; but it appears to the present writer that she not unfrequently errs by being too diffuse, that several passages are weakened by unnecessary expansion, and that the spirit of the whole can be better preserved in a more varied form of versification than in the monotonous quatrains which she adopted. The prevalent fault of most poetical translations is diffuseness or amplification, by which the thoughts are weakened and their spirit lost. Much allowance, however, must be granted to those who attempt to clothe in English verse such composi- tions as the Irish Fenian tales ; and any one who makes the experiment will feel the difficulty of preserving a just medium between a loose paraphrase and a strict verbal translation. It is almost if not altogether impossible to translate into rhyme without an occasional accessory idea or epithet on the one hand, and the omission of some unimportant adjunct on the other. The great object should be to preserve the spirit of the original — to be “ true to the sense, but truer to his fame” —nec verbum verbo reddere fidus. Some passages could not be understood, others would not be endured by any reader of taste or refinement if rendered word for word. In my next communication I shall send you a translation of the first part of the Poem of the Chase — namely, the intro- ductory dialogue between Patrick and Oisin. This shall be followed by the succeeding part of the poem, should you deem such compositions suited to the pages of your “ Journal,” which I hope will be eminently useful in promoting both the literary and moral taste of the people of Ireland. D. DEAF AND DUMB— A MOUNTAIN SKETCH. EY MRS S. C. HALL. It has been a general and certainly a well-founded complaint against Ireland, that the arts, whose influence has extended so much over England and Scotland during the last half cen- tury, have made but little progress in “the Emerald Isle.” It “has sent forth painters, but encouraged none.” This I fear is true, though lately I have been delighted to observe some very happy exceptions to the rule. There are many reasons why art and artists have not flou- rished in Ireland. The greater number of those who have the means to patronise talent are absentees, spending in foreign lands the produce of the riches bestowed by the Almighty on their own — while the minds of the residents are usually so pre-occupied by religious or political controversies, that they have no time to bestow, or attention to give to anything else. Another reason I would urge, even at the hazard of being charged with national pride, is, the country so overflows with natural beauty, that in the matter of landscape painting the Irish gentry are hard to please. To those who doubt this, I would simply say, come and see ; and if any English artist does not discover good cause why they should be fasti- dious, all I can observe is, that I shall be very much asto- nished. Even the highways are crowded with antiquarian and picturesque beauty ; but road-makers do not seek these so much as convenience ; nor are the most-talked-of places those where a “ landskipper,” as I heard an artist called in Kerry, will reap the richest harvest. There are hills and lakes, rivers and glades, of most exqui- site beauty, profusely scattered over the country— far away from the highroads, in the fastnesses of the mountains — and even within hearing of the roar of the wild ocean are dells and little valleys, cascades, lawns of greenest hue and softest grass, where Druids’ altars hang upon their mysterious points of rest, and the breeze whispers amid mouldering towers — memorials of the troubled past. Still, eyes accustomed from their opening to really fine scenery are not likely to be satisfied with aught that falls short of perfection ; and, as I have said, I find such of my countrymen as really love art very hard to please in landscape, particularly in Irish landscape : they have become familiar with the same scenes from many points of view — the artist can only record one, and it is at least likely that the one he has chosen is not the favourite. Still, I fear, the chief cause why art has not flourished hitherto, must be attributed to the continued excitement of religion and politics ; to judge from collateral evidence^ the influence of this excitement is happily on the decrease, tor . I have seen framed prints in several cottages, and observed in many dwellings, where paintings would be an extravagance, volumes of beautiful engravings displayed as the chief trea- sures of their country homes. On our late pilgrimage through the beautiful and romantic “ Kingdom of Kerry” we encountered a native artist, who beguiled us of an hour, and interested us deeply. We had lingered long in the beautiful vale of Glengariff, and still longer on the mountain road which commands a view of the magic bay and its golden islands, that seem lifted by earth to- wards heaven as a peace-offering ; and when we passed through the tunnel, which is still regarded by the mountaineers with evident astonishment, the sun was sinking behind the huge range of Kerry mountains, which looked the more bleak when contrasted with the memory of the exceeding fertility of Glen- gariff. We were then literally amid both clouds and moun- tains, and the only sound that disturbed the awful stillness of the scene was the scream of an eagle, which issued from be- hind a tower-like assemblage of barren rocks, where most probably the eyrie of the royal bird w r as placed ; the sound added greatly to the effect of the scenery, and we drew up that we might listen to it more attentively ; it was several times repeated, and almost at the same instant a fresh breeze dispersed the mists which had in some degree obscured the glory of the departing sun ; and the valley beneath the pass became literally illuminated wherever the breaks or fissures in the opposite mountains permitted the brightness of the sun, as it were, to pass through. I had never seen such an effect of light and shade before, for the mountain shadows were heavy as night itself ; I feel I cannot describe either the brightness of the one or the intenseness of the other. I am sure the scene could not be painted so as to convey any idea of its reality. Any attempt to depict the extravagance of nature is always deemed unnatural. We are weak enough to bound the Almighty’s works by what has come within the sphere of our own finite observa- tions. How paltry this must seem to those who dwell amongst the mountains, and read the book of ever varying nature amid the silent places of the earth ! I had been gazing so earnestly upon the scene below- and around us, that I had not noted the sudden appearance of a lad upon a bank, a little to the left of the place on which we stood ; but my attention was attracted by his clasping his hands together, and laughing, or rather shouting loudly, in evident delight at the scene. There was nothing in his ap- pearance different from that of many young goatherds we had passed, and who hardly raised their heads from the purple heath to gaze at our progress. His sun-burnt limbs were bare below the knee ; but his long brown hair had been cared for, and fiow-ed beneath a wude-leafed hat, which was garnished, not untastefully, with a couple of wreaths of spreading fern. His garments were in sufficient disor- der to satisfy the most enthusiastic admirer of “ the pic- turesque;” and although we called to him repeatedly, it was not until a sudden diffusion of cloud had interfered be- tween him and the sunset, so as to diminish the light, and of course lessen the effect of the shadows, that he noticed us in the least ; indeed, I do not think he would have done so at all, but for the unexpected appearance of another “ child of the mist,” in the person of a little tangled-looking , bright-eyed girl — literally one mass of tatters— who sprang to where the boy stood, and seizing his hand, pointed silently to us. He descended immediately, followed by the little girl, and after removing his hat, stood by the side of our carriage, into w'hieh he peered with genuine Irish curiosity. To our question of “ Where do you live?” the mountain maid replied, “ Neen English,” which experience had previously taught us signified that she did not understand our lan- guage. We then addressed ourselves to the boy, w-hen the girl placed her hands on her lips, then to her ears, and finally shook her head. “ Deaf and dumb ?” I said. Upon which she replied, “ Ay, ay, deaf, dumb — deaf, dumb.” The little creature having so said, regarded him with one of those quick looks so eloquent of infant love ; and seizing his hand, lifted up her rosy face to be kissed. He patted her head impatiently, but was too occupied examining the contents of our carriage to heed her affectionate request. His eye glanced over our packages without much interest, until they rested upon a 95 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. small black portfolio, and then he leaped, and clapped liis hands, making us understand he wanted to inspect that. His little companion had evidently some idea that this was an intrusion, and intimated so to the boy ; but he pushed her from him, determined, with true masculine spirit, to have his own way. Nothing could exceed his delight while turning over a few sketches and some engravings. He gave us clearly to understand that he comprehended their intent — looking from our puny outlines to the magnificent mountains by which we were surrounded, and smiiing thereat in a way that even our self-love could not construe into a compli- ment ; he evinced more satisfaction at a sketch of Glengariff, pointed towards the district, and intimated that he knew it well ; but his decided preference was given to sundry most exquisite drawings, from the pencil of Mr Nicoll, of the ruins of Aghadoe, Mucross Abbey, and a passage in the gap of Dunloe. I never understood before the power of “ mute elo- quence.” I am sure the boy would have knelt before the objects of his idolatry until every gleam of light had faded from the sky, if he had been permitted so, to do. Nor was his enthusiasm less extraordinary than the purity of his taste ; for he turned over several coloured engravings, brilliant though they were, of ladies’ costumes, after a mere glance at each, while he returned again and again to the draw- ings that were really worthy of attention. While he was thus occupied, his little companion, struck by some sudden thought, bounded up the almost perpendicular mountain with the grace and agility of a true-born Kerry mai- den, until she disappeared ; but she soon returned, springing from rock to rock, and holding the remnants of her tattered apron together with evident care. When she descended, she displayed its contents, which interested us greatly, for they were her brother’s sketches, five or six in number, made on the torn-out leaves of an old copy-book in pale ink, or with a still paler pencil. Two were tinged with colour extracted from plants that grew upon the mountain; and though rude, there were evidences of a talent the more rare, when the circumstances attendant upon its birth were taken into consi- deration. The lad could have had no instruction — he had never been to school, though schools, thank God ! are now to be found in the fastnesses of Kerry — the copy-book was the property of his eldest brother, and he had abducted the leaves to record upon them his silent observations of the magnificence of Nature, whose power had elevated and instructed his mind, closed as it was by the misfortune of being born deaf and dumb, against such knowledge as he could acquire in so wild a district. We should not have read even this line of his sim- ple history, but for the opportune passing of a “ Kerry dra- goon”. — a wild, brigand-looking young fellow, mounted be- tween his market-panniers on his rough pony — who proved to be the lad’s brother, although he did not at first tell us so. “ We all,” he said, “live high up in de mountain; but I can’t trust Mogue to look after de goats by himself. His whole delight is puttin’ down upon a bit of paper or a slate whatever he sees. I’d ha’ broke him off it long agone ; but he was his mother’s darlin’, and she’s wid de blessed Yargin these seven years, so I don’t like to cross his fancy ; besides, de Lord’s hand has been heavy on him already, and it does no harm, no more than himself, except when any of de chil- dre brake what he do be doing ; den he goes mad intirely, and strays I dunna where ; though, to be sure, de Almighty lias his eye over him, for he’s sure to come back well and quiet.” The lad at last closed our portfolio with a heavy sigh, and did not perceive until he had done so that his little sister had spread out his own productions on the heather which grew so abundantly by the road-side. He pointed to them with some- thing of the exaltation of spirit which is so natural to us all when we think our exertions are about to be appreciated, and he bent over them as a mother would over a cherished child. His triumph, however, was but momentary— it was evident that his having seen better things rendered him discontented with his own, for while gathering them hastily together, he burst into tears. Poor mountain boy ! I do not think his tears were excited by envy, for he returned to our folio in a few moments with the same delight as before ; but his feelings were the more in- tense because he could not express them ; and he had been taught his inferiority, a bitter lesson, the remembrance of which nothing but hope, all-glorious hope, that manifestation of immortality, can efface. We gave him some paper and pencils, together with a few engravings, and had soon looked our last at Mogue Murphy, as he stood, his little sister clinging to his side, waving his hat on a promontory, while we were rapidly descending into the valley. 1 thought the memory of such a meeting in the moun- tains was worthy of preservation. IMPROPER CONDUCT IN PUBLIC PLACES. There is scarcely anything by which a stranger is more forcibly struck on visiting Paris and other continental cities, than meeting at the museums, libraries, palaces, menageries, and other places of exhibition, crowds of private soldiers, artizans, and persons of inferior degree, who with the greatest attention, and in the most decorous and orderly manner, in- spect the various objects presented to their notice ; and who, judging from the intelligent manner in which they discuss the merits of these objects, would appear to derive the greatest pos- sible advantage from the privileges they enjoy. Amongst this crowd of people it was not an unfrequent sight, a year or two since, to observe some well-dressed individual poking at a picture with his fingers, as if his eyes were on the points of them, teasing the animals in the menagerie, or possibly in- scribing his worthless name on some pillar or statue. You might have safely addressed the person whom you saw thus employed in English as one from our own dominions ; and if you looked around, you would have seen an expression of anger in the countenances of the native spectators, or have heard them muttering their just contempt of the ignorance and rudeness displayed in thus wantonly injuring or defacing that which, being publicly exhibited for general advantage, becomes so far public property as to appeal strongly to the honour of all well-thinking individuals for its protection. In our own country, a few years since, it required no ordinary generosity, and no little sacrifice of selfishness, to place with- in the reach of our people any works of art or curiosity in the shape of exhibitions ; and our government contributed very little assistance towards forwarding the great work of na- tional improvement by such means. Truly melancholy was it then to see the mischief wantonly done to the property of the few liberal individuals who offered to share their pleasures with their less fortunate fellows ; one instance of which (pro- bably one that has wrought much to induce good conduct) may perhaps be worth narrating here. In certain beautiful pleasure grounds, freely opened to the public, there was to be seen, a few years since, a board bearing the following in- scription : — “ This mound was planted with evergreens three times, and as often trampled down by thoughtless individuals admitted to walk in the grounds : it is now planted a fourth time.” This was the delicate but touching reproof of the worthy proprietor, who may now, however (having suffered in a good cause), congratulate himself on the amended habits of the people, brought about by the increasing enlightenment on the subject of the necessity and utility of admitting the humbler orders to places of rational and instructive recreation, aided by their improved education and temperate habits, which hold forth great encouragement to those who possess the power to extend the privileges still too scantily accorded. We are indeed satisfied that a most decided improvement in the habits and feelings of the humbler classes of the community has really taken place within the last few years, and that under judi- cious arrangements they might now be admitted safely even to exhibitions of objects of great intrinsic value; and in proof of this opinion we may state, that about two years since, when, on the occasion of the Queen’s coronation, the Royal Hiber- nian Academy opened tlie doors of their annual exhibition to the public gratuitously for one day, though thousands took advantage of this free admission, not the slightest accident to the property or impropriety of any kind whatever occurred. If proofs of the utility of thus disposing of the spare time of the people be required, one answer will be, that they are thus at least “ kept out of harm’s way ;” and in accomplish- ing this (quite a sufficient object for exertion when man’s propensities to evil are taken into account), a great deal more of good is achieved, for a spirit of inquiry is thus induced, and a talent for observation cultivated, which are the parents of true knowledge, and which, combined with the habit of concentrating thought and reflection, must open up the sources of wisdom, and produce an enlargement of understanding in the fortunate possessor, which older and still too prevalent methods of education are eminently calculated to repress. It has been observed, until the observation has become trite, that “knowledge is power,” and it is therefore the duty of all who are sensible of the value of mental deyelopement to encou- 96 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. rage whatever tends to promote it ; though, unfortunately, there still exists a class of men -who seek to maintain unde- served superiority, by keeping all persons subordinate to them in ignorance, instead of generously extending to them such help as would enable them to advance in intelligence. How different was the feeling of him who said, that if permitted to have his wishes accomplished he would ask but for two : the first, that he might possess all knowledge that man in his finite nature can or ought to possess ; and the second, that having attained this knowledge, all his fellow-creatures might be admitted to a participation of it. The value of observation as an accessible source of infor- mation to all, must be obvious ; the infant observes before he reasons, and reason advances with the poAvers of observing. When the man becomes a sage, he may theorise ; but he must first test his Avisdom by observation, Avhich would thus ap- pear to be the fulcrum on Avhich mind must depend to raise itself ; and as opportunities of observation are noAV daily in- creasing, it becomes a matter of importance to aid those Avho are inclined, by showing them how to observe, and to draw out the latent talent in those who, having eyes, yet see not ; and there is no mode in which this can be more effectually and agreeably done than by draAving their attention to those na- tural objects by which they are surrounded. The sacred writers Avere Avell aware of the value of thus directing the mind ; and our poets have in many instances derived applause and celebrity from their pOAver of accurately observing and faithfully describing the phenomena of nature. To aid the people in the acquirement of knowledge so de- sirable, our best efforts shall not be wanting, and we propose to ourselves accordingly to give a series of papers on Natural History, pointing out, in a popular manner, what all Avho have eyes may see, and, seeing, profit by. B. ANSALDO AND THE CATS. Everybody, we presume, has heard or read the story of “ Whittington and his Cat,” which is an especial favourite Avith the worthy citizens of “ London tOAvn,” where it is matter of history that the once poor and friendless little boy rose to be thrice Lord Mayor ; but from the tale quoted below, it would seem that the Italians are not without a version of their own on the subject. Which of the tAvo is the most ancient or original, we confess our inability to decide, but it is a matter of very little consequence, as the moral in each is similar, namely, that perseverance and industry Avill generally meet their just reAvard, while the endeavours of an idle and impro- vident man to realise a great fortune all at once, by some wild and desperate speculation, pretty much the same as gambling, or even, as Ave may add, by that detestable and degrading vice itself, rarely fails to involve the rash projector in ruin and disgrace. However, without fatiguing the reader with fur- ther preface, we will present him Avith the following literal translation from the Italian of Lorenzo Magaletti : — “ About the time when our Amerigo Vespucci discovered the new world, there was a merchant in our town whose name Avas Messer Ansaldo degli Ormani, who, though he had become very rich, but yet desirous to double his wealth, char- tered a very large ship, and began to trade Avith his merchan- dise in the newly-discovered regions of the West. Having already made two or three prosperous voyages, he wished to return thither once more ; but scarcely had he left Cadiz when there arose a most furious gale, which drove him along for se- veral days, without his knoAving where he was ; but at length fortune was so kind as to enable him to reach an island called Canaria. He had no sooner done so than the king, being in- formed of the arrival of a vessel, Avent doAvn to the port Avith all his nobles, and gave Messer Ansaldo a land reception : he then conducted him to the royal palace, to show his joy at his arrival. Dinner Avas then prepared in the most sumptuous style, and he sat down with Messer Ansaldo, who was sur- prised to see a great number of youths Avho held in their hands long sticks, similar to those used by penitents ; but no sooner were the viands served up than he understood fast enough the meaning of such attendance, for ‘ Not Xerxes led so many into Greece, Nor numerous thus the myrmidonic bands, As on the scene their countless hosts appeared !’ Berni. In fact, so many and so large were the rats which came in from all quarters, that it was really wonderful to see them. Thereupon the youths aforesaid took to their sticks, and Avith great labour defended the dish from which the king and Mes- ser Ansaldo were eating. When the latter had heard and seen the multitudes of those filthy animals which Avere innu- merable in that island (nor had any means been found to ex- tirpate them), he sought to make the king under stand by signs that he Avished to provide him with a remedy by means of AA’hich he might be freed from such horrid creatures ; and running quickly to the ship, he took two very fine cats, male and female, and brought them to the king, saying that on the next occasion they should be put upon the table. As soon therefore as the smell of the meat began to diffuse itself, the usual procession made its appearance, when the cats seeing it began to scatter them so bravely that there was very soon a prodigious slaughter of the enemy. On seeing this, the delighted king, wishing to remunerate Ansaldo, sent for many strings of pearls, Avith gold, silver, and rare precious stones, which he presented to Messer An- saldo, who, thinking he had made a good profit of his mer- chandise, spread his sails to the wind, prosecuted his voyage, and returned home immensely rich. Some time afterAvards, he Avas relating what had occurred betAveen himself and the King of Canaria to a circle of his friends, Avhen one of them, named Giocondo de Finfali, Avas seized with a desire to make the voyage to Canaria himself, to try his fortune also ; and in order to do so, sold an estate he had in the Val d’Elsa, and invested the money in a great quantity of jewels, together with rings and bracelets of im- mense value ; and having given out that he intended to go to the Holy Land, lest any should blame his resolution, he re- paired to Cadiz, where he embarked, and soon arrived at Canaria. He presented his riches to the king, reasoning in this manner — ‘ If Messer Ansaldo got so much for a paltry pair of cats, how much more Avill be my just recompence for Avhat I have brought his majesty !’ But the poor man de- ceived himself, because the King of Canaria, Avho highly esteemed the present of Giocondo, did not think he could make him a fairer exchange than by giving him a cat; so hav- ing sent for a very fine one, son to those which Ansaldo had given him, he presented it to Giocondo ; but he, thinking him- self insulted, returned miserably poor to Florence, continually cursing the King of Canaria, the rats, and Messer Ansaldo and his cats ; but he Avas Avrong, because that good king, in making him a present of a cat, gave him what he considered the most valuable thing in his dominions.” W. S. T. INSCRIPTION ON A TOMBSTONE IN THE CHURCHYARD OF YOUGHAL, ON ANNE MARIA CAREW, AGED 24 . 'Tis ever thus, ’tis ever thus, when hope hath built a bow’r Like that of Eden, Avreathed about with many a thornless flow’r, To dwell therein securely, the self-deceivers trust A whirlwind from the desert comes, and all is in the dust. ’Tis ever thus, ’tis ever thus, that when the poor heart clings With all its finest tendrils, with all its flexile rings, That goodly thing it cleaveth to so fondly and so fast, Is struck to earth by lightning, or shattered by the blast. ’Tis ever thus, ’tis ever thus, AAdth beams of mortal bliss, With looks too bright and beautiful for such a AvorLd as this, One moment round about us their angel light Avings play ; Then doAvn the veil of darkness drops, and all is passed away. ’Tis ever thus, ’tis ever thus, Avith creatures heavenly fair, T oo finely formed to bear the brunt more earthly natures bear A little while they dAvell Avith us, blest ministers of love, Then spread the Avings Ave had not seen, and seek their homes above. Printed and Published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin Agents : — It. Groombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London ; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool; J. Drake, Birmingham; M. Bingham, Broad Street, Bristol ; Fraser and Crawford, George Street, Edinburgh; and David Robertson, Trongate, Glasgow. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 13. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1840. Volume I. HOLLYBROOK HALL, COUNTY OF WICKLOW. Among the very many beautiful residences of our nobility and gentry, situated within a drive of an hour or two of our metro- polis, there is probably not one better worthy of a visit than that which we have chosen to depict as the illustration of our present number — Hollybrook Hall, the seat of Sir George Frederick John Hodson, Bart. It is situated in the county of Wicklow, about a mile beyond the town of Bray, and about eleven miles from Dublin. To direct public attention to this charming spot is no less our pleasure than our duty, for we feel quite assured that even among the higher classes of our fellow-citizens but a very few know more respecting it than its name and locality, and that it will surprise the vast majority to be told that Holly- brook Hall is no less remarkable for the beauty of the sylvan scenery by which it is surrounded, than as affording in itself the most perfect specimen of the Tudor style of architecture to be found in Ireland. That Hollybrook is thus little known to the - public, is not, howmver, their fault : excluded from the eye by high and un- sightly stone w r alls on every side by which it might otherwise be seen by the traveller, it is passed without even a glimpse ot the bower of beauty, w r hich would attract his attention and excite the desire to obtain a more intimate acquaintance with objects of such interest by a request to its accomplished owner, which we are satisfied w'ould never be denied. Hollybrook Hall, like Clontarf Castle, of which we have already given some account, is a fine specimen of the mqny recently erected or rebuilt residences of our nobility and gen- try, which we esteem it our duty to notice and to praise. Like that fine structure also, it is an architectural creation of that accomplished artist to whose exquisite taste and correct judgment we are indebted for so many of the most beautiful buildings in the kingdom ; and in many of its features and the general arrangement of its parts, it bears a considerable resemblance to that admirably composed edifice. In its ground plan and general outline, however, it is essentially different ; and it is, moreover, characterised by a peculiarity w'hich perhaps no other of Mr Morrison’s works exhi- bits, namely, that it has no mixed character of style, but is in every respect an example of English domestic architecture in the style of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, or, in other words, it uniformly preserves through all its details the cha- racter of the Tudor style. In the choice of this style, as well as in the general composi- tion of the structure, the artist was obviously guided by a judi- cious desire to adapt the building to the peculiar character ot the scenery by which it is surrounded, and the historical associations connected with the locality ; and a more happy result than that which he has effected could hardly be. ima- gined. Seated upon a green and sunny terraced bank in the 98 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. midst of venerable yew and other evergreens, and immedi- ately above a small artificial lake or pond, which reflects on its surface the dark masses of ancient and magnificent forest trees, which rise on all sides from its banks, and which are only topped by the peaked summits of the greater and lesser Sugar-Loaf Mountains, as seen through vistas, the building and its immediate accompaniments seem of coequal age and designed for each other ; and all breathe of seclusion from the cares of the world and a happy domestic repose. It would indeed be impossible to conceive any combinations of archi- tecture and landscape scenery more perfectly harmonious or beautiful of their kind. Hollybrook Hall is wholly built of mountain granite squared and chiselled, and presents three architectural fronts.' That which we have represented in our illustration is the east front, which faces the small lake or pond, and contains the library and drawing-room ; but the principal front is that facing the north, on which side the entrance porch is placed. The princi- pal apartments consist of a hall, library, dining and drawing rooms, with the state bed-rooms above them ; and of these apartments the hall is the most grand and striking feature, though of inferior size to that of Clontarf Castle. It is thirty- four feet long by twenty feet wide, but has an open porch and vestibule or outer hall, twelve feet six inches wide ; and like every other part of the edifice, its details are throughout in the purest style of Tudor architecture. This hall is panelled with oak, and is lighted by one grand stained glass window, eight feet six inches wide, and fourteen feet six inches high. This window, which resembles those of the English ecclesiastical edifices of the fifteenth century, is divided by stone mullions into four days, or compartments, and being beautifully pro- portioned, affords abundant light to the interior. But the most imposing feature of the hall is its beautiful oak staircase, which, rising from beneath the window, conducts to a gallery which crosses the hall, and communicates with the bed-rooms over the principal apartments. The ceiling is of dark oak, supported by principals which spring from golden corbels, and it is enlivened by golden bosses, which are placed at the various crossings of the rich woodwork, and have a most pleasing effect from the contrasting relief which they give to its pervading dark colour. The cornice, which is equally rich and elegantly roportioned, is suiunounted by a gilded crest ornament, which y its lightness and brilliancy attracts the eye, and leads the mind to contemplate the fine proportions and elegance of de- sign which characterises the details of the ceiling in all its parts. Of the other principal apartments it is only necessary to state that they are equally well proportioned, and have ceil- ings of great richness and beauty, executed in a bold and masterly style of relief : they are of larger size than the simi- lar rooms of Clontarf Castle, the library being thirty feet by seventeen feet six inches, the dining-room thirty feet by twenty, and the drawing-room thirty-four feet six by twenty. These apartments are lighted by oriel windows, each of which commands a view of some striking beauty in the surrounding scenery. An extensive range of offices and servants’ rooms branches off the Hall on its western side, but these are as yet only partly erected, and further additions are still wanting to carry out the original design of the architect, and give to the edifice as a whole the intricacy and picturesque variety of out- line which he intended. Hollybrook was originally the seat of a highly respectable branch of the Adair family, who, as it is said, though long located in Scotland, are descended from Maurice Fitzgerald, fourth Earl of Kildare. By a marriage with the only daugh- ter of the last proprietor of this family, Forster Adair, Esq., it passed into the possession of Sir Robert Hodson, Bart., descended of an old English family, and father of the present proprietor, who succeeded to the baronetcy and estates on the death of his elder brother the late Sir Robert Adair Hodson, by whom the new structure of Hollybrook Hall was com- menced. Sir Robert was a gentleman of refined tastes and intellectual acquirements — a landscape painter of no small merit, and of a poetic mind. The present baronet is, we be- lieve, similarly gifted, and therefore worthy to be the pro- rietor and resident of a spot of such interest and beauty ; ut he should raze those odious unsightly walls, which exclude Hollybrook from the eye, and make it an unvisited and almost unknown solitude. P. None are so seldom found alone, and are so soon tired of their own company, as those conceited coxcombs who are on the best terms with themselves, TIM CALLAGHAN, THE INIMITABLE PIPER. Oh ! ye whom business or pleasure shall henceforth lead to the county of Wexford, especially to the baronies of Forth and Bargie, should you see a tall, stout, lazy-looking fellow, with sleepy eyes and huge cocked nose, dragging his feet along as if they were clogs imposed on him by nature to restrain his motion instead of helping him forward, dawdling along the highw r ays, or lounging about a public-house, with a green bag under his arm, beware of him, for that is Tim Callaghan ! — fling him a sixpence or shilling if you will, but ask him not for music ! Tim Callaghan seriously assured me “ that he sarved seven long years wid as fine a piper as ever put chanther ondher an arm and that at the end of that well-spent period he began to enchant the king’s lieges on his own account, master of a splendid set of pipes, and three whole tunes ( barring a few odd turns hero and there which couldn’t be conquered, and of no conse quince'), a golden store in his opinion. “ Ah, then, Tim,” said I, when I was perfectly acquainted with himself and his musical merits, “ what a pity that with your fine taste and superior set of pipes you did not try to con- quer the half dozen at least !” , “ Ogh, musha!” quoth Tim, looking sulky and annoyed, “that same quisthen has been put to me by dozens, an’ I hate to hear it 1 It was only yistherday that another lady axt me that same. ‘ Arrab, ma’am,’ ses I, ‘ did ye ever play a thune on the pipes in yer life?’ ‘ Niver, indeed,’ ses she, lookin’ ashamed ov her ignorance, as she ought. ‘ Bekase if ye did,’ ses I agin, ‘ye’d soon say, “bright was yerself, Tim Cal- laghan, to get over the three thunes dacently, widout axin’ people to do what’s onpossible.” ’ An’ now Iappail to you, Miss, where’s the use ov bodherin’ people’s brains wid six or seven whin three does my business as well ?” As in duty bound, I admitted that his argument w r as un- answerable, and thenceforward we were the best friends pos- sible. Grateful for my patience and forbearance, he eternally mangles the three unfortunates for my gratification ; and I doubt if I could now relish them with their fair proportions, so accustomed as I have been to Tim’s “ short measure !” After all, Tim Callaghan was a politic fellow ; and these three tunes were expressly chosen and learnt to win the ears and suffrages of all denominations of Christian men. Thus, the “ Boyne water” is the propitiatory sacrifice at the Pro- testant’s door, “ Patrick’s Hay” at that of the Roman Catho- lic, and when he is not sure of the creed of the party he wishes to conciliate, to suit Quakers, Methodists, Seekers, and Jumpers, “God save the Queen” is the third. For many years he was contented to give these favourite airs in their original purity ; but some wicked wight — a gentleman piper, I suspect — has at last persuaded him that his melody would be altogether irresistible if he would introduce some orna- mental variations, “ such as his own fine taste would suggest and poor Tim, unaccustomed to flattery, and wholly unsuspi- cious of the jest, caught at the bright idea, conquered his na- tural and acquired laziness, and made an attempt. When he thought he had mastered the difficulties, he did me the honour to select me as judge to pronounce on his melodious acquisi- tions ; and all I shall say anent them is, let the blackest hy- pochondriac that ever looked wistfully at a marl-hole or his garters, listen to Tim Callaghan’s “ varry-a-shins,” and watch his face while performing them, and he will require “ both poppy and mandragora to medicine him to sleep,” if sleep he ever will again for laughing ! When Tim arrives at a gentleman’s door, his usual plan is to commence with the suitable serenade, and drone away at that till the few pence he is piping for sends him away con- tent. But if he is detained long, and he sees no great chance of reward or entertainment within doors, he becomes furious, and in his ire he rattles up that one of the three which he sup- poses most disagreeable and opposite to the politics of the offender. If the party be a Roman Catholic, he will be un- pleasantly electrified, and all his antipathies aroused, by “ the Boyne water,” performed with unusual spirit ; and if a church- goer, he will never recover the shock of “ Patrick’s Day,” given with an energy that will render the wound unhealable ! If he is asked for any favourite or fashionable air — and you might as well ask Tim Callaghan to repeat a passage of Ho- mer in the original Greek — his civilest reply is, “ I haven’t that, but I’ll give yez one as good,” when one of the trio fol- lows of course ; and if the impertinent suitor for novelties in 99 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. his ignorance persists in demanding more than is to be had, he is angrily cut short, especially if of inferior rank, with “ How bad ye are for sortins ! Yer masther wud be contint wid what I gave ye, an’ thankful into the bargin'.” Thus qualified to please, it is not to be wondered at that he is cele- brated through three baronies as “ the piper !” When first I had the pleasure to see and hear Tim Cal- laghan, it was in the middle of winter, dark and dreary, and in a retired country place, where even the “ vile screeching of the wTy-necked fife” would have been welcome in lieu of better. Conceive our ecstacy, then, when the inspiring drone of the bagpipe startled our ears into attention and expecta- tion ! The very servants were clamorous in expressing their delight, and in beseeching that the piper should be brought into the house and entertained. The petition was granted, the minstrel was led in “ nothing loth,” and seated in the hall. Well, Tim’s first essay at the minister’s house was of course “ the Boyne,” played very spiritedly and accurately on the whole, with the exception of a few rather essential notes that he omitted as unnecessary and troublesome, or (as the servants supposed) in consequence of the cold of his fingers ; and finally they took him to the kitchen, and seated him oppo- site to a blazing fire. “Now he’ll play in airnest!” cried they, as one and all gathered round him in expectation of music. Our piper being now in the lower regions, among the inferior gentry, and willing to please all orders and conditions, begins to consider whether he shall repeat the “ Boyne,” or commence the all-enlivening “Patrick’s JDay.” “ What religion is the sarvints ov ?” replied he at length to a little cow-boy gaping with wonder at the grand ornaments of the pipes. “ They are ovall soarts, sur,” whispered Tommy in reply, and reddening all over at the great man’s especial notice. “ Ov all soarts !” mutters Tim significantly; then deciding instantly, with much solemnity of face and strength of arm he squeezed forth the conciliating “ God save the King.” The butler listened awhile with the sapient air of a judge. “You’re a capitial performer, piper!” said he at length patronizingly, and with a hand on each hip ; “ an’ that’s a fine piece ov Hannibal’s compersition ! but it is not shutable for all occashins, an’ a livelier air would agree with our timperament betther. Change it to somethin’ new.” And tucking his apron aside, he gallantly took the rosy tips of the housemaid’s fingers and led her out, while the gardener as politely handed forth the cook. The piper looked sullen, and still continued the national anthem as if he knew what he was about, and was determined to play out his tune. The butler’s dignity bristled up. “ Railly,” he observed, and smiled superciliously, “ we are very loyal people hereabouts, but at this pertiekler moment we 'don’t want to join in a prayer for our savren’s welfare ! Stop that melancholic thing, man ! an’ give us one of Jack- son’s jigs.” “ Out ov fashin,” quoth Tim sullenly, “ but I’ll give yez one as good,” and “ Patrick’s Day” set them all in motion for a quarter of an hour. “ Oh, we’re quite tired ov that !” at length lisped the house- maid ; “ do, piper, give us a walse or co-dhreelle. Do you play ‘ Tanty-po/pitty ?’ Jem Sidebottom and I used to dance it beautifully when I lived at Mr A — - — ’s !” “ What does yez call it?” asked Tim rather sneeringly. “ Tanty-jso/pitty,” replied the damsel, drawing herself up with an air enough to kill a piper ! “ Phew !” returned the musician contemptuously, “ that’s out ov fashin too ; but I’ll give yez one as good and the “ Boyne” followed, played neither faster nor slower than he had been taught it, which was in right time, and any thing but dancing time, to the no small annoyance of the dancers. Another and another jig and reel was demanded, and to all and each Tim Callaghan replied, “ I have’nt that, but Til give yez one as good and the “ King,” the “ Boyne,” and the “ Day,” followed each other in due succession. Was there anything more provoking ! There stood four active, zealous votaries of T erpsichore, with toes pointed and heads erect, anxiously awaiting a further developement of Tim Callaghan’s powers ! There stood the dancers, looking beseech- ingly at the piper ; there sat the piper staring at the dancers, wondering what the deuce they waited for, quite satisfied that they had got all that could reasonably be expected from him. “ An’ have you nothin’ else in yer chanther ?” at last angrily demanded the butler. “ E — ah?” drawled Tim Callaghan, as if he did not under- stand the querist. The question was repeated in a higher key. “ Arrah, how bad yez are for sortins !” retorted the piper ; “ yer masther wud be contint wid what I gave yez, an’ thank- # ful into the bargin !” “ By Jupither Amond /” exclaimed he of the white apron, “ this beats all the playin’ I ever heerd in my life ! Arrah, do ye ever attind the nobility’s concerts ? — Ha ! ha ! ha !.” “ ’Pon my voracity, ” cried the smiling housemaid, “ I am greatly afeerd he will get ‘ piper’s pay — more kicks than halfpence.’ — Ha ! ha ! ha !” “ An’ good enough for him i” added the gardener ; “ a fella that has but three half thunes in the world, an’ none ov them right ! Arrah, what’s yer name, avic ?” “ What’s that to you ?” growled the piper. “ Oh, nothin’ ! Only I thought that you might be ‘ the piper that played before Moses.’ — Ha ! ha ! ha !” “ Oh ! the world may wag Since he got the bag,” sang the cook, as she returned to her avocations. But the butler, as master of the ceremonies, showed his disappointment and displeasure in a summary ejection of the unfortunate min- strel from the comforts of the fire and the house altogether. Again I had the exquisite delight of hearing Tim Callaghan. It was in another part of our county, and where he was quite a stranger. A lady had assembled a number of young per- sons to a sea-side dance one evening ; but, alas ! ere the hour of meeting arrived, she had heard that the fiddler she expected was ill, and could not possibly attend her. What was to be done ? Nothing ! When the guests arrived, and the dire news communicated, the gentlemen in spite of themselves looked terrifically glum, as if they anticipated a dull evening ; and the bright coun- tenances of the ladies were overcast, though as usual, sweet creatures ! they tried to look delightful under all visitations. In this dilemma one of the beaux suddenly recollected that “ he had seen a piper coming into the village that evening ; and he thought it was probable he would stop for the night at one of the public-houses.” Hope instantly illuminated all faces, and a messenger was forthwith dispatched for the man of music. For my part, whenever I heard a piper mentioned, I knew who was full before me. “ What sort of person is your piper ?” asked I of the gentle- man that had introduced the subject. “ A tall, stout, rather drowsy-looking fellow,” was the reply. “ Oh !” cried I, “it is the Inimitable ! — it is Tim Callaghan !” I was eagerly asked if he were a good performer ; and as I could not venture to reply with any degree of gravity, one other person present, who knew honest Timothy and his ways, with admirable composure answered, “ That under the shield of Miss Edgeworth’s mighty name he would decline trumpet- ing the praises of any one, she having expressly declared in her novel of 1 Ennui,’ that ‘ whoever enters thus announced appears to disadvantage ;’ and therefore,” said my friend, “we leave Tim Callaghan’s musical merit to speak for itself.” No- thing could be better than this, and the effect Tim produced was corresponding. While the messenger is away for our piper, I must relate an anecdote of another servant, and a rustic one too, once sent on a similar errand. John’s master had friends spending the evening with him, and he desired his servant to procure a musi- cian for the young folks for love or money. In about half an hour John returned after a fruitless search ; and instead of saying in the usual style that “he could not find one,” he flung open the drawing-room door, and announced his unsuc- cess in the following impromptu,* spoken with all due empha- sis and discretion — - “ I searched the city’s cir-cum-fe-rence round, And not a musician is there to be found ! I fear for music you’ll be at a loss, For the fiddler has taken the road to Ross !” and then made his bow and retired. The city, by the way, was a village of some half-dozen houses. So much for John, and now for Tim Callaghan. Presently the identical Tim made his appearance, and was placed in high state at the top of the room, with a degree of attention and respect fully due to his abilities. For my part, the very sight of Tim, and the thought of his consummate * Fact ! He composed and spoke the verses as I give them. 100 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. assurance or stupidity in attempting to play for dancing, amused me beyond expression ; but I suppressed all symp- toms of this, and kept my eyes and ears on the alert in expecta- tion of what was to follow. A bumper of his favourite punch *w.as prepared for him, and while sipping it, I thought he cast a scrutinizing and anxious glance on the company, probably think- ing how he should adjust his politics there. But he had little time to pause. A quadrille set was immediately formed, and he was called on to play ! — the sapient belles and beaux never dreaming that a modern piper even might not play quadrilles. Never did I find it so difficult to restrain myself from immode- rate laughter ! There stood the eight elegantes, ringleted, perfumed, white-gloved, and refined ; and there sat Tim Cal- laghan in all his native surly stupidity, dreadfully puzzled, “looking unutterable things,” humming and hawing, and tun- ing and droning much longer than necessary — not in the least aware of the demand that was to be made on himself or his pipes, but puzzling his brains as to which of his own he should play first. “ A quadrille, piper ! — the first of Montague’s !” called out the leading gentleman. “ E-ah!” said Tim Callaghan, opening his sleepy eyes, sur- prised into some little animation. “ The first of Montague’s set of quadrilles !” repeated the beau. “ Ogh, Mounty cute’s is out ov fashin ; but I’ll give yez one as good and the company being mixed, of whose opinions he could not be sure, the quadrillers were astounded with “ God save the King” in most execrable style ! All stared, and most laughed heartily ; but what was of more consequence to poor Tim, his arm was fiercely seized, and he was stopt short in the midst of his loyalty by an angry demand “ if he could play no quadrilles ? Not or ?” and the names of a dozen quadrilles and waltzes w r ere mentioned, that the unfortunate minstrel had never heard of in all his days and travels ! In his dire extremity he commenced “ the Boyne,” when at the instant some person called the lady of the house. The name seemed a Catholic one — a sudden ray of joy shot through his frame to his fingers’ ends, and from thence to his pipes, and poor “ Patrick’s Day” was the result. A kind of jigging quadrille was then danced by the least fastidious and better humoured of the party ; the first top couple, superfine exquisites ! — the lady an importation from London, and odo- rous of “ Bouquet a-la-Reine,” and the gentleman a perfect “ Pelham,” from the aristocratic arch of his brow to his shoe-tie — having retreated to their seats with looks and ges- tures of horror and disgust, quite unnoticed by Tim Calla- ghan, who bore himself with all the dignity of a household bard of the olden time, in his element, playing his own favou- rite tune, and quollity actually dancing to his music ! It was a great day for the house of Callaghan ! Well ! as there seemed nothing better to be had, “ Patrick’s Day” continued in requisition, now as a quadrille, now as a country-dance, by all who preferred motion to sitting still, before and after supper, till at last every one was weary of it, and a general vow was made to drop the “ Day” and take the “ Boyne,” and endeavour to move it as we best could. By that time, too, our piper seemed most heartily tired of his patron saint, and having quaffed his fourth full-flowing goblet, appeared to be rather inclined for a doze than to renew his melody. But he was roused up by our worthy host, who, good, gay old man ! was the very soul of cheerfulness. “ For pity’s sake, piper,” said he, “ try to give us something that we can foot it to ! I was not in right mood for dancing to-night till now. If you be an Irishman, look at the pretty girl that is to be my partner for the next dance, and perhaps her eyes may inspire even you, you drowsy fellow, with mo- mentary animation, and perform a miracle on your pipes !” Short as this address was, and gaily as it was uttered, it had no other effect on our piper than administering an addi- tional soporific. While the old gentleman was speaking, the drowsy god was descending faster and faster on Tim Callaghan. He dozed and was shaken up. “ What does yez want ?” growded he at length. “ What the d — 1 does yez want?” looking as if he would say, “ Now my weary lips I close ; Leave me, leave me to repose.” “ Music! music!” said our host, laughing. “ Any sort of music, any sort of noise,” and he left the piper and took his place amongst the dancers. Tim mechanically fumbled at his pipes, while the gentlemen busied themselves in procuring partners. There was silence for some seconds. “ Begin, piper,” called out our host. “ Out ov fashin,” muttered Tim in broken half-finished sen- tences ; “but — I’ll — give — yez— -one — as— good and a long, a loud reverberating snore at the instant made good his promise of music almost as harmonious a3 the sounds elicited from his bagpipe ! ! Imagine to yourselves, ye who can, the scene that followed. The salts-bottle and perfumed handkerchief of the exquisites were in instant requisition, as if they felt sensations of faint- ing ! the nervous started as if a pistol went off at their heads, and those who bore the explosion with fortitude joined in a chorus of laughter, increased to pain when it was perceived that the Inimitable, noways disturbed or alarmed, prolonged his repose, and agreeably to the laws of music, and in excel- lent taste, bringing in his nasal performance as a grand finale to each resounding peal ! “ Now,” observed the friend who had answered for me at a critical crisis, “ has not Tim Callaghan made his own pane- gyric ? Has not his merit spoken for itself? W T hat a figure our inimitable piper would have cut, had we ushered him in with a flourish of trumpets !” When the cachinnatory storm had subsided, and when all considered that their unrivalled musician had had enough of slumber, he was once more aroused, to receive his well-earned guerdon, when the following colloquy commenced : — . “Pray, piper, what is your name ?” demanded the master of the house, with all the gravity of a magistrate on the bench, and drawing forth his tablets. “ E — all? Why, Tim Callaghan.” “Ha! Tim Callaghan (writing), I shall certainly remem- ber Tim Callaghan ! I suppose, Tim, you are quite cele- brated?” “ E— ah ?” “ I suppose you are very well known ?” “ Why, those that knowed me wanst, knows me agin,” quoth Tim Callaghan. “ I do believe so ! I think I shall know you at all events. Who taught you to play the pipes ?” “ One Tim Hartigan, of the county Clare.” “ Had he much trouble in teaching you?” “ He thrubble ! I knows nothin’ ov his thrubble, but faix I well remimber me own ! There is lumps in my head to this very day, from the onmarciful cracks he used to give it when I want asthray.” “Ha! ha! ha! Oh, poor fellow! Well, farewell, Tim Callaghan ! — pleasant be your path through life ; and may your fame spread through the thirty-two counties of green Erin, till you die surfeited with glory !” “ Faix, I’d rather be surfeited wid a good dinner !” quoth Tim Callaghan, and made his exit. * * * For a couple of years I quite lost sight of Tim, and I began to fear that he had evanished from the earth altogether “with- out leaving a copy but, lo ! this very summer, that “ bright particular star” appeared unto us again, with a strapping wife, and a young Timotheus at his heels — a perfect fac- simile of its father, nose, sleepy eyes, shovel feet and all ; and all subsisting, nay flourishing, on three tunes and their unri- valled “ varry-a-shins !” M. G. R The Dead Alive — In my youth I often saw Glover on the stage : he was a surgeon, and a good writer in the Lon- don periodical papers. When he was in Cork, a man was hanged for sheep-stealing, whom Glover smuggled into afield, and by surgical skill restored to life, though the culprit had hung the full time prescribed by law. A few nights after, Glover being on the stage, acting Polonius, the revived sheep-stealer, full of whisky, broke into the pit, and in a loud voice called out to Glover, “ Mr Glover, you know you are my second father ; you brought me to life, and sure you have to support me now, for I have no money of my own : you have been the means of bringing me back ‘into the world, sir; so, by the piper of Blessington, you are bound to maintain me.” Ophelia never could suppose she had such a brother as this. The sheriff was in the house at the time, but appeared not to hear this appeal ; and on the fellow persisting in his outcries, he, through a principle of clemency, slipped out of the theatre. I he crowd at length forced the man away, telling him that if the sheriff found him alive, it was his duty to hang him over again !_ Recollections of O’Keefe. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 101 LARUS MINUTUS, THE LITTLE GULL. This bird, hitherto known in Great Britain only as an occa- sional and rare visitant, has now been added to the Fauna of Ireland — one of a pair seen between Shannon Harbour and Shannon Bridge having been shot in the month of May of the present year, by Walter Boyd, Esq. of the 97th regiment, and presented by him to the Natural History Society of Dublin. It has been stuffed by Mr Glennon of Suffolk Street, who con- tinues to gratify the lovers of natural history by a free inspec- tion of it. The Little Gull was first noticed with certainty as a British bird by Montague, who, in the Supplement to his Ornithologi- cal Dictionary, published in 1813, described an immature spe- cimen, the plumage being that of the yearling in transition to its winter garb. The Irish specimen, on the contrary, is invested with its full summer plumage, as described by Tem- minck. The head and upper portion of the neck are black ; the lower portion of the neck and under parts of the body are white, and at first exhibited a rosy tint, w’hich as is usual quickly faded after death ; rump and tail white ; upper parts pearl grey, the secondaries and quills being tipped with white ; legs and toes bright red ; bill of a reddish brown, rather than of the deep lake of Temminck, or arterial blood-red of Selby ; its length ten inches, or somewhat more than one-half of that of the blackheaded gull (Larus ridibundus), its nearest congener. Little has been added to the history of this bird as briefly given by Temminck as follows It inhabits the rivers, lakes, and seas of the eastern countries of Europe ; is an occa- sional visitant of Holland and Germany ; is common in Russia, Livonia, and Finland ; and very rarely wanders to the lakes of Switzerland. It feeds on insects and worms, and breeds in the eastern and southern countries.” In America the Little Gull w'as noticed on the northern journey of Sir John Franklin, and it is numbered by Bona- parte amongst the rarer birds of the United States — render- ing it probable that the American continent includes also its breeding habitats. To this w r e may reasonably add — consi- dering the state of plumage of the Irish specimens, the season of their discovery, the inland locality in which they were seen, and the analogy in habits between them and the other black- headed gulls with which they were associated — a belief and hope that the Little Gull wall yet he found to breed on some of the wide expanses of the Shannon, or on the lakes of Ros- common, Leitrim, and Sligo. To understand the relation of this gull to the other species ©f the same genus, it is necessary that we should take a rapid survey of the whole family ; and happy are w r e to indulge our- selves in such mental rambling, as many a gladsome reminis- cence will be awakened both in our own and in our readers’ minds by the mention of these well-known birds. Few indeed are there who at some period of their lives have not wandered to the sea-side to enjoy the exhilarating influence of the sea breeze, and to revel, perchance, on the rich feast of knowledge w r hich the many strange but admirably formed creatures of the deep must ever present to the inquiring and contemplative mind. To them the sea-mew or gull must be familiar, both in those of the larger species, w'hich are seen heavily winging their way over the waters, or poised in air, wheeling round to approach their surface, and in those of lighter and more aerial form, which, in the words of Wilson, “ enliven the prospect by their airy movements — now skimming closely over the wa- tery element, watching the motions of the surges, and now rising into the higher regions, sporting with the winds and we may surely add, still in the words of that enthusiastic wor- shipper of Nature, that “such zealous inquirers must have found themselves amply compensated for all their toil, by ob- serving these neat and clean birds coursing along the rivers and coasts, and by inhaling the invigorating breezes of the ocean, and listening to the soothing murmurs of its billows.” Nor could they fail to notice how admirably the white and grey tints w'hich prevail in the plumage of these birds harmo- nize with those of air and ocean — a species of adaptation which is manifest in all the works of nature, no colours, however varied, presenting to the eye an incongruous or disagreeable picture, and no sounds, however modified by the throats of a thousand feathered warblers, jarring as discord on the ear. Well may we judge from this that our senses were framed in unison with all created objects, and that the right test of ex- cellence in music, painting, or poetry, is, “ that it is natural.” The genus Larus (Gull) of the early writers included many birds now separated from it — the Skuos, or parasitic gulls ; Lestris ; the Terns, or sea-sw'allows ; Sterna ; and some others — the consequence of increasing knowledge in natural science being the gradual limitation of genera by the use of more precise and restricted characters. All these genera now form part of the family of Laridse, or gull-like birds — the system of grouping together those genera which exhibit strik- ing analogies in plumage or habits securing the advantages of a natural arrangement, without the danger of that confusion which so often results from loosely defined genera. The ten- dency is indeed to still further subdivision— the kittiwake ( Larus rissa) having been made the type of a new genus, Rissa (Stephens), and the blackheaded gulls classed together as the genus Xema (Boie) — the periodic change of the colour of their heads from the w’hite of winter to the black of summer, their more rapid and tern or sw r allow-like flight, and their inland habits, forming so many striking and apparently natu- ral marks of distinction. To this genus, if finally admitted, will belong the Little Gull (Xema minuta). The term Larus is adopted from the Greek, the ancient Latin name as used by Pliny being Gavia. Brisson (1763) applies Larus to some of the larger species, and Gavia to a multitude of others ; but there is much confusion in his iden- tifications of species, and the line of separation w 7 as not well considered. Modern writers also subdivide the gulls, for th© sake of convenience, into two sections — the larger, or those varying from nineteen to twenty-six or more inches in length, the “ Goelands” of Temminck ; and the smaller, or “ Mouettes” of Temminck. But this system of division is imperfect, as it veils the remarkable relation existing between many of the larger and smaller gulls, which should not therefore be sepa- rated from each other. This relation was noticed by some of the earlier writers. Willoughby designates under the name Larus cinereus maximus both the herring and the lesser black- backed gulls ; and under that of Larus cinereus minor, the common sea-gull. This kind of relation is indeed strikingly displayed amongst British gulls — as in the greater and lesser blackbacked gulls, the Glaucous and Iceland gulls, the her- ring and common gulls, and, we may add, the blackheaded and little gulls ; and it is very probable that further research will show that it exists still more wddely. From Aristotle or Pliny little can be gleaned of the his- tory of these birds. Aristotle states that the Gavise and Mergi lay two or three eggs on the rock — the Gavise in summer, the Mergi in the beginning of spring — hatching the eggs, but not building in the manner of other birds. Pliny says that the Gavise build on rocks, the Mergi sometimes on trees ; from which remark it appears probable that the genus Mergus then included not merely the various divers, but also the cormorants, as was formerly conjectured by Turner. Whilst, therefore, the ancient Latin name of gull, Gavia , has been entirely removed from modern nomenclature, the word Mergus has obtained a signification very limited in com- parison to that which it enjoyed among the ancients, being now' applied to the Mergansers alone, although for a time re- stored by Brisson to the Colymbi, which, as possessing the property of diving in its highest perfection, seem most enti- tled to retain it, whilst the term Merganser might be judici- ously applied to the genus now called by some, Mergus, as was done by Aldrovandus, Willoughby, Brisson, and Stephens. 102 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. The remarkable differences in the habits of gulls, which form in part the basis of separation, as suggested by Boie in the case of the blackheaded gulls, were early noticed. Old Gesner (1587) says that some gulls dwell about fresh waters, others about the sea ; and from Aristotle, that the grey gull seeks lakes and rivers, whilst the white gull inhabits the sea. Every one indeed must have noticed the flocks of gulls which occasionally appear inland, and share with the rooks and other corvid® the rich repast of grubs which is afforded by the fresh-ploughed land. The common gull ( Larus canns) is one of those which indulge in these terrestrial excursions ; but the blackheaded gulls (Xema) select even the inland marshes as their breeding-places. The more truly maritime gulls select islands or rocks, on the surface of which they deposit their eggs, as the kittiwake the narrow ledges of precipitous cliffs, the young being reared with safety, where it would seem that the least movement must plunge them from the giddy height into the abyss below. This beautiful illustration of the power of instinct to preserve even the nestling from danger, is admi- rably displayed on the northern coast of Mayo, where at Downpatrick Head the whole face of the perpendicular lime- stone cliff is peopled by line above line of gulls, flying, when disturbed by a stone thrown either from mischievous or curi- ous hand, in screaming flocks from their eggs or young, and as ciuickly settling upon them again, without, as it were, dis- turbing the equilibrium of either in a place where to move would be to tumble into destruction. The clamour of the kittiwake is indeed so great on such occasions that it has given rise in the Feroe Islands to a proverb, “noisy as the Rita in the rocks.” The eggs of several species of gulls are used as food, being regularly sought for as such on the coast of Devonshire and other maritime places, but those of the blackheaded gulls are considered the best, and often substi- tuted for plover eggs. The flesh of gulls was considered by the ancients unfit for the food of man; not so by the moderns, who, though probably no great admirers of it, have not entirely rejected it. Hence Willoughby tells us (1678) that “the sea- crows (blackheaded gulls) yearly build and breed at Norbury in Staffordshire, in an island in the middle of a great pool, in the grounds of Mr Skrimshew, distant at least 30 miles from the sea. About the beginning of March hither they come ; about the end of April they build. They lay three, four, or five eggs of a dirty green colour, spotted with dark brown, two inches long, of an ounce and half weight, blunter at one end. The first down of the young is ash-coloured, and spotted with black. The first feathers on the back, after they are fledged, are black. When the young are almost come to their full growth, those entrusted by the lord of the soil drive them from off the island through the pool, into nets set in the banks to take them. When they have taken them, they feed them with the entrails of beasts ; and when they are fat, sell them for fourpence orfivepence a-piece. They take yearly about one thousand two hundred young ones ; whence may be com- J uted what profit the lord makes of them. About the end of uly they all fly away and leave the island.” And in Feroe, according to Landt (1798), the flesh of the kittiwake is not only eaten, but considered “ well-tasted.” As pets, gulls have always on the sea-coast been favourites, Gesner quotes from Oppian, “ That gulls are much attached to man— fa- miliarly attend upon him ; and, when watching the fishermen, as they draw their nets and divide the spoil, clamorously demand their share.” In our own boyish experience we knew one, poor Tom, which grew up under our care to maturity, and, unrestrained by any artificial means, flew away and re- turned again as inclination impelled it — recognising and an- swering our voice even when flying high in air above. But, alas ! like too many pets, he fell a sacrifice to the loss of that instinct which would have led him to shun danger. He joined a crowd of water-fowl on a small lake on the Start Bay Sands. His companions, alarmed at the approach of the fowler, flew unharmed away ; but poor Tom, with ill-judged confidence, left the water and walked fearlessly towards the enemy of all "winged creatures, who could not allow even a gull to escape, and, alas ! he was the next moment stretched lifeless on the sand. Here we shall arrest our pen. Perhaps we have dwelt too long on this interesting genus of birds, and yet we would hope that some of our readers may profit by our remarks, and be led to watch with an inquisitive eye the many animated beings which surround them, and thus to read in Nature’s never- tiring, never-exhausted volume, new lessons of wisdom— new proofs of the exalted intelligence which has created every thing perfect and good of its kind. J, E. P. THE CHASE, A POEM TRANSLATED PROM THE IRISH. OISIX. O son of Calphruin ! thou whose ear Sweet chant of psalms delights to hear, Hast thou ere heard the tale, How Fionn urged the lonely chase, Apart from all the Fenian race, Brave sons of Innisfail ? PATRICK. O royal born ! whom none exceeds In moving song, or hardy deeds, That tale, to me as yet untold, Though far renown’d, do thou unfold In truth severely wise, From fancy’s wanderings far apart : For what is fancy’s glozing art But falsehood in disguise ? OISIN. O ! ne’er on gallant Fenian race Fell falsehood’s accusation base : By faith of deeds, by strength of hand, By trusty might of battle-brand, We spread afar our glorious fame, And safely from each conflict came. Ne’er sat a monk in holy chair, Devote to chanting hymn and prayer, More true than the Fenians bold : No chief like Fionn, world around, 'Was e’er to bards so gen’rous found. With gifts of ruddy gold. If lived the son of Morne fleet, Who ne’er for treasure burned ; Or Duine’s son to woman sweet. Who ne’er from battle turned, But fearless with his single glaive A hundred foemen dared to brave ; If lived Macgaree stern and wild, That hero of the trenchant brand ; Or Caoilte, Ronan’s witty child, Of liberal heart and open hand; Or Oscar, once my darling boy, Thy psalms would bring me little joy. If lived, the Fenian deeds to sing, Sweet Fergus with his voice of glee; Or Daire, who trilled a faultless string. Small pleasure were thy bells to me. If lived the dauntless little Hugh, Or Fillan, courteous, kind and meek, Or Conan bald, for whom the dew Of sorrow yet is on my cheek, Or that small dwarf whose power could steep The Fenian host in death-like sleep — More sweet one breath of theirs would bo Than all thy clerks’ sad psalmody. PATRICK. Thy chiefs renowned extol no more, O son of kings — nor number o’er ; But low, on bended knee, record The power and glory of the Lord ; And beat the breast, and shed the tear, And still his holy name revere, Almighty, by whose potent breath Thy vanquished Fenians sleep in death. OISIN. Alas ! for Oisin — dire the tale ! No music in thy voice I hear ; Not for thy wrathful God I wail, But for my Fenians dear. Thy God ! a rueful God I trow, Whose love is earned by want and woe ! Since came thy dull psalm-singing crew, How rapid away our pastimes flew, And all that charmed the soul ! Where now are the royal gifts of gold. The flowing robe with its satin fold, And the heart-delighting bowl ? Where now the feast, and the revel high, And the jocund dance and sweet minstrelsy, And the steed loud-neighing in the morn, With the music sweet of hound and horn, 103 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. And well-armed guards of coast and bay ? All, all like a dream have passed away ; And now we have clerks with their holy qualms, And books, and bells, and eternal psalms, And fasting — that waster gaunt and grim, That strips of all beauty both body and limb. PATRICK, Oh ! cease this strain, nor longer dare Thy Fionn, or his chiefs, compare With him who reigns in matchless might, The King of kings enthroned in light. ’Tis he who frames the heavens and earth ; 'Tis he who nerves the hero’s hand ; ’Tis he who calls fair fields to birth, And bids each blooming branch expand : He gives the fishy streams to run, And lights the moon and radiant sun. What deeds like these, though great his fame, Canst thou ascribe to Fionn’s name ? OISIN. To weeds and grass his princely eye My sire ne’er fondly turned ; But he raised his country’s glory high. When the strife of warriors burned. To shine in games of strength and skill, To breast the torrent from the hill, To lead the van of the bannered host — These were his deeds and these his boast. Where was thy God, when o’er the tide Two heroes hither bore Of Lochlin, king of ships, the bride, And carnage heaped the shore ? When Tailk on Fenians hacked his brand, ’Twas not thy God’s, but Oscar’s hand That hero prostrate laid ; When rough-voiced Manus swept the coast. If lived thy God, the Fenian host Had triumphed by his aid. When Alum, Anver’s son of fame, Round Tara rolled the bickering flame, Rot by thy King’s, but Oscar’s glaive The warrior sank in a bloody grave. When haughty Dearg advanced in pride With his shields of gold o’er Lochlin’ s tide, Why lingered then thy cloud-borne Lord To save our host from his slaughtering sword ? Oh ! glorious deeds arise in crowds, Of the gallant Fenian band ; But what is achieved by thy King of the clouds — Where reddened he his hand ?* PATRICK. Here let this vain contention rest, For frenzy, Bard, inspires thy breast. Supreme in bliss God ever reigns : Thy Fionn groans in hell’s domains — In penal fire — in lasting chains. OISIN. Small glory to thy potent King His chains and fires on our host to bring ! Oh ! how unlike our generous chief, 'Who, if thy King felt wrong or grief, Would soon in arms, with valour strong, Avenge the grief, redress the wrong. Whom did the Fenian king e’er see In thraldom, pain, or fear, But his ready gold would set him free, Or the might of his victor spear ? This arm, did frenzy touch my brain, Their heads from thy clerks would sever, Nor thy crozier here, nor white book remain, Nor thy bells be heard for ever. TO BE CONTINUED. * rubente Dextera sacras jaculatus arces Terruit urbem. — H or. Heaver’s eternal Sire, With rnd right-arm , at his own temples hurl'd His thunders, and alarm'd a guilty world.— Francis. Some of Oisin’s expressions might justly shock the piety of St Patrick. But let it ba remembered that Oisitr is no convert to Christianity ; on the con- trary, he is opposed to it, principally because it had put an end to his favou- rite pastimes. EGYPT AND SYRIA— MEHEMET ALI. The boasted civilization which Mehemet Ali has introduced into the countries under his sway is entirely superficial, and has no origin whatever in any real improvement or ameliora- tion in the condition or for the benefit of their respective po- pulations ; and the reason why a contrary impression has so generally prevailed amongst late travellers is as follows : — When travellers arrive at Alexandria, and more particularly those of name or rank, they immediately fall into the hands of a set of clever persons, some of them consuls, who having either made their fortunes by the Pacha, or having them to make, leave no effort unemployed to impress them with fa- vourable opinions of his government. They are then pre- sented at the Divan, where, instead of a reserved austere- looking Turk, they find a lively animated old man, who com- verses freely and gaily with them, talks openly of his projects to come, and of his past life, tells them that he is glad to see them, and that the more travellers that pass through Egypt, the better he is pleased ; that he wishes every act of his go- vernment and institutions to be known and seen, and that the more they are so, the better will he be appreciated. He then turns the conversation to some subject personal to them, for he is always well informed of who and what they are, and what they know, and at last dismisses them with an injunction to visit his establishments with care, and to let him know their opinion of them on their return ; and if they happen to be persons of distinction, he offers them a cavass to accom- pany them on their journey. All this is done in a simple pleasing manner, which can hardly fail to captivate when coming from so remarkable a man. Instructed by the clique, and won by the Pacha, they proceed on their journey to Cairo, where the delusion begun at Alexandria is completed ; for travelling through the country is now easy, and compara- tively safe to what it was, and establishments of various kinds, such as polytechnic schools, schools of medicine and general instruction, and manufactories, have been formed ia Cairo and those parts of the country which are most fre- quently visited. These are under the direction of foreigners, chiefly Frenchmen, and are open to those who choose to visit them; consequently, as the greater proportion of travellers seek for sights more than instruction, these gentlemen, won at Alexandria, and delighted at the facility of their journey from that place, neither turn to the right nor the left from the beaten track, but, judging of what they do not see by that which is purposely prepared to be shown them, return to Eu- rope, and on grounds such as I have above described, and without looking an inch beneath the surface, proclaim the Pacha the civilizer and regenerator of Egypt. How far such is the case, you will be able to judge from what follows, in which there is no exaggeration. The journey I made extended up to the second cataract on the Nile, throughout Egypt and Nubia, and then through Palestine, the whole of Syria, and the Libanus. I consequently visited very nearly all the coun- tries under the domination of Mehemet Ali, and as I did not allow myself to be influenced at Alexandria, and missed no occasion of informing myself of the state of things whilst on my journey, I may fairly say that I can give an unbiassed opinion as to what is going on in that unhappy part of the world. In Egypt the whole of the land belongs to the Pacha ; be - sides himself there is no land-proprietor, and he has the abso- lute monopoly of every thing that is grown in the country. The following is the manner in which it is cultivated : — Por- tions of land are divided out between the fellahs of a village, according to their numbers ; seed, corn, cotton, or other pro- duce, is given to them ; this they sow and reap, and of the produce seventy-five per cent, is immediately taken to the Pacha’s depots. The remaining twenty-five per cent, is left them, with, however, the power to take it at a price fixed by the Pacha himself, and then resold to them at a higher rate. This is generally done, and reduces the pittance left them about five per cent, more ; from this they are to pay the ca- pitation tax, which is not levied according to the real number of the inhabitants of a village, but according to numbers a.t which it is rated in the government books ; so that in one in- stance with which I was acquainted, a village originally rated at 200, but reduced by the conscription to 100, and by death or flight to 40, was still obliged to pay the full capitation ; and when I went there, 26 of the 40 had been just bastinadoed to extort from them their proportion of the sum claimed. After the capitation comes the tax on the date-trees, raised 104 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. from 30 to 60 paras by the Pacha, and that of 200 piasters a-year for permission to use their own water-wheels, without ■which the lands situated beyond the overflow of the Nile, or too high for it to reach, would be barren. Then comes an infinity of taxes on every article of life, even to the cakes of camels’ dung which the women and children collect and dry for fuel, and which pay 25 per cent, in kind at the gate of Cairo and the other towns. Next to the taxes comes the corvee in the worst form, and in continual action ; at any mo- ment the fellahs are liable to be seized for public works, for the transport of the baggage of the troops, or to track the boats of the government or its officers, and this without pay or reference to the state of their crops. When Mehemet Ali made his famous canal from Alexandria to the Nile, he did it by forcibly marching down 150,000 men from all parts of the country, and obliging them to excavate with their hands, as tools they had not, or perhaps could not be provided. The excavation was completed in three months, but 30,000 men died in the operation. Then comes the curse of the conscription, which is exercised in a most cruel and arbitrary manner, without any sort of rule or law to regulate it. An order is given to the chief of a district to furnish a certain number of men ; these he seizes like wild beasts wherever he can find them, without distinction or exemption, the weak as well as the strong, the sick as well as those in health ; and as there is no better road to the Pacha’s favour than showing great zeal in this branch of the service, he if possible collects more even than were demanded. These are chained, marched down to the river, and embarked amidst the tears and lamentations of their families, who know that they shall probably never see them again : for change of climate, bad treatment, and above all, despair, cause a mortality in the Pacha’s army beyond belief ; mutilation is not now con- sidered an exemption, and the consequence of the system is, that from Assouan, at the first cataract, to Aleppo, you lite- rally speaking never see a young man in a village ; and such is the depopulation, that if things continue as they now are for two years more, and the Pacha insists on keeping up his army to its present force, it will be utterly impossible for the crops to be got in, or for any of the operations of agriculture to be carried on. The wffiole of this atrocious system is carried into action by the cruelest means — no justice of any sort for the weak, no security for those who are better off : the bastinado and other tortures applied on every occasion, and at the arbitrary will of every servant of the government. In addition to this, the natives of the country are rarely employed— -never in offices of trust — and the whole government is entrusted to Turks. In short, the worst features of the Mameluke and Turkish rules are still in active operation ; but the method of applying them is much more ingenious, and the boasted civilization of Mehe- met Ali amounts to this : that being beyond doubt a man of extraordinary talents, he knows how to bring into play the resources of the country better than his predecessors did, but like them entirely for his own interest, and without any refer- ence to the well-being of the people ; and that with the aid of his European instruments he has, if I may say so, applied the screw with a master-hand, and squeezed from the wretches under his sway the very last drop of their blood. Such is the state of these two countries. Syria is perhaps the worst off of the two : for the Egyptians used to oppression bear it without a struggle ; whilst the Syrians, who had been less harshly treated in old times, writhe under and gnaw their chain. — From the Sun newspaper. Rotation Railway This invention aims at effecting a complete revolution in the present mode of railway construc- tion and locomotion. In place of having the ordinary rails and wheeled carriages, two series of wheels are fixed along the whole length of tho road at about two yards apart, and at an equal distance from centre to centre of each wheel. These wheels are connected throughout the whole length of the line by bands working in grooved pullies keyed on to the same axle as the wheels, but the axles of one side of the line are not connected with those of the opposite line The axles of the wheels are raised about one foot from the ground ; the top of the wheel, which is proposed to be of 3 feet diameter, will be therefore elevated 2J feet above the surface. On these wheels is placed a strong framing of timber, having an iron plate fastened on each side in the line of the two series of wheels. A little within this bearing frame, so as just to clear the wheels, is a luggage-box or hold, descending to within a few inches of the ground, in which it is proposed to stow all heavy commodities, for which purpose it is well adapted, opening as it does at either end, and its flooring close to the surface of the ground. At each end of the lower part of the framing of this luggage-box, are fixed horizontal guide or friction wheels, working against the supports of the bearing wheels and pullies, by which arrangement curves will be tra- versed with little friction, and it will be impossible for the framing to quit the track. The framing of timber will be about 19 feet in length, so that it will rest alternately on six and eight wheels, but never on less than six. On this framing the passenger carriages are erected, which, in its progression forward, it is thought will be kept steady and free from lateral motion by the weight in the luggage-box, assisted by the horizontal guide-wheels. Locomotion is produced by put- ting the wheels in motion by means of machinery at either end, which would be effected for an immense distance with a moderate power, as there would be very little more friction due to the wheels than that arising from their owm weight ; and the frame which bears the carriage would not be run on to the bearing-wheels until the whole were in motion, when its weight would act almost after the manner of a fly- wheel, resting as it would on the periphery of the beai’ing- wheels. It will be perceived that by this plan the bearings of the wheels must be kept perfectly in the direction of the plane of the road, whether inclined or horizontal ; otherwise serious concussions would occur. Rut this would not be the case by the depression of one wheel, or even by its entire re- moval, as the framing wall be constructed sufficiently stiff as not to deflect by having the distance of the bearings doubled. If this plan should be found to answer, it will present facilities of transport never before thought of, as carriages might be continually dispatched without a chance of colli- sion, either by stoppage or from increased speed of the last beyond the preceding. It also promises to remove the present great drawback to railway progression, viz. the being able to surmount but very slight acclivities by locomotive power with any profitable load ; but by the rotative system, inclines may be surmounted of almost any steepness without the chance of acci- dent. If a band should break, the action of this railway would not be impeded, as the power being transmitted from either end, rotation would take place throughout its whole length, but the pow r er would not be transmitted from either end past the disjunction. Even should two bands be destroyed at a distance from each other and on the same side of the track, its action would not be destroyed, for although the isolated portion of wffieels would be dead, those on the other side of the track would be in action, which, with the horizontal guide- wheels, would move forward the carriage, although, on such portion, at a diminished speed. Instead of an increased out- lay being required in the formation of railways on this system, it is estimated that a very considerable saving will be effected, as a single track will be sufficient, with sidings of dead wheels at the termination of the several portions into which a long line would be divided. In crossing valleys, a framing of piles to support the bearing-wheels would be quite sufficient, and the road might be left quite open between each line of wheels, as it would be impossible for the carriage to quit the track, and therefore no necessity for making a solid road for safety sake Civil Engineer and Architect' s Journal. Magnanimity. — When the Spanish armies invested Ma- laga in 1487, when in possession of the Moors, a circumstance occurred in a sortie from the city, indicating a trait of cha- racter worth recording. A noble Moor, named Abraher Zenete, fell in with a number of Spanish children who had wandered from their quarters. Without injuring them, he touched them gently with the handle of his lance, saving, “ Get ye gone, varlets, to your mothers.” On being rebuked by his comrades, who inquired why he had let them escape so easily, he replied, “ Because I saw no beard upon their chins.” An example of magnanimity (says the Curate of Los Palacios) truly wonderful in a heathen, and which might have reflected credit on a Christian hidalgo Prescott's History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, Boston, 1839. Printed and Published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin.— Agents : — R. Groombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London ; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool ; J. Drake, Birmingham; M. Bingham. Broad Street, Bristol; Eraser and Crawford, Geo-rge Street, Edinburgh: and David Robertson, Trongate, Glasgow, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 14. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1840. Volume I. PADDY CONEELY, T Wii need hardly have acquainted our Irish readers that in the j prefixed sketch, which our admirable friend the Burton has made for us, they are presented with the genuine portrait of a piper, and an Irish piper too — for the face of the man, and the instrument on which he is playing, are equally national and characteristic — both genuine Irish : in that w r ell-pro- portioned oval countenance, so expressive of good sense, gen- tleness, and kindly sentiments, we have a good example of a form of face very commonly found among the peasantry of the west and south of Ireland — a form of face which Spurzheim distinguished as the true Phoenician physiognomy, and which at all events marks wdth certainty a race of southern or Semitic origin, and quite distinct from the Scythic or noifihern Indo-European race so numerous in Ireland, and character- ized by their lighter hair and rounder faces. And as to the bagpipes, they are of the most approved Irish kind, beauti- HE GALWAY PIPER. | fully finished, and the very instrument made for Crump, the greatest of all the Munster pipers, or, we might say, Wish of modern times, and from which he drew his singularly deli- cious music. Musical reader ! do not laugh at the epithet we have applied to the sounds of the bagpipe: the music of Crump, which we have often heard from himself on these very pipes, w r as truly delicious even to the most refined musical ears. These pipes after Crump’s death w r ere saved as a national relic by our friend the worthy and patriotic historian of Galway — need w’e say, James Hardiman — who, in his characteristic sphit of generosity and kindness, presented them to their pre- sent possessor, as a person likely to take good care of them, and not incompetent to do justice to their powers ; and the gift was nobly and well bestowed ! Y"et, truth to tell, Paddy Coneely is not to be compared with John Crump, who, accord- ing to the recolloctioas of him which cling to our memory, 106 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. was a Paganini in his way-— a man never to be rivalled — and who produced effects on his instrument previously unthought of, and which could not be expected. Paddy is simply an excellent Irish piper — inimitable as a performer of Irish jigs and reels, with all their characteristic fire and buoyant gaiety of spirit — admirable indeed as a player of the music composed for and adapted to the instrument ; but in his per- formance of the plaintive or sentimental melodies of his coun- try, he is not able, as Crump was, to conquer its imperfections : he plays them not as they are sung, but — like a piper. Yet we do not think this want of power attributable to any deficiency of feeling or genius in Paddy — -far indeed from it : — he is a creature of genuine musical soul; buthehashad no oppor- tunities of hearing any great performer, like that one to whom we have alluded, or of otherwise improving, to any considera- ble extent, his musical education generally : the best of his predecessors whom he has heard he can imitate and rival suc- cessfully ; but still Paddy is merely an Irish piper— the piper of Galway par excellence : for in every great town in the west and south of Ireland there is always one musician of this kind more eminent than the rest, with whose name is justly joined as a cognomen the name of his locality. But we are not going to write an article on Irish pipers, or to sketch their general characteristics — we have no such presumption as to attempt any thing of the kind, which we feel would be altogether abortive, and which we are sure will be so perfectly done for us by our own Carleton. We only desire to present a few traits in the character of an individual of the species ; and these after all are more relating to the man than the musician. We are anxious, moreover, to let our English, Continental, American, and Indian readers understand that all our pipers are not like “Tim Callaghan” with his three tunes, of whom a sketch has been given by a fair and ingenious contributor in our last number. Tim Avith his three party tunes may do very Avell for the comfortable farmers in the rich lands of the baronies of Forth and Bargie — Lord ! what sort of ears have they ? — but he would not be “ the man,” nor the piper either, “ for Galway !” Paddy can play not three tunes, but three thousand : in fact, Ave have often Avished his skill more circumscribed, or his memory less retentive, particularly Avhen, instead of firing away Avith some lively reel, or still more animated Irish jig, he has pestered us, in spite of our nationality, Avith a set of quadrilles or a galloppe, such as he is called on to play by the ladies and gentlemen at the balls in Galway. But what a monstrosity — to dance quadrilles in Galway ! Dance indeed : no, but a droAvsy walk, and a look as if they were going to their grandmothers’ funerals. Fair Galwegians, for assuredly you are fair, put aside this sickly affectation of refinement, Avhich is equally inconsistent with your natural excitability, and with the healthy atmospheric influences by which you are sur- rounded. Be yourselves , and let your limbs play freely, and your spirits rise into joyousness to the animating strains of the Irish jig, the reel, and the country dance ; so it was Avith your fathers, and so it should be with you. But avc are Avandering, perhaps, from our subject, forget- ful of our friend Paddy, of whose character, not as a piper but as a man Ave have yet to speak ; and a more interesting character in his Avay Ave have rarely met with — a man de- prived by fate of eyesight, yet by the light of his mind track- ing his journey through life in one continued stream of sun- shine, beloved by many, and respected by all whose respect is worth possessing. We had heard enough of his possession of the qualities which had procured him this respect, inde- pendently of his musical renown, before Ave had met with him, to make us desire his acquaintance ; and on a visit with some friends to Gahvay last year, Ave made an endeavour for tAvo or three days to get him to our hotel for an evening, but in vain. He Avas from home on his professional avocations, and could not be found, till, on taking our Avay towards Connemara, Ave encountered a blind man coming along the road, who Ave at once concluded must be the Gahvay piper ; and we were right. It AVas Paddy Coneely himself, Avho had returned home for a change of clothes, and Avas on his way back to Gahvay to spend the evening with a party of gentlemen by whom he Avas engaged to play during the Regatta. We could not, how- ever, conveniently return Avith him, and so Ave determined very wisely to carry him off with us ; and this we were easily able to do by first making a seizure of his pipes, after which we soon had him, a quiet though for a Avhile a repining cap- tive. “ Oh ! murdher, what will Mr K— — • and the gentle- men think of me at all at all ?” exclaimed Paddy. “ JSieYer mind, Paddy,” we replied, “they can hear you often, but Ave may never have another opportunity of doing so ; so come along, and depend upon it you will be as happy Avith us as Avith the gentlemen at the Regatta and so Ave trust he Avas. In a feAV minutes after, we had Paddy croning old Irish songs for us, and pointing out all the objects of any interest or beauty on either side of the road, and this with a correctness and accuracy Avhich perfectly astounded us. “ Is not that a beautiful view of Lough Corrib there now, Sir ? That’s St Oran’s Well, Sir, at the other side of the road we are noAV passing. Is not that averypurty place of Mr Burke’s ?” and so on with every feature on either side to the end of our day’s journey at Oughterard. We kept Paddy Avith us for a fortnight, when we brought him safely back to Gahvay ; and during that time, as well as since, we had frequent opportunities of observing his accurate knoAvledge of topographical objects, and his modes of acquir- ing it. Ask any questions respecting an old church or castle in his hearing, and ten to one he Avill give a more correct de- scription of its locality, and a more accurate account of its size, height, and general features, than any one else. Speak of a mountain, and he will break out with some such remark as this “ I discovered a beautiful spring well on the top of that mountain, Sir, that no one before ever heard of.” His knowledge of atmospheric appearances and influences is equally if not still more remarkable. Fie can always tell Avith the nicest accuracy the point from which the wind bloAvs, and pre- dict with a degree of certainty we never saAv excelled, the pro- bable steadiness of the weather, or any approaching change likely to take place in it. He is a perfect barometer in this way, for his conclusions are chiefly draAvn from a delicate per- ception of the state of the atmospheric air imperceptible to others, and are rarely erroneous. On a fine sunny morning Avhen the lakes are smooth, the mountains clear, and the sky without a cloud, Ave remark to him that it is a fine morning. “ It is, Sir, a beautiful morning.” “ And Ave are sure of hav- ing a fine day, Paddy,” Ave continue. “ Indeed I fear not, Sir ; the wind is coming round to the south-east, and the air is thickening. We’ll have heavy rain in some hours,” or “ be- fore long.” Again, on a rainy morning, Avhen everything around looks hopelessly dreary, and we feel ourselves booked for a day in our inn, avc observe to him, “ There’s no chance of this day taking up, Paddy.” But Paddy lcnoAvs better, and he cheers us up Avith the answer, “ Oh, this will be a fine day. Sir, by and bye. The wind is getting a point to the north, the clouds are rising, and the air is getting drier. We’ll have a fine day soon.” The power thus exhibited of acquiring such accurate know- ledge of localities, and of atmospheric appearances and influ- ences, Avithout the aid of sight, affords a striking example of the capabilities beneficently vested in us, of supplying the Avant created by the accidental loss of one organ, by an increase of activity and acuteness in some other, or others. These capabilities are equally observable in the loAver animals as in man ; but their degree is very various in individuals of both species, being dependent on the delicacy of organiza- tion and amount of intellectuality which the individual may happen to possess. Thus the potver to supply the want of vision by the exercise of other organs, is not given to every blind man in any thing like the degree enjoyed by the Galway piper, who is a creature of the most delicate nervous organi- zation, and a man of a high degree of intellectuality. Paddy is a genuine inductive philosopher, never indolent or idle, always in quest of knoAvledge either by inquiry or experimental observation, and drawing his OAvn conclusions accordingly. To observe his processes in this Avay is not only amusing but instructive, and has often afforded us a high enjoyment. When Paddy comes to a place Avith Avhich he has no previous acquaintance, he commences his topographical researches with as little delay as possible, first about the exterior of the house, Avhich he examines all round, measuring Avith his stick its length and breadth, and calculates its height ; ascertains the situation of its doors and the number of its windoAvs, and makes himself acquainted Avith the peculiarities of their form and material : he next proceeds to the out-offices, which he surveys in a similar manner, feeling even any stray cart, car, or Avheel-barroAv, which may be lying in the courtyard or barn, and determining whether they are Avell made or not. If a coav or horse come in his Avay, he will subject them to a similar examination, and, if asked, pronounce accurately on their points, condition, and value. Having satisfied himself with an examination of all these nearer objects, if time permit he THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 107 then extends his researches to those more distant as the roads, ascertaining their breadth, &c. ; the neighbouring bridges, streams, rivers, and even mountains; the nature of the soil too, and state of the crops, are attended to. While we were sojourning at the hotel at Maam last year, we found him one sunny morning standing on the very brink of a deep river, about a quarter of a mile distant, and examining the construc- tion of the arch of a bridge which crossed it. How he had got there we could not possibly imagine, for there was no other mode of reaching it than by a descent from the road of a bank nearly perpendicular, and eighteen or twenty feet in height. But our friend Paddy made light of it, and remarked that there was not the slightest danger of him in such explor- iugs. On another occasion, being about to visit the island castle on Lough Corrib, called Caislean-na-Circe, Paddy expressed to us his desire to accompany us, as he said he never had an opportunity of seeing it. We took him with us accordingly ; and there was not a spot on the rocky island that with the aid of his stick he did not examine, or a crumbling Avail that he did not scale, even to places that we should have supposed only accessible to jackdaws. “ Dear me, Sir,” he exclaimed on our return, “ but that’s a mighty curious castle, and must be very ancient. I never saw Avails in a castle so thick before, and how beautiful and smooth the arches were ! I think they Avere a kind of grit-stone ?” This Avas added inquiringly ; and so they were — red sandstone chiselled. But we are dAvelling too long on these characteristics, for- getting that Ave have others to notice of greater interest ; and of these perhaps the most eminent is his habitual, and, as we might say, constitutional benevolence. Of this trait in his character we heard many interesting instances, but our space will only allow us to notice one or two which we artfully ex- tracted from himself. Having heard of his kindnesses to some of his neighbours who are poorer than himself, Ave had de- termined to make himself speak on the matter ; and, accord- ingly, when passing through the village in which he resides, about two miles and a half from Galway, we remarked to him that some of those neighbours seemed very poor. “ Indeed they are, Sir, very,” he replied ; “ they have been very badly off this year in consequence of the wet, the want of firing, and the dearness of potatoes.” “ And how,” I rejoined, “ have they contrived to keep body and soul together?” “ Why, Sir, just by the assistance of those a little better off than them- seh-es.” Paddy Avould not name himself as their benefactor, so we had to ask him if he had been able to give them any aid, and then his ingenuousness obliged him to confess that he had : he had lent thirty shillings to one family to buy seed for their bit of ground, ten shillings to another to buy meal, and so on. “ And will they ever pay you, Paddy ?” we inquired. “ Och ! the creatures, they will, to be sure, Sir,” Paddy replied in a tone expressive of surprise at the imputation on their honesty ; but added in a loAver voice, “ if they can ; and if they can’t, Sir, why, please God, I’ll get over it ; sure one couldn’t see the creatures starve !” This was last year. In the present summer we had heard that Paddy’s turf Avas all stolen from him shortly after — perhaps by some of the very persons Avhom he had assisted — and we Avere curious to ascertain how he took his loss. So we inquired, “ Hoav were you off, Paddy, for firing last winter?” “ Very badly, Sir. I had no turf of my own, and Avas obliged to buy turf in Galway at four shillings the kish. It Avould have been cheaper to buy coal, only I don’t like a grate, for the children burn themsolves at it.” “ And how did it happen that you had no turf of yosr OAvn ?” “ Because, Sir, it Avas all stolen from me, after I had paid tAA'o pounds for cutting and drying it.” “Did you ever,” I inquired, “ discover who were the robbers ?” “ Oh, yes, Sir,” he replied. “ And could you prove the theft against them ?” “ I could, to be sure.” “ Did you prosecute them ?” “ Tut, tut, Sir, what good would that do me?” and Paddy added, in a tone of pity, “ the creatures ! sure they were poor rogues, or they Avould not have taken every bit aAvay.” “ Well, then, Paddy,” I inquired, “ did you ever speak to them about it?” “ I did, Sir.” “ And what ansAver or apology did they make ?” “ They said, Sir, that they wouldn’t have touched it if they kneAV it Avas mine.” “ Did they ever return any of it?” Paddy replied with a laugh, “ Oh, no !” Reader, are you richer in a Avorldly sense than Paddy Coneely ? And if, as it is probable, you are so, let us ask vou, do you just iioav feel an unusual Avarmth in vour cheeks ? If so, you need not be greatly ashamed of it, for believe us, there are many nobles in our land who might well feel a similar sensation on reading these anecdotes of the benevolence of Paddy Coneely. Paddy, like all or most genuine Irishmen, has a dash of quiet Irish humour and much excitability in his character, of which Ave must venture to give an instance or two. On a certain day, while Paddy was stopping at Mr O’Fla- herty ’s of Knock-ban, the coachman, avIio Avas blind of one eye, was airing two horses, one of which was similarly Avant- ing in a visual organ, and the other stone blind. A gentle- man present remarking that here were four animals, two men and two horses, that had but tAvo eyes among them, proposed a race, to Avhich Paddy and the coachman assented. Paddy was placed upon the horse which could see a little, and the coachman got up on the blind one. Off they started with whip and spur, and to Ins great delight, Paddy won. This is one of the feats of which Paddy is most proud. Again — We Avere standing in the kitchen at Maam one day, listening to Paddy telling his stories to a happy group of young people, when he Avas addressed by a middle-aged woman, Avho, from her imperfect knoAvledge of English, mis- understood him, and imagined that he Avas paying court to a blooming girl, and representing himself as an unmarried man. To his great surprise, therefore, Paddy heard himself attacked Avith terrific vituperation, in Avhole Irish and broken English, on the heinousness of his conduct. Before, however, she had got to the end of her oration, Paddy’s face had assumed an expression which announced that he Avas determined to lend himself to her mistake, and carry on the joke. Accordingly, when he was alloAved to reply, he rated her in turn upon her silly stupidity in supposing that she knew him — denied having ever seen her before — declared that he w'asnot Paddy Coneely at all, and never had heard of or seen such a person ; and added, that “ it was a shame for a woman Avith her two eyes to be so foolish.” The woman looked at him for a Avhile in mute bcAA-ilderment, and actually seemed to doubt the evi- dences of her own senses. But she gradually became satisfied of his identity, and, excited into a virtuous rage, she rushed out of the house, declaring that she Avould never stop till she told his wife — poor Avoman — of his misconduct ! And she kept her word, for we actually met her at Oughterard in a couple of days after, on her return from Paddy’s residence. We would gladly record some other instances of Paddy’s humour, but our limits will not permit us ; and we can only add a feAV Avords on one or two other traits in his character. We have already stated that Paddy, despite of his humble condition, and that loss of sight Avhich would be deemed by most persons as one of the greatest of human calamities, is a happy man — a happier one we never saAv. He is always singing— in sunny Aveather, sprightly airs, and in gloomy wea- ther, pathetic ones; but he never looks or is sad, except Avhen a tale of sorrow excites his pity, or AA'hen he is about to se- parate from friends. The calamity of want of sight he thinks of little moment, and inferior to the loss of any other organ — . that of hearing, in particular, which he considers as the great- est of all possible bodily afflictions. “ I don’t remember,” said Paddy, “ ever Avishing for sight but once in my life ; ’twas when I w'ent to a horse race. I Avent with two friends, and somehoAv Ave got parted in the throng, and I could not make them out. There w-as a great deal of bustle and con- fusion, and I knew that the race Avould soon begin ; and I Avas a long Avay from the starting-post, and had not any one to lead me to it. Dear, dear, said I, if I had my sight noAv, I might be able to hear the horses starting. Just then I heard some one calling Paddy, Paddy ! It was one of my friends looking for me; and I think I never seen men so distressed Avhen they found they had lost me. It was mighty pleasant ; they never let me go all day after, and we were just in time to hear the horses start.” We are, indeed, reluctantly constrained to confess that Paddy, notwithstanding his humanity, is, like many other benevolent men of higher grade, wdioare equally blind in this re- spect, an ardent lover of field spoi’ts, as an instance will show. We Avere seated at our breakfast in the hotel at Maam one morn- ing, Avhen our ears Avere assailed by a strange din, composed of the barking of dogs and the shouting of men. We started to the oriel window Avhich commands a view of the road beyond the bridge for a mile or more, and the reader may judge of our astonishment Avhen Ave saw Paddy Coneely hand in hand with Paddy Lee, one of our car-drivers from Clifden, racing at their utmost speed— Paddy throAving his heels twice as- high in the air as the other — both shouting joyously, and attended by a number of greyhounds and terriers, Avho barked in chorus 108 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. — and so they raced till they were out of sight. “ What in the world,” we inquired of our host, Rourke, “ is the meaning of that ?” “ It’s Paddy and Lee, Sir, who have borrowed my dogs, and are gone off to course !” But we must pull up in our own course, and not run Paddy down. Let us however add, for he is a favourite with us, that Paddy is a temperate as he is a prudent man. We came to this conclusion, from the healthiness of his appearance and the equanimity of his manner, in five minutes after we first saw him. “ You don’t drink hard, Paddy,” we remarked to him. “ No, Sir,” he replied ; “ I did once, but I found it was destroy- ing my health, and that if I continued to do so, I would soon leave my family after me to beg ; so I left it off three yeai-3 ago, and I have never tasted raw spirits since; or taken more than a tumbler, or, on an odd occasion, a tumbler and a half of punch, in an evening since.” We only desire to add to this slight sketch, that Paddy ap- pears to be in tolerably comfortable circumstances — he farms a bit of ground, and his cottage is neat and cleanly kept for one in his rank in Galway. He has a great love of appro- bation, a high opinion of his musical talents, and a strong feeling of decent pride. He will only play for the gentry or the comfortable farmers. He will not lower the dignity of his professional character by playing in a tap-room or for the commonalty — except on rare occasions, when he will do it gra- tuitously, and for the sole pleasure of making them happy. We have ourselves been spectators on some of these occasions, and may probably give a sketch of them in a future number. P. A BIT OF PHILOSOPHY. Disappointment — pho ! What is disappointment, I should like to know ? Why should any body feel it? I don’t. I did so at one time, however, certainly, and have a vague recollec- tion of it being a rather unpleasant sort of feeling ; but I am a total stranger to it now, and have been so for the last twenty years. “Lucky fellow!” say you; “then you succeed in every thing ?” “ Quite the reverse, mv dear sir ; I succeed in nothing. I have not the faintest recollection of having ever succeeded in any single thing, where success was of the least moment, in the whole course of my life. I have invariably failed in every thing I have tried. But what has been the consequence ? Why, the consequence has been, that I now never expect suc- cess in any thing I aim at ; and this again has produced one of the most delightful states of feeling that can well be conceived. In fact, the reader can not conceive how delicious is the re- pose, the placidity of mind, the equanimity of temper, the coolness, the calmness, the comfort, arising from this indepen- dence of results — this delightful quiescence of the aspirations. It is a perfect paradise, an elysium. You recline on it so softly, so easily. It is like a down pillow ; a bed,of roses ; an English blanket. I recollect the time when I used to fret and fume when I attempted any thing. How I used to be worried and tortured with hopes and fears, when I commenced any new undertaking, or applied for any situation 1 What folly ! what absurdity ! — all proceeding from the ridiculous notion that I had some chance of success ! Grown wiser, I save myself a world of trouble now. I know that I need not look for success in any thing I attempt, and therefore never expect it. It would do you good, gentle reader, to see with what calmness, with what philosophy, I now wait the result of any effort to better myself in life. It is truly edifying to behold. Notwithstanding, however, this certain foreknowledge of consequences as regards the point in question, I deem it my bounden duty, both to myself and family, to make every ef- fort I can for their and my own advancement ; to try for every situation to which I think myself competent, and, therefore, I do so ; but it is merely in complianoe with this moral obli- gation, and from no hope whatever of succeeding ; and the result has invariably shown, that to have given myself any uneasiness on the subject, to have entertained the most remote idea of success, would have been one of the most ridiculous things conceivable. What a triumph is mine in such cases ! I suffer nothing — no distress of mind, no uneasiness, not the least of either : I am calm and cool, and quite prepared for the result, and sure as fate it comes— “ Dear Sir, I am sorry to say,” &c, &e. I never read a word beyond this. Perhaps it would amuse the reader to give him one of those instances — I could give him five hundred — of what the gene- rality of people call disappointments, which has induced the happy state of mind I now enjoy, which enables me to con- template such crises as would throw any other person into the utmost agitation, with the most perfect equanimity. About four or five years ago, a very intimate and dear friend suddenly burst in upon me while at breakfast one morn- ing. He was almost breathless, and his look was big with intelligence. “ Well, Bob,” said he, with a gleeful smile, “ here s some- thing at last that will do you good.” , I smiled, and shook my head. “ Well, well, so you always say,” said my friend, who per- fectly understood me ; “ but you cannot miss this time. I have just heard from a confidential friend that Mr Bowman is about to retire from business, and that he is on the look- out for a respectable person to purchase his stock in trade, and the good will of his shop, privately. Now, Bob, that’s just the thing for you. You know the trade ; you know, too, that Mr Bowman "has realised a handsome fortune in it, and that his shop, where that fortune was made, has the best business in town.” Now, all this that my friend said was true, perfectly true. Mr Bowman had made a fortune in the shop alluded to. It had by far the best run in town : it -was crowded with cus- tomers from morning till night. But I felt quite confident that the moment I took the shop there would be an end of its pros- perity. However, my friends prevailed. To please them, and to show that I was willing to do any thing to better my circumstances, I took the shop. I bought the stock and good will of the business, and entered on possession. My friends all congratulated me, and declared that my fortune was made. I knew better. However, to give the speculation fair play, a thing I thought due to it, I prevailed on Mr Bowman to forego the usual proceeding in such cases of advertising his retirement from business and recommending me as his successor, because I knew that if he did so, all chance of my doing any good would be instantly knocked on the head. Recommend me ! Why, the bare mention of my name— any allusion to it— would be certain and immediate destruction to me. I knew that if the public was made aware that I had succeeded to the business, it would instantly desert the shop. Impressed with this conviction, I had the whole matter and manner of the transfer of property and interest in the shop managed with the utmost privacy and secrecy, my object being to slip unperceived and unobserved, as it were, into my predecessor’s place, that the public might not have the slightest hint of the change. In order further to secure this important secret, I would not permit the slightest alteration to be made, either on the shop itself, or on any of its multifarious contents. I would not allow a box, or an article of any kind, not even a nail, to be removed or shifted from its place, for fear of giving the public the slightest clue to the fact of the shop’s being now mine. As to my own appearance in it, which of course could not be avoided, I hoped that I might pass for a shopman of Mr Bowman’s. All, however, as I expected, was in vain. The public by some intuitive instinct, as it seemed to me, discovered that I was noAv proprietor of the shop, and took its measures accord- ingly. On the very first day that I took my place behind the counter, I thought it looked shy at me. I was not mistaken. Day after day my customers became fewer and fewer, until hardly one would enter the shop. Being quite prepared for this result, I felt neither surprise nor disappointment, but shortly after coolly disposed of the shop, and all that was in it, to another party, who, as I wish every body well, I am glad to say, did, according to his own account, amazingly well in it, he declaring to me himself that it fulfilled his most sanguine expectations. It could not be otherwise, for, as I well knew would be the case, the moment I quitted the counter, and this person took my place, the stream of public patronage returned ; customers came thronging in faster than he and two stout active shop- men could serve them. Now, in this affair, as in all others of a similar kind, my friends confessed that I had given the spec fair play, and that there was nothing on my part to which they could attribute the blame of failure. Unable to account for it, therefore, they merely shrugged their shoulders and said, “ It was odd ; THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 109 they didn’t understand it.” Neither did I, good reader ; but so it was. One rather odd feature in my case I may mention. Al- though I never actually succeed in any thing, I am always very near doing so — very near getting every thing — within an ace, in almost every instance, of obtaining all 1 want. My friends are frequently bitten by this will-o’-the-wisp in my for- tunes, and have fifty times congratulated me on the strength of its deceptive promises or successes, which of course are never realized. In reply to their congratulations on such occasions, I merely smile and shake my head ; adding, perhaps, “ Not so fast, my good friends ; wait” a bit and you’ll see. I have been as near my mark a hundred times before.” Perhaps the reader w-ould like to glance at a case in point. I will present it to him : it is not yet three weeks old. I ap- plied for a certain appointment in the gift of a certain board. Here is the reply of the secretary, who was my personal friend : — “ My dear Sir, I am exceedingly happy to inform you that your application, which was this day read at the board, has been most favourably received. Indeed, from what has passed on the subject, I may assure you of success, and beg to congratulate you accordingly. Your success would not per- haps have been quite so certain had Mr S— been at home, as he would probably support his friend B., who is the only per- son you had to fear. But Mr S— , who is on the continent (at Carlsbad), is not expected for a fortnight, and cannot be here for a week at the soonest ; so you are safe.” “ Well, then, now surely, Bob,” said my friends to whom I showed this letter. “ vou cannot doubt of your success in this instance. “ No, indeed !” exclaimed I, with the usual shake of the head and accompanying smile of incredulity ; “never had less ex- pectation from any thing in my life. Don’t you see, Mr S — iv ill be home in time, and will give his powerful interest to my rival ?” “ Impossible, my dear sir ; Mr S — is at Carlsbad, and can- not be home in less than a week. Neither steam-boat nor rail- road could enable him to accomplish such a feat.” “ No, but a balloon might ; and depend upon it a balloon he will take, rather than I should get the situation. This he’ll certainly do, although he knows nothing of what is going on.” “ There’s the postman, my dear,” said I with gentleness and equanimity to my wife, on the morning of the third day after the conversation above alluded to had taken place. “ It is a letter from my friend Secretary Wilkins, to inform me that I have lost the situation of ; that Mr S — , performing- miracles in the way of expedition, although not impelled by any particular motive, came home just in time to support his friend B., and, of course, to cut me out.” It was precisely so. “ My dear Sir,” began my friend’s letter, “ I am truly sorry to inform you” I read no more ; not another word. It was quite unnecessary ; I knew it all before. So, laying the letter gently on the table, I said with my w-onted smile, “ Exactly ; all right !” Now, does the reader think that, in this, or in any other similar case, I gave myself the smallest uneasiness about the result ? Not I, indeed— not the smallest. I expected no suc- cess, and was not therefore disappointed. C, OLD TIMES. BY J. U. IX. “ My soul is full of other times !” Where is that spirit of our prime, The good old day ! Have the life and power of that honoured time All passed away ! When old friendship breathed, and old kindness wreathed The cot and castle in kindred claim. And the tie was holy of service lowly, And Neighbour was a brother’s name, And the streams of love and charity Flowed far and wide, And kind welcome held the portal free To none denied, And blessed from far rose that kindly star The high roof o’er the well-known hall, The cordial hearth, the genial mirth — Has Time the tyrant stilled them all ! Ay, some are fallen — their courts are green ; The cold calm sky Looks in on many a once-loved scene Of days gone by. And some stand on, but their lights are gone. Their manners are new and their masters strange ; They know no trace of that frank old race Swept off by the tide of time and change. These would’st. thou mourn, go, trace the path, The far wild road, To some old hill where ruin bath Its lone abode — Where morn is sleeping, and dank dews weeping — Where the grey moss grows on the lintel stone — Where the raven haunts, and the wild weed flaunts, And old remembrance broods alone : There weep — for generous hearts dwelt there, To pity true — Each light and shade of joy and care These old w-alls knew. With weary ray the eye of day Looks lifeless on their mouldering mound : Their pride is blighted ! — but the sun ne’er lighted A happier home in his bright round. There smiles, whose light hath passed away, Bound young hearts fast ; And hope gilt many a coming day Now long, long past. There was beauty’s flower and manhood’s power — The frail, proud things in which mortals trust ; And yon hall was loud with a merry crowd Of breasts long mingled in the dust. There too the poor and weary sought Relief and rest ; His song the wandering harper brought, A welcome guest ; There lay rose lightly, and young eyes shone brightly. And in sunshine ever life’s stream rolled on ; And no thought came hither how time could wither — Yet time stole by, and they are gone. And there — the breast were cold indeed That would not feel, How with the same relentless speed Our seasons steal. The princely towers and pleasant bowers May scoff the hours with gallant show-, In vain — they are what once these were. And in their turn must lie as low r The Beautiful in Nature and Art In looking at our nature, w r e discover among its admirable endowments the sense or perception of beauty. We see the germ of this in every human being ; and there is no pow-er which admits greater cultivation : and why should it not be cherished in all ? It deserves remark, that the provision for this principle is infinite in the universe. There is but a very minute portion of the creation which we can turn into food and clothes, or gratification for the body ; but the whole creation may be used to minister to the sense of beauty. Beauty is an all-pervad- ing presence ; it unfolds the numberless flowers of the spring ; it waves in the branches of the trees and the green blades of grass ; it haunts the depth of the earth and sea, and gleams out in the hues of the shell and the precious stone ; and not only these minute objects, but the ocean, the mountains, the clouds, the heavens, the stars, the rising and setting sun. all overflow with beauty. The universe is its temple, and those men who are alive to it cannot lift their eyes without feeling themselves encompassed with it on every side. Now, this beauty is so precious, the enjoyments it gives are so refined and pure, so congenial with our tenderest and noble feelings, and so akin to worship, that it is painful to think of the mul- titude of men as living in the midst of it, and living almost a> blind to it, as if, instead of this fair earth and glorious sky, they were tenants of a dungeon. An infinite joy is lost to the world by the want of culture of this spiritual endowment. Suppose that I were to visit a cottage, and to see its walls lined with the choicest pictures of Raphael, and every spare nook filled with statues of the most exquisite workmanship. 110 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. and that I were to learn that neither man, woman, nor child, ever cast an eye at these miracles of art, how should I regret their privation ; how should I want to open their eyes ; and to help them to comprehend and feel the loveliness and grandeur which in vain courted their notice ? But every husbandman is living in sight of the works of a diviner artist ; and how much would his existence be elevated, could he see the glory which shines forth in their forms, hues, proportions, and mo- ral expression! I have spoken only of the beauty of nature ; but how much of this mysterious charm is found in the ele- gant arts, and especially in literature ? The best books have most beauty. The greatest truths are wronged if not linked with beauty, and they win their way most surely and deeply into the soul when arrayed in this their natural and tit attire. Now no man receives the true culture of a man in whom the sensibility to the beautiful is not cherished ; and I know of no condition in life from which it should be excluded. Of all luxuries, this is the cheapest and most at hand ; and it seems to be most important to those conditions where coarse labour tends to give a grossness to the mind. From the diffusion of the sense of beauty in ancient Greece, and of the taste for music in modern Germany, we learn that the people at large may partake of refined gratifications which have hitherto been thought to be necessarily restricted to a few. — Charming. A COMMON FROG! “ Come along ; don’t stay poking in that ditch ; it’s nothing but a common frog,” said a lively-looking fellow to his com- panion ; who replied, “ True, it is only a common frog, but give me a few minutes, and I will endeavour to show you that it better deserves attention than many a creature called rare and curious. The fact is, that the history of what we call common animals, and see every day, is often very imperfectly known, though possessing much to astonish and instruct us. Come, sit you down on this bank for a few minutes, instead of pursuing your idle Avalk, and I will endeavour to excite your curiosity and powers of observation. If I do so by means of so humble an instrument as a common frog, I do better ser- vice than if I were to fix your attention by accounts of the mightiest monsters of fossil or existing Herpetology, as the part of natural history which treats of reptiles is called. See ! I have caught him, and a fine stout fellow he is, for I perceive from his swelling chops he is a male. Let us now consider his place in the creation : it is in the tailless section of the fourth order of reptiles called Batrachians, and distinguished from the other three orders by the absence of scales on the skin, and by the young undergoing the most extensive changes of form, organic structure, and habits of life. You know, I presume, that frogs are hatched from eggs, or as they are called in mass, spawn, which is laid early in the year in shal- low pools, and resembles boiled sago. The peasantry believe that as it is laid in more or less deep water, so will the coming- season be dry or wet. This, however, like many other in- stances of supposed prescience in animals, does not stand the test of observation, for spawn is freqxiently laid where, when the weather proves fine, the water is dried up. Neverthe- less, its position does in some degree indicate the state of the atmosphere, as, under the low pressure of air which precedes and attends rain, the spawn, owing to bubbles of air entangled in it, floats more buoyantly, and is fitted for shallower water than it could swim in under other circum- stances. But to our subject. The product of this spawn is in every thing unlike the perfect frog we now behold. He commenced life with some twelve hundred in family, a tiny, fish-formed creature, with curious external gills, which in'a short time became covered with skin ; and he then breathed by taking in water at the mouth, passing it over the gills, and out at orifices on each side, just as we see in ordinary fishes. The circulation of his blood was also similar to that of those animals. His head and body were then confounded in one globular mass, to which was appended a long, flattened, and powerful tail ; his mouth was small, his jaws suited to his food, which was vegetable, and his intestines were four times longer in proportion than they are now. After some time of this fish-like life, two limbs began to bud near to the junction of his body and tail— then another pair under the skin near his gills. His tail absorbed in proportion as his limbs developed, until, casting away the last of his many tadpole skins, and with it his jaws and gills, he emerged from the water a ‘ gap- ing, wide-mouthed, waddling frog,’ to seek on land his prey, in future to consist exclusively of worms, insects, and other small living beings ; still retaining his power of swimming and diving, but accomplishing it by powerful exertions of his hinder legs, which serve him on land to effect his prodigious jumps, of which we may form an estimate by knowing that a man exerting as great a power in proportion could jump upwards of one hundred yards. He cannot, however, breathe under water ; and though his skin, which possesses enormous ab- sorbing powers, may contribute a portion of the necessary stimulus to his blood, yet he must breathe as we do by getting air into his lungs, and therefore, except when he is torpid from cold, he cannot continue any great length of time under water. Observe now his mode of breathing — see with what regularity his nostrils open and shut, while the skin under his throat falls and rises in the same order, for as he is without ribs or diaphragm, his mode of inspiration is not effected as ours is ; but he takes air into his closely shut mouth through his nostrils, which he then closes, and by a muscular exertion presses the air into his lungs. Were you to keep his mouth open, he would be infallibly smothered. His tongue is one of his most striking peculiarities, for instead of being rooted, as in other animals, at the throat, it is fastened to his under lip, and its point is directed to his stomach. Nevertheless, this strange arrangement is well suited to his purposes, and his tongue as an organ of prehension is very effective. It is fiat, soft, and long, and is covered with a‘ very viscid fluid. When he wishes to use it, he lowers his under jaw suddenly, and ejects and retracts his tongue with the rapidity of a flash of light, snatching away a luckless worm or beetle attached, by the se- cretion before alluded to, to its tip. The insertion of the tongue in front of the lower jaw serves not only to aid mechanically in its ejection and retraction, just as we manage the lash of a whip, but it saves material in its construction, for it would require much greater volume of muscle to accomplish the same end posited as tongues usually are ; and it has also the advantage of bringing the food into the proper place for being swallowed, without further exertion than that of' its retraction. Look now at the splendour of the golden iris of his eyes, and his triple eyelids ; see, notwithstanding the meagre de- velopement of his head, as a phrenologist would say, his great look of vivacity ; though his brain is small, his nerves are particularly large, and his muscles are accordingly possessed of more than ordinary excitability, which property has sub- jected his race to very many cruel experiments, at the hands of physiologists, galvanists, &c. A favourite experiment was, by the galvanic action of a silver coin and a small plate of zinc, on the leg of a dead frog, to make it jump with more than the force of life. Should you be inclined to study his anatomy, you will find ample stores in the ponderous folios of old writers, who have so laboriously wrought out his story as to leave little to be accomplished by us. The frog, now abundantly dispersed over Ireland, was introduced into this country not much more than a century since by Doctor Gwythers of Trinity College; and in thus naturalizing this pretty creature, cold and clammy though it be, he did a ser- vice, for it contributes materially to check the increase of slugs and worms. I have often vindicated the frog from charges brought against him by gardeners. I have been shown a strawberry, and desired to look at the mischief he has done. I have pointed out, that the edge where he was accused of biting out a piece was not only dry, but smaller than the interior of the cavity, and it therefore could not be formed by a bite. I have then shown other strawberries Avith similar Avounds, in which small black slugs were feeding ; and I have cut up the supposed strawberry-devouring frog slain by the gardener, and shown in his stomach, Avith several earth- worms, a number of little black slugs of the species alluded to, but not one bit of fruit : thus proving, I hope, that the culti- vator of strawberries ought for his own sake to be the protector of frogs. The frog is a good instance of the confusion that constantly arises from applying the same Avords to designate different animals in different countries. The common frog of the con- tinent is the green frog (Rana esculenta), Avhile our common frog is their red frog (Rana temporaria ). The former is of much more aquatic habits than the latter, and is not knoAvn in Ireland. 1 once made an attempt to introduce it here, and Avheil in Paris directed a basket of 100 frogs to be made up for me, giving special instructions that no common frogs Avere to be amongst them, Avhich order I found on returning was obeyed as understood in that country, and not a single green frog Avas in my lot, though 1 intended to have none other. As articles of food there seems to be little difference, but THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Ill the preference is given to the green frog. The vulgar opi- nion that Frenchmen eat frogs for want of better food is quite erroneous ; the contrary is the fact ; for a fricassee of these animals is an expensive dish in France, and is considered a delicacy. Its chief merit appears to me to be its freedom from strong flavour of any kind ; a delicate stomach may indulge in it without fear of a feeling of repletion. In this country the foolish prejudices which forbid the use of many attainable articles of wholesome food, applies with force to frogs. Our starving peasants loath what princes of other nations wmuld banquet on, and leave to badgers, hedgehogs, buzzards, herons, pike and trout, sole possession of a very nu- tritive and pleasant article of food. When devoured by the heron, it is in part converted into a source of wonder to the unenlightened ; for the curious masses of whitish jelly found on the banks of rivers and other moist places, and said by the country people to be fallen stars, are, so far as I have been able to observe, masses of immature frog spawn in a semi-di- gested state ; and they seemed to me to have been rejected by herons, just as we see hawks and owls reject balls of hair, feathers, or other indigestible portions of their prey. While on the subject of eating frogs, one of many of my adventures with the animal comes upon me with something like a feeling of compunction. When I was at school, it happened on a great occasion that a party of the ‘ big boys’ were al- lowed to sit up much beyond the ordinary time of retiring. Finding it cold, it was proposed to adjourn to the kitchen, poke up the fire, and make warm before going to bed. Proceeding accordingly, we were startled by the repetition of some heavy sounds on the floor, and on getting up a blaze we discovered a frog of gigantic proportions jumping across the room. He was seized, and a council being held upon him, it was resolved that he should be killed, roasted, and eaten ; and this awful sentence was at once put into execution — the curious for curi- osity, the braggarts for bravado, and the cowards, lest they be thought so, partaking of the repast. We discovered next day that the unfortunate devoured had been for three years a settled denizen of the kitchen, where he dealt nightly havoc on the hordes of crickets and cockroaches it contained. I have had for three years a frog in confinement where his food is not very abundant, and he has grown proportionally slowly, being still of a very diminutive size. Linnreus and others dis- tinguished ours as the mute frog, believing it did not possess a voice. They -were mistaken : you hear our captive, when I press his back, give utterance to his woes ; but if you desire to attend his concert, get up some bright night in spring, seek out his spawning place about the witching hour, and you will then hear sounds, of strange power, which seem to make the earth on which you stand to tremble. On investigation you will find it to proceed from an assembled congregation of frogs, each pronouncing the word Croak, but dwelling, as a musician would say, with a thrill on the letter r. When speaking of the tadpole, I forgot to allude to the fact, that recent experimenters find that by jdacing them in covered jars, the developement of the frog is arrested. The tadpole will continue to grow until it reaches a size as great as that of an adult frog. This has been attributed by the discoverer to a withdrawal of the agency of light; but it strikes me he has, in his anxiety to prop a theory, lost sight of the true reason, which appears to be, that while he excluded the young ani- mal from light, he also put it in such a situation as to compel it to breathe alone by its gills, and afford it no opportunity for the developement of its lungs, and so it retained of necessity its fisli-like functions. As you are probaby more of a sportsman than a naturalist, you have observed in rail shooting, your pointer, after a show of setting, roll on the ground : if you had examined, the chances are you would have found a dead frog of no very pleasing perfume. Why the dog so rolled, I cannot say, unless it be, that he like other puppies wished to smear his hair with nasty animal odours. I have now I think worked out your patience ; and though I could dwell much longer on the subject, and eke out much from ancient lore, I will end by a less pompous quotation of part of a well-known song — ‘ A frog he would a-wooing go, Whether his mother would let him or no.’ And the catastrophe, ‘ A lily white duck came and gobbled him up.’ Pray apply the moral. Had the said frog had his mind cul- tivated, and had he been acquainted with nature, he would not have engaged in a thoughtless courtship, that could have no good end, nor have disobeyed the voice of experience, and so met with the fate that awaited him. You may now go on your walk ; and if a common frog cannot interest you, take care of the lily white duck.” B. GARDENS FOR THE LABOURING CLASSES. BY MARTIN DOYLE. T he advantage which the working man, possessed of a little patch of laud at a moderate rent, has over him who is without any, or holds it at a rate greatly above its value (a common case with the Irish labourer), can only be fully understood by those who have narrowly observed in England the respective conditions of the field labourer, with his allotment of a rood or half a rood of garden, and the workman in a town factory. It is very obvious that the garden gives healthful recreation to the family, young and old, who have always some little matter to perform in it, and if they really like the light work of cul- tivating kitchen vegetables, fruits and flowers, they combine pleasure with profit. Here is something on which they can always fall back as a resource if a day’s work for hire is inter- rupted — they can make up at home for so much lost time — the children have something rational and useful to do, instead of blackguarding about roads and streets — they help to raise the potatoes and cabbages, & c, which with prudent management materially assist their housekeeping. The benefits which have arisen to the labourer and all the rural poor in England who have obtained from ten to forty perches of garden from land-proprietors or farmers, or those who have the privilege of encroaching upon commons for the purpose, is truly surprising. Much of this is attributable to the exertions of the London Labourers’ Friend Society, who, in an age when party violence divides man from his fellows, and excites from some quarter or other opposition to every sys- tem designed for the common good, have quietly but steadily pursued their own way. I have had occasion more than once to press upon the at- tention of those who have the disposal of land in Ireland, the great benefits which would result to our poor if they would act upon the principle which actuates this benevolent society ; and strange though it be, the fact is, that some landlords possessing estates both in England and Ireland are at pains to secure to the English labourer advantages which they take no trouble to provide for the labourer on the soil of Ireland. I have referred to the principle which guides the society. It is, that the labouring classes should have such allotment of land as will not interfere with their general course of fixed labour, nor render them at all independent of it, but merely give them employment during those hours which they have at command in the intervals of their more profitable occupations. I have myself seen innumerable instances of the happy effects of giving to the labourer or little mechanic even half a rood of land, which he generally has in the highest state of produc- tiveness, and from it his table is frequently supplied ; while gooseberry and currant trees, in luxuriant bearing, and flowers close to the road, and without a higher fence than a paling or hedge three feet high, attest the bigh degree of ho- nesty and decorum which the habit of having such productions in this unprotected way undoubtedly generates. The local poor-rates have in all instances been greatly les- sened by this mode of enabling labourers to help themselves ; and if in this country the compulsory system of providing food or employment for the sick or hungry poor had prevailed long ago as in England, the landlords would have found means to guard against those dreadful realities of destitution with which we have been familiarized. Not that it is desirable to give a very open invitation to the parish manger, for this de- stroys the feeling of self-dependence and weakens the motives to economy and industry. But there should have long since been more practical exertion to place the labourer \vithin reach of reasonable comforts. What are the circumstances of tens of thousands of work- ing people in the great manufacturing towns of Great Britain, in which no land can be given to them ? Families so circum- stanced wear out their health and existence in unvarying la- bour— not requiring much immediate exertion of strength, it is 112 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. true ; but wearisome from its continued sameness, which gives no exercise whatever to the mind. The many pictures presented to us of the mental and phy- sical condition of a great portion of our fellow-creatures kept at the slave-like labour of the factory, are appalling, and I fear they are true : this is unquestionably so, that children from nine to twelve years of age (and many have been worked from the age of jive ) are locked up for six days in the week, for twelve hours every day, in a warm artificial temperature, instead of breathing the free air of heaven ; they are looked upon as parts of the machinery, and must move accordingly ; with this difference, that while human genius is always at work to devise improvements in inanimate complications, and to keep them in the highest state of order, the condition of the living soul and body is in too many instances neglected altogether. There is a wear and tear of human life, and an accumulation of moral corruption, which it is frightful to think of. When work is in good demand, the joint labours of the parent and their children earn considerable weekly wages. There is then plenty of bread and butter and some bacon for the children, and beer and gin besides for their parents ; but nothing is saved for less prosperous times, and the family is not eventually the better for the short run of high earnings. The want of a bit of land is more serious than many will believe, not only in its effect upon health, but upon moral conduct also. Among some facts published by the London Labourers’ Friend Society, are the details of the complete reformation of twelve men, who had been severally committed to gaol for different offences of a very serious nature, in consequence of their obtaining portions of land, varying from two acres and a half to one rood ; and I may add, that out of eighty occupants of land-allotments in the same neighbourhood, there has been only one case of robbery within seven years. Some of the foregoing remarks tend to show that the Irish poor would not gain in happiness by the establishment of the modern British factory system among them, unless the advan- tage of a little land could be afforded them at the same time. A proof of this exists in the altered circumstances of the people who were once employed in the domestic manufacture of linen in Ulster. These had a patch of land, to which they could at pleasure turn from the loom and the reel ; and as the labour of their children was not prematurely demanded, they could enjoy the green fields or the garden, and be employed in school, with a certainty of substantial food (instead of bad cofi'ae and adulterated tea), until they attained the age of thirteen or fourteen, when they could take an active part in the labour of the loom. When field or garden labour can be combined with factory work, the miseries of the manufacturing system are much removed, and manufactures in such a case become serviceable under judicious and moral management : the present state of the town of Lancaster affords some illustration of this. It verges on a purely agricultural district, and now contains both manufacturing and farm labourers. Upon the introduc- tion of cotton manufactures (and half the few mills now exist- ing there were established only seven years ago), the wages of each individual workman were rendered less than they had been before, hut the earnings of his whole family increased considerably. Children before that period were burdensome to their parents, who when making application for parish aid pleaded the number of their family. Now children are sources of increased comfort to such parents ; and even step-children, grand-children, nephews, and nieces, who were formerly pressed into the list of mouths to be fed from the parish rates, are now studiously kept out of sight, because they earn wages, and contribute to the support of those who would otherwise shift them off their hands. On the whole, those with families are better off than if without them ; and the children them- selves, except in times of very hurried work, and allowing for occasional abuses by employers and parents over-working them, are better off than formerly. The comparatively good state of the Lancaster operatives arises from the circum- stance, that in times of difficulty in the factories many of the work people have fai’m work to turn to, and numbers of them have allotments of their own. In proportion as the labouring poor of any community are deprived of the advantage of gardens, is a decrease in their health,, happiness, and moral state. Of this, as regards an- other nation, I have a proof before me in the letter of Mr T. Bastard, who in a communication from Germany (I shall only give a portion of it) to tho editor of the Labourers’ Friend Magazine, says, “ In regard to the allotment system in parti- cular, as a mode of giving the labourer ‘ a stake in the hedge,’ I have learnt nothing here which induces me to change my opinion of its value : on the contrary, I feel rather con- firmed in the belief, that where population and capital exist in a high degree, no other practicable mode has yet been pro- posed, so calculated to prevent the labouring classes from fall- ing into the degraded position, with all its train of ill con- sequences, of being mere machines in the hands of the capi- talists ; or if they have already so fallen, so adapted to restore them to a higher moral state. I believe that a much greater proportion of the labouring classes of Saxony possess some ‘ stake in the hedge’ than those of England. * * * I am sorry, however, to add, that Saxony appears to me, by the increase that is taking place in her population, and by her efforts to push her manufactures, to be approaching the evil which we have lon^ suffered under in England, that of having the sole interest of a great portion of her people dependent entirely on the amount of weekly wages that they can obtain. During three months of last year I resided in a village at some distance from Dresden, and in every sense a rural one, the occupations of the inhabitants, of which there were be- tween seven and eight hundred living in about one hundred houses, being confined to agriculture, with the exception of some handicraftsmen, such as shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths, &c. and a few who worked in some stone quarries. Besides two considerable estates belonging to two persons who stood in the position of esquires, and shared the manorial privileges, the land was much divided, two or three persons having as much as 140 acres, but the greater part only from one to five acres, which were held under a sort of feudal tenure ; and all the cottages had at least gardens. The appearance of general comfort and happiness certainly exceeded that which I have ever seen in an English village of the same kind and size. The inhabitants were healthy-looking : their houses were all good substantial ones, provided (at least several that I entered) with decent furniture, and they were invariably well clothed. The two latter points are remarkable in Saxony. I have never seen a row of cottages, or rather huts here, and very rarely a raggedly-dressed person. I will here add, also, that the Saxons who visit rich England are particularly struck with the numbers of persons they see in rags and tatters. I found, however, that there were several persons, and even families, who had merely lodgings in the cottages without any land, and these were invariably in bad circumstances. In fact, they were dependent solely on wages ; and here was the commencement of that evil to which I have before adverted, and for which I can think of no other effectual remedy than the allotment system.” Irish Bravery and Honour On the surprise of Cre- mona by Prince Eugene in 1702, when Villerov, the French general, most of the officers, military chests, &c. were taken, and the German horse and foot in possession of the town, excepting one place only, the Po Gate, which was guarded by two Irish regiments commanded by O’Mahonv and Bourlc, before the Prince commenced the attack there, he sent to ex- postulate with them, and show them the rashness of sacri- ficing their lives where they could have no probability of relief, and to assure them if they would enter into the impe- rial service, they should be directly and honourably promoted. The first part of this proposal they heard with impatience, the second with disdain. “ Tell the Prince,” said they, “ that we have hitherto preserved the honour of our country, and that we hope this day to convince him that we are worthy of his esteem. While one of us exists, the German eagle shall not be displayed upon these walls. This is our deliberate resolu- tion, and we will not admit of further capitulation.” The attack was commenced by a large body of foot, supported by five thousand cuirassiers, and after a bloody conflict of two hours the Germans retreated : the Irish pursued their advantage, and attacked them in the streets. Before even- ing the enemy were expelled the town, and the general and the military chests recovered. Printed and Published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Offiee ot the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dub- J n ‘ A S en!s : — H. Ghoomuriuge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Kow, Lon- don. Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester. C. Davies North John Street. Liverpool. J. Drake, Birmingham. M. Bingham* Broad Street, Bristol. Phaser and Crawford, George Street, Edin- burgh. David Rodertson, Trongate, Glasgow. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 15. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 10, 1840. Volume I. THE TOWN AND CASTLE OF LEIXLIP, COUNTY OF KILDARE. Localities are no less subject to the capricious mutations of fashion in taste, than dress, music, or any other of the various objects on which it displays its extravagant vagaries. The place which on account ot its beauties is at one period the chosen resort of pleased and admiring crowds, at another becomes abandoned and unthought of, as if it were an un- sightly desert, unfit for the enjoyment or happiness of civil- ized man. Some other locality, perhaps of less natural or acquired beauty, becomes the fashion of the day, and after a time gets out of favour in turn, and is neglected for some other novel scene before unthought of or disregarded. Yet the principles of true taste are immutable, and that which is really beautiful is not the less so because it has ceased to attract the multitude, who are generally governed to a far greater extent by accidental associations of ideas than by any abstract feelings of the mind. ? Perhaps it is less attributable to any characteristic vola- tility in the character of the inhabitants of our metropolis, than to the singular variety and number of the beautiful localities which surround our city, and in emulous rivalry at- tract our attention, that this inconstancy of attachment to any one locality is more strikingly instanced among ourselves, than among the citizens of any other great town with which we are acquainted. But, however this may be, the fact is unquestionable, that there is scarcely a spot of any natural or improved beauty, within a few miles of us, which has not in turn had its day of fashion, and its subsequent period of un- merited neglect. Clontarf, with its sequestered green lanes, and its glorious views of the bay — Glasnevin, the classical abode of Addison, Parnell, Tickell, Sheridan, and Delany — Finglas, with its rural sports — Chapelizod, the residence of the younger Cromwell — Lucan, Leixlip, with their once celebrated spas, and all the delightful epic scenery of the Liffey — Dundrum, with its healthy mountain walks and atmo- sphere, and many others unnecessary to mention, all experi- encing the effects of this inconstancy of fashion, have found their once admired beauties totally disregarded, and the ad- miration of the multitude almost wholly transferred to a wild and unadorned beauty on the rocky shores of Kingstown and Bullock, which our forefathers deemed unworthy of notice. But let that beauty take warning from the fate of her prede- cessors, and not hold her head too high in her day of tri- umph, for she too will assuredly be cast off in turn, and find herself neglected for soma rival as yet unnoticed, 114 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Of such unmerited inconstancy and neglect there are no localities in the neighbourhood of Dublin which have greater reason to complain than the village of Lucan and that which forms the subject of our prefixed embellishment. As the establishment of peace in Ireland led to an increase of civili- zation, which exhibited itself in improved roads and vehicles of conveyance, and the citizens, emerging from their embattled strongholds, ventured to enjoy the pleasures of nature and rural life, Lucan and Leixlip, with the beautiful scenery in which they are situated, became the favourite places of re- sort ; and their various natural attractions becoming height- ened by art, were described by travellers, and chaunted in song. About “ sixty years since” they had reached their greatest glory, and Leixlip was the favourite of the day. It is thus described at this period by the celebrated Doctor Campbell : — “ All the outlets of Dublin are pleasant, but this is superlatively so which leads through Leixlip, a neat little village about seven miles from Dublin, up the Liffey ; whose banks being prettily tufted with wood, and enlivened by gentlemen’s seats, afford a variety of landscapes, beautiful beyond description.” It was at this period also that O’Keefe, in his popular opera of “ The Poor Soldier,” makes Patrick sing— “ Though Leixlip is proud of its close shady bowers. Its clear falling waters and murmuring cascades. Its groves of fine myrtle, its beds of sweet flowers, Its lads so well dressed, and its neat pretty maids.” But though Leixlip no longer holds out attractions sufficient to gratify those whose tastes are dependent on fashion, it has never ceased to be a favourite with all whose tastes had a more solid foundation. It was here, and in its immediate vicinity, that the two Robertses, genuine Irish landscape painters, found many of the most congenial subjects for their pencils. It was here, too, that the strong-headed painter of strong heads — the Rembrandt of miniature painters, John Comerford — used occasionally to retire, abandoning for a week or two the intellectual society of Dublin which he so much enjoyed, and the acquisition of gain which he no less relished, to make some elaborate study of one of the scenes about the Bridge of Leixlip, which he, in his own dogmatic way, asserted, “ for genuine landscape beauty, could not be sur- assed or even rivalled any where !” This estimate of the eauties of Leixlip’s “ close shady bowers, &c.” was, we con- fess, a somewhat extravagant one ; yet, like most other ho- nestly formed opinions of Comerford’s, it would not have been an easy task to shake his belief in its truth, and to sustain it he could, if combated, adduce the testimony of his and our friend Gaspar Gabrielli, the first of Italian landscape painters of our times, who notwithstanding his pride in being a Roman, and his national predilections in favour of the classic scenery of his dear Italy, has often declared in our hearing that he had never seen in his own country scenery of its kind comparable with that of the Liffey, in the vicinity of Lucan and Leixlip. But enthusiastic admiration of the scenery of Leixlip has not been confined to the painters. Hear with what gusto our friend C. O. lets himself out on this subject, not in his draw- ing-room character as the clerical Connaught tourist, but in his more natural, buoyant, and Irish one, as Terence O’Toole, our co-labourer in the first volume of the Dublin Penny Journal : — “ Any one passing over the Bridge of Leixlip, must, if his eye is worth a farthing for anything else than helping him to J nck his way through the puddle, look up and down with de- ight while, moving over this bridge. To the right, the river winning its noisy turbulent way over its rocky bed, and los- ing itself afar down amidst embossing woods ; to the left, after plunging over the Salmon-leap, whose roar is heard though half a mile off, and forming a junction with the Rye- water, it takes a bend to the east, and washes the rich amphi- theatre with which Leixlip is environed. I question much whether any castle, even Warwick itself [bravo, Terence!] stands in a grander position than Leixlip Castle, as it embat- tles the high and w r ooded grounds that form the forks of the two rivers. Of the towers, the round one of course was built by King John, the opposite square one by the Geral- dines. This noble and grandly circumstanced pile has been in latter days the baronial residence of the White family, and subsequently the residence of [lord-lieutenants] generals and prelates. Here Primate Stone, more a politician than a Christian [churchman], retired from his contest with the Ponsonbys and the Boyles to play at cricket with General Cunningham ; here resided Speaker Connolly before he built his splendid mansion at Castletown ; here the great commoner, as he was called, T om Connolly, was born. Like many such edifices, this castle is haunted : character and keeping would be altogether lost if towers of 600 years’ standing, with rich mullioned ‘ windows that exclude the light, and passages that lead to nothing,’ with tapestried chambers that have witnessed pranks of revelry and feats of war, of Norman, Cromwellian, and Williamite possession, if such a place had not its legend ; and one of Ireland’s wildest geniuses, the eccentric and splen- did Maturin, has decorated the subject with the colourings of his vivid fancy.” Terence adds : — “ Leixlip is memorable in an historic point of view as the place where, in the war commencing 1641, Ge- neral Preston halted when on his way to form a junction with the Marquis of Ormonde to oppose the Parliamentarians. Acknowledging that his army was not excommunication proof, he bowed before the fiat of the Nuncio, and lost the best op- portunity that ever offered of saving his cause and his country from what has been called “ the curse of Cromwell.” To this brief but graphic sketch of our friend we can add but little. Leixlip is a market and post town of the county of Kildare, situated in the barony of North Salt — a name de- rived from the Latin appellation of the cataract called the Saltus Salrnonis, “ Salmon Leap,” in the vicinity of the town — and is about eight miles from Dublin. It contains between ele- ven and twelve hundred inhabitants, and consists of one long street of houses, well, though irregularly built, but exhibiting for the greater number an appearance of negligence and de- cay. It is bounded on one extremity by the river Liffey, which is crossed by a bridge of ancient construction, and on the other by the Rye-water, over which there is a bridge of modern date. As the focus of a parish, it has a church and a Roman Catholic chapel, both of ample size and substantial construction, but, like most edifices of their class in Ireland, but little remarkable for the purity of their architectural styles. The latter is of recent erection. Its most impos- ing architectural feature is, however, its castle, which is magnificently situated on a steep and richly wooded bank over the Liffey ; but though of great antiquity, it exhibits in its external character but little of the appearance of an ancient fortress, having been modernised by the Hon. George Caven- dish, its present occupier. On its west side it is flanked by a circular, and on its east by a square tower. This castle is supposed to have been erected in the reign of Henry II. by Adam de Hereford, one of the chief followers of Earl Strong- bow, from whom he received as a gift the tenement of the Salmon Leap, and other extensive possessions. It is said to have been the occasional residence of Prince John during his governorship of Ireland in the reign of his father ; and in recent times it was a favourite retreat of several of the Viceroys, one of whom, Lord Townsend, usually spent the summer here. From an inquisition taken in 1604, it appears that the manor of Leixlip was part of the possessions of the abbey of St Tho- mas in Dublin. In 1658, the castle, with sixty acres of land, belonged to the Earl of Kildare. They afterwards passed into the hands of the Right Hon. Thomas Connolly, Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, and are now the property of Colonel Connolly of Castletown. P. THE CHASE, A POEM TRANSLATED FRO?” THE IRISH — CONCLUDED. PATRICK. O son of kings, adorned with grace, ’Twere music to my ear, Of Fionn and his wondrous chase The promised tale to hear. OISIN. Well — though afresh my bosom bleeds, Remembering days of old — When I think of my sire and his mighty deeds — Yet shall the tale be told. While the Fenian bands at Almhuin’s towers. In the hall of spears, passed the festive hours, The goblet crowmed, with chessmen played,* Or gifts for gifts of love repaid ; * The game of chess is repeatedly noticed in connection with various his- torical incidents in the early history of Ireland. Theophilus O'Flanagan, in a note to his translation of Deirdri, an ancient Irish tale, published in the Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Dublin, speaks of it as “ a military THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 115 From the reckless throng Finn stole unseen, When he spied a young doe on the heath-clad green With agile spring draw near : On Sceolan and Bran his nimble hounds He whistles aloud, and away he bounds In chase of the hornless deer. With his hounds alone and his trusty blade, The son of Luno’s skill, On the track of the flying doe he strayed To Guillin’s pathless hill. But when he came to its hard- won height No deer appeared in view ; If east or west she had sped her flight Nor hounds nor huntsman knew. But those sprang westward o’er the sod, While eastward Fionn press’d — Why did not pity touch thy God To see them thus distress’d ? There while he gazes anxious round, Sudden he hears a doleful sound, And by a lake of crystal sheen Spies a nymph of loveliest form and mien : Her cheeks as the rose were crimson bright, Her lips the red berry’s glow ; Her neck as the polished marblef white, Her breast the pure blossom’s full blow ; Downy gold were her locks, and her sparkling eyes Like freezing stars in the ebon skies. Such beauty, O Sage, all cold as thou art, Would kindle warm raptures of love in thy heart. Nigh to the nymph of golden hair With courteous grace he drew — “ O hast thou seen, enchantress fair. My hounds their game pursue ?” J NYMPH. “ Thy hounds I saw not in the chase, 0 noble prince of the Fenian race; But I have cause of woe more deep, For which I linger here and weep.” PIONN. “ O, hast thou lost a husband dear ? Falls for a darling son thy tear, Or daughter of thy heart ? Sweet, soft-palmed nymph, the cause reveal To one who can thy sorrows feel, Perchance can ease thy smart ? The maid of tresses fair replied — “ A precious ring I wore ; Dropped from my finger in the tide, Its loss I now deplore : But by the sacred vows that bind Each brave and loyal knight, 1 now adjure thee, Chief, to find My peerless jewel bright.” He feels her adjuration’s ties ; Disrobes each manly limb, pawietbat engages the mental faculties, like mathematical science.” O’Fla- herty’s Ogygia states that Cathir, the 120th king of Ireland, left among his bequests to Crimthan “ two chess-boards with their chess-men distinguished with their specks and power ; on which account he was constituted master of the games in Leinster.” In the first book of Horner’s Odyssey the suitors are described as amusing themselves with the game oi chess : — With rival art and ardour in their mien, At chess they vie to captivate the queen, Divining of their loves. in Pope’s translation there is a learned note on the subject, to which the curious reader is referred ; and also to a passage in Vallaneey’s Essay on the Celtic Language, f Literally, as lime. $ This will remind the reader of a similar question by Venus in the first 2Eneid : — Heus inquit, juvenes monstrate mearum Vidistis usquam hie errantem forte sororum Succinctam pharetra, et maculosas tegmine lyncis, Aut spumantis apri cursum clamore prementem? — iEN. I. 325. Ho, strangers ! have you lately seen, she said, One of my sisters, like myself array’d, Who cross’d the lawn or in the forest stray’d ? A painted quiver at her back she bore ; Varied with spots, a lynx's hide she wore ; And at full cry pursued the tusky boar.— D ryden. And for the smooth-palmed princess hies The gulfy lake to swim. Five times deep-diving down the wave, Through every cranny, nook, and cave. With care he searches round and round, Till the golden ring at length he found ; But scarce to shore the prize could bring, When by some blasting ban — Ah ! piteous tale — the Fenian king Grew a withered, grey, old man ! Meanwhile the Fenians passed the hours In the hall of spears, at Almhuin’s towers ; The goblet crowned, with chessmen played, Or gifts for gifts of love repaid, When Caoilte rose and asked in grief, “Ye spearmen, where is our gallant chief? O, lost I dread is the Fenians’ boast — Then who shall lead our bannered host ?” Bald Conan spoke — “ A sweeter sound Ne’er tingled on my ear ; If Fio nn be lost, may he not be found Till end the distant year ! Bnt, Caoilte of the nimble feet, Ye shall not want a chieftain meet ; In me, till Fionn’s fate be told, The leader of your host behold 1” Although the Fenian bands were torn With agony severe. We burst into a laugh of scorn Such arrogance to hear. To urge the quest, we then decree, Of Finn and his hounds the joyous three That still to triumph led ; And soon from Almhuin’s halls away, With Caoilte, I, and our dark array, North to Slew Guillinsped. There, as with searching glance the eye O’er all the prospect rolled, Beside the lake a wretch we spy, Poor, withered, grey, and old. 1 Disgust and horror touched the heart To see the bones all fleshless start In a frame so lank and wan ; We thought him some starved fisher torn From the whelming stream, by famine worn. And left but the wreck of man. We asked if he had chanced to see A swift-paced chieftain go, With two fleet hounds, across the lea, Behind a fair young doe. He gave us back no answer clear, But in the nimble Caoilte’s ear He breathed his tale — O, tale of grief ! — That in him we saw the Fenian chief ! Three sudden shouts to hear the tale Our host raised loud and shrill — . The badgers started in the vale, The wild deer on the hill. Then Conan fierce unsheathed his sword. And curs’d the Fenian king and his horde. “ If true thy tale,” he cries, “ This blade thy head would off thee smite ; For ne’er my valour in the fight, Nor prowess didst thou prize. Would that like thee, both old and weak. Were the Fenians all, that my sword might reek In their craven blood, and their cairns might swell On the grassy lea ! — for since Cumhail fell, O’ercome in fateful strife By Morni’s son of the golden shields, Our sons thou hast sent to foreign fields, Or of freedom reft and life.” “ Bald, senseless wretch ! our care is due To Finn’s sad state, or thy mouth should rue A speech so vile, and soon atone With shattered teeth and fractured bone,’ 116 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Indignant Caoilte spoke. With equal wrath said Oscar stern, “ Audacious babbler ! silence learn — “ What foe e’er felt thy stroke ?” Then Conan thus — “ Vain boy ! be dumb, Or tell what deed of fame Did e’er thy Finn, but gnaw his thumb* Until the marrow came ? We, not Clan-Boske, did the deed Whene’er we saw the foemen bleed. Behind thee, Oisin, may thy son A puling, whining chanter run, And bear white book and bell. His words I scorn — in open fight. Which of us twain is in the right Let swords, not speeches, tell.” Him answered Oscar’s trusty steel ; When craven Conan, taught to feel, And trembling for his worthless life, The Fenians prayed to end the strife, And stay rough Oscar’s blade. Between them swift the Fenians rushed, The rising storm of battle hushed, And Oscar’s vengeance stayed. Of Cumhail’s son then Caoilte sought What wizard Danan foe had wrought Such piteous change— and Finn replied, “ ’Twas Guillin’s daughter — me she bound By a sacred spell to search the tide Till the ring she lost was found.” Then Conan spoke in altered mood — “ Safe may we ne’er depart, Till we see restored our chieftain good, Or Guillin rue his art !” Then close around our chief we throng, And bear him on our shields along. Eight days and nights the caverned seat Where Guillin made his dark retreat We dig with sleepless care; Pour through its windings close the light. Till we see, in all her radiance bright, Spring forth th’ enchantress fair. A chalice she bore of angled mould, f And sparkling rich with gems and gold ; Its brimming fount in the hand she placed Of Finn, whoso looks small beauty graced. Feeble he drinks — the potion speeds Through every joint and pore ; To palsied age fresh youth succeeds — Finn of the swift and slender steeds Becomes himself once more. His shape, his strength, his bloom returns, And in manly glory bright he burns ! We gave three shouts that rent the air — The badgers fled the vale : And now, O sage of frugal care, Hast thou not heard the tale ? D. * A note in Miss Brooke’s translations informs us that “ Finn was re- proached with deriving all his courage from his foreknowledge of events, and chewing his thumb for prophetic information.” t Quadrangular— the ancient cup of the Irish, called meadar. Specimens of it may be seen in the Antiquarian Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. Discretion This is a nice perception of what is right and proper under the circumstances in which a person is called to act. It may be illustrated by the feelers of the cat, which are long hairs placed upon her nose, with which she readily measures the space between sticks and stones through which she desires to pass, and thus determines, by a delicate touch, whether it is sufficiently large to let her go through without being scratched. Thus discretion appreciates diffi- culties, dangers, and obstructions around, and enables a per- son to decide upon the proper course of action. “ There are many more shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none so useful as discretion. It is this which gives a value to all the rest, which sets them at work, and turns them to the advantage of the person who is possessed of them. Without it, learning is pedantry and wit impertinence; nay, virtue itself often looks like weakness. Discretion not only shows itself in words, but in all the circumstances of action ; and is like an agent of Providence, to guide and direct us in the or- dinary chances of life.” But how shall discretion be cultivated in children ? Chiefly by example. It is a virtue especially committed to the cultivation of the mother. She may do much to promote it, by rebuking acts of imprudence, and be- stowing due encouragement upon acts of discretion. Let the mother remember that discretion is important to men, and see that she cherishes it in her sons ; let her remember that it is essential to women, and make sure of it in her daughters — • Dr Charming. THE IRISH MATCHMAKER. BY WILLIAM CARLETON. Though this word at a glance may be said to explain itself, yet lest our English or Scotch readers might not clearly un- derstand its meaning, we shall briefly give them such a defini- tion of it as will enable them to comprehend it in its lull extent. The Irish Matchmaker, then, is a person selected to conduct reciprocity treaties of the heart between lovers themselves in the first instance, or, where the principal parties are indiffer- ent, between their respective families, when the latter happen to he of opinion that it is a safer and more prudent thing to consult the interest of the young folk rather than their incli- nation. In short, the Matchmaker is the person engaged in carrying from one party to another all the messages, letters, tokens, presents, and secret communications of the tender pas- sion, in whatever shape or character the said parties may deem it proper to transmit them. The Matchmaker, therefore, is I a general negotiator in all such matters of love or interest as are designed by the principals or their friends to terminate in the honourable bond of marriage ; for with nothing morally improper or licentious, or approaching to the character of an intrigue, will the regular Irish Matchmaker have any thing at all to do. The Matchmaker, therefore, after all, is only the creature of necessity, and is never engaged by an Irishman unless to remove such preliminary obstacles as may stand in the way of his own direct operations. In point of fact, the Matchmaker is nothing but a pioneer, who, after the plan of the attack has been laid down, clears away some of the rougher difficulties, until the regular advance is made, the siege opened in due form, and the citadel successfully entered by the prin- cipal party. We have said thus much to prevent our fair neighbours of England and Scotland from imagining that because such a character as the Irish Matchmaker exists at all, Irishmen are personally deficient in that fluent energy which is so necessary to express the emotions of the tender passion. Addison has proved to the satisfaction of any rational mind that modesty and assurance are inseparable — that a blushing face may ac- company a courageous, nay, a desperate heart— and that, on the contrary, an abundance of assurance may be associated with a very handsome degree of modesty. In love matters, I grant, modesty is the forte of an Irishman, whose character in this respect has been unconsciously hit off by the poet. Indeed he may truly be termed vultus ingenui puer, ingenuique pudoris ; which means, when translated, that in looking for a wife an Irishman is “a boy of an easy face, and remarkable modesty.” At the head of the Matchmakers, and far above all compe- titors, stands the Irish Midwife, of whose abilities in this way it is impossible to speak too highly. And let not our readers imagine that the duties which devolve upon her, as well as upon matchmakers in general, are slight or easily discharged. T o conduct a matter of this kind ably, great tact, knowledge of character, and very delicate handling, are necessary. To be incorruptible, faithful to both parties, not to give offence to either, and to obviate detection in case of secret bias or par- tiality, demand talents of no common order. The amount of fortune is often to be regulated — the good qualities of the par- ties placed in the best, or, what is often still more judicious, in the most suitable light — and when there happens to be a scarcity of the commodity, it must be furnished from her own invention. The miser is to be softened, the contemptuous tone of the purse-proud bodagh lowered without offence, the crafty cajoled, and sometimes the unsuspecting overreached. Now, all this requires an able hand, as matchmaking in gene- ral among the Irish does. Indeed I question whether the wiliest politician that ever attempted to manage a treaty of THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 117 peace between two hostile powers could have a more difficult card to play than often falls to the lot of the Irish Matchmaker. The Midwife, however, from her confidential intercourse with the sex, and the respect with which both young and old of them look upon her, is peculiarly well qualified for the office. She has seen the youth shoot up and ripen into the young man — she has seen the young man merged into the husband, and the husband very frequently lost in the wife. Now, the marks and tokens by which she noted all this are as perceptible in the young of this day as they were in the young of fifty years ago ; she consequently knows from experience how to manage each party, so as to bring about the consummation which she so devoutly wishes. Upon second thoughts, however, we are inclined to think after all that the right of precedence upon this point does not exclu- sively belong to the Midwife ; or at least, that there exists an- other person who contests it with her so strongly that we are scarcely capable of determining their respective claims : this is the Cosherer. The Cosherer in Ireland is a woman who goes from one relation’s house to another, from friend to friend, from acquaintance to acquaintance— is always welcome, and uniformly well treated. The very extent of her connexions makes her independent ; so that if she receives an affront, otherwise a cold reception, from one, she never feels it to affect her comfort, but on the contrary carries it about with her in the shape of a complaint to the rest, and details it with such a rich spirit of vituperative enjoyment, that we believe in our soul some of her friends, knowing what healthful oc- cupation it gives her, actually affront her from pure kindness. The Cosherer is the very impersonation of industry. Unless when asleep, no mortal living ever saw her hands idle. Her principal employment is knitting; and whether she sits, stands, or walks, there she is with the end of the stocking under her arm, knit, knit, knitting. She also sews and quilts ; and whenever a quilting is going forward, she can tell you at once in what neighbour’s house the quilting-frame was used last, and where it is now to be had ; and when it has been got, she is all bustle and business, ordering and commanding about her — her large red three-cornered pincushion hanging conspi- cuously at her side, a lump of chalk in one hand, and a coil of twine in the other, ready to mark the pattern, whether it be wave, square, or diamond. The Cosherer is always dressed with neatness and comfort, but generally wears something about her that reminds one of a day gone by, and may be considered as the lingering rem- nant of some old custom that has fallen into disuse. This, slight as it is, endears her to many, for it stands out as the memorial of some old and perhaps affecting associations, which at its very appearance are called out from the heart in which they were slumbering. It is impossible to imagine a happier life than that of the Cosherer. She has evidently no trouble, no care, no children, nor any of the various claims of life, to disturb or encumber her. Wherever she goes she is made, and finds herself, per- fectly at home. The whole business of her life is carrying about intelligence, making and projecting matches, singing old songs and telling old stories, which she frequently does with a feeling and unction not often to be met with. She will sing you the different sets and variations of the old airs, repeat the history and traditions of old families, recite ranns, interpret dreams, give the origin of old local customs, and tell a ghost story in a style that would make your hair stand on end. She is a bit of a doctress, too — an extensive herbalist, and is very skilful and lucky among children. In short, she is a perfect Gentleman’s Magazine in her way — a regular repertory of traditionary lore, a collector and distributor of social antiqui- ties, dealing in every thing that is timeworn or old, and hand- ling it with such a quiet and antique air, that one would ima- gine her life to be a life not of years but of centuries, and that she had passed the greater portion of it, long as it was, in ‘Gvandering by the shores of old romance.” Such a woman the reader will at once perceive is a formi- dable competitor for popular confidence with the Midwife. Indeed there is but one consideration alone upon which we would be inclined to admit that the latter has any advantage over her— and it is, that she is the Midwife ; a word which is a tower of strength to her, not only against all professional opponents, but against such analogous characters as would intrude even upon any of her subordinate or collateral offices. As matchmakers, it is extremely difficult to decide between her and the Cosherer ; so much so, indeed, that we are dis- posed to leave the claim for priority undetermined. In this respect each pulls in the same harness ; and as they are so well matched, w r e will allow them to jog on side by side, drawing the youngsters of the neighbouring villages slowly but surely towards the land of matrimony. In humble country life, as in high life, we find in nature the same principles and motives of action. t Let not the speculat- ing mother of rank, nor the husband-hunting dowager, ima- gine for a moment that the plans, stratagems, lures, and trap- falls, with which they endeavour to secure some wealthy fool for their daughters, are not known and practised — ay, and with as much subtlety and circumvention too — by the very humblest of their own sex. In these matters they have not one whit of superiority over the lowest, sharpest, and most fraudulent gossip of a country village, where the arts of women are almost as sagaciously practised, and the small scandal as ably detailed, as in the highest circles of fashion. The third great master of the art of matchmaking is the Shanahus, who is nothing more or less than the counterpart of the Cosherer ; for as the Cosherer is never of the male sex, so the Shanahus is never of the female. With respect to their habits and modes of life, the only difference between them is, that as the Cosherer is never idle, so the Shanahus never works ; and the latter is a far superior authority in old popular pro- phecy and genealogy. As a matchmaker, however, the Sha- nahus comes infinitely short of the Cosherer ; for the truth is, that this branch of diplomacy falls naturally within the ma- noeuvring and intriguing spirit of a woman. Our readers are not to understand that in Ireland there exists, like the fiddler or dancing-master, a distinct character openly known by the appellation of matchmaker. No such thing. On the contrary, the negociations they undertake are all performed under false colours. The business, infact, is close and secret, and always carried on with the profoundest mys- tery, veiled by the sanction of some other ostensible occupation. One of the best specimens of the kind we ever met was old Rose Mohan, or, as she was called, Moan, a name, we doubt, fearfully expressive of the consequences which too frequently followed her own negociations. Rose w r as a tidy creature of middle size, who always went dressed in a short crimson cloak much faded, a striped red and blue drugget petticoat, and a heather-coloured gown of the same fabric. When walking, which she did with the aid of a light hazel staff hooked at the top, she generally kept the hood of the cloak over her head, which gave to her whole figure a picturesque effect ; and when she threw it back, one could not help admiring how well her small but symmetrical features agreed with the dowd cap of white linen, with a plain muslin border, which she wore. A pair of blue stockings and sharp-pointed shoes high in the heels completed her dress. Her features w^ere good-natured and Irish ; but there lay over the whole countenance an ex- pression of quickness and sagacity, contracted no doubt by a habitual exercise of penetration and circumspection. At the time I saw her she was very old, and I believe had the repu- tation of being the last in that part of the country who was known to go about from house to house spinning on the dis- taff, an instrument which has now passed away, being more conveniently replaced by the spinning-wheel. The manner and style of Rose’s visits were different from those of any other who could eome to a farmer’s house, or even to an humble cottage, for to the inmates of both were her services equally rendered. Let us suppose, for instance, the whole female part of a farmer’s family assembled of a sum- mer evening about five o’clock, each engaged in some domes- tic employment : in runs a lad who has been sporting about, breathlessly exclaiming, whilst his eyes are lit up with delight, “Mother! mother! here’s Rose Moan coming down the bc- reen !” “ Get out, avick ; no, she’s not.” “ Bad cess to me but she is ; that I may never stir if she isn’t t Now 1” The whole family are instantly at the door to see if it be she, with the exception of the prettiest of them all, Kitty, who sits at her wheel, and immediately begins to croon over an old Irish air which is sadly out of tune; and well do we know, not- withstanding the mellow tones of that sweet voice, why it is so, and also why that youthful cheek in which health and beauty meet, is now the colour of crimson. “ Oh, Rosha, acushla, cead millia failte ghud ! (Rose, dar- lin’, a hundred thousand welcomes to you !) Och, musha, what kep you away so long. Rose ? Sure you won’t lave us this month o’ Sundays, Rose ?” are only a few of the cordial expres- sions of hospitality and kindness with which she is received. But Kitty, whose cheek but a moment ago was carmine, why is it now pale as the lily ? 118 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. “ An’ what news, Rose ?” asks one of her sisters ; “ sure you’ll tell us every thing ; won’t you ?” “ Throth, avillish, / have no had news , any how — an’ as to tellin’ you all — Biddy, Ihig dumh, let me alone. No, I have no bad news, God be praised, but good news .” Kitty’s cheek is again crimson, and her lips, ripe and red as cherries, expand with the sweet soft smile of her country, ex- hibiting a set of teeth for which many a countess would barter thousands, and giving out a breath more delicious than the fragrance of a summer meadow. Oh, no wonder, indeed, that the kind heart of Rose contains in its recesses a message to her as tender as ever was transmitted from man to woman ! “ An,’ Kitty, acushla, where’s the welcome from you, that’s my favourite? Now don’t be jealous, childi’e ; sure you all know she is, an’ ever an’ always was.” “ If it’s not upon my lips, it’s in my heart, Rose, an’ from that heart you’re welcome !” She rises up and kisses Rose, who gives her one glance of meaning, accompanied by the slightest imaginable smile, and a gentle but significant pressure of the hand, which thrills to her heart and diffuses a sense of ecstacy through her whole spirit. Nothing now remains but the opportunity, which is equally sought for by Rose and her, to hear without inter- ruption the purport of her lover’s communication ; and this we leave to lovers to imagine. In Ireland, however odd it may seem, there occur among the very poorest classes some of the hardest and most penu- rious bargains in matchmaking that ever were heard of or known. Now, strangers might imagine that all this close hig- gling proceeds from a spirit naturally near and sordid, but it is not so. The real secret of it lies in the poverty and neces- sity of the parties, and chiefly in the bitter experience of their parents, who, having come together in a state of destitution, are anxious, each as much at the expense of the other as pos- sible, to prevent their children from experiencing the same privation and misery which they themselves felt. Many a time have matches been suspended or altogether broken off because one party refuses to give his son a slip of a pig-, or another his daughter a pair of blankets ; and it was no un- usual thing for a matchmaker to say, “ Never mind ; I have it all settled but the slip.” One might naturally wonder why those who are so shrewd and provident upon this subject do not strive to prevent early marriages where the poverty is so great. So unquestionably they ought, but it is a settled usage of the country, and one too which Irishmen have never been in the habit of considering as an evil. We have no doubt that if they once began to reason upon it as such, they would be very strongly disposed to check a custom which has been the means of involving themselves and their unhappy offspring in misery, penury, and not unfrequently in guilt itself. Rose, like many others in this world who are not conscious of the same failing, smelt strongly of the shop ; in other words, her conversation had a strong matrimonial tendency. No two beings ever lived so decidedly antithetical to each other in this point of view as the Matchmaker and the Keener. Mention the name of an individual or a family to the Keener, and the medium through which her memory passes back to them is that of her professed employment — a mourner at wakes and funerals. “ Don’t you know young Kelly of Tamlaght?” “ I do, avick,” replies the Keener, “ and what about him ?” “ Why, he was married to-day mornin’ to ould Jack M‘Clus- key’s daughter.” “ Well, God grant them luck an’ happiness, poor things ! I do indeed renumber his father’s wake an’ funeral well — ould Risthard Kelly of Tamlaght— a dacent corpse he made for his years, an’ well he looked. But indeed I knewn by the colour that sted in his cheeks, an’ the limbs remainin’ soople for the twenty-four hours afther his departure, that some of the family ’ud follow him afore the year was out ; an’ so she did. The youngest daughter, poor thing, by raison of a could she got, over-heatin’ herself at a dance, was stretched beside him that very day was eleven months ; and God knows it was from the heart my grief came for her — to see the poor handsome colleen laid low so soon. But when a gallopin’ consumption sets in, avourneen, sure we all know what’s to happen. In Crockaniska churchyard they sleep — the Lord make both their beds in heaven this day !” The very reverse of this, but at the same time as inveterately professional, was Rose Moan. “ God save you, Rose.” “ God save you kindly, avick. Eh ! — let me look at you. Aren’t you red Billy M'Guirk’s son from Ballagh ?” “ I am, Rose. An’, Rose, how is yourself an’ the world get- tin’ an ?” “ Can’t complain, dear, in such times. How are yez all at home, alanna?” “ Faix, middlin’ well, Rose, thank God an’ you You heard of my granduncle’s death, big Ned M‘Coul ?” “ I did, avick, God rest him. Sure it’s well I remimber his weddin’, poor man, by the same atoken that I know one that helped him on wid it a thrifle. He was married in a blue coat and buckskins, an’ wore a scarlet waistcoat that you’d see three miles off. Oh, well I remimber it. An’ whin he was settin’ out that mornin’ to the priest’s house, * Ned,’ says I, an’ I fwhislispered him, ‘ dhrop a button on the right knee afore you get the words said.’ ‘ Thighum,’ said he, wid a smile, an’ he slipped ten thirteens into my hand as he spoke. ‘ I’ll do it,’ said he, ‘ and thin a fig for the fairies !’ — becase you see if there’s a button of the right knee left unbuttoned, the fairies — this day’s Friday, God stand betune us and harm ! — can do neither hurt nor harm to sowl or body, an’ sure that’s a great blessin’, avick. He left two fine slips o’ girls behind him.” “ He did so — as good-lookin’ girls as there’s in the parish.” “ Faix, an’ kind mother for them, avick. She’ll be mar- ryin’ agin, I’m judgin’, she bein’ sich a fresh good-lookin’ wo- man.” “ Why, it’s very likely, Rose.” “ Throth its natural, achora. What can a lone woman do wid such a large farm upon her hands, widout having some one to manage it for her, an’ prevint her from bein’ imposed on ? But indeed the first thing she ought to do is to marry off her two girls widout loss of time, in regard that it’s hard to say how a stepfather an’ thim might agree ; and I’ve often known the mother herself, when she had a fresh family cornin’ an her, to be as unnatural to her fatherless childre as if she was a stranger to thim, and that the same blood did’nt run in their veins. Not saying that Mary M‘Coul will or would act that way by her own ; for indeed she’s come of a kind ould stock, an’ ought to have a good heart. Tell her, avick, when you see her, that I’ll spind a day or two wid her — let me see — to-morrow will be Palm Sunday — why, about the Ais- thor holidays.” “ Indeed I will, Rose, with great pleasure.” “ An’ fwhishsper, dear, jist tell her that I’ve a thing to say to her — that I had a long dish o’ discoorse about her wid a friend o’ mine. You wont forget now?” “ Oh the dickens a forget !” “ Thank you, dear : God mark you to grace, avourneen ! When you’re a little ouldher, maybe I’ll be a friend to you yet.” This last intimation was given with a kind of mysterious benevolence, very visible in the complacent shrewdness of her face, and with a twinkle in the eye, full of grave humour and considerable self-importance, leaving the mind of the person she spoke to in such an agreeable uncertainty as rendered it a matter of great difficulty to determine whether she was se- rious or only in jest, but at all events throwing the onus of inquiry upon him. The ease and tact with which Rose could involve two young persons of opposite sexes in a mutual attachment, were very remarkable. In truth, she was a kind of matrimonial incen- diary, who went through the country holding her torch now to this heart and again to that — first to one and then to an- other, until she had the parish more cr less in a flame. And when we consider the combustible materials of which the Irish heart is composed, it is no wonder indeed that the labour of taking the census in Ireland increases at such a rapid rate during the time that elapses between the periods of its being made out. If Rose, for instance, met a young woman of her acquaintance accidentally — and it was wonderful to think how regularly these accidental meetings took place she would address her probably somewhat as follows : “ Arra, Biddy Sullivan, how are you, a-colleen?” “ Faix, bravely, thank you, Rose. How is yourself?” “ Indeed, thin, sorra bit o’ the health we can complain of, Bhried, barrin’ whin this pain in the back comes upon us. The last time I seen your mother, Biddy, she was complainin’ of a weid* I hope she’s betther, poor woman?” * “ Hut ! bad scran to the thing ails her ! She has as light a foot as e’er a one of us, an’ can dance ‘ Jackson’s mornin’ brush’ as well as ever she could.” “ Throth, an’ I’m proud to hear it. Och ! och ! ‘Jackson’s mornin’ brush !’ and it was she that could do it. Sure I re- * A feverish cold. 119 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. mimber her wedding-day like yestherday. Ay, far an near her fame wint as a dancer, an’ the clanest-made girl that ever came from Lisbuie. Like yestherday do I renumber it, an’ how the squire himself an’ the ladies from the Big House came down to see herself an’ your father, the bride and groom — an’ it wasn’t on every hill head you’d get sich a couple — dancin’ the same 1 Jackson’s mornin’ brush.’ Oh ! it was far and near her fame wint for dancin’ that — An’ is there no news wid you, Bhried, at all at all ?” “ The sorra word, Rose : where ud I get news ? Sure it’s yourself that’s always on the fut that ought to have the news forv.s, Rose alive.” “ An’ maybe I have too. I was spaikin’ to a friend o’ mine about you the other day.” “ A friend o’ yours, Rose ! Why, what friend could it be ?” “ A fi’iend o’ mine — ay, an’ of yours too. Maybe you have more friends than you think, Biddy — and kind ones too, as far as wishin’ you well goes, ’tany rate. Ay have you, faix, an’ friends that e’er a girl in the parish might be proud to hear named in the one day wid her. Awouh !” “ Bedad we’re in luck, thin, for that’s more than I knew of. An’ who may these great friends of ours be, Rose?” “ Awouh ! Faix, as dacent a boy as ever broke bread the same boy is, ‘ and,’ says he, ‘ if I had goold in bushelfuls, I’d think it too little for that girl ;’ but, poor lad, he’s not aisy or happy in his mind in regard o’ that. ‘ I’m afeard,’ says he, ‘ that she’d put scorn upon me, an’ not think me her aiquals. An’ no more I am,’ says he again, ‘ for where, afther all, would you get the likes of Biddy Sullivan ?’ — Poor boy ! throth my heart aches for him !” “ Well, can’t you fall in love wid him yourself, Rose, who- ever he is ?” “ Indeed, an’ if I was at your age, it would be no shame to me to do so ; but, to tell you the thruth, the sorra often ever the likes of Paul Heffernan came acrass me.” “ Paul Heffernan ! Why, Rose,” replied Biddy, smiling wdtn the assumed lightness of indifference, “ is that your beauty? If it is, why, keep him, an’ make much of him.” “ Oh, wurrah ! the differ there is between the hearts an’ tongues of some people— one from another — -an’ the way they spaik behind others’ backs ! Well, well, I’m sure that wasn’t the way he spoke of you, Biddy ; an’ God forgive you for run- nin’ down the poor boy as you’re doin’. Trogs ! I believe you’re the only girl would do it.” “ Who, me ! I’m not runnin’ him down. I’m neither runnin’ him up nor down. I have neither good nor bad to say about him — the boy’s a black sthranger to me, barrin’ to know his face.” “ Faix, an’ he’s in consate wid you these three months past, an’ intin ds to be at the dance on Friday next, in Jack Gormly’s new house. Now, good bye, alanna ; keep your own counsel till the time comes, an’ mind what I said to you. It’s not behind every ditch the likes of Paul Heffernan grows. Bannaght lhath ! My blessin’ be wid you !” Thus would Rose depart just at the critical moment, for well she knew that by husbanding her information and leaving the heart something to find out, she took the most effectual steps to excite and sustain that kind of interest which is apt ultimately to ripen, even from its own agitation, into the attachment she is anxious to promote. The next day, by a meeting similarly accidental, she comes in contact with Paul Heffernan, who, honest lad, had never probably bestowed a thought upon Biddy Sullivan in his life. “ Morrow ghud, Paul ! — how is your father’s son, ahager ?” “ Morrow ghutelia, Rose ! — my father’s son wants nothin’ but a good wife, Rosha.” “ An’ it’s not every set day or bonfire night that a good wife is to be had, Paul — that is, a good one, as you say ; for, throth, there’s many o’ them in the market sich as they are. I was talkin’ about you to a friend of mine the other day — an’, trogs, I’m afeard you’re notw'orth all the abuse we gave you.” “ More power to you, Rose ! I’m oblaged to you. But who is the friend in the manetime?” “ Poor girl ! Throth, when your name slipped out an her, the point of a rush would take a drop of blood out o’ her cheek, the way she crimsoned up. ‘ An’, Rose,’ says she, ‘ if ever I know you to breathe it to man or mortual, my lips I’ll never open to you to my dyin’ day.’ Trogs, whin I looked at her, an’ the tears standin’ in her purty black eyes, I thought I didn’t see a betther favoured girl, for both face and figure, this many a day, than the same Biddy Sullivan.” “ Biddy Sullivan ! Is that long Jack’s daughter of Car g ah ?” “ The same. But, Paul, avick, if a syllable o’ what I tould 5 J yOU “ Hut, Rose ! honour bright ! Do you think me a stag, that I’d go and inform on you ?” “ Fwhishsper, Paul ; she’ll be at the dance on Friday next in Jack Gormly’s new house. So bannaght lhath, an’ think o’ what I betrayed to you.” Thus did Rose very quietly and sagaciously bind two young hearts together, who probably might otherwise have never for a moment even thought of each other. Of course, when Paul and Biddy met at the dance on the following Friday, the one was the object of the closest attention to the other; and each being prepared to wdtness strong proofs of attachment from the opposite party, every thing fell out exactly according to their expectations. Sometimes it happens that a booby of a fellow during his calf love will employ a male friend to plead his sriit with a pretty girl, who, if the principal party had spunk, might be very walling to marry him. To the credit of our fair country- women, however, be it said, that in scarcely one instance out of twenty does it happen, or has it ever happened, that any of them ever fails to punish the faint heart by bestowing the fair lady upon what is called the blaekfoot or spokesman whom he selects to make love for him. In such a case it is very natu- rally supposed that the latter will speak two words for him- self and one for his friend, and indeed the result bears out the supposition. Now, nothing on earth gratifies the heart of the established Matchmaker so much as to hear of such a dis- aster befalling a spoony. She exults over his misfortune for months, and publishes his shame to the uttermost bounds of her own little world, branding him as “ a poor pitiful crature, who had not the courage to spaik up for himself or to employ them that could.” In fact, she entertains much the same feel- ing against him that a regular physician would towards some weak-minded patient, who prefers the knavish ignorance of a quack to the skill and services of an able and educated medical practitioner. Characters like Rose are fast disappearing in Ireland ; and indeed in a country where the means of life were generally in- adequate to the wants of the population, they were calculated, however warmly the heart may look back upon the memory of their services, to do more harm than good, by inducing young folks to enter into early and improvident marriages. They certainly sprang up from a state of society not tho- roughly formed by proper education and knowdedge— vvhere the language of a people, too, was in many extensive disti’icts in such a state of transition as in the interchange of affection to render an interpreter absolutely necessary. We have our- selves witnessed marriages where the husband and wife spoke the one English and the other Irish, each being able with dif- ficulty to understand the other. In all such cases Rose was invaluable. She spoke Irish and English fluently, and indeed was acquainted with every thing in the slightest or most re- mote degree necessary to the conduct of a love affair, from the first glance up until the priest had pronounced the last words — or, to speak more correctly, until “ the throwing of the stocking.” Rose was invariably placed upon the hob, which is the seat of comfort and honour at a farmer’s fireside, and there she sat neat and tidy, detailing all the news of the parish, telling them how such a marriage was one unbroken honeymoon — a sure proof by the way that she herself had a hand in it — and again, how another one did not turn out well, and she said so ; “ there was always a bad dhrop in the Haggarties ; but, my dear, the girl herself was for him ; so as she made her own bed she must lie in it, poor thing. Any way, thanks be to good- ness I had nothing to do wid it !” Rose was to be found in every fair and market, and always at a pai’ticular place at a certain hour of the day, where the parties engaged in a courtship were sure to meet her on these occasions. She took a chirping glass, but never so as to be- come unsteady. Great deference was paid to every thing she said; and if this w r as not conceded to her, she extorted it with a high hand. Nobody living could drink a health with half the comic significance that Rose threw into her eye when say- ing, “ Well, young couple, here’s everything as you wish it! Rose’s motions from place to place wure usually very slow, and for the best reason in the world, because she was fre- quently interrupted. For instance, if she met a young’ man on her way, ten to one but he stood and held a long and ear- nest conversation with her ; and that it was both important and confidential, might easily be gathered from the fact that 120 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. whenever a stranger passed, it was either suspended altoge- ther, or carried on in so low a tone as to be inaudible. This held equally good with the girls. Many a time have I seen them retracing their steps, and probably walking back a mile or two, all the time engaged in discussing some topic evidently of more than ordinary interest to themselves. And when they shook hands and bade each other good bye, heavens ! at what a pace did the latter scamper homewards across fields and ditches, in order to make up for the time she had lost ! Nobody ever saw Rose receive a penny of money, and yet when she took a fancy, it was beyond any doubt that she has often been known to assist young folks in their early strug- gles ; but in no instance was the slightest aid ever afforded to any one whose union she had not herself been instrument al in bringing about. As to the when and the how she got this money, and the great quantity of female apparel which she was known to possess, we think we see our readers smile at the simplicity of those who may not be able to guess the several sources from whence she obtained it. One other fact we must mention before we close this sketch of her character. There were some houses — we wall not, for we dare not, say how many — into which B,ose was never seen to enter. This, however, was not her fault. Every one knew that what she did, she did always for the best ; and if some small bits of execration were occasionally levelled at her, it was not more than the parties levelled at each other. All marriages cannot be happy ; and indeed it was a creditable proof of Rose Moan’s sagacity that so few of those effected through her instrumentality were unfortunate. Poor Rose! matchmaking was the great business of your simple but not absolutely harmless life. You are long since, we trust, gone to that happy place where there are neither marryings nor givings in marriage, but where you will have a long Sabbath from your old habits and tendencies. We love for more reasons than either one or two to think of your faded crimson cloak, peaked shoes, hazel staff, clear grey eye, and nose and chin that were so full of character. As you used to say yourself, bannaglit lliath ! — my blessing be with you ! RANDOM SKETCHES.— No I. FELINE RECOLLECTIONS. One result of perusing such interesting papers on “ the In- tellectuality of Domestic Animals” as that which lately ap- peared in the Dublin University Magazine, should be the pub- lication of similar facts ; another, the promotion of that kind- ness towards the inferior creation which is still, alas ! so spar- ingly manifested. I therefore propose stuffing a cranny of the Irish Penny Journal with a few particulars relating, firstly, to the maternal and filial piety of the cat ; secondly, to the humanity (or, psychologically speaking, brutality) of the same animal. Of the facts illustrative of the former vir- tues I was an eye-witness— those illustrative of the latter I had from a member of the family in which they occurred. In my early home two cats, a mother and a son, formed part of the establishment. The former, a dark-grey matron, rejoiced in the euphonious name of Smut— the colour of the latter may be inferred from his appellation, F ox. Smut was, to be brief, the most lady -like cat I ever saw'; Fox was a huge Dan Donnelly of a brute, a very hero of the slates, and the terror of all the cats in the neighbouxhood, save one : he walloped them right and left ; and many a smirking sylph of the gutters, wont to pick her steps daintily to avoid all pos- sible contact with the wet, was seen to scamper away scream- ing when Fox appeared in view, for truth obliges me to re- cord that he spared neither age nor sex. Nor was he formi- dable to the brute creation alone — humanity often suffered under his visitations. There was no keener forager among the larders and pantries of the neighbourhood. A poor danc- ing-master who had a way of leaving his window open was most frequently victimized ; for as the said window w r as con- venient to the low roof of a back house, our hero used to quietly walk in and purvey to his liking. In the recess of a chimney, and several feet above the roof of our house, was a kind of small platform, where Master Fox was usually pleased to regale himself on his ill-gotten gains. One day I saw him with a calf’s or lamb’s pluck in his mouth, twice as long as himself, darting aloft towards his refectory. The weight of the booty several times dragged him back ; but he persevered till he gained his point : it wms a sight ludicrous beyond all imagining. But as it urns not every day Master Fox could mulct the circumambient dancing-master in a beef-steak or a calf’s pluck, he often returned home hungry ; and I am now come to the point of proving the “ intellectuality” of Madam Smut, as evidenced in her maternal piety. Within the kitchen-door lay a mat, in a hole in which she daily hid a portion of her lights. She w r as generally dozing before the fire when her son came in for the night, and whenever I happened to follow' him and watch her movements, she invariably looked up to see whether he had scented the provender : and wffien satisfied on that point, coiled herself up to sleep again. But her maternal tenderness never interfered with her matronly dignity. Woe betide Fox, if, in proceeding to take his place at the fire, he attempted to pass between her and it. She would instantly spring up and deal him a dab, which prevented for that time a repetition of the indecorum. I have seen him steal most cautiously along the forbidden path in the presumption that she was asleep, but I do not remember to have ever seen him effect a passage. I have said that he leathered all the cats about him save one — that one was his mother. Determined pugilist and fire-eater as he was, he never returned the dab she gave him. The fact of which I was only an ear-witness may be briefly related. A lady of this city observing one day a wretched kitten which had been ruthlessly flung into the street before her residence, had it taken into the house and carefully tended. Some time after, when it had growm into a thorough-bred mouser, a strange cat with a broken leg hobbled into the yard, where it w r as discovered by the foundling, which immediately took charge of it, and regularly allotted to the sufferer a por- tion of its own daily food till it w r as sufficiently recovered to shift for itself. As a warm friend of the inferior creation, I w'as much pleased to find their cause pleaded towards the close of the article, which gave rise to the present sketch, and a just en- comium passed on the author of “the Rights of Animals.” And much was I gratified to find that the same cause appears to maintain an abiding interest in the bosom of the first of living poets. “ C. O.” alludes as follows to a conversation he had with Mr Wordsworth on the subject : — “ I remember an observation made to me by one of the most gifted of the hu- man race— one of the stars of this generation — the poet of na- ture and of feeling — the good and the great Mr Wordsworth. Having the honour of a conversation with him after he had made a tour through Ireland, I in the course of it asked what was the thing that most struck his observation here as making us differ from the English ; and he without hesitation said it was the ill-treatment of our horses : that his sold was often, too often, sick within him at the way in which he saw these crea- tures of God abused.” One evening, which I had the happi- ness of spending at Rydal Mount, the very same subject was broached by Mr W. Defend my countrymen I could not, but I parried the attack by showing that other segments of the united kingdom had little right to boast over them in this particular. This I proved by adverting to the notorious oat- skinning of London — a horror unknown in Ireland, bad as we are— and to certain atrocious cruelties which had just been perpetrated on some horses in Sutherland (though I must con- fess that I know too little of Scotland to pronounce whether its national character is tarnished by cruelty to animals or not). And much was I surprised when the son of the poet threw discredit on the character of one of the first of London newspapers, from which I had cited a recent case in proof of my assertion. It was in 1833 I visited Rydal Mount. Should this paper reach the eye of Mr W. jun., he may find my state- ment corroborated, and the perpetration of the barbarous trade demonstrated, by referring to the case of Elizabeth Ro- gerson, an old offender, who in 1839 was condemned to the ridiculously lenient penalty of two months’ imprisonment for the crime, without hard labour. A diametrically opposite opinion respecting the treatment of horses in Ireland was once expressed to me by another English gentleman of some celebrity in the religious world. He passed an encomium on the kindness to animals observable in this country, from the habit he had noticed among the drivers of jaunting-cars, dur- ing his short stay in Dublin, of feeding their horses from their hands with a wisp of hay at leisure moments — a pitch of hu- manity just equivalent to that of greasing the wheels of their vehicles. Printed and published every Saturday by GUNN and CAMERON, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin ; and sold by all Booksellers. THE PENNY JOURNAL. Number 16. SATURDAY, OCTOBER IT, 1840. Volume I. THF, CASTLE AND LAKE OF INCHIQU1N, COUNTY OF CLARE. Connemara itself, now so celebrated for its lakes and moun- tains, was not less unknown a few years since than the greater portion of the county of Clare. Without roads, or houses of entertainment for travellers, its magnificent coast and other scenery were necessarily unvisited bv the pleasure tourists, and but little appreciated even by their inhabitants themselves. But Clare can no longer be said to be an unvisited district : the recent formation of roads has opened to observation many features of interest previously inaccessible to the traveller, and its singular coast scenery — the most sublimely magnifi- cent in the British islands, if not in Europe — has at least been made known to the public by topographical and scientific explorers — it has become an attractive locality to artists and pleasure tourists, and will doubtless be visited by increasing numbers of such persons in each successive year. There is however as yet in this county too great a deficiency in the number of respectable houses of entertainment suited to the habits of pleasure tourists ; for though the wealthier and more educated classes in the British empire are becoming daily a more travelling and picturesque-hunting- genus, they will not be content to live on fine scenery, but must have food for the body as well as for the mind ; and truly they must be enthusiastic lovers of the picturesque, who, to gratify their taste, will subject themselves to the vicissitudes of such an un- certain climate as ours, without the certainty of such consol- ing comforts as are afforded in a clean and comfortable inn. Yet we do not despair of seeing this want soon supplied. Wherever there is a demand for a commodity it will not be long wanting ; and the people of Clare are too sagacious not to perceive, however slowly, the practical wisdom of holding out every inducement of this kind to those who might be dis- posed to visit them and spend their money among them. The first step necessary, however, to produce such results in any little frequented district, is to make its objects of interest known to the public by the pencil and the pen — the rest will follow in due course ; and our best efforts, such as they are, shall not be unexerted towards effecting such an important good as well for Clare as for many other as yet little known localities of our country. Clare is indeed on many accounts descrying of greater atteai 122 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. lion than it has hitherto received. It is a county rich in attractions for the geologist and naturalist, and interesting in the highest degree to the lovers of the picturesque. With a surface singularly broken and diversified, full of mountains, hills, lakes, and rivers, dotted all over -with every class of an- cient remains, its scenery is peculiarly Irish, and though of a somewhat melancholy aspect, it is never wanting in a poetic and historic interest. Such a district is not indeed exactly suited to the tastes of the common scenery-hunter, for it pos- sesses but little of that woody and artificially adorned scenery which he requires, and can alone enjoy ; and hence it has usually been described by tourists and topographers with a coldness which shows how little its peculiarities had impressed their feelings, and how incompetent they were to communicate to others a just estimate of its character. Let us take as an example the notice given by the writers of Lewis’s Topogra- phical Dictionary, of one of the Clare beauties of which the natives are most proud— -the caverns called the To-meens or To-mines, near Kiltanan: — . “ At Kiltanan is a succession of limestone caverns, through which a rivulet takes its course : these are much visited in summer ; many petrified shells are found in the limestone, some of which are nearly perfect, and — very curious /” This it must be confessed is cold enough ; but the descrip- tion of the same locality given by our friend the author of the Guide through Ireland, is, as our readers will see, not a whit warmer. It is as follows : — “ A mile from Tulla is Kiltanan, the handsome residence of James Moloney, Esq. ; and in addition to the pleasure of a well-kept residence, in a naked and sadly neglected country, some interest is excited by the subterraneous course of the rivulet called the To-meens, which waters this demesne !” Now, would any person be induced by such descriptions as these to visit the said To-meens ? We suspect not. But hear with what delight a native writer of this county actually revels in a description of these remarkable caves : — . “ About a mile N. W. of Tulla lies the river of Kiltanan, and Milltown, famous for its ever-amazing and elegant subterra- neous curiosities, called the To-mines : they form a part of the river, midway between Kiltanan House and the Castle of Milltown, extending under ground for a space, which (from its invisible winding banks and crystal meanders) may rea- sonably be computed a quarter of an English mile : they are vaulted, and sheltered with a solid rock, transmitting a suffi- ciency of light and air by intermediate chinks and apertures gradually offering at certain intervals. “ At each side of this Elysian-like river are roomy passages or rather apartments, freely communicating one with the other, and scarcely obvious to any inclemency whatsoever : they are likewise decorated with a sandy beach level along to walk on, whilst the curious spectators are crowned with gar- lands of ivy, hanging in triplets from the impending rocky shades : numbers of the sporting game, the wily fox, the wary hare, and the multiplying rabbit, &c. merrily parading in view of their own singular and various absconding haunts and retreats. Ingenious nature thus entertains her welcome visitants from the entrance to the extremity of the To-mines. Lo ! when parting liberally rewarded, and amply satisfied with such egregious and wonderful exhibitions, a bridge or arch over the same river, curiously composed of solid stone, appears to them as a lively representation of an artificial one. What can the much boasted of Giants’ Causeway, in the north of this kingdom, produce but scenes of horror and obscurity ? whilst the To-mines of the barony of Tulla, like unto the artifi- cial beauties of the Latomi of Syracuse, freely exhibit the most natural and pleasing appearances. Let the literati and curious, after taking the continental tour of Europe, praise and even write of the imaginary beau- ties and natural curiosities of Italy and Switzerland — pray, let them also, on a cool reflection, repair to the county of Clare, view and touch upon the truly subterraneous and really unartificial curiosities of the To-mines : they will im- artially admit that these naturally enchanting rarities may e freely visited, and generously treated of, by the ingenious and learned of this and after ages.” — A Short Tour, or an Impartial and Accurate Description of the County of Clare, by John Lloyd, Ennis ; 1780. Excellent, Mr Lloyd ! Your style is indeed a little pecu- liar, and what some would think extravagant and grotesque ; but you describe with feeling, and we shall certainly visit your To-meens next summer. But in the mean time we must notice another Clare lion, of which you have given us no account — the lake and castle, which we have drawn as an embellishment to our present number. This is a locality respecting the beauty of which there can be no difference of opinion : it has all the circumstances which give interest to a landscape — • wood, water, lake, mountain, and ancient ruin — and the effect of their combination is singularly enhanced by the surprise created by the appearance of a scene so delightful in a district wild, rocky, and unimproved. The lake of Inchiquin is situated in the parish of Kilnaboy, barony of Inchiquin, and is about two miles and a half in cir- cumference. It is bounded on its western side by a range of hills rugged but richly wooded, and rising abruptly from its margin ; and on its southern side, the domain surrounding the residence of the Burton family, and the ornamental grounds of Adelphi, the residence of W. and F. Fitzgerald, Esqrs. con- tribute to adorn a scene of remarkable natural beauty. One solitary island alone appears on its surface, unless that be ranked as one on which the ancient castle is situated, and which may originally have been insulated, though no longer so. The castle, which is situated at the northern side of the lake, though greatly dilapidated, is still a picturesque and in- teresting ruin, consisting of the remains ot a barbican tower, keep, and old mansion-house attached to it ; and its situation on a rocky island or peninsula standing out in the smooth water, with its grey walls relieved by the dark masses of the wooded hills behind, is eminently striking and imposing. It is from this island or peninsula that the barony takes its name ; and from this also the chief of the O’Briens, the Mar- quis of Thomond, derives his more ancient title of Earl of In- chiquin. For a long period it was the principal residence of the chiefs of this great family, to one of whom it unquestion- ably owes its origin ; but we have not been able to ascertain with certainty the name of its founder, or date of its erection. There is, however, every reason to ascribe its foundation to Tiege O’Brien, king or lord of Thomond, who died, accord- ing to the Annals of the Four Masters, in 1466, as he is the first of his name on record who made it his residence, and as its architectural features are most strictly characteristic of the style of the age in which he flourished. But though the erection of this castle is properly to be ascribed to the O’Briens, it is a great error in the writers of Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary to state that it has been from time immemorial the property of the O’Brien family. The locality, as its name indicates, and as history and tradi- tion assure us, was the ancient residence of the O’ Quins, a family of equal antiquity with the O’Briens, and of the same stock namely, the Dal Cas or descendants of Cormac Cas, the son of Ollioll Oluim, who was monarch of Ireland in the beginning of the third century. The O’Quins were chiefs of the clan called Hy-Ifearnan, and their possessions were bounded by those of the O’Deas on the east, the O’Loughlins and Q’Co- nors (Corcomroe) on the west and north-west, the O’Hynes on the north, and the O’Hehirs on the south. At what pe- riod or from what circumstance the O’Quins lost their an- cient patrimony, we have not been able to discover ; but it would appear to have been about the middle or perhaps close of the fourteenth century, to which time their genealogy as chiefs is recorded in that invaluable repository of Irish family history, the Book of Mac Firbis ; and it would seem most pro- bable that they were transplanted by the O’Briens about this period to the county of Limerick, in which they are subse- quently found. Their removal is indeed differently accounted for in a popular legend still current in the barony, and which, according to our recollections of it, is to the following effect : In the youth of the last O’ Quin of Inchiquin, he saw from his residence a number of sw r ans of singular beauty frequenting the west side of the lake, and wandering along its shore. Wishing, if possible, to possess himself of one of them, he was in the habit of concealing himself among the rocks and woods in its vicinity, hoping that he might take them by surprise, and he was at length successful : one of them became his cap- tive, and was secretly carried to his residence, when, to his amazement and delight, throwing off her downy covering, she assumed the form of a beautiful woman, and shortly after be- came his wife. Previous to the marriage, however, she im- posed certain conditions on her lover as the price of her con- sent, to which he Avillingly agreed. These were— first, that their union should be kept secret ; secondly, that he should not receive any visitors at his mansion, particularly those of the O’Briens ; and, lastly, that he should wholly ab- stain from gambling. For some years these conditions were strictly adhered to : they lived in happiness together, and THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 123 two children blessed their union. But it happened unfortu- nately at length that at the neighbouring races at Cood he fell in with the O’Briens, by whom he was hospitably treated ; and being induced to indulge in too much wine, he forgot his engage- ments to his wife, and invited them to his residence on a cer- tain day to repay their kindness to him. His wife heard of this invitation with sadness, but proceeded without remon- strance to prepare the feast for his guests. But she did not grace it with her presence ; and when the company had assem- bled, and were engaged in merriment, she withdrew to her own apartment, to which she called her children, and after embracing them in a paroxysm of grief, which they could not account for, she took her original feathery covering from a press in which it had been kept, arrayed herself in it, and assuming her pristine shape, plunged into the lake, and was never seen afterwards. On the same night, O’ Quin, again forgetful of the promises he had madeher, engaged in play w T ith Tiege-an-Cood O’Brien, the most distinguished of his guests, and lost the whole of his property. The reader is at liberty to believe as much or as little of this story as he pleases : but at all events the legend is valu- able in a historical point of view, as indicating the period when the lands of Inchiquin passed into the hands of the O’Brien family ; nor is it wholly improbable that under the guise of a wild legend may be concealed some indistinct tradition of such a real occurrence as that O’ Quin made a union long kept hidden, with a person of inferior station, and that its discovery drew down upon his head the vengeance of his proud compeers, and led to their removal to another district of the chiefs of the clan Hy-Ifearnan. Be this, however, as it may, the ancient family of O’Quin — more fortunate than most other Irish families of noble origin— has never sunk into obscurity, or been without a representative of aristocratic rank ; and it can at present boast of a representative among the nobility of the empire in the person of its justly presumed chief, the noble Earl of Dunraven. We have thus slightly touched on the history of the O’ Quins, not only as it was connected with that of the localit y which we had to illustrate, but also as necessary to correct a great error into which Burke and other modern genealogists have fallen in their accounts of the origin of the name and descent of this family. Thus it is stated by those writers that “the sur- name is derived from Con Ceadcaha, or Con of the hundred battles, monarch of Ireland in the second century, whose grandson was called Cuinn (rather O’Cuinn), that is, the descendant of Con, when he wielded the sceptre in 2.54.” But those writers should not have been ignorant that Con, which literally signifies the powerful, w r as a common name in Ireland both in Christian and Pagan times ; and still more, they should not have been ignorant of the important fact for a genealogist, that the use of surnames was unknown in Ire- land till the close of the tenth century. The story is altoge- ther a silly fiction ; and as the real origin of the family appears to be now unknown even to themselves, and as their pedigree has never as yet been printed, we are tempted to give it in an English form, translated from the original, pre- served in the books of Lecan and Duald Mac Firbis : — “ Conor O’ Quinn, the son of Donell, Donell, Thomas, . Donell, • Donogh, • Giolla Seanain, Donogh, Morough, Core, who w r as the tutor of Murtogh O’Brien (the great grandson of Brian Boru), ■ Feidhleachair, . Mall, who was henchman to Morough, the son of Brian Boru, whose fate he shared in the battle of Clontarf, Conn, from whom the name is derived.” The pedigree is carried up from this Con through eighteen generations to Cormac Cas, the son of Ollioll Oluim, and the common progenitor of all the tribes of the Dal-Cassians. In this notice we may add, as an evidence of the ancient rank of the family, that the Irish annalists at the year 1188 record the death of Edaoin, the daughter of O’Quin, Queen of Munster, on her pilgrimage at Derry in that year. She appears to have been the wife of Mortogh O’Brien, who died without issue in 1168, and w r as succeeded by his brother Donald More, the last king of all Munster. The Castle of Inchiquin is referred to in the Irish Annals as the residence of the chiefs of the O’Brien family, at the years 1542, 1559, and 1573; but the notices contain no inte- rest to the general reader. P. ANCIENT IRISH LITERATURE— No. II. In a preceding paper under this heading w T e lately gave a sample from the lighter class of native Irish poetry of the seven- teenth century, namely, “ The Woman of Three Cows.” We have now to present our readers with a specimen of a more serious character, belonging to the same age — an Elegy on the death of the Tironian and Tirconnellian princes, who having fled with others from Ireland in the year 1607, and afterwards dying at Rome, were there interred on St Peter’s Hill, in one grave. The poem is the production of O’Donnell’s bard, Ow 7 en Roe Mac an Bhaird, or Ward, who accompanied the family in their flight, and is addressed to Nuala, O’Donnell’s sister, wiio w T as also one of the fugitives. As the circumstances con- nected with the flight of the Northern Earls, and which led to the subsequent confiscation of the six Ulster Counties by James I., may not be immediately in the recollection of many of our readers, it may be proper briefly to state, that their departure from this country w r as caused by the discovery of a letter directed to Sir William Ussher, Clerk of the Council, which w-as dropped in the Council-chamber on the 7th of May, and which accused the Northern chieftains generally of a con- spiracy to overthrow the government. Whether this charge was founded in truth or not, it is not necessary for us to ex- press any opinion ; but as in some degree necessary to the illustration of the poem, and as an interesting piece of hitherto unpublished literature in itself, we shall here, as a preface to the poem, extract the following account of the flight of the Northern Earls, as recorded in the Annals of the Four Mas- ters, and translated by Mr O’Donovan : — . “ Maguire (Cuconnaught) and Donogh, son of Mahon, w r ho w r as son of the Bishop O’Brien, sailed in a ship to Ireland, and put in at the harbour of Swilly. They then took with them from Ireland the Earl O’Neill (Hugh, son of Ferdoragh) and the Earl O’Donnell (Rory, son of Hugh, w ho w T as son of Mag- nus) and many others of the nobles of the province of Ulster. These are the persons w ; ho went with O’Neill, namely, his Countess, Catherina, daughter of Magennis, and her three sons ; Hugh, the Baron, John and Brian ; Art Oge, son of Cormac, who was son of the Baron ; Ferdoragh, son of Con, who was son of O’Neill ; Hugh Oge, son of Brian, wdio was son of Art O’Neill ; and many others of his most intimate friends. These were they w 7 ho went with the Earl O’Donnell, namely, Caffer, his brother, with his sister Nuala; Hugh, the Earl’s child, w r anting three w'eeks of being one year old ; Rose, daughter of O’Doherty and wife of Caffer, with her son Hugh, aged two years and three months ; his (Rory’s) bro- ther son Donnell Oge, son of Donnell, Naghtan son of Cal- vach, w r ho was son of Donogh Cairbreach O’Donnell, and many others of his intimate friends. They embarked on the Festival of the Holy Cross in Autumn. “ This w r as a distinguished company ; and it is certain that the sea has not borne and the wind has not wafted in modern times a number of persons in one ship more eminent, illustri- ous, or noble, in point of genealogy, heroic deeds, valour, feats of arms, and brave achievements, than they. Would that God had but permitted them to remain in their patrimonial inheri- tances until the children should arrive at the age of manhood S Woe to the heart that meditated, w r oe to the mind that con- ceived, w r oe to the council that recommended the project of this expedition, without knowfing wdtether they should, to the end of their lives, be able to return to their native principali- ties or patrimonies.” AN ELEGY ON THE TIRONIAN AND TIRCONNELLIAN PRINCES BURIED AT ROME. “ 21 bljeaij EUdift ^ at) >*pe4|vc !” O, Woman of the Piercing Wail, Who mournest o’er yon mound of clay With sigh and groan, Would God thou wert among the Gael ! Thou wmuldst not then from day to day Weep thus alone. 124 ' THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. ’Twere long before, around a grave In green Tirconnell, one could find This loneliness ; Near where Beann-Boirche’s banners wave Such grief as thine could ne’er have pined Companionless. Beside the wave, in Donegall, In Antrim’s glens, or fair Dromore, Or Killilee, Or where the sunny waters fall, At Assaroe, near Erna’s shore. This could not be. On Derry’s plains — in rich Drumclieff— Throughout Armagh the Great, renowned In olden years, No day could pass but Woman’s grief Would rain upon the burial-ground Fresh floods of tears ! O, no ! — from Shannon, Boyne, and Suir, From high Dunluce’s castle-walls, From Lissadill, Would flock alike both rich and poor, One wail would rise from Cruachan’s halls To Tara’s hill ; And some would come from Barrow-side, And many a maid would leave her horns On Leitrim’s plains, And by melodious Banna’s tide, And by the Mourne and Erne, to come And swell thy strains ! O, horses’ hoofs would trample down The Mount whereon the martyr-saint*’ Was crucified. From glen and hill, from plain and town, One loud lament, one thrilling plaint, Would echo wide. There would not soon be found, I ween. One foot of ground among those bands For museful thought, So many shriekers of the keen] Would cry aloud, and clap their hands. All woe -distraught ! T wo princes of the line of Conn Sleep in their cells of clay beside O’Donnell Roe : Three royal youths, alas ! are gone, Who lived for Erin’s weal, but died For Erin’s woe ! Ah ! could the men of Ireland read The names these noteless burial-stones Display to view', Their wounded hearts afresh would bleed, Their tears gush forth again, their groans Resound anew' ! The youths w'hose relics moulder here Were sprung from Hugh, high Prince and Lord Of Aileach’s lands ; Thy noble brothers, justly dear, Thy nephew, long to be deplored By Ulster’s bands. Theirs were not souls wherein dull Time Could domicile Decay or house Decrepitude 1 They passed from Earth ere Manhood’s prime, Ere years had power to dim their brows Or chill their blood. And who can marvel o’er thy grief, Or who can blame thy flowing tears, That knows their source ? O’Donnell, Dunnasava’s chief, Cut off amid his vernal years. Lies here a corse * St Peter. This passage is not exactly a blunder, though at first it may seem one: the poet supposes the grave itself transferred to Ireland, and he naturally includes in the transference the whole of the immediate locality around the grave. — T r. t Caoine, the funeral -wail. Beside his brother Cathbar, whom Tirconnell of the Helmets mourns In deep despair — For valour, truth, and comely bloom, For all that greatens and adorns, A peerless pair. O, had these twain, and he, the third. The Lord of Mourne, O’Niall’s son, Their mate in death — A prince in look, in deed, and word — Had these three heroes yielded on The field their breath, O, had they fallen on Criffan’s plain, There would not be a town or clan From shore to sea, But would with shrieks bewail the Slain, Or chant aloud the exulting ram* Of jubilee ! When high the shout of battle rose, On fields w'here Freedom’s torch still burned Through Erin’s gloom, If one, if barely one of those Were slain, all Ulster would have mourned The hero’s doom ! If at Athboy, where hosts of brave Ulidian horsemen sank beneath The shock of spears, Young Hugh O’Neill had found a grave, Long must the North have wept his death With heart-wrung tears ! If on the day of Ballach-myre The Lord of Mourne had met, thus young, A warrior’s fate, In vain w'ould such as thou desire To mourn, alone, the champion sprung From Niall the Great ! No marvel this — for all the Dead, Heaped on the field, pile over pile, At Mullach-brack, Were scarce an eric] for his head, If Death had stayed his footsteps while On victory’s track ! *1 If on the Day of Hostages The fruit had from the parent bough Been rudely torn In sight of Munster’s bands. — Mao-Nee’s — Such blow the blood of Conn, I trow. Could ill have borne. If on the day of Ballach-boy Some arm had laid, by foul surprise, The chieftain low, Even our victorious shout of joy Would soon give place to rueful cries And groans of w'oe ! If on the day the Saxon host Were forced to fly — a day so great For Ashaneej; — The Chief had been untimely lost, Our conquering troops should moderate Their mirthful glee. There would not lack on Lifford’s day, From Galway, from the glens of Boyle, From Limerick’s towers, A marshalled file, a long array, Of mourners to bedew the soil With tears in showers ! If on the day a sterner fate Compelled his flight from Athenree, His blood had flowed, What numbers all disconsolate Would come unasked, and share with thee Affliction’s load ! If Derry’s crimson field had seen His life-blood offered up, though ’twere On Victory’s shrine, A thousand cries would swell the keen, A thousand voices of despair Would echo thine ! • Song. t A compensation or fine. + Ballyshannon, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 125 O, had the fierce Dalcassian swarm That bloody night on Fergus’ banks, But slain our Chief, When rose his camp in wild alarm — How would the triumph of his ranks Be dashed with grief ! How would the troops of Murbach mourn If on the Curlew Mountains’ day, Which England rued, Some Saxon hand had left them lorn, By shedding there, amid the fray, Their prince’s blood ! Red would have been our warriors’ eyes Had Roderick found on Sligo’s field A gory grave, Iso Northern Chief would soon arise So sage to guide, so strong to shield, So swift to save. Long would Leith-Cuinn have w T ept if Hugh Had met the death he oft had dealt Among the foe ; But, had our Roderick fallen too, All Erin must, alas 1 have felt The deadly blow ! What do I say ? Ah, woe is me ! Alreadv we bewail in vain Their fatal fall And Erin, once the Great and Free, Now vainly mourns her breakless chain, And iron thrall ! Then, daughter of O’Donnell ! dry Thine overflowing eyes, and turn Thy heart aside ! For Adam’s race is born to die, And sternly the sepulchral urn Mocks human pride ! Look not, nor sigh, for earthly throne. Nor place thy trust in arm of clay — But on thy knees Uplift thy soul to God alone, For all things go their destined way As He decrees. Embrace the faithful Crucifix, And seek the path of pain and prayer Thy Saviour trod ; Nor let thy spirit intermix With earthly hope and worldly care Its groans to God ! And Thou, O mighty Lord ! whose ways Are far above our feeble minds To understand, Sustain us in these doleful days, And render light the chain that binds Our fallen land ! Look down upon our dreary state, And through the ages that may still Roll sadly on, Watch Thou o’er hapless Erin’s fate, And shield at least from darker ill The blood of Cohn ! M. BOB PENTLAND, or the GAUGER OUTWITTED. BY WILLIAM CARLETON. That the Irish are a ready-witted people, is a fact to the truth of which testimony has been amply borne both by their friends and enemies. Many causes might be brought forward to account for this questionable gift, if it were our intention to be philosophical ; but as the matter has been so generally con- ceded, it w'ould be but a wmste of logic to prove to the w r orld that which the world cares not about, beyond the mere fact that it is so. On this or any other topic one illustration is w’orth twenty arguments, and, accordingly, instead of broach- ing a theory we shall relate a story. Behind the hill or rather mountain of Altnaveenan lies one of those deep and almost precipitous vallies, on which the practised eye of an illicit distiller would dwell with delight, as a topography not likely to be invaded by the unhallowed feet of the gauger and his red-coats. In point of fact, the spot we speak of was from its peculiarly isolated situation nearly invisible, unless to such as came very close to it. Being so completely hemmed in and concealed by the round and angular projections of the mountain hills, you could never dream of its existence at all, until you came upon the very verge of the little precipitous gorge which led into it. This advantage of position was not, however, its only one. It is true indeed that the moment you had entered it, all possibility of its being ap- plied to the purposes of distillation at once vanished, and you consequently could not help exclaiming, “ what a pity that so safe and beautiful a nook should have not a single spot on which to erect a still-house, or rather on which to raise a suffi- cient stream of water to the elevation necessary for the pro- cess of distilling.” If a gauger actually came to the little chasm, and cast his scrutinizing eye over it, he would imme- diately perceive that the erection of a private still in such a place was a piece of folly not generally to be found in the plans of those who have recourse to such practices. This absence, however, of the requisite conveniences was only apparent, not real. To the right, about one hundred yards above the entrance to it, ran a ledge of rocks, some fifty feet high, or so. Along their lower brows, near the ground, grew thick matted masses of long heath, which covered the entrance to a cave about as large and as high as an ordinary farm-house. Through a series of small fissures in the rocks which formed its roof, descended a stream of clear soft water, precisely in body and volume such as was actually required by the distiller ; but, unless by lifting up this mass of heath, no human being could for a moment ima- gine that there existed any such grotto, or so unexpected and easy an entrance to it. Here there was a private still-house made by the hand of nature herself, such as no art or inge- nuity of man could equal. Now it so happened that about the period we write of, there lived in our parish two individuals so antithetical to each other in their pursuits of life, that we question whether throughout all the instinctive antipathies of nature w r e could find any two animals more destructive of each other than the two we mean — to wit, Bob Pentland the gauger, and little George Steen the illicit distiller. Pentland was an old, stanch, well-trained fellow, of about fifty years or more, steady and sure, and with all the characteristic points of the high-bred gauger about him. He was a tallish man, thin but lathy, with a hooked nose that could scent the tread of a dis- tiller with the keenness of a slew-hound; his dark eye was deep-set, circumspect, and roguish in its expression, and his shaggy brow seemed always to be engaged in calculating whereabouts his inveterate foe, little George Steen, that eter- nally blinked him, when almost in his very fangs, might then be distilling. To be brief, Pentland was proverbial for his sagacity and adroitness in detecting distillers, and little George was equally proverbial for having always baffled him, and that, too, sometimes under circumstances where escape seemed hopeless. The incidents which w T e are about to detail occurred a,t that period of time when the collective wisdom of our legis- lators thought it advisable to impose a fine upon the whole townland in which the still head and worm might be found ; thus opening a door for knavery and fraud, and, as it proved in most cases, rendering the innocent as liable to suffer for an offence they never contemplated as the guilty who planned and perpetrated it. The consequence of such a law wrns, that still-houses were always certain to be erected either at the very verge of the neighbouring districts, or as near them as the circumstances of convenience and situation wmuld permit. The moment of course that the hue-and-cry of the gauger and his myrmidons was heard upon the wind, the whole apparatus was immediately heaved over the mering to the next town- land, from which the fine imposed by parliament w T as necessa- rily raised, whilst the crafty and offending district actually escaped. The state of society generated by such a blunder- ing and barbarous statute as this, was dreadful. In the course of a short time, reprisals, law-suits, battles, murders, and massacres, multiplied to such an extent throughout the whole country, that the sapient senators who occasioned such com- motion w r ere compelled to repeal their own act as soon as they found how it worked. Necessity, together with being the mother of invention, is also the cause of many an accidental discovery. Pentland had been so frequently defeated by little George, that he vowed never to rest until he had secured him ; and George on the other hand frequently told him — for they were otherwise on the best terms — that he defied him, or as he himself more quaintly expressed it, “that he defied ths 126 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. devil, the world, and Bob Pentland.” The latter, however, was a very sore thorn in his side, and drove him from place to place, and from one haunt to another, until he began to de- spair of being able any longer to outwit him, or to find within the parish any spot at all suitable for distillation with which Pentland was not acquainted. In this state stood matters between them, wffien George fortunately discovered at the hip of Altnaveenan hill the natural grotto we have just sketched so briefly. Now, George was a man, as we have already hinted, of great fertility of resources ; but there existed in the same parish another distiller who outstripped him in that far- sighted cunning which is so necessary in misleading or cir- cumventing such a sharp-scented old hound as Pentland. This was little Mickey M‘Quade, a short-necked squat little fellow with bow legs, who might be said rather to creep in his motion than to walk. George and Mickey were intimate friends, independently of their joint antipathy against the gauger, and, truth to tell, much of the mortification and many of the defeats which Pentland experienced at George’s hands, were, sub rosa, to be attributed to Mickey. George was a dis- tiller from none of the motives which generally actuate others of that class. He was in truth an analytic philosopher — a na- tural chemist never out of some new experiment — and we have reason to think might have been the Kane or Faraday or Dalton of his day, had he only received a scientific education. Not so honest Mickey, who never troubled his head about an experiment, but only thought of making a good running, and defeating the gauger. The first thing of course that George did, was to consult Mickey, and both accordingly took a walk up to the scene of their future operations. On examining it, and fully perceiving its advantages, it might well be said that the look of exultation and triumph which passed between them was not unworthy of their respective characters. “ This will do,” said George. “ Eh — don’t you think we’ll put our finger in Pentland’s eye yet ?” Mickey spat sagaci- ously over his beard, and after a second glance gave one grave grin which spoke volumes. “ It’ll do,” said he ; “ but there’s one point to be got over that maybe you didn’t think of ; an’ you know that half a blink, half a ooint, is enough for Pent- land.” “ What is it ?” “ What do you intend to do with the smoke when the fire ’s lit ? There’ll be no keepin’ that down. Let but Pentland see as much smoke risin’ as would come out of an ould woman’s dudeen, an’ he’d have us.” George started, and it was clear by the vexation and dis- appointment which were visible on his brow that unless this untoward circumstance could be managed, their whole plan was deranged, and the cave of no value. “ What’s to be done?” he inquired of his cooler companion. “ If we can’t get over this, we may bid good bye to it.” “ Never mind,” said Mickey ; “ I’ll manage it, and do Pent- land still.” “ Ay, but how?” “ It’s no matter. Let us not lose a minute in settin’ to work. Lave the other thing to me ; an’ if I don’t account for the smoke without discoverin’ the entrance to the still. I’ll give you lave to crop the ears off my head.” George knew the cool but steady self-confidence for which Mickey was remarkable, and accordingly, without any further interrogatory, they both proceeded to follow up their plan of operations. In those times when distillation might be truly considered as almost universal, it was customary for farmers to build their out-houses with secret chambers and other requisite par- titions necessary for carrying it on. Several of them had pri- vate stores built between false walls, the entrance to which was only known to a few, and many of them had what were called Malt-steeps sunk in hidden recesses and hollow gables, for the purpose of steeping the barley, and afterwards of turning and airing it, until it was sufficiently hard to be kiln- dried and ground. From the mill it was usually conveyed to the still-house upon what were termed Slipes, a kind of car that was made without wheels, in order the more easily to pass through morasses and bogs which no wheeled vehicle could encounter. In the course of a month or so, George and Mickey, aided by their friends, had all the apparatus of keeve, hogshead, &c, together with still head and worm, set up and in full work. “And now, Mickey,” inquired his companion, “how will you manage about the smoke ? for you know that the two worst informers against a private distiller, barrin’ a stag, is a smoke by day an’ a fire by night.” “ I know that,” replied Mickey ; “ an’ a rousin’ smoke we’ll have, for fraid a little puff wouldn’t do us. Come, now, an’ I’ll show you.” They both ascended to the top, where Mickey had closed all the open fissures of the roof with the exception of that which was directly over the fire of the still. This was at best not more than six inches in breadth and about twelve long. Over it he placed a piece of strong plate iron perforated with holes, and on this he had a fire of turf, beside which sat a little boy who acted as a vidette. The thing was simple but effec- tive. Clamps of turf were at every side of them, and the boy w'as instructed, if the gauger, whom he well knew, ever ap- peared, to heap on fresh fuel, so as to increase the smoke in such a manner as to induce him to suppose that all he saw of it proceeded merely from the fire before him.. In fact, the smoke from the cave below was so completely identified with and lost in that which was emitted from the fire above, that no human being could penetrate the mystery, if not made pre- viously acquainted with it. The writer of this saw it during the hottest process of distillation, and failed to make the dis- covery, although told that the still-house was within a circle of three hundred yards, the point he stood on being considered the centre. On more than one occasion has he absconded from home, and spent a whole night in the place, seized with that indescribable fascination which such a scene holds forth to youngsters, as well as from his irrepressible anxiety to hear the old stories and legends with the recital of which they ge- nerally pass the night. In this way, well provided against the gauger — indeed much better than our readers are yet aware of, as they shall under- stand by and bye — did George, Mickey, and their friends, pro- ceed for the greater part of a winter without a single visit from Pentland. Several successful runnings had come off, which had of course turned out highly profitable, and they were just now preparing to commence their last, not only for the season, but the last they should ever work together, as George was making preparations to go early in the spring to America. Even this running was going on to their satisfac- tion, and the singlings had been thrown again into the still, from the worm of which projected the strong medicinal first- shot as the doubling commenced — this last term meaning the spirit in its pure and finished state. On this occasion the two worthies were more than ordinarily anxious, and cer- tainly doubled their usual precautions against a surprise, ft*? they knew that Pentland’s visits resembled the pounces of a hawk or the springs of a tiger more than any thing else to which they could compare them. In this they Avere not disap- pointed. When the doubling was about half finished, he made his appearance, attended by a strong party of reluctant sol- diers — for indeed it is due to the military to state that they never took delight in harassing the country people at the command of a keg-hunter, as they generally nicknamed the gauger. It had been arranged that the vidette at the iron plate should whistle a particular tune the moment that the gauger or a red-coat, or in fact any person whom he did not know, should appear. Accordingly, about eight o’clock in the morn- ing they heard the little fellow in his highest key whistling up that well-known and very significant old Irish air called “ Go to the devil an’ shake yourself ’’—which in this case was ap- plied to the gauger in any thing but an allegorical sense. “ Be the pins,” which was George’s usual oath, “ be the pins, Mickey, it’s over with us — Pentland’s here, for there’s the sign.” Mickey paused for a moment and listened very gravely ; then squirting out a tobacco spittle, “ Take it aisy,” said he ; “1 have half a dozen fires about the hills, any one as like this as your right hand is to your left. I didn’t spare trou- ble, for I knew that if Ave’d get over this day, we’d be out of his power.” “ Well, my good lad,” said Pentland, addressing the vidette* “what’s this fire for?” “ What is it for, is it?” “ Yes ; if you don’t let me know instantly, I’ll bloiv your brains out, and get you hanged and transported afterwards.” This he said with a thundering voice, cocking a large horse pistol at the same time. “ Why, sir,” said the boy, “ it’s watchin’ a still I am ; but be the hole o’ my coat if you tell upon me, it’s broilin’ upon these coals I’ll be soon.” “ Where is the still then ? An’ the still-house, where is it ?” “ Oh, begorra, as to where the still or still-house is, they I wouldn’t tell me that.” THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 127 “ Why, sirra, didn’t you say this moment you were watch- ing a still ?” “ I meant, sir,” replied the lad with a face that spoke of pure idiocy, “that it was the gauger I was watchin’, an’ I w r as to whistle upon my fingers to let the boy at that fire on the hill there above know that he was cornin’.” “ Who told you to do so ?” “ Little George, sir, an’ Mickey M‘Quade.” “ Ay, ay, right enough there, my lad — two of the most no- torious schemers unhanged they are both. But now, like a good boy, tell me the truth, an’ I’ll give you the price of a pair of shoes. Do you know where the still or still-house is ? Because if you do, an’ won’t tell me, here are the soldiers at hand to make a prisoner of you ; an’ if they do, all the world can’t prevent you from being hanged, drawn, and quartered.” “ Oh, bad cess may seize the morsel o’ me knows that ; but if you’ll give me the money, sir, I’ll tell you who can bring you to it, for he tould me yestherday mornin’ that he knew, an’ offered to bring me there last night, if I’d steal him a bot- tle that my mother keeps the holy water in at home, tal he’d put whisky in it.” “ Well, my lad, who is this boy ?” “ Do you know Harry Neil, or Mankind, sir ?” “ I do, my good boy.” “ Well, it’s a son of his, sir; an’ look, sir : do you see the smoke farthest up to the right, sir?” “To the right. ? Yes.” “ Well, ’tis there, sir, that Darby Neil is w r atchin’ ; and he says he knows.” “ How long have you been watching here ?” “ This is only the third day, sir, for me; but the rest, them boys above, has been here a good while.” “ Have you seen nobody stirring about the hills since you r>)) came ? “ Only once, sir, yesterday, I seen two men having an empty sack or two, runnin’ across the hill there above.” At this moment the military came up, for he had himself run forward in advance of them, and he repeated the substance of his conversation with our friend the vidette. Upon examining the stolidity of his countenance, in which there certainly was a woful deficiency of meaning, they agreed among themselves that his appearance justified the truth of the story which he told the gauger, and upon being still further interrogated, they were confirmed that none but a stupid lout like himself would entrust to his keeping any secret worth knowing. They now separated themselves into as many detached par- ties as there were fires burning on the hills about them, the gauger himself resolving to make for that which Darby Neil had in his keeping, for he could not help thinking that the vidette’s story was too natural to be false. They were just in the act of separating themselves to pursue their different routes, when the lad said, “Look, sir! look, sir! bad scran be from me but there’s a still any way. Sure I often seen a still : that’s jist like the one that Philip Hogan the tinker mended in George Steen’s barn.” “ Hollo, boys,” exclaimed Pentland, “ stoop ! stoop ! they are coming this way, and don’t see us : no, hang them, no ! they have discovered us now, and are off towards Mossfield. By Jove this will be a bitter trick if they succeed ; confound them, they are bent for Ballagh, which is my own property ; and may I be hanged if we do not intercept them ; but it is I myself who will have to pay the fine.” T he pursuit instantly commenced with a speed and vigour equal to the ingenuity of this singular act of retaliation on the gauger. Pentland himself being long-winded from much practice in this way, and being further stimulated by the pro- spective loss which he dreaded, made as beautiful a run of it as any man of his years could do. It was all in vain, how- ever. He merely got far enough to see the still head and worm heaved across the march ditch into his own property, and to reflect after seeing it that he was certain to have the double consolation of being made a standing joke of for life, and of paying heavily for the jest out of his own pocket. In the mean time, he was bound of course to seize the still, and report the caption ; and as he himself farmed the townland in ques- tion, the fine was levied to the last shilling, upon the very natural principle that if he had been sufficiently active and vigilant, no man would have attempted to setup a still so con- venient to his own residence and property. This manoeuvre of keeping in reserve an old or second set of apparatus, for the purpose of acting the lapwing and mis- leading the gauger, was afterwards often practised with suc- cess ; but the first discoverer of it was undoubtedly Mickey M‘Quade, although the honour of the discovery is attributed to his friend George Steen. The matter, however, did not actually end here, for in a few days afterwards some mali- cious wag — in other words, George himself — had correct infor- mation sent to Pentland touching the locality of the cavern and the secret of its entrance. On this occasion the latter brought a larger military party than usual along Avith him, but it was only to make him feel that he stood in a position if possible more ridiculous than the first. He found indeed the marks of recent distillation in the place, but nothing else. Every ves- sel and implement connected with the process had been re- moved, w'ith the exception of one bottle of whisky, to which was attached by a bit of twine the following friendly note : — “ Mr Pentland, Sir — Take this bottle home and drink your own health. You can’t do less. It was distilled under your nose the first day you came to look for us, and bottled for you while you were speaking to the little boy that made a hare of you. Being distilled then under your nose, let it be drunk in the same place, and don’t forget while doing so to drink the health of G. S.” The incident went abroad like wildfire, and was known everywhere. Indeed for a long time it was the standing to- pic of the parish ; and so sharply was it felt by Pentland that he could never keep his temper if asked, “ Mr Pentland, when did you see little George Steen ?” — a question to which he was never known to give a civil reply. THE GLOBE OF THE EARTH. We were surprised very much some time ago at considering how much of the surface of the globe is covered by the waters of the lakes and oceans, and took the opportunity then of ad- verting to the importance of water in the general economy of nature. When, however, we pass to the consideration of the magnitude of the earth itself, the relative proportion of water appears to be much less considerable. Although there are many places in the great Atlantic and Pacific Oceans where the depth of water is very great, yet it has been deduced from principles that are not liable to much error, that the general or average depth does not exceed three miles. It may appear very strange that we can assert any thing positive about the depth of water in those seas, that are to the lines used for sounding quite unfathomable ; but it is effected very simply. Every person has seen a wave ad- vancing along the level surface of a canal, and by observing with a watch, it could easily be found to move more quickly at some times than at others. The deeper any part of the canal is, the more rapidly does the wave move along ; and partly by experiment, and partly by reasoning, the connection between the depth of the water and velocity of the wave has been discovered. Now, the tide which comes to Dublin every twelve hours is produced by the influence of the sun and moon on the vast body of water in the Southern Pacific Ocean ; and the great wave there formed turns round Cape Horn, and passes up the Atlantic Ocean, to arrive at the coasts of Europe and North America. The time occupied by this great wave in passing from one end to the other of the Atlan- tic can thus be known, and, precisely as in a canal, the depth of water thus calculated. The circumference of the earth at its widest part is about 25,000, and its diameter 8000 miles. Hence the sheet of wa- ter which constitutes the ocean forms but 3-4000ths of its thick- ness, or nearly the same proportion as if we took an eighteen inch globe, and having spilled water on its surface, allowed all the excess of water to drain off. The remaining wetness would represent pretty nearly the condition of the waters of the ocean on the surface of the earth. By this means we can form, though obscurely, to our minds, an idea of the great magni- tude of the earth itself. This magnitude renders also very inconsiderable those inequalities on the surface of the earth which constitute our highest ridnes of mountains. A true model of Mont Blanc, the highest of European mountains, it constructed on the eighteen inch globe before referred to, wmuld be unfelt by a finger drawn along its surface, and it would be only some of the highest peaks of the Andes and Hima- layah that could be distinctly felt. Where man also employs his most gigantic energies and greatest efforts of skill to pe- netrate below the surface, forming mines by which the sup- plies of coal, of iron, of copper, and other minerals, have been obtained from the earliest times, the cavities that he makes can only be compared with the trace given by the point of a pin 128 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. that had lightly touched the globe, and which would require a favourable incidence of light to see. The earth is therefore almost perfectly a smooth and solid ball. It is, however, almost certain that it was not always solid. It is, on the contrary, almost certain that at a period far exceeding in remoteness any time of which mere human indications can be found, the globe of the earth was one mass of liquid matter, heated to a degree exceeding our most in- tense fires, and wherein were melted all together the various elements which have since arranged themselves into their pre- sent forms. From having been thus liquid, the earth, which, revolving on its axis, produces by the side it turns to the sun the alternating day and night, has bulged out where the rota- tion of the surface is most rapid, at the equator, and has be- come flattened at the extremities of its axis, at the poles, just as a thin hoop which we spin round becomes compressed. The amount of this flattening is however very small. The equatorial diameter of the earth being accurately 7925, and the polar diameter being 7898, the compression is 27 miles. To account for the existence of this compression, the earth must have been originally liquid, for otherwise the rotation on its axis could not have generated this regular form. If it had been solid when it began to revolve, it should either have retained its original form, or it should have broken in pieces ; but certainly unless it had been liquid, it could not have ar- rived at the exact degree of flattening which its velocity of rotation should have produced in a liquid mass. The intensely heated and liquid earth, revolving in the cold and empty spaces of the planetary system, gradually must have lost its excess of heat. Cooling most rapidly at the surface, it there solidified, and generated the first rocks. The loss of heat still going on, the solidification proceeded to a greater and greater depth, and should ultimately have reduced the earth to the same temperature as the empty space among the stars. The temperature of space has been calculated to be almost the same as that in the winter at Melville Island, in nor- thernmost America, that is, 56 deg. below zero, or as far below the freezing point of water as the temperature of the hottest water that the hand can bear is above it. The earth is, how- ever, not allowed to cool to that degree. It receives from the sun by radiation a quantity of heat which counteracts its ten- dency to cool, and hence the mean temperature of the surface of the earth has remained the same from the earliest historical epochs. In fact, at the surface we can find no trace of that original and internal great heat, the temperature of the sur- face of the earth being regulated altogether by the effect of the sun’s rays ; but if we dig down to a moderate depth, about 45 feet, the influence of the sun becomes insensible. Within that space also we can detect a very curious and important arrangement of the heat. It is not that the whole surface be- comes warmed in summer and cold in winter, but the heat which is received from the sun in one summer travels by con- duction beneath the surface, and is succeeded by the heat of the next summer, an intervening and cooler layer corresponding to the winter time, so that at a depth of 20 feet we may de- tect the heat which had fallen upon the surface four or five years before, this space of 45 feet being formed of numerous layers like the coatings of an onion, one for each year, until becoming less and less distinct, according as the depth in- creases, they join together in forming the layer of invariable temperature in which all the effect of the sun’s heat is lost. If we dig down still farther, the earth, though having lost the heating power of the sun, becomes sensibly warmer. The greater the depth to which we descend, the higher is the tem- perature found to be. Thus, where deep sinkings have been made for mines or wells, the air or water at the bottom is found to be much higher in temperature than at the invari- ble layer which gives the mean temperature of the place. This observation was first made in the case of the deep mines in Cornwall, and, although for some time ascribed to the pre- sence of the workmen and the burning lamps, has since been verified by observations in all parts of Europe, and such agree- ment found, that the law connecting the temperature with the depth has been at least approximately determined. It is found, counting from the invariable layer, that the tem- perature increases about one degree of Fahrenheit’s scale for every fifty feet in depth. Thus, a well having been sunk at lfudersdorff to a depth of 630 feet, the water at the bottom was found to be 67 degrees, while the mean temperature was 50 degrees. In a coal mine at Newcastle, which reaches to a depth of 1584 feet, the mean temperature of the surface being 48 degrees, the thermometer was found to stand at 73 degrees in the lowest part of the mine, and hence the elevation of tem- perature was 25 degrees. Observations elsewhere vary be- tween these limits ; but the general result is, that the rise is one degree for about every fifty feet, as above stated. When we consider the great magnitude of the earth, and observe the rapidity with which the increase of temperature occurs, it will strike every person that we in reality inhabit a mere pellicle or skin, which has formed bv cooling upon the surface, whilst all the internal mass of our globe may still be in the same state of igneous fusion and tumultuous action of ele- ments, from which its present mineral constitution on the sur- face has resulted. For although it has cooled so far that at the surface all traces of its central fires have disappeared, yet at a mile and a half below the surface the temperature is such as should boil water : at a depth of five miles, lead would melt. Thirty miles below the surface, cast iron, and all those rocks which are generally the product of volcanoes in action, as trap and basalt, would fuse ; and hence we may consider those terrific phenomena which have so frequently desolated some of the most beautiful districts of the earth, as being minute apertures or cracks in the thin coating of our planet, and giving vent from time to time to some small portions ot the internal fires which work beneath. Additional evidence of the existence of this central heat may be derived from the peculiarity of springs. Those springs which carry off and are supplied with water from the surface, change their temperature with the season, being in winter cold, but in summer warm. Others, deriving their waters from a deeper layer of soil, as from the stratum of constant heat, are always the same, and, possessing the mean temperature of the place, feel warm in winter and cold in summer. Such springs exist in every country, and are very useful in as- certaining the mean temperature, for in place of watching a thermometer for a year, and taking averages, it is only necessary to select with proper caution such a deeply supplied spring, and by observing the temperature of its waters, the mean temperature of the place is found. A certain quantity of the water which is absorbed by the ground after rain must penetrate to a great depth, must descend, in fact, until at. 1£ miles it is boiled and driven up again to find some outlet as a spring. In rising up, however, it is for the most part cooled ; but having charged itself with various saline and metallic bodies, under the most favourable circumstances of high temperature and pressure, it issues as a hot mineral spring or spa. On getting into the air, it gene- rally abandons a great part of what it had dissolved, and forms in many cases enormous depositions of solid rock. A company in Paris have formed the idea of using the water thus heated by the powers below, for the purposes of public baths. The neighbourhood of Paris is peculiarly fitted for what are termed Artesian wells, in which the water often rises considerably above the surface of the ground. Under tha auspices of this company, a well has been sunk already to the depth of 1600 feet, and water obtained at 77 degrees ; but to obtain natural hot water at a temperature of 100 degrees, which would be required for bathing purposes, an additional depth of probably as much more will be required. It is said the projectors are not now sanguine of its pecuniary success. The Secret of Success in Life In no department of life do men rise to eminence who have not undergone a long and diligent preparation ; for whatever be the difference in the mental power ot individuals, it is the cultivation of the mind alone that leads to distinction. John Hunter was as remark- able for his industry as for his talents, of which his museum alone forms a most extraordinary proof ; and if we look around and contemplate the history of those men whose talents and acquirements we must esteem, we find that their superiority of knowledge has been the result of great labour and dili- gence. It is an ill-founded notion to say that merit in the long-run is neglected. It is sometimes joined to circumstances that may have a little influence in counteracting it, as an un- fortunate manner and temper ; but generally it meets with its due reward. The world are not fools — every person of merit has the best chance of success ; and who would be ambitious of public approbation, if it had not the power of discriminat- ing ? — Physic and Physicians. Printed and Published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dub- lin ; and sold by all Booksellers. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 17. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1840. Volume I. NEW BRIDGE, COUNTY OF KILDARE. It Is a curious circumstance, that while among the most i humble and illiterate, as well as among the high and edu- cated classes of society in Ireland, a certain degree of interest and. respect is usually felt for the ecclesiastical and military . remains^ of past ages, those of a purely useful character, as ancient bridges for example, excite no corresponding senti- ments, and are destroyed without causing the slightest feeling of regret in the minds of any portion of society. Strange, however, as this may appear, the fact is undeniable, as the recent destruction of Thomond Bridge at Limerick, and the intended destruction of other ancient fridges on that noble* river and elsewhere, sufficiently testify ; and in a few years'*, more there will, in all probability, scarcely remain -in the country a single example of monuments of this class. Yet it cannot be said that such memorials of the progress of civili- zation An past ages are without their hallowing associations, or that their moss-stained and ivy-mantled arches are less pleasing to the lover of the picturesque than those of the ruined oastle, church, or abbey. Who that has ever seen the ancient bridge of Limerick, with its fifteen arches, exhibit- ing every variety of form, its horizontal line contrasting so admirably with the upright forms of the adjacent objects, and calling up in the mind recollections of the finest landscapes of Claude — who, we say, that has enjoyed this pleasure of a refined taste, but will bear testimony to the truth of our assertion, and regret the circumstances which have given birth to it ? Who, in like manner, that has ever seen the an- cient bridge which forms the embeUishment of our present number, but would deeply lament its destruction ? Yet such was the fate to which it was doomed, but a few years since, by a county grand jury, and from which it only escaped through the influence of the worthy proprietor of St Woolstan’s, Richard Cane, Esq., who, in a spirit equally honourable to his taste and his nationality, declared that sooner than permit so interesting a monument of antiquity to be destroyed, he would build a new bridge at his own expense. Alas ! that w r e have not aniongst us a greater number of gentlemen of his taste, wealth, and spirit ! Despite of its contradictory name, New Bridge is the oldest bridge now remaining on the beautiful Liffey, and, with the exception of the ancient Bridge of Dublin, w r hich was taken down and rebuilt some years since, is probably the first 130 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. bridge of stone ever erected on it. From Pembridge’s Annals, as published by the Father of British antiquaries, William Camden, we learn that this bridge was erected in the year 1308, by John le Decer, the Mayor of Dublin in that year, at his own expense. So that by a curious and not uninter- esting coincidence, it owes its erection to one worthy and patriotic citizen of Dublin, and its preservation, after a lapse of more than five hundred years, to another. New Bridge is situated in the barony of North Salt, about one Irish mile south-west of the town of Leixlip. It consists of four arches, some of which are semicircular and others pointed ; and, like most ancient bridges, it is high and ex- tremely narrow. Mantled with luxuriant ivy, and enriched with the varied and mellow tints of so many centuries, it is in itself an object of great picturesque beauty ; but these attractions are greatly enhanced by the quiet yet romantic features of the scenery immediately about it — particularly the woods and the ruins of the venerable Abbey of St Woolstan, of which we shall give some account in a future number. P. ANCIENT IRISH LITERATURE. NUMBER III. For our third specimen of the literature of our ancestors we have selected an example of what may be called the fireside stories, in vogue from a very ancient period till the last cen- tury. These stories are for the most part only personal tra- ditions, and as they are not found in any vellum manuscripts which have descended to us, it might be concluded that they are of very modern date. Such conclusion, however, would be erroneous : there is no doubt that in their groundwork at least they are of an antiquity of several centuries, although modified in their language and allusions in conformity with the changes in manners and customs of succeeding times. The personages who figure in them are always either histori- cal, or belonging to the ancient mythology of Ireland, and they are well worthy of preservation, for the light which they reflect on the habits of thought, as well as the manners and customs of bygone times. BODACH AN CHOTA-LACHTNA, OR THE CLOWN WITH THE GREY COAT, A FENIAN TALE. On a certain day a fair and a gathering were held at Bineadar, by the seven ordinary and seven extraordinary battalions of the Fenians of Erinn. In the course of the day, on casting a look over the broad expanse of the sea, they beheld a large, smooth- sided, and proud-looking ship ploughing the waves from the east, and approaching them under full sail. When the capacious vessel touched the shore and lowered her sails, the Fenians of Erinn counted upon seeing a host of men disembark from her; and great was their surprise when one warrior, and no more, came out of the ship and landed on the beach. He was a hero of the largest make of body, the strongest of champions, and the finest of the human race ; and in this wise was the kingly warrior equipped : — an impenetrable helmet of polished steel encased his ample and beautiful head ; a deep-furrowed, thick-backed, sharp-edged sword hung at his left side ; and a purple bossed shield was slung over his shoulder. Such were his chief accoutrements ; and armed in this fashion and man- ner did the stranger come into the presence of Finn Mac Coole and the Fenians of Erinn. It was then that Finn, the King of the Fenians, addressed the heroic champion, and questioned him, saying, “ From what quarter of the globe hast thou come unto us, O goodly youth ? or from which of the noble or ignoble races of the universe art thou sprung? Who art thou ?” “ I am,” answered the stranger, “ Ironbones, the son of the King of Thessaly ; and so far as I have travelled on this globe, since the day that I left my own land, I have laid every coun- try, peninsula, and island, under contribution to my sword and my arm : this I have done even to the present hour ; and my desire is to obtain the crown and tribute of this country in like manner: for if I obtain them not, I purpose to bring slaughter of men and deficiency of heroes and youthful war- riors on the seven ordinary and seven extraordinary battalions of the Fenian host. Such, O king, is the object of my visit to this country, and such is my design in landing here.” Hereupon uprose Conan the Bald, and said, “ Of a truth, my friend, it seems to me that you haye come upon a foolish enterprise, and that to the end of your life, and the close of your days, you will not be able to accomplish your purpose ; because from the beginning of ages until now, no man ever heard of a hero or ever saw a champion coming with any such mighty design to Ireland, who did not find his match in that same country.” But Ironbones replied : “ I make but .very little account of your speech, Conan,” said he : “ for if all the Fenian heroes who have died within the last seven years were now in the world, and were joined by those who are now living, I would visit all of them with the sorrow of death and show all of them the short- ness of life in one day ; nevertheless I will make your warriors a more peaceable proposal. I challenge you then, O warriors, to find me a man among you who can vanquish me in running, in fighting, or in wrestling ; if you can do this, I shall give you no further trouble, but return to my own country without loitering here any longer.” “ And pray,” inquired Finn, “ which of those three manly exercises that you have named will it please you to select for the first trial of prowess ?” To this Ironbones answered, “If you can find for me any one champion of your number who can run faster than I can, I will give you no further annoyance, but depart at once to my own country.” “It so happens,” said Finn, “that our Man of Swiftness, Keelte Mac Ronan, is not here at present to try his powers of running with you ; and as he is not, it were better, O hero, that you should sojourn here a season with the Fenians, that you and they may mutually make and appreciate each other s acquaintance by means of conversation and amuse- ments, as is our wont. In the meanwhile I will repair to Tara of the Kings in quest of Keelte Mac Ronan ; and if I have not the good fortune to find him there, I shall certainly meet with him at Ceis-Corann of the Fenii, from whence I shall without delay bring him hither to meet you.” To this Ironbones agreed, saying that he was well satisfied with what Finn proposed ; and thereupon Finn proceeded on his way towards Tara of the Kings, in search of Keelte. Now, it fell out that as he journeyed along he missed his way, so that he came to a dense, wide, and gloomy wood, divided in the midst by a broad and miry road or pathway. Before he had advanced more than a very little distance on this road, he perceived coming directly towards him an ugly, detestable looking giant, who wore a grey frize coat, the skirts of which reached down to the calves of his legs, and were bespattered with yellow mud to the depth of a hero’s hand ; so that every step he made, the lower part of that coat struck with such violence against his legs as to produce a sound that could be distinctly heard a full mile of ground off. Each of the two legs that sustained the unwieldy carcase of this horrible hi- deous monster was like the mast of a great ship, and each of the two shoes that were under his shapeless, horny, long- nailed hoofs, resembled a roomy long-sided boat ; and every time that he lifted his foot, and at every step that he walked, he splashed up from each shoe a good barrelful of mire and water on the lower part of his body. Finn gazed in amaze- ment at the colossal man, for he had never before seen anv one so big and bulky ; yet he would have passed onward and continued his route, but the giant stopped and accosted him, and Finn was under the necessity of stopping also, and ex- changing a few words with the giant. The giant began in this manner : — “ What, ho ! Finn Mac Coole,” said he, “what desire for travelling is this that has seized on you, and how far do you mean to go upou this journey?” “ Oh,” said Finn, “ as to that, my trouble and anxiety are so great that I cannot describe them to you now, and indeed small is the use,” added he, “ it would be of to me to attempt doing so ; and I think it would be better for you to let me go on my way without asking any more questions of me.” But the giant was not so easily put off. “ O Finn,” said he, “ you may keep your secret if you like, but all the loss and the misfortune attending your silence will be your own ; and when you think well upon that, maybe you ‘would not boggle any longer about disclosing to me “the nature of your errand.” So Finn, seeing the huge size of the giant, and thinking it advisable not to provoke him, began to tell him all that had taken place among the Fenians of Erinn so short a time be- fore. “ You must know,” said he, “ that at the meridian hour of this very day the great Ironbones, the son of the King of Thessaly, landed at the harbour of Bineadar, with THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 131 the view of taking 1 the crown and sovereignty of Ireland into his own hands ; and if he does not obtain them with the free and good will of the Irish, he threatens to distribute death and destruction impartially among the young and old of our heroes ; howbeit he has challenged us to find a man able to surpass him in running, fighting, or wrestling, and if we can find such a man, then he agrees to forego his pretensions, and to return to his own country without giving us further trou- ble ; and that,” said Finn, “ is the history that I have for you.” “ And how do you intend to oppose the royal warrior?” asked the giant ; “I know him well, and I know he has the vigour in his hand and the strength in his arm to carry every threat he makes into effect.” “ Why, then,” said Finn, in answer to this, “ I intend to go to Tara of the Kings for Keelte Mac Ronan, and if I do not find him there, I will go to look for him at Ceis-Corann of the Fenii; and it is he,” said he, “ whom I mean to brin high degree. This box he highly prized, and it was sent round the table and admired by all. After some time, how- ever, it was found not to be forthcoming. Every one stared — no one had it — all had seen it the moment before, but could not tell what could possibly have become of it. In vain the owner entreated every gentleman to search his pocket, as some one might have taken it inadvertently. All tried without suc- cess. After remaining an hour in the greatest anxiety, in which the company seemed to participate, they separated. Mr Bradbury consulted some of his friends on this very un- pleasant business, w r ho advised him to send for a Bow Street officer, who might from his habits be able to suggest some ‘ means of detection. This advice was instantly followed, and Rivett, the well-known peace-officer, was sent for. The same company met next day at dinner, and the most anxious in- quiries were made by all for the box, but still no account of it. Amongst the company was a Captain C , who was aide-de-camp to General Leake, who wms then going out to India, and waiting for the first fair Avind. 'Phis gentleman was the first to quit the room after dinner, and by a precon- certed arrangement was folloAved into his bedroom by Rivett, who was Avaiting outside. Mr Bradbury also followed ; and it Avas immediately communicated to Captain C that he must submit to a search, a Avarrant for that purpose having been obtained against every gentleman in the room. This was instantly submitted to in the most cheerful manner by Captain G -, who invited them to make it, and expressed great satisfaction at such a course as the only means of de- tection ; but he could not bring himself to believe that any gentleman could be guilty of so infamous an act except through inadvertence. After his trunk and dressing-case had been searched, he hoped they Avere perfectly satisfied of his inte- grity in the business. Rivett, however, observed that as far as the search Avas made, he Avas satisfied that all Avas correct, and nothing noAv remained but to search his person. These words were scarcely uttered when he was observed to change colour and stagger ; a smothered groan escaped him, and he fell back in a chair ; and in a state scarcely conscious of ex- istence, the box was taken from his pocket. He remained in this state of stupor for a few moments, whilst Bradbury and the peace-officer stood looking at each other, scarcely believ- ing the evidence of their senses ; and recovering himself a little, he stood up, gazed AAuldly at one and then at the other, and gasping with the intensity of his feelings, he rushed to his dressing-table, and like lightning dreAv a razor across his throat. Surgical assistance being on the spot, the wound was pronounced not to be mortal. The effect of the scene— the look of the man— his maniac look, and the act of desperation accompanying it — his rank in life, and every circumstance connected with it, had such an effect on poor Bradbury that he lost his reason, and did not recover it for a year after- wards. The matter could not be kept a secret. The truly unfortunate and miserable Captain C of course lost his commission, and it is not known AA T hat afterwards became of him. There was, how r ever, no prosecution. The punishment was sufficient. w. e. Elevation of the Mind — Lofty elevation of mind does not make one indifferent to the wants and sufferings of those who are below r him : on the contrary, as the rarified air of mountains makes distant objects seem nearer, so are all his fellow-beings brought nearer to the heart of him Avho looks upon them from the height of his wisdom. Napoleon after Death. — Death had marvellously im- ! proved the appearance of Napoleon, and every one exclaimed, when the face Avas exposed, “ How very beautiful !” for all pre- sent acknowledged that they had never seen a finer or more regular and placid countenance. The beauty of the delicate Italian features Avas of the highest kind ; Avhilst the exquisite serenity of their expression Avas in the most striking contrast with the recollections of his great actions, impetuous character, and turbulent life. As during his eventful career there was much of the mysterious and inscrutable about him, even after death Napoleon’s inanimate remains continued a puzzle and a mystery : for, notAvithstanding his great sufferings and the usual emaciating effects of the malady that destroyed him, the body Avas found enormously fat. The frame was as unsuscep- tible of material disintegration as the spirit was indomitable. Over the sternum, or breast bone, Avhich is generally only thinly covered, there Avas a coat of fat an inch and a half thick ; and on the abdomen tAvo inches, Avhilst the omentum, kidneys, and heart, Avere loaded Avith fat. The last organ was remark- ably small, and the muscle flabby, in contradiction to our ideal associations, and in proof of the seeming paradox, that it is possible to be a very great man with a very little heart. Much anxiety Avas felt at the time to ascertain the disease of which Bonaparte died. Mr O’Meara had represented the liver as the faulty organ, and this has been echoed by Antom- marchi ; though, as we have said before, the illustrious sufferer himself, Avith better judgment, referred the mischief to the stomach, as its seat and source ; and he was perfectly right, as the event proved. This organ Avas found most extensively disorganised : in fact, it was ulcerated all over like a honey- comb. The focus of the disease Avas exactly the spot pointed out by Napoleon — the pylorus, or lower end Avbere the intes- tines begin. At this place I put my finger into a hole, made by an ulcer, that had eaten through the stomach, but which Avas stopped by a slight adhesion to the adjacent liver. After all, the liver Avas free from disease, and every organ sound ex- cept the stomach. Several peculiarities were noticed about the body. He appeared at some time to have had an issue open in the arm, and there Avas a slight mark, like a wound, in the leg, but Avhich might have been caused by a suppurating boil. The chest was not ample, and there Avas something of feminine delicacy in the roundness of the arms and the small- ness of the hands and feet. The head was large in propor- tion to the body, Avith a fine, massy, capacious forehead. In other respects there Avere no remarkable developements for the gratification of phrenologists. The diseased state of the stomach Avas palpably and demonstrably the cause of death ; and hoAv Napoleon could have existed for any time with such an organ, Avas wonderful, for there was not an inch of it sound. — Biography of a Surgeon. The March of Magniloquence — Is “ onward” like the prosperity of your two-and-sixpenny republic in Central Ame- rica. We [the Americans] are becoming so great, that it is very much to be feared Ave shall lose all our standards of commerce. Having nothing little, we don’t see how the deuce we shall be able to express a diminutive. Our miniature wall all become magnitude, and it is difficult for us to see our way clearly in the world. Our insects will groAV into elephants, and for aught we see we shall have to speak of the gnat as a large monster, and the honey-bee have to be described as a beast of prey. “ I does business in this store," Avas the re- mark made the other day by a dealer in crab apples, as he crawled out of a refuse molasses-hogshead with his peck bas- ket of merchandise. The skippers of the Long Island clam- boats all call each other captains; and we lately heard a city scavenger complaining to another gentleman in the same line of business, that his town house had been endangered during a recent conflagration : a mischievous cracker -boy had thrown one of his flaming missiles into the segment of a cellar occu- pied by the complainant and his family. Mr Mark Anthony Potts told us the other day that he had made arrangements for extending his business. He has taken the superintendence of two coal carts, having heretofore shovelled for but one. Nobody thinks noAvadays of calling the conductor of a mud cart on the railroad by any less dignified title than an agent. The vender of apple-jack on a dilapidated cellar-door upon the North river, is a merchant ; and the fourth-rate victualler along the wharves, who manages to rent half of a broken- doAvn cobbler’s stall, keeps a public house ! Printed and published every Saturday by GUNN and CAMERON, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin ; and sold by all Booksellers. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 20. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1840. Volume I. MALAHIDE CASTLE, An ancient baronial castle, in good preservation and still in- habited by the lineal descendant of its original founder, is a rare object to find in Ireland ; and the causes which have led to this circumstance are too obvious to require an explana- tion. In Malahide Castle we have, however, a highly inte- resting example of this kind ; for though in its present state it owes much of its imposing effect to modern restorations and improvements, it still retains a considerable portion of very ancient date, and most probably even some parts of the ori- ginal castle erected in the reign of King Henry II. Consi- dered in this way, Malahide Castle is without a rival in inte- rest, not only in our metropolitan county, but also perhaps within the boundary of the old English pale. The Castle of Malahide is placed on a gently elevated si- tuation on a limestone rock near the village or town from which it derives its name, and of which, with its picturesque bay, it commands a beautiful prospect. In its general form it is quadrangular and nearly approaching to a square, flanked on its south or principal front by circular towers, with a fine “Gothic” entrance porch in the centre. Its proportions are of considerable grandeur, and its picturesqueness is greatly heightened by the masses of luxuriant ivy which mantle its walls. For much of its present architectural magnificence it is however indebted to its present proprietor, and his father the late Colonel Talbot. The structure, as it appeared in the commencement of the last century, was of contracted di- mensions, and had wholly lost its original castellated charac- COUNTY OF DUBLIN. ter, though its ancient moat still remained, This moat is however now filled up, and its sloping surface is converted into a green-sward, and planted with Italian cypresses and other evergreens. Interesting, however, as this ancient mansion is in its exte- rior appearance, it is perhaps still more so in its interior fea- tures. Its spacious hall, roofed with timber-work of oak, is of considerable antiquity ; but its attraction is eclipsed by another apartment of equal age and vastly superior beauty, with which indeed in its way there is nothing, as far as we know, to be compared in Ireland. This unique apartment is wainscotted throughout with oak elaborately carved, in com- partments, with subjects derived from scripture history, and though Gothic, in their general character, some of them are executed with considerable skill ; while the chimney-piece, which exhibits in its central division figures of the Virgin and Child, is carved with a singular degree of elegance and beauty. The whole is richly varnished, and from the blackness of tint which the wood has acquired from time, the apartment, as Air Brewer well observes, assumes the resemblance of one vast cabinet of ebony. The other apartments, of which there are ten on each floor, are of inferior architectural pretensions, though some of them are of lofty and spacious proportions. But they are not with- out attractions of a high order, being enriched with some costly specimens of porcelain, and their walls covered with the more valuable ornaments of a collection of original por- 154 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. traits and paintings by the old masters. , Among the former the most remarkable are portraits of Charles L and Queen Henrietta Maria, by Vandyke ; James II. and his queen, Anne Hyde, by Sir Peter Lely ; Queen Anne, by Sir Godfrey Knel- ler ; the Duchess of Portsmouth, mistress to Charles II. ; the first Duke of Richmond (son of the above duchess) when a child ; Richard Talbot, the celebrated Duke of Tirconnel, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, general and minister to James II., by Sir Peter Lely; the Ladies Catherine and Charlotte Tal- bot, daughters of the duke, by Sir P. Lely ; with many other portraits of illustrious members of the Talbot family. The portraits of the Duchess of Portsmouth and her son were pre- sented by herself to Mrs Wogan of Rathcoffy, from whom they were inherited by Colonel Talbot. Among the pictures of more general interest, the most dis- tinguished is a small altar piece divided into compartments, and representing the Nativity, Adoration, and Circumcision. This most valuable and interesting picture is the work of Albert Durer, and is said to have belonged to the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots. It was purchased by Charles II. for £2000, and was given by him to the Duchess of Portsmouth, who presented it to the grandmother of the late Col. Talbot. As already observed, the noble family of Talbot have been seated in their present locality for a period of nearly seven hundred years ! According to the pedigree of the family, drawn up with every appearance of accuracy by Sir William Betham, Richard Talbot, the second son of Richard Talbot, Lord of Eccleswell and Linton, in Herefordshire, who was living in 1153, having accompanied King Henry II. into Ire- land, obtained from that monarch the lordship of Malahide, being part of the two cantreds of Leinster, in the neighbour- hood of Dublin, which King Henry had reserved, when he granted the rest of the province to Richard Earl of Strong- bow, to be held as a noble fief of the crown of England. It is at all events certain, as appears from the chartulary or re- gister of Mary’s Abbey, now in the British Museum, that this Richard Talbot granted to St Mary’s Abbey in Dublin cer- tain lands called Venenbristen, which lie between Croscurry and the lands of Hamon Mac Kirkyl, in pure and perpetual alms, that the monks there might pray for the health of his soul and that of his brother Roger, and their ancestors ; and that he also leased certain lands in Malahide and Portmarnoc to the monks of the same abbey. From this Richard Talbot the present Lord Talbot de Malahide descends in the twen- tieth generation, and in the twenty-fourth from Richard T al- bot, a Norman baron who held Hereford Castle in the time of the Conqueror. The noble Earls of Shrewsbury and Tal- bot are of the same stock, but descend from Gilbert, the elder brother of Richard, who was Lord of Eccleswell and Linton, and was living in 1 1 90. There can be no question, therefore, of the noble origin of the Talbots de Malahide, nor can their title be considered as a mushroom one, though only conferred upon the mother of the present lord ; for Sir William Betham shows that his ancestor, Thomas Talbot, knight and lord of Malahide, who had livery of his estate in 1349, was summoned by the she- riff of Dublin to the Magnum Concilium, or Great Council, held in Dublin in 1372, 46 Edward III., and again to the Mag- num Concilium held on Saturday, in the vigils of the holy Trinity, 48 Edward III., 1374, by special writ directed to himself by the name of “ Thome Talbot, Militis.” He was also summoned by writ to the Parliament of Ireland in the same year. If therefore it could be ascertained that this Thomas Talbot actually took his seat under that writ, it would be clear that his lineal heir-male and heir-general, the present baron, has a just claim to the honours and dignity which he has so recently acquired. The manor of Malahide was created by charter as early as the reign of King Henry II., and its privileges were con- firmed and enlarged by King Edward IV. in 1475. This, we believe, still remains in the possession of the chief of the fa- mily, but various other extensive possessions of his ancestors passed to junior branches of his house, and have been long alienated from his family. Among the most memorable circumstances of general in- terest connected with the history of this castle and its pos- sessors, should be mentioned what Mr Brewer properly calls “ a lamentable instance of the ferocity with which quarrels of party rivalry were conducted in ages during which the inter- nal polity of Ireland was injuriously neglected by the supreme head of government : — On Whitsun-eve, in the year 1329, as is recorded by Ware, John de Birmingham, Earl of Louth, Richard Talbot, styled Lord of Malahide, and many of their kindred, together with sixty of their English followers, were slain in a pitched battle at Balbriggan [Ballybragan] in this neighbourhood, by the Anglo-Norman faction of the De Verdons, De Gernons, and Savages : the cause of animosity being the election of the earl to the palatinate dignity of Louth, the county of the latter party.” At a later period the Talbots of Malahide had a narrow escape from a calamity nearly as bad as death itself — the total loss of their rank and possessions. Involved of necessity by their political and religious principles in the troubles of the middle of the seventeenth century, they could hardly have escaped the persecution of the party assuming government in the name of the parliament. John Talbot of Malahide having been indicted and outlawed for acting in the Irish rebellion, his castle, with five hundred acres of arable land, was granted by lease, dated 21st December 1653, for seven years, to the regicide Miles Corbet, who resided here for several years after, till, being himself outlawed in turn at the period of the Restoration, he took shipping from its port for the continent. More fortunate, however, than the representatives of most other families implicated in the events of this unhappy period, Mr Talbot was by the act of explanation in 1665 restored to all his lands and estates in the county of Dublin, as he had held the same in 1641, only subject to quit rents. It is said that during the occupation of Malahide by Corbet it became for a short time the abode of Cromwell himself; but this statement, we believe, only rests on popular tradition — a chronicler Much has been too fond of making similar statements respecting Irish castles generally, to merit attention and belief. Our limits will not permit us on the present occasion to enter on any description of the picturesque ruins of the an- cient chapel and tombs situated within the demesne, and im- mediately adjacent to the castle ; and we shall only add in conclusion, that the grounds of the demesne, though of limited extent, and but little varied in elevation, are judi- ciously laid out, and present among its plantations many scenes of dignified character and beauty. - P. SAINT BRIDGET’S SHAWL, BY T. E., AUTHOR OF “DARBY DOYLE,” ETC. Amongst the many extraordinary characters with which this country abounds, such as fools, madmen, onshochs, omadhauns, hair-brains, crack-brains, and naturals, I have particularly taken notice of one. His character is rather singular. He begs about Newbridge, county of Kildare : he will accept of any thing offered him, except money — that he scornfully re- fuses ; which fulfils the old adage, “ None but a fool will refuse money.” His habitation is the ruins of an old fort or ancient stronghold called Walshe’s Castle, on the road to Kilcullen, near Arthgarvan, and within a few yards of the river Liffey, far away from any dwelling. There he lies on a bundle of straw, with no other covering save the clothes he wears all day. Many is the evening I have seen this poor crazy crea- ture plod along the road to his desolate lodging. There is another stamp of singularity on his character : his name is Pat Mowlds, but who dare attempt to call him Pat ? It must be Mr Mowlds, or he will not only be offended himself, but will surely offend those who neglect this respect. In general . he is of a downcast, melancholy disposition, boasts of being very learned, is much delighted when any one gives him a ballad or old newspaper. Sometimes he gets into a very good humour, and will relate many anecdotes in a droll style. About two years ago, as I happened to be sauntering along the border of the Curragh, I overtook this solitary being. “ A fine morning, Mr Mowlds,” was my address. “Yes, sur, thank God, a very fine morning; shure iv we don’t have fine weather in July, when will we have it ?” “ What a great space of ground this is to lie waste — what a quantity of provisions it would produce — what a number of people it would employ and feed !” said I. “ Oh, that’s very thrue, sur ; but was it all sown in pitta- ties, what w T ould become ov the poor sheep ? Shure we want mutton as well as pittaties — besides, all the devarshin we have every year. Why, thin, maybe ye have e’er an ould news- paper or ballit about ye?” I said I had not, but a couple of Penny Journals should be at his service which I had in my pocket. “ Och, any thing at all that will keep a body amused, though I have got a great many of them ; but among them all I don’t see any picther or any account of the round tower THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 155 furninst ye ; nor any account ov the fire Saint Bridget kept in night an’ day for six hundred years ; nor any thing about the raison why it was put out ; nor any thing about how Saint Bridget came by this piece ov ground ; nor any thing about the ould Earl ov Kildare, who rides round the Curragh every seventh year with silver spurs and silver reins to his horse — God bless ye, sur, have ye e’er a bit of tobacky ? — there’s not a word about this poor counthry at all.” My senses were now driven to anxiety — I gave him some tobacco. He then resumed : — “ Och, an’ faix it’s myself that can tell all about those things. Shure my grandfather was brother to one of the ould anshint bards who left him all his books, and he left them to my mother, who left them to me.” “Well, Mr Mowlds,” I said, “you must have a perfect knowledge of those things — let us hear something of their contents.” “ Why, thin, shure, sur, I can’t do less. Now, you see, sur, it’s my fashion like the priests and ministhers goin’ to praich : they must give a bit ov a text out ov some larned book, and that’s the way with me. So here goes — mind the words : “The seventeenth ov March, on King Dermot’s great table, Where ninety-nine beeves were all roast at a time, We dhrank to the memory, while we wor able, Ov Pathrick, the saint ov our nation; And gaily wor dhrinkin’, roarin’, shoutin’, Cead mille faltha, acushla machree. There was Cathleen so fair, an’ Eileen so rare! With Pathrick an’ Nora, An’ flauntin’ Queen Dorah ! On Pathrick’s dav in the mornin’. Who o'! ! ! County Kildare an’ the sky over it ! Short grass for ever !” He thus ended with a kick up of his heel which nearly touched the nape of his neck, and a flourish of his stick at the same time. Then turning to me he said, “ I am not going to tell you one word about the fire — I am going to tell you how Saint Bridget got all this ground. Bad luck to Black Noll (a name given to Cromwell) with his crew ov dirty Sasanachs that tore down the church ; and if they could have got on the tower, that would be down also. No matther — every dog will have his day. Sit down on this hill till we have a shaugh ov the dhudheen. In this hill lie buried all the bones ov the poor fellows that Gefferds killed the time ov the throuble, peace an’ rest to their souls !” “ But to the story, Mr Mowlds,” I said, as I watched him with impatience while he readied his pipe with a large pin. “ Well, sur, here goes. Bad luck to this touch, it’s damp : the rain blew into my pocket t’other night an’ wetted it — ha, I have it. Now, sur, you persave by the words ov my text that a great feast was kept up every year at the palace of Castle- dermot on Saint Pathrick’s day. Nothing was to be seen for many days before but slaughtering ov bullocks, skiverin’ ov pullets, rowlin’ in ov barrels, an’ invitin’ all the quolity about the counthry ; nor did the roolocks and spalpeens lag behind — they never waited to be axt ; all came to find a frindly hand at the feast ; nor war the kings ov those days above raisin’ the ax to slay a bullock. King O’Dermot was one ov those slaughtherin’ kings who wouldn’t cringe at the blood ov any baste. ’Twas on one ov those festival times that he sallied out with his ax in his hand to show his dexterity in the killin’ way. The butchers brought him the cattle one afther another, an’ he laid them down as fast as they could be dhrained ov their blood. Afther layin’ down ninety-nine, the last ov a hundhred was brought to him. Just as he riz the ax to give it the clout, the ox with a sudden chuck drew the stake from the ground, and away with him over hill an’ dale, with the swingin’ block an’ a hundred spalpeens at his heels. At last he made into the river just below Kilcullen, when a little gossoon thought to get on his back ; but his tail bein’ very long, gave a twitch an’ hitched itself in a black knot round the chap’s body, and so towed him across the river. Away with him then across the Curragh, ever till he came to where Saint Bridget lived. He roared at the gate as if for marcy. Saint Bridget was just at the door when she saw the ox with his hoims thrust through the bars. ‘ Arrah, what ails ye, poor baste ?’ sez she, not seein’ the boy at his tail. ‘ Och,’ sez the boy, makin’ answer for the ox, ‘for marcy sake let me in. I’m the last ov a hundred that was goin’ to be kilt by King O’Dermot for his great feast to-morrow ; but he little knows who I am.’ Begor, when she heard the ox spake, she was startled ; but rousin’ herself, she said, ‘ Why, thin, it ’ud be fittherfor King O’Dermot to give me a few ov yees, than be feedin’ Budhavore : it’s well you come itself. ’ ‘ Ah, but, shure, you won’t kill me, Biddy Darlin,’ sez the chap, takin’ the hint, as it was nigh dark, and Biddy couldn’t see him with her odd eye ; for you must know, sur, that she was such a purty girl when she was young, that the boys used to be runnin’ in dozens afther her. At last she prayed for somethin’ to keep them from tormenting her. So you see, sur, she was seized with the small-pox at one side ov her face, which blinded up her eye, and left the whole side ov her face in furrows, while the other side remained as beautiful as ever ‘ In troth you needn’t fear me killin’ ye,’ sez she ; ‘ but where can I keep ye ?’ ‘ Och,’ says the arch wag, ‘ shure when I grow up to be a bull I can guard yer ground.’ ‘ Ground, in yeagh,’ sez the saint ; ‘ shure I havn’t as much as would sow a ridge ov pittaties, barrin’ the taste I have for the girls to walk on.’ ‘ And did you ax the king for nane?’ sed the supposed ox. ‘ In troth 1 did, but the ould budhoch refused me twice’t.’ ‘ Well, Biddy honey,’ sez the chap, 4 the third offer’s lucky. Go to-morrow, when he’s at dinner, and you may come at the soft side ov him. But won’t you give some refreshment to this poor boy that I picked up on the road ? I fear he is dead or smothered hanging at my tail.’ Well, to be sure, the chap hung his head (moryeah) when he sed this. Out St Bridget called a dozen ov nuns, who untied the knot, and afther wipin’ the chap as clean as anew pin, brought him into the kitchen, and crammed him with the best of aitin’ and drinkin’ ; but while they wor doing this, away legged the ox. St Bridget went out to ax him some questions consarnin’ the king, but he was gone. 4 ’Pon my sowkins,’ sed she, 4 but that was a mighty odd thing entirely. Faix, an it’s myself that will be off to Castle- dermot to-morrow, hit or miss.’ Well, sur, the next day she gother together about three dozen nuns. 4 Toss on yer mantles,’ sez she, 4 an’ let us be off to Castle- dermot.’ 4 With all harts,’ sez they. 4 Come here, Norah,’ sez she to the sarvint maid. 4 Slack down the fire,’ sez she, 4 and be sure you have the kittle on. I couldn’t go to bed without my tay, was it ever so late.’ So afther givin’ her ordhers off they started. Well, behould ye, sur, when she got within two miles ov the palace, word was brought to the king that St Bridget and above five hundred nuns were on the road, cornin’ to dine with him. 4 O tundheranounthers,’ roared the king, 4 what’ll I do for their dinner ? Why the dhoul didn’t she come an hour sooner, or sent word yestherday ? Such a time for visithers ! Do ye hear me, Paudeen Roorke?’ sez he, turnin’ to his chief butler: 4 run afther Rory Condaugh, and ax him did he give away the two hind quarthers that I sed was a little rare.’ 4 Och, yer honor,’ sed Paudeen Roorke, 4 shure he gev them to a parcel of boccochs at the gate.’ 4 The dhoul do them good with it ! Oh, fire and faggots ! what’ll become ov me ? — shure she will say I have no hospita- lity, an’ lave me her curse. But, cooger, Paudeen : did the roolocks overtake the ox that ran away yestherday ?’ 4 Och, the dhoul a haugh ov him ever was got, yer honor.’ 4 Well, it’s no matther; that’ll be a good excuse; do you go and meet her ; I lave it all to you to get me out ov this hobble.’ 4 Naboclish,’ said Paudeen Roorke, cracking his fingers, an’ out he started. Just as he got to the door he met her going to come in. Well become the king, but he shlipt behind the door to hear what ud be sed. 4 Bedhahusth,’ he roared to the guests that wor going to dhrink his health while his back was turned. 4 God save yer reverence!’ said St Bridget to the butler, takin’ him for the king’s chaplain, he had such a grummoch face on him ; 4 can I see the king ?’ 4 God save you kindly !’ sed Paudeen, 4 to be shure ye can. 156 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Who will I say wants him ?’ eyeing the black army at her heels. ‘ Tell him St Bridget called with a few friends to take pot hick.’ ‘ Oh, murther !’ sed Paudeen, * why didn’t you come an hour sooner ? I’m afraid the meat is all cowld, we waited so long for ye.’ ‘ Och, don’t make any bones about it,’ sed St Bridget : ‘ it’s a cowld stummock can’t warm its own mait.’ 4 In troth that’s thrue enough,’ sed Paudeen ; ‘ but I fear there isn’t enough for so many.’ ‘ Why, ye set of cormorals,’ sed she, ‘have ye swallied the whole ninety-nine oxen that ye kilt yestherday ?’ ‘ Oh, blessed hour !’ groaned the king to himself, ‘ how did she know that ? Och, I suppose she knows I’m here too.’ 4 Oh, bad scran to me !’ said Paudeen, ‘ but we had the best and fattest keepin’ for you, but he ran away.’ ‘ In troth you needn’t tell me that,’ sez she ; 4 I know all about yer doings. If I’m sent away without my dinner itself, I must see the king.’ Just as she sed this, a hiccup seized the king, so loud that it reached the great hall. The guests, who war all silent by the king’s order, thought he sed hip, hip ! — so. Such a shout, my jewel, as nearly frightened the saint away. ‘ In troth,’ sez she, ‘ I’d be very sorry to venthur among such a set of riff-raff, any way. But who’s this behind the door ?’ sez she, cockin’ her eye. 4 Oh, I beg pardon !— I hope no inthrusion — there ye are — ye’ll save me the trouble ov goin’ in.’ 4 Oh,’ sed the king (hie), ‘ I tuck a little sick in my stum- mock, and came down to get fresh air. I beg pardon. Why didn’t you come in time to dinner ?’ ‘ I want no dinner,’ said she ; ‘ I came to speak on affairs ov state.’ ‘ Why, thin,’ said the king, ‘ before ye state them, ye must come in and take a bit in yer fingers, at any rate.’ ‘ In troth,’ sez she, ‘ I was always used to full and plenty, and not any scrageen bits ; and to think ov a king’s table not having a ftaugooloeh meal, is all nonsense : that’s like the taste ov ground I axt ye for some time ago.’ Begor, sur, when she sed that, she gov him such a start that the hiccough left him. ‘ Ah, Biddy, honey,’ sez he, ‘ shure ye w r or only passin’ a joke to cure me : say no more— it’s all gone.’ Just as he sed this, he heard a great shout at a distance : out he pulled his specks, an’ put them on his nose ; when to his joy he saw a whole crowd ov spalpeens dhrivin’ the ox be- fore them. The king, forgettin’ who he was spaikin’ to, took off his caubeen, and began to wave it, as he ran off to meet them. 4 Oh ! mahurpendhoul, but ye’re brave fellows,’ sez he ; 4 who- ever it was that cotch him shall have a commission in my life guards. I never wanted a joint more. Galong, every mo- ther’s son ov yees, and borry all the gridirons and frying- pans ye can get. Hand me the axe, till I have some steaks tost up for a few friends.’ So, my jewel, while ye’d say thrap-stick, the ox was down, an’ on the gridirons before the life was half out ov him. Well, to be shure, St Bridget got mighty hungry, as she had walked a long way. She then tould the king that the gen- tlemen should lave the room, as she could not sit with any one not in ordhers, and they being a little out ov ordher. So, to make themselves agreeable to her ordhers, they quit the hall, and w r ent out to play at hurdles. When the king recollected who he was goin’ to give dinner to, sez he to himself, 4 Shure no king ought to be above sarvin’ a saint.’ So over he goes to his wife the queen. 4 Dorah,’ sez he, 4 do ye know who’s within ?’ 4 Why, to be shure I do,’ sez she ; 4 ain’t it Bridheen na Keogue ?’ 4 Ye’re right,’ sez he, 4 and you know she’s a saint ; an’ I think it will be for the good ov our sowls that she kem here to-day. Come, peel off yer muslins, and help me up wid the dinner.’ 4 In troth I’ll not,’ sez the queen ; 4 shure ye know I’m a black Prospitarian, an’ bleeve nun ov yer saints.’ ‘Arrah, nun ov yer quare ways,’ sez he: 4 don’t you wish my sowl happy, any how? — an’ if you help me, you will be only helpin’ my sowl to heaven.’ 4 "Oh, in that case,’ sez she, 4 here’s at ye, and the sooner the betther. But one charge I’d give ye : take care how ye open yer daub about ground : ye know she thought to come round ye twioe before.’ So in the twinklin’ ov an eye she went down to the kitchen, an’ put on a prashkeen, an’ was first dish at the table. The king saw every one lashin’ aw r ay at their dinner except Bridget. 4 Arrah, Biddy, honey,’ sez he, 4 why don’t ye help yerself ?’ 4 Why, thin,’ sez she, 4 the dhoul a bit, bite or sup, I’ll take undher yer roof until ye grant me one favour.’ 4 And what is that ?’ sez the king ; 4 shure ye know a king must stand to his word was it half his kingdom, and how do I know but ye want to chouse me out ov it : let me know first what ye want.’ 4 Well, thin, Mr King O’Dermot,’ sez she, 4 all I want is a taste ov ground to sow a few pays in.’ 4 Well, an’ how much do ye want, yer reverence,’ sez he, all over ov a thrimble, betune his wife’s dark looks, and the curse he expected from Bridget if he refused. 4 Not much,’ sez she, 4 for the present. You don’t know how I’m situated. All the pilgrims going to Lough Dhearg are sent to me to put the pays in their brogues, an’ ye know I havn’t as much ground as would sow a pint ; but if ye only give me about fifty acres, I’ll be contint.’ 4 Fifty acres !’ roared the king, stretching his neck like a goose. 4 Fifty acres !’ roared the queen, knitting her brows ; 4 shure that much ground would fill their pockets as well as their brogues.’ 4 There ye’re out ov it,’ said the saint ; 4 why, it would’nt be half enough if they got their dime according to their sins ; but I’ll lave it to yerself.’ 4 How much will ye give ?’ 4 Not an acre,’ said the queen. 4 Oh, Borah,’ sed the king, 4 let me give the crathur some.’ 4 Not an inch,’ sed the queen, 4 if I’m to be misthress here.’ 4 Oh, I beg pardon,’ sez the saint ; 4 so, Mr King O’Der- mot, you are undher petticoat government I see ; but maybe I won’t match ye for all that. Now, take my word, you shall go on penance to Lough Dhearg before nine days is about ; and instead ov pays ye shall have pebblestones and swan shot in yer brogues. But it’s well for you, Mrs Queen, that ye’re out ov my reach, or I’d send you there barefooted, with no- thing on but yer stockings.’ When the king heard this, he fell all ov a thrimble. 4 Oh, Dorah,’ sez he, 4 give the crathur a little taste ov ground to satisfy her.’ 4 No, not as much as she could play ninepins on,’ sez she, shakin’ her fist and grindin’ her teeth together ; 4 and I hope she may send you to Lough Dhearg, as she sed she would.’ 4 Why, thin, have ye no feeling for one ov yer own sex ?’ sez the saint. 4 I’ll go my way this minit, iv ye only give me as much as my shawl will cover.’ 4 Oh, that’s a horse ov another colour,’ sez the queen ; 4 you may have that, with a heart and a half. But you know very Avell if I didn’t watch that fool ov a man, he’d give the very nose off his face if a girl only axt him how he was.’ Well, sur, when the king beard this, he grew as merry as a cricket. 4 Come, Biddy,’ sez he, 4 we mustn’t have a dhry bargain, any how.’ 4 Oh, ye’ll excuse me, Mr King O’Dermot,’ sez she ; 4 1 never drink stronger nor wather.’ 4 Oh, son ov Fingal,’ exclaimed the king, 4 do ye hear this, and it Pathrick’s day !’ 4 Oh, I intirely forgot that,’ sez she. 4 Well, then, for fear ye’d say I was a bad fellow, I’ll just taste. Shedhurdh.’ Well, sur, after the dhough-an-dheris she went home very well pleased that she was to get ever a taste ov ground at all, and she promised the king to make his pinance light, and that she would boil the pays for him, as she did with young men ov tendher conshinses ; but as to ould hardened sinners, she’d keep the pays till they’d be as stale as a sailor’s bisket. Well, to be shure, when she got home she set upwards ov a hundhred nuns at work to make her shawl, during which time she was never heard of. At last, afther six months’ hard la- bour, they got it finished. 4 Now,’ sez she, 4 it’s time I should go see the king, that he may come and see that I take no more than my right. So, taking no one with her barrin’ herself and one nun, off she set. The king and queen were just sitting down to tay at the parlour window when she got there. 4 Whoo ! talk of the dhoul and he’ll appear,’ sez he. 4 Why, thin, Biddy honey, it’s an age since we saw ye. Sit down ; we’re just on the first cup. Dorah and myself were afther talkin’ about ye, an’ thought ye forgot us intirely. Well, did ve take that bit ov ground ?’ THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 157 ‘ Indeed I’d be very sorry to do the likes behind any one’s back. You must come to-morrow and see it measured.’ ‘ Not I, ’pon my sowkins,’ sed the king : * do ye think me so mane as to doubt yer word ?’ ‘ Pho ! pho !’ sed the queen, ‘ such a taste is not worth talkin’ ov ; but, just to honour ye, we shall attind in state to-morrow. Sit down.’ She took up her station betune the king an’ queen: the purty side ov her face was next the king, an’ the ugly side next the queen. ‘ I can’t be jealous ov you, at any rate,’ sed the queen to her- self, as she never saw her veil off before. ‘ Oh, murther !’ sez the king, ‘ what a pity ye’re a saint, and Dorah to be alive. Such a beauty !’ Just as he was starin’, the queen happened to look over at a looking-glass, in which she saw Biddy’s pretty side. ‘ Hem !’ sez she, sippin’ her cup. ‘ Dermot,’ sez she, * it’s very much out ov manners to be stuck with ladies at their tay. Go take a shaugh ov the dhudheen, while we talk over some affairs ov state.’ Begor, sur, the king was glad ov the excuse to lave them together, in the hopes St Bridget would convart his wife. Well, sur, whatever discoorse they had, I disremember, but the queen came down in great humour to wish the saint good night, an’ promised to be on the road the next day to Kildare. ‘ Faix,’ sez the saint, ‘ I was nigh forgettin’ my gentility to wish the king good night. Where is he ?’ ‘ Augh, and shure myself doesn’t know, barrin’ he’s in the kitchen.’ ‘ In the kitchen !’ exclaimed the saint ; ‘ oh fie !’ ‘ Ay, indeed, just cock yer eye,’ sez the queen, * to the key-hole : that dhudheen is his excuse. I can’t keep a maid for him.’ * Oh ! is that the way with him ? — never fear : I’ll make his pinance purty sharp for that. At any rate call him out an’ let us part in friends.’ So, sur, afther all the compliments wor passed, the king sed he should go see her a bit ov the road, as it w r as late : so off he went. The moon had just got up, an’ he walked alongside the saint at the ugly side ; but when he looked round to praise her, an’ pay her a little compliment, he got sich a fright that he’d take his oath it wasn’t her at all, so he was glad to get back to the queen. Well, sur, next morning the queen ordheredthe long car to be got ready, with plenty ov clean straw in it, as in those times they had no coaches ; then regulated her life guards, twelve to ride before and twelve behind, the king at one side and the chief butler at the other, for without the butler she couldn’t do at all, as every mile she had to stop the whole re- tinue till she’d get refreshment. In the meantime, St Bridget placed her nuns twenty-one miles round the Curragh. At last the thrumpet sounded, which gave notice that the king was coming. As soon as they halted, six men lifted the queen up on the throne, wdiich they brought with them on the long car. The king ov coorse got up by her side. ‘ Well, Dorah,’ sez he in a whisper, ‘what a laugh we’ll have at Biddy, with her shawl !’ ‘ I don’t know that neither,’ sez the queen. ‘ It looks as thick as Finmocool’s boulsther, as it hangs over her shoulder.’ ‘ God save yer highness,’ sed the saint, as she kem up to them. ‘ Why, ye sted mighty long. I had a snack ready for ye at one o’clock.’ ‘ Och, it’s no matther,’ sez the queen ; ‘ measure yer bit ov ground, and we then can have it in comfort.’ So with that St Bridget threw down her shawl, which she had cunningly folded up. Now, sur, this shawl was made ov fine sewin’ silk, all net- work, each mesh six feet square, and tuck thirty-six pounds ov silk, and employed six hundred and sixty nuns for three months making it. Well, sur, as I sed afore, she threw it on the ground. ‘ Here, Judy Conway, run to Biddy Conroy with this cor- ner, an’ let her make aff in the direckshin ov Kildare, an’ be shure she runs the corner into the moristery. Here, you, Nelly Murphy, make off to Kilcullen ; an’ you, Katty Farrel, away with you to Ballysax ; an’ you, Nelly Doye, away to Arth- garvafl ; an’ you, Rose Regan, in the direckshin of Connell ; an’ you, Ellen Fogarty, away in the road to Maddenstown ; an’ you, Jenny Purcel, away to Airfield. Just hand it from one to t’other.’ So givin’ three claps ov her hand, off they set like hounds, an’ in a minnit ve’d think a haul ov nuns wor cotched in the net. ‘ Oh. millia murther !’ sez the queen, ‘ she’s stretchin’ it over my daughter’s ground.’ ‘ Oh, blud-an’-turf !’ sez the king, ‘ now she’s stretchin’ it over my son’s ground. Galong, ye set ov thaulabawns,' sed he to his life-guards ; ‘ galong, I say, an’ stop her, else she’ll cover all my dominions.’ “ Oh fie, yer honour,’ sez the chief butler ; ‘ if you break yer word, I’m not shure ov my wages.’ Well behould ye, sur, in less than two hours Saint Bridget had the whole Curragh covered. ‘ Now see what a purty kittle of fish you’ve made ov it !’ sez the queen. ‘ No, but it’s you, Mrs Queen O’Dermot, ’twas you agreed to this.’ ‘ Ger out, ye ould bosthoon,’ sez the queen, ‘ ye desarve it all : ye might aisy guess that she’d chouse ye. Shure iv ye had a grain ov sinse, ye might recollect how yer cousin King O’Toole was choused by Saint Kavin out ov all his ground, by the saint stuffin’ a lump ov a crow into the belly ov the ould goose.’ 4 Well, Dorah, never mind ; if she makes a hole, I have a peg for it. Now, Biddy,’ sez he, ‘though I gave ye the ground, I forgot to tell ye that I only give it for a certain time. I now tell ye from this day forward you shall only have it while ye keep yer fire in.’ ” Here I lost the remainder of his discourse by my ill man- ners. I got so familiar with Mr Mowlds, and so interested with his story, that I forgot my politeness. “ And what about the fire, Pat?” said I, without consider- ation. Before I could recollect the offence, he turned on me with the eyes of a maniac — “ The dhoul whishper nollege into your ear. Pat ! — (hum) — Pat ! — Pat ! — this is freedom, with all my heart.” So saying, he strode away, muttering something between his teeth. However, I hope again to meet him, when I shall be a little more cautious in my address. THE ELECTROTYPE. An elaborate and very lucid article on the Electrotype and Daguerreotype, being a review of “ An Account of Expe- riments in Electricity made by Thomas Spencer — Annals of Electricity, January 1840,” and of the account of M. Da- guerre’s discovery of Photogenic Drawing as published by himself, has appeared in that excellent work “ The West- minster Review” for September. Our space not allowing us to enter so fully into details as our admirable contem- porary, we present our readers with as concise an article as the nature of the subject will permit, confining ourselves for the present to the Electrotype, as being less generally known, though not less curious. The electrotype is another instance of the application of invi- sible elements to the uses of man, by which powers and influ- ences, of whose nature he is as yet wholly ignorant, are made subservient to his pui’pos'es, and obedient to his rule. To define accurately what electricity is, would be, as yet at least, impossible. Many oonjectures have been, are, and will be hazarded, but the knowledge of its production, power, and effects, is only in its infancy, and so full of promise of a gigan- tic growth, that time will be better spent in its cultivation than in debating upon what it is. The truth of this proposition is fully borne out by the sub- ject of our present paper ; for whilst many scientific men have been exhausting their energies in the production of plausi- ble theories upon the nature of the electric fluid, other more matter-of-fact philosophers have addressed themselves to its application ; and whilst some of these devote themselves to the developement of its motive powers, in the well-founded hope of its superseding steam, others press its services to far differ- ent uses. Amongst the last, Mr Spencer holds a foremost place. Before entering into the description of the electrotype, we must say a few words on the subject of electricity to the less informed of our readers. The electric fluid, as it is called, may be produced in various ways : the most ordinary is by the friction of glass against silk, as exemplified in the elec- trical machine, which is familiar to almost every one. But galvanic and voltaic electricity is differently produced. In all cases its production is the consequence of combination. 158 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. but particularly in the galvanic battery and voltaic circle- The latter, being Mr Spencer’s apparatus, we shall briefly describe. An ordinary voltaic circle is formed by a plate of zinc and another of copper being placed upright in a vessel containing acid or a saline solution. Zinc is more oxidisable than copper, that is, it has a greater affinity to, or inclination to unite itself with, the gas called oxygen, the combination of which with the particles of metal produces that appearance which is called “ rust.” Whilst the zinc and copper are separate, the oxygen of the fluid operates upon both ; but if they are united by means of a wire connected with each, the oxygen forsakes the copper altogether, and proceeds with increased force to unite with the zinc, and a current of electricity is immediately formed, which proceeds from the zinc plate through the fluid medium to the copper, thence along the connecting wire to the zinc, and thence round again in a constant circulating stream, until the zinc has been entirely decomposed, or oxidised. Electricity being thus produced by combination, its pro- gress and effects are marked by a wonderful power of separa- tion or decomposition, which it exerts upon substances brought within the circle ; and this is the power which Mr Spencer has turned to his use, the great object which he has at present in view being the multiplication of engraved plates of copper for the purpose of printing from. Every person who has seen metal of any desci’iption in a state of fusion, must have remarked that it never forms a thin fluid such as water, capable of insinuating itself into the smallest interstices, but is what would be called thick even at the fiercest heat, consequently incapable of entering into sxich fine scratches as are necessary to be accurately and clearly defined upon an engraved plate. Again, the contraction and expansioix of all metals by the application of heat and cold, would offer an almost insuperable bar to the utility of casting, even if the fusion could be rendered perfect. But the applica- tion of electricity removes all the inconveniences, and opens a new field of science. Mr Spencer’s apparatus consists of an earthenware vessel, in which is suspended another, much smaller, of earthenware or wood, with a bottom formed of plaster-of-Paris. Into the larger vessel is poured a saturated solution of copper (the copper being dissolved in sxilphuric acid) sufficient to rise up along the sides of the lesser one, which is filled with the acid or saline solution intended to operate upon the zinc. The plaster-of-Paris being very porous, allows the two liquids to meet in its cells, but prevents them from mixing ; by permit- ting them to meet, however, the current of electricity is en- abled to circulate through all. In the larger vessel, and be- neath the bottom of the smaller one, is placed the copper plate from which the cast is to be taken, or upon which the pattern is to be raised. It is suspended by the wire, which is to con- nect it with the zinc, being fixed on the edge of the inner vessel, in which is the zinc plate, sxispended by its connecting wire. The two wires are then brought into contact, fixed together by a screw, and the voltaic circle is complete. The acid in the upper vessel attacks the zinc, the electric current descends through the plaster bottom, thence through the so- lution of copper, where its separating or decomposing power is broxight into operation, causing the infinitely minute particles $f copper suspended in the solution to separate from the sul- phuric acid, and descend upon the plate, through which itself proceeds to the wire, and so round again. Now, here is probably the most wonderful part of the pro- cess. It is only on the copper plate that the particles of cop- per, disengaged from the solution, will descend and settle. If the copper be varnished, or covered with a coat of wax, they will not deposit themselves or go together at all ; but where they find the clean surface of the metal, they at once not only settle, but fix and adjust themselves in their proper forms, building up as it were a metal structure, not eccentric or un- even, but forming a correct plate of new metal, so pure, so hard, and so free from defect or extraneous matter, that engravers prefer copper plates thus formed to any other for working upon. But the perfection of this operation consists in the wonderful accuracy with which the finest lines of the most beautiful engravings are copied : the particles which float in the solution are so indefinitely small, that they can enter into the finest cuts, the slightest scratches ; and as they undergo no process of heating or cooling, their form is in no- wise altered. We have already observed, that if the plate of metal be covered, even with varnish, the particles will not descend or form upon it ; nevertheless, if some slight substance be not interposed, the depositing particles adhere so firmly to it as to be inseparable, and it is upon this property that one of the processes — that of engraving in relief on a plate of copper — . entirely depends for success. When a cast of an engraved plate is required, the plate mxxst be coated with bee’s-wax, mixed with a little spii'its of turpentine. It is laid on the plate in a lump and melted, and when just cooling is wiped off, when, although apparently clean, enough remains to interpose between the new and original plates, and prevent a too strong cohesion. It is not necessary that the engraved plate should be copper : it may be for instance lead or type metal, in which case it need not be waxed, as the application of heat, expand- ing the metals uneqxxally, caxxses them at once to start asunder. A piece of wire having been soldered to the back of the plate, its back and edges should be covered with a doxible coat of thick varnish, or it may be embedded in a box with plaster-of-Paris or Roman cement. This precaution is necessary, to prevent the plate from being inclosed, and to limit the deposition to a proper extent. It may now be suspended in the apparatus, and the wires being placed in contact, the operation begins. Particle by particle the new metal is foi’med, until the plate is of sufficient thickness, when it is withdrawn, and heat being applied, the two plates are separated, one being the exact counterpart, in relief, of the other. Care must be taken in all cases to change the solution of copper frequently, for by merely adding, the separated particles of the sulphuric acid would accumxilato to such extent as to mar or injure the operation. From the plate thus formed in relief, as many casts as may be required can be obtained, by making it the mould. To copy or multiply medals and coins the operation is very simple, for a mould can be easily obtained by compressing the medal or coin between two plates of milled sheet lead, and by varnishing the lead roxind the impression, the deposit will be formed in the hollow only ; and for this pxxrpose a very simple apparatus will suffice, and one that may be very easily made. For the outer vessel an ordinary glass tumbler or finger-bowl will answer ; and for the inner, a cylindrical gas-glass, having a bottom made of plaster-of-Paris. The solution of copper being in the tumbler, axid the acid with the ziuc in the gas- glass, the mould should be suspended by its conducting wire between the bottoms, the wire of the zinc connected with it, and the operation will proceed. In all cases it must be ob- served that the edge of the mould shoxild be up, as, if it be placed horizontally, extraneous substances, sinking by their own weight, may be deposited upon it. To produce a raised design upoxx a plate of copper, or as it is i*ather erroneously styled, “ Engraving in Relief,” the ope- ration is thus performed : — . The plate upon which the design is to be raised having had the conducting wire soldered to it, is covered with a coat of wax about one-eighth of an inch or less in thickness, and upon the surface of this coat the design is drawn. With a graver, the end of which must be of the form of a thin parallelogram, so as to make grooves in the wax equally broad at the bottom as at the top, the lines of the drawing are to be carefxilly cut down to the plate ; care being taken that the plate is per- fectly cleaned throughout each fine, and also that the grooves are not narrower at the bottom than at the top. In order to lay the sxirface of the copper at the bottom of the grooves pei*- fectly bare, the plate must be immersed in diluted nitric acid (three parts of water to one of acid), and the particles of wax that may have escaped the graver are driven off by the fumes of the acid. The plate is then placed in the apparatus, the circle closed as before, and the operation commeixces. As the particles of copper require a metallic base, they avoid the wax and seek the metal in the grooves ; they there attach themselves to it, and to each other, until the hollows are quite filled up, when the plate is removed. If the surfaces of the ridges thus built up be not perfectly smooth, a piece of pumice stone ox* smooth flag, with water, being rubbed to them, will soon re- duce them, after which the wax can be melted and cleaned off with spirits of turpentine ; and so firm is this formation of metal thus raised, both in the adherence of its particles to each other and to the original plate, that it may be printed from at any ordinary printing-press. One general remark applies to the production of electrotype copper, and it is, that the strength and solidity of the fonxxa- tion depends upon the slowness and deliberation of the pro- cess. The more slowly and deliberately the particles sepa- rate from the solution and proceed to their places, the mors THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 159 fitly they appear to take them up, and the more firmly they adhere ; whilst on the contrary, if the operation be hurried, the metal is brittle, so much so as sometimes to powder under an ordinary pressure. The thicker and finer the partition of plaster between the two fluids, the more slightly are they connected, and consequently the slower is the circulation of the electricity. The proper length of time to be allowed for the process varies according to the nature of the work, and the strength or solidity required. Forty-eight hours seems to be the least time for forming a design in relief, and somewhat more than a week for a plate with sunk lines. The laws which govern matter are mysterious. The en- tire of this process is so wonderful, that to descant upon it would be unnecessary ; and, after all, it is but another step taken upon the path of science, each advance upon which, whilst disclosing new scenes and greater wonders, is only the needful preliminary to another which will display yet more 1 THE FIELD OF RUNNER S D O R F. (FROM THE GERMAN OF TIEDGE.) Day is exiled from the bowers of Twilight ; Leaf and flower are drooping in the -wood ; And the stars, as on a dark-stained skylight, Glass their ancient glory in the flood. Let me here, where nightw'inds through the yew sing, Where the moon is chary of her beams, Consecrate an hour to mournful musing Over Man and Man’s delirious dreams. Pines and yews ! envelope me in deeper, Dunner shadow, sombre as the grave, While with moans, as of a troubled sleeper, Gloomily above my head ye w r ave ! Let mine eye look down from hence on yonder Battle-plain, which Night in pity dulls — Let my sad imagination ponder Over Kunnersdorf,* that Place of Skulls ! Dost thou re-illume these wastes, O Summer ? Hast thou raised anew thy trampled bowers ? Will the wild bee come again a hummer Here, within the houses of thy flowers ? Can thy sunbeams light, thy mild rains water This Aceldema, this human soil, Since that dark day of redundant slaughter When the blood of men flowed here like oil ? Ah, yes ! Nature, and Thou, God of Nature, Ye are ever bounteous ! — Man alone, Man it is whose frenzies desolate your World, and make it in sad truth his owm ! Here saw Frederick fall his bravest warriors — Master of thy World, thou wert too great ! Heaven had need to stablish curbing-barriers ’Gainst thine inroads on the World of Fate ! O, could all thy coronals of splendour Dupe thy memory of that ghastly day ? Could the Muses, could the Gracesf render Smooth and bright a corse-o’ercovered w r ay ? No ! the accusing blood-gouts ever trickle Down each red leaf of thy chaplet-crown ! Men fell here, as corn before the sickle, Fell, to aggrandise thy false renowm ! Here the veteran drooped beside the springald, Here sank Strength and Symmetry in line — Here crushed Hope and gasping Valour mingled, And, Destroyer, the wild work was thine ! What and wherefore is this doom funereal ? Whence this Tide of Being’s flow and ebb ? Why rends Destiny the fine material Of Existence’s divinest w r eb ? Vainly ask we ! — Dim age calls to dim age — Answ r er, save an echo, cometh none— Here stands Man, of Life in Death an image, There, invisibly, The Living One ! Storm-clouds lour and muster in the Distance — While, begirt w r ith wrecks by sea and land, * A village near Frankfort on the Oder, in which Frederick the Great was defeated on the 12th August 1759, in one of the bloodiest battles of modern times. t An allusion to Frederick’s literary pursuits Time, upon the far shore of Existence, Counts each wavedrop sw r allowed by the sand. Generation chases generation, Downbowed by the same tremendous yoke — No cessation, and no explication — Birth — Life — Death ; — the Stillness — Flash — and Smoke ! Here, then, Frederick, formidable Sovereign! Here in presence of these whitened bones, Sw'ear at length to cherish Peace, and govern So, that Men may learn to reverence Thrones ! O ! repudiate bloodbought fame, and hearken T o the myriad witness-voiced Dead, Ere the SternnessJ shall lay dowm to darken In the Silentness|| thy crownless head ! Shudder at the dire phantasmagory Of the Slain who perished here by thee, And abhor all future wreaths of glory Gathered from the baleful cypress-tree ! Lofty souls disdain or dread the laurel — Hero is a poor exchange for Man ; Adders lurk in green spots : such the moral Taught by History since her school began. Caesar slain, the victim of his trophies, Bayazeed§ expiring in his cage, All the Caesars, all the sabre-Sophies, Preach the same sad homily each age. One drugged winecup dealt with Alexander, And his satraps scarce had shared afresh Half the empires of the World-Commander, Ere the charnel-worms had shared his flesh. Though the rill roll down from Life’s green mountain Bright through festal dells of youthful days, Soon the waters of that glancing fountain In the Vale of Years must moult its rays. There the pilgrim, on the bridge that, bounding Life’s domain, frontiers the wolds of Death, Startled, for the first time hears resounding From Eternity a Voice which saith — “ All w r HicH is not pure shall melt and w’ither — Lo ! the Desolator’s arm is bare, And where Man is, Truth shall trace him THITHER, Be he curtained round with gloom or glare." m. { Death. || The Grave. § Bajazet II. FINE LADS. We have a mortal aversion to fine lads. And, wherefore, pray ? Why, because in nine cases out of ten, if not posi- tively in every case, they are the dullest and most insipid of all human beings : they are good, inoffensive creatures, cer- tainly, but oh, they are dreadful bores ! If you doubt it, just you take an hour of a fine lad’s company, with nobody present but yourselves. Shut yourself up in a room with him for that space of time, and if you don’t ever after, as long as you live, stand in dread and awe of the society of fine lads, you must be differently constituted from other men, and amongst other rare gifts must possess that of being bore-proof. But, pray, what after all is a fine lad? To the possession of what quality or qualities is he indebted for this very ami- able sort of character ? Why, these are questions which, like many others, are much more easily put than answered. But, speaking from our own knowdedge and experience, we should say that it is not the presence, but the absence — the entire absence of every quality, good, bad, and indifferent, that constitutes the fine lad ; and hence his intolerable insipidity. The fine lad is a blank, a cipher, a vacuum, a nonentity, a ring without a circumference, a footless stocking without a leg. In disposition he is neither sweet, sour, nor bitter ; in temper, neither hot nor cold; in spirit, neither merry nor sad. He is in fact, so far as any thing positive can be said of him, a mere concentration of negatives. In person he is neither long nor short, neither fat nor lean, neither stout nor slender. There must in short be a total absence of all meaning, all expression, all character, in the happy individual whom every body will agree in calling a fine lad. 160 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Between the fine lad and the world the matter stands thus : the latter finding him destitute of all distinctive characteris- tics, is greatly at a loss what to make of him. It cannot in conscience call him clever, and it does not like to say he is an ass, so it good-naturedly calls him a fine lad, taking shelter in the vagueness and indefiniteness of the term, since nobody can say precisely what a fine lad really means. Unlike most other reputations, that of the fine lad is wholly undisputed : it is generally bestowed on him by universal consent— no dis- sentient voice — every body agrees in calling him a fine lad. This is well, and must be a source of great comfort and satis- faction to the fine lad himself. We have stated that nobody can say precisely what a fine lad really is, and this is true, generally speaking. But there is notwithstanding some degree of meaning attached to the term : it means, so far as it means any thing, a soft, meek, sim- pering, unresisting creature, who will allow himself to be kicked and cuffed about by any body and every body with- out resenting it, and who will take quietly any given quantity of abuse you choose to heap upon him. This we imagine to be the true reason why people call him a fine lad, just because he offers them, whether right or wrong, no resistance ; hence it is too, we have no doubt, that he is so general a favourite. As most people have a great fancy for having as much of their own way as possible, and as they find themselves much jostled and opposed in the indulgence of this laudable propen- sity by those who are bent on having the same enjoyment, they are delighted when they meet with one who readily makes way for them, and reward his simplicity by clapping him on the head, and calling him a fine lad. The fine lad is a goose, poor fellow— no doubt of it — a de- cided goose, but he cannot help that : it is no fault of his ; he means well, and is a most civil and obliging creature — all smiles and good nature. Being in reality good for little or nothing, having no activity, no tact whatever of any kind, the fine lad would in most cases be rather ill off as regards his temporalities, but for his steadiness. He is generally steady, and of sober and regular habits ; and this, together with his extremely civil demeanour and inoffensive disposition,' helps him on, and secures him in comfortable and respectable br*ead. You will thus for the most part find the fine lad in a well-doing way — in a good situation probably, and with every prospect of advancement. His employer likes him for his integrity and docility. He confesses that he is by no means clever, in fact that he is rather stupid ; but, then, he is a fine lad. This character he gives him to every body, and every body acknowledges its justice, and calls him a fine lad too. Fine lads are in great favour with the ladies, and no won- der, for fine lads are remarkably attentive to them : they make the best of all beaus. Thus it is that you are sure to find at least one fine lad at &rery tea party you go to. You know him at once by his soft speech and maiden-like smile, and by the readiness with which he undertakes, and the quiet gentleness with which he performs, the task of handing about the tea-bread, and discharging the other little duties of the occasion. At all this sort of work the fine lad is unapproach- able — it is his element — here, if nowhere else, he shines resplendant. High in favour, however, as fine lads are with the fair sex, we have sometimes thought that there was fully more of esteem than admiration in the feeling with which they contemplate his character. They like his society, and have at all times their softest words and blandest smiles ready for him ; but we much doubt if he is just the sort of man they would choose for a husband. We rather think not. We suspect they see in his nature something too much akin to their own, to allow of their ever thinking of him in the light of a protector. The fine lad, however, does get married sometimes, and in justice to him, we are bound to say, always makes an excel- lent husband. He is gentle, kind, and indulgent : for the fine lad generally remains, in spirit at least, a fine lad to the last. So the ladies had better take this into consideration, having our authority for so doing, and henceforth look on fine lads with more seriousness than they have hitherto done. C. Fidelity. — This virtue is displayed in the fulfilment of promises, whether expressed or implied, in the conscientious scrupulous discharge of the duties of friendship, and in the keeping of secrets. It is therefore a great virtue, and may be used as a decisive test of character. He who has it is entitled to confidence and respect; he who lacks it merits contempt. If a man carefully performs his promises, may we not confide in him ? If he violates them, mubt we not despise him ? If we find a person is true to friendship, we may be sure that he has just perceptions of virtue. If we find one who betrays a friend, or who is guilty of any species of trea- chery, we cannot doubt that he is essentially base and corrupt. To those who cannot keep a secret, we commend an anecdote of Charles II. of England, which ought to be engraved upon the heart of every man. When importuned to communicate something of a private nature, the subtle monarch said, “ Can you keep a secret?” “ Most faithfully,” returned the noble- man. “ So can I,” was the laconic and severe answer of the king. Let parents, who desire that their children should pos- sess the respect of the community, and enjoy the pleasures of friendship, take care to imbue them with fidelity of character. — Fireside Education, by S. G. Goodrich. Anecdote. — “Guzzling Pete,” ahalf-witted country wight, and the town’s jest, came home one rainy Saturday night so “ darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,” that he went to bed with his hat and boots on, and his old cotton umbrella under his arm. He got up about two o’clock the next afternoon, drunk with last night, and took his way to the meeting-house. Rev. Hr B was at his “ I7thly” in the second of six divisions of a very comprehensive body of Hopkinsian divinity, when “ Guzzling Pete” entered the church with an egg in each hand. He saw as through a glass darkly, and with evident commisera- tion, a man in black, very red in the face, for the day was op- pressively warm, who seemed to utter something with a great deal of vehemence, while a considerable number of those under- neath him were fast asleep — among them Deacon C •, with his shiny-bald head leaning against the wall. Pete, unobserved by the minister, balanced his egg, and with tolerable aim plas- tered its contents directly above the deacon’s pate ! Hearing the concussion, the worthy divine paused in his discourse, and looked daggers at the maudlin visitor. “ Never mind, uncle,” exclaimed the intruder : “jest you go on a-talkin’ — Eli keep ’em awake for you !” By this time the congregation were tho- roughly aroused. “ Mr L ,” said the reverend pastor, with a seeming charity, which in his mortification he coidd scarcely have felt, and addressing a “ tiding-man” near the door, “ Mr L ., won’t you have the kindness to remove that poor creature from the aisle ? I fear that he is sick.” “ Sick !” stammered our qualmish hero, as he began to confirm the fears of the clergyman by very active symptoms ; “ s-i-c-k ! — yes, and it’s enough to make a dog sick to sit under such stupid preachin’ as your’n : it’s more’n I can stand under! Y^es, take me out — the quicker the better !” The Ass.- — The ass performs so many useful duties besides his choragic functions in our community, that he cannot be respectfully omitted. He is called a bad vocalist, though some amateurs prefer him to the mule ; but he is perhaps under- rated. There are many notes which alone are shocking to the ear, that have in concert an agreeable harmony. The gabble of the goose is not unpleasant in the orchestra of the barn-yard, and there are many instances, no doubt, in which braying would improve harmony. If one looks close into nature, he will find nothing, not even the gargle of the frog- pond, created in vain. At Musard’s they often improve the spirit of a gallopade by the sudden clank and crash of a chain upon a hollow platform, with now and then a scream like the war-whoop of the Seminoles. What the Italians understand, and what most other nations do not, is the harmonious com- position of discordant sounds. If a general concert of nature could be formed, the crow as well as the nightingale would be necessary to the perfect symphony ; and it is likely even the file and hand-saw might be made to discourse excellent music. But even in a solo, the ass, according to Coleridge, has his merits. He has certainly the merit of execution. He com- mences with a few prelusive notes, gently, as if essaying his organs, rising in a progressive swell to enthusiasm, and then gradually dies away to a pathetic close ; an exact prototype of the best German and Italian compositions, and a living sanction of the genuine and authentic instructions of the Aca- demic de Musique. Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin. — Agents : — R. Groombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London ; Simms and Diniiam, Exchange Street, Manchester ; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool ; J. Drake, Birmingham ; Slocombe & Simms, Leeds ; Frazer and Crawford, George Street, Edinburgh j and David Robertson, Trongate, Glasgow. JOURNAL. Number 21. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1840. Volume I. THE SOUND AND ISLAND OF D The little rocky island of Dalkey forms the south-eastern extremity of the'Bay of Dublin, as the bold and nearly insu- lated promontory of Howth forms its north-eastern termina- tion. It is separated from the mainland of the parish from which it takes, or to which, perhaps, it gives its name, by a channel called Dalkey Sound, which is about nine hundred yards long, three hundred and eight yards wide at its south entrance, and two hundred and nine yards wide at its north entrance ; the soundings in mid-channel varying from ten to five fathoms. This channel was anciently considered a tolera- bly safe and convenient harbour, and was the principal anchor- age for ships frequenting the little castellated seaport town of Dalkey, from which merchandise was transferred to Dublin, as well by boats as by cars. Hence also the harbour of Dal- key was frequently used in former times on state occasions for the embarkation or landing of the Irish viceroys and other state officers. The Lord Deputy Philip de Courtney landed here in 1386, and Sir John Stanley, the deputy of the Marquis of Dublin, in the following year. In 1414, Sir John Talbot, then Lord Furnival, and afterwards the renowned Earl of Shrewsbury, landed here as Viceroy of Ireland ; and in 1488, Sir Richard Edgecombe embarked at this harbour for Eng- land, after having taken the homage and oaths of fidelity of the nobility who had espoused the cause of Lambert Simnel. Here also landed Sir Edward Bellingham, Lord- Lieutenant in 1548, and Sir Anthony St Leger in 1553 ; and it was from ALKEY, COUNTY OF DUBLIN. this harbour that the Earl of Sussex, in 1558, embarked a large body of forces to oppose the Scottish invaders at the isle of Rathlin ; and lastly, again, it was here that the unfortunate Sir John Perrot landed as viceroy in 1584. The conversion of this sound into an asylum harbour was at one time contem- plated by government, and a plan for the purpose was proposed by the Committee of Inland Navigation ; but from certain objections which were made to it, the project was abandoned. The situation would certainly have been a more imposing and magnificent one than that ultimately chosen. The island of Dalkey is of a nearly oval form, having a very irregular surface, in part rocky, and in part consisting of a fertile salt marsh, very valuable for the cure of sick cat- tle, who by feeding on it quickly recover and fatten. It is five hundred and twenty-eight yards long from north to south, and three hundred and eight yards wide from east to west, and comprises about twenty-nine acres of pasture. Its shore is rocky, and in some parts precipitous, and it commands the most beautiful view's of the bays of Dublin and Killiney. Among several springs of fresh water on it, one on its south- west side has long been considered to possess sanative pro- perties, and w ? as formerly much resorted to for the cure of scurvy and other diseases. On the same side there are the roofless Trails of an ancient church dedicated to St Benet or Benedict, the patron of the parish ; and at its south-eastern, extremity there is a battery, and a Martello tower which dif- 162 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. fers from all the other structures of this class erected on the Irish coast, in having its entrance not at the side but on its top. It is traditionally stated that during the remarkable plague which visited Dublin in 1575, many of the citizens fled to this island for safety. Dalkey island has several smaller ones contiguous to it, one of which, denominated Lamb Island, is covered with grass, while the others present a surface of bare granite. Of the latter islets one is called Clare Rock, and another the Maiden Rock, an appellation derived from a tradition said to be of twelve hundred years’ antiquity, that twelve young maidens from Bullock and Dalkey having gone over to this rock to gather duilisk, they were overtaken by a sudden storm so ' violent as to prohibit assistance from the larger island, and all miserably perished. To the north of these islands is situ- ated the group of rocks called the Muglins, extending one hundred and thirty-two yards in length, and seventy-one in width. On those rocks, in 1765, the pirates Mac Kinley and Gidley were hanged in chains for the murder of Captain Glass. Most of the features we have thus noticed, together with a portion of the adjacent shore of the bay, are exhibited in our prefixed illustration ; and to the older citizens of our metropo- lis, as well as to many others of our countrymen, they must, we think, awaken many stirring recollections of the striking changes in the appearance of the scenery in many districts adjacent to the city, as well as in the character of the citizens themselves, which have taken place within the present cen- tury. It does not, indeed, require a very great age for any of us Dublinians to remember when the country along the southern shore of our beautiful bay, from Dunleary to the land’s-end on Dalkey common, presented a nearly uniform character of wildness and solitude — heathy grounds, bro- ken only by masses of granite rocks, and tufts of blossomy furze, without culture, and, except in the little walled villages of Bullock and Dalkey, almost uninhabited. The district known as the Commons of Dalkey, which extended from the village to the eastern extremity of the bay, “ the Sound," or channel lying on its north-east, and the rocky hill of Dalkey on its south — this in particular was a locality of singularly romantic beauty, a creation of nature in her most sportive mood, and wholly untouched, as it would appear, by the hand of man. Giant masses of granite rocks, sometimes form- ing detached groups, and at others arranged into semicir- cular and even circular ledges, gave the greatest variety and inequalities of surface, and formed numerous dells of the greenest sward, so singularly wild and secluded that the elves themselves might justly claim them as their own. To these natural features should be added those of the rocky iron- bound coast, with its little coves, commanding from its cliffs the most delightful views of Killiney Bay, the Sound, the Island of Dalkey, and the Bay of Dublin. These latter fea- tures still remain, and can never change ; but of all the others which we have noticed, what is there left ? Scarcely a vestige that would remind the spectator of what the locality had been. The rocks have been nearly all removed, or converted into building materials for an assemblage of houses of all kinds of fantastic construction, surrounded for the most part by high and unsightly stone walls ; and, except in the views ob- tained from some spots in it, the picturesque beauty of Dalkey common is gone for ever. The common of Dalkey is now a place of life — a suburb, as we might say, of the city ; but at the period to which we have alluded, it was ordinarily a scene of the most desert soli- tude. A few cottages stretching from the village along its southern boundary, and a solitary cabin originally built by miners, and which still remains, were the only habitations to be seen. But though thus uninhabited, it was not at all times a scene of loneliness. On Sundays and other holidays its rocks and dells were peopled with numerous pic-nic or sod parties of the middle class of the citizens. The song went round, and the echoes were startled by the merry notes of the fiddle or the flute, to which the several groups of happy dancers footed the Irish jig and country dance. Nor were such pic- nics confined exclusively to the citizens of the middle class the sporters of jaunting cars and jingles. Parties of the higher ranks occasionally assembled here on week days, and had their rural fetes on a larger and more magnificent scale. It was our own good fortune to be an invited guest to one of these, of which we may be permitted to give some account, as an example of a state of manners and usages of society in Ire- land now no longer to be found in persons of the class to which we refer. It was a pic-nic party given by the Alexan- ders, the Armits, and the present popular and deservedly ho- noured veteran the Commander of the Forces in Ireland— then lieutenant-colonel of the 18th or Royal Irish Fusileers, which were at the time quartered in Dublin. On the morning of as beautiful a day in June as ever came, the inhabitants of the leading thoroughfares of the city, and those along the road side from Dublin to Dunleary, were surprised by the unusual crowds of open carriages of all kinds conveying the youth and beauty of the aristocracy of the metropolis to the chosen scene ; and when the fine band of the Fusileers, in their mag- nificent full-dress uniforms of blue and gold, were seen to pass along on the same route, innumerable parties of the inferior ranks of the inhabitants of the city and south-eastern suburbs were hastily formed to follow in their wake. At noon, or a little after, not only the majority of the original party were assembled in a beautiful and extensive green amphitheatre, surrounded by rocky cliffs, but those cliffs were themselves covered by a crowd of smaller parties— tributary stars around the more splendid galaxy that occupied the centre of the bril- liant scene. Two splendid marquees were erected at an early hour in the morning — one for the accommodation of the ladies, the other for the dinner party ; and two beautiful pleasure-yachts which conveyed a portion of the invited to the scene, rested at anchor in the Sound, and with their white sails and coloured streamers contributed their share of life and beauty to the landscape. Let the reader then imagine what a spectacle was presented when the groups of quadrille-dancers — the beauty and gallantry of the metropolis and its vicinity— commenced dancing on the greensward to the music of one of the finest of military bands — what a delight to the happy multitude of spec- tators who looked on at the graceful and tempered gaiety of high life ! The mind of the accomplished painter Watteau, in his finest pictures of the fetes champetres of the French, never conceived any thing so exquisitely beautiful and romantic. This party did not disperse till after sunset. After an early dinner, dancing was again resumed ; and it is worthy of remark that throughout the day there was not a single instance of rudeness or indecorum on the part of the uninvited spectators — no attempt even to approach beyond the natural rocky boundary which they had chosen for themselves — and that the festivities were concluded with mutual pleasure to all the par- ties who had participated in them. Alas ! of the gay party then assembled — the gentle maidens in all the bloom of youth- ful beauty, the frank young soldiers, the men of fortune, the delighted parents — of all these how many now lie low ! More, reader, than you could possibly imagine ! Nor can we avoid exclaiming again, alas that such scenes of rational pleasure, in which the higher and the humbler classes came together in healthful and innocent enjoyment, are not now to be seen in our country as they were heretofore ! But while our memory Avith changeful feelings of pleasure and of pain fondly lingers on the brilliant scene we have attempted to sketch, we must not forget that our subject requires of us a notice of festivities of a very different character of which Dalkey Avas in former times the scene — when Dublin and its suburbs poured forth their crowds to enjoy the fun and drolleries of the crowning of Dalkey’s insular king ! — Avhen Dalkey, its Common, its Sound, and its Island, on a June day annually for several years, presented a spectacle of life, gaiety, good-humour, and enjoyment, such perhaps as was rarely ever exhibited elsewhere. What a glorious day Avas this for the Dunleary, Bullock, and Dalkey boatmen ! Gene- rous fellows ! they Avould take over his majesty’s lieges to his empire for almost nothing — frequently for nothing ; but, being determined enemies to absenteeism, they would not allow them to depart on the same terms, but w'ould mulct those with taxes ad libitum who desired to abandon their country. And again, what a glorious day Avas this for the jingle-drivers of the Blackrock, the noddy-drivers, and the drivers of all other sorts of hired carriages in Dublin ! Has it never occurred to the Railroad people to revive these forgotten frolics ? What a harvest they might reap ! But what do we say ? The thing is impossible. The mirthful temperament, the thought- less gaiety, the wit and humour that characterised the citizens in those days, are gone for ever. The Dublinians have become a grave, thoughtful, and serious people — we had almost said, a dull one. Their faces no longer Avear a cheerful and happy look ; the very youths of our metropolis seem to be ignorant of what merriment is, or at best to suppose that it consists in puffing tobacco smoke ! Ah ! very different were the notions of their predecessors, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 163 the nobility and gentry of his Majesty the King of Dalkey ! Smoking would not at all have suited their mercurial tem- erament : it would have been the last thing that they would ave thought of to have had their tongues tied and their mouths contorted into ugliness in the ridiculously serious ef- fort to hold a cigar between the lips, and look absurdly im- portant ! These fellows thought that mouths were given for a very different purpose — to sing the manly song, to throw forth, not clouds of tobacco smoke, but flashes of wit and hu- mour ; and we are inclined to think they were right. We are not about to describe the annual ceremony of the coronation of the Dalkey king, though we should gladly do so if we had the power, for the memory of it, as an interesting illustration of the character of Irish society in days not very remote, should not be allowed to die. We have indeed been an eye-witness of some of these brilliant follies, but we were young at the time, and our memory only retains a general impression of them. We can recollect that the green island figured in our woodcut, as well as the common, presented one mass of living beings, gaily dressed and arranged into groups of happy parties, each with its own musicians. We can recollect also that the dress of the ladies was almost invaria- bly white, with green silk bonnets — a costume that gave a sin- gularly brilliant effect to the scene. A large marquee was erected about the centre of the island for the use of his Ma- jesty and attendant nobles, and a cordon was drawn around it, within which none others were permitted to enter. There was a military band in attendance upon the royal party ; and while the noblemen and ladies of the court danced upon the sod within the bounds, to the music of the state minstrels, the subjects of the monarch danced outside. But these were only the evening festivities. The day was devoted to graver purposes — the landing of his Majesty and nobles from the royal barge under a salute of twenty-one guns, the band playing “ God save the King,” and the assem- bled multitude rending the air with their acclamations ! Then the ceremony of his coronation, and afterwards his journey through his dominions, attended by his nobles ! At an early hour the monarch with his court proceeded in ludicrously so- lemn procession from the palace to the church — the roofless ruin figured in our cut — in which the ceremony was performed with a mock gravity which was, however thoughtlessly pro- fane, still irresistibly humorous. The nobles, with painted faces and a profuse display of stars and ribbons, had their ti- tles and appropriate badges of office. There was the grand chamberlain, with his bunch of old rusty keys — the archbishop with his paper mitre and his natural beard of a month’s growth ! The very titles of these great personages were con- ferred in a spirit of drollery, and made characteristic of the peculiarities of the individuals who bore them. Thus there was a Lord of Ireland’s-eye— a grave-looking gentleman who had lost one of his visual organs ; a Lord Posey— a gentleman who was remarkable for his habit of carrying a bunch of flow- ers at his breast ; and so on. All the nobility were wits, ora- tors, and generally first-rate vocalists, and the royal visitors were similarly gifted. Charles Incledon, the prince of ballad- singers of his time, here sang his “ Black-eyed Susan” and other charming ditties, and John Philpot Curran, the greatest wit of the world, set the table in a roar with his meteor flashes. But the prime spirits of the court were his Majesty himself, Stephen Armitage, his Lord High Admiral Luke Cassidy, and his archbishop Gillespy. The long coronation ser- mon of the latter was one of the richest treats of the day, and produced effects such as sermon never produced before. During this august and imposing ceremony, the church was not only crowded to excess, and its ruined walls covered with human beings, but it was also surrounded with a dense mass of anxious listeners. As to his Majesty himself, he was at times the gravest and at times the merriest of monarchs, much of his humour consisting in the whimsical uncertainty of his movements, for there never was a crowned head more capri- cious or changeable in disposition than the King of Dalkey. He would set out attended by his court on a journey to some distant region of his dominions, change his mind in a minute and alter his route elsewhere, and again change it within a few minutes ; and all these mutations of purpose were most loyally approved of and sympathised in by his majesty’s nobles and subjects. Another trait in King Stephen’s character was his love for song ; and when the word ran through his empire that at the royal banquet his majesty had commenced or was about to commence his favourite “ Love is my passion and glory,” there was scarcely one of his subjects, male or female, who did not make a rush to get within earshot of him. Peace be with thee, Stephen 1 thou wert a king “of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy ;” and though thy reign was short and thy dominions small*, thou madest more of thy subjects truly happy than many monarchs whose reigns were as much longer as their possessions were more extensive ! Imperfect as these recollections of the Dalkey festivities are, they wall perhaps convey to many who have not hitherto heard of them some slight idea of their character ; and they will, we trust, excite some surviving actor in them to preserve their memory in a fuller and more graphic record. They were, it will be seen, a sort of extemporaneous acted drama of the Tom Thumb kind, admirably preserving the unities of time and place — the time being one day, and the place — his majesty’s empire ! As to the theatre on which it was acted, it was most admirably adapted for the spectacle, and had the most abun- dant accommodation for the audience. The scenery too was real scenery — not painted canvass, that required distance to give it the effect of reality : the greensward, the blue sky and bluer sea, the rocky islands, the distant hills and mountains, were painted by the hand of the greatest of all Artists ; and the theatre, instead of miserable foot-lights, had its illumina- tion from the glorious sun, the greatest of all His visible works ! It may be supposed that these annual festivities must have been productive of scenes of drunkenness and quarrelling, and we cannot state of our owm knowledge whether they were so or not : but we have been informed that they did not lead to such results ; and the statement would seem true, from the fact that no accident ever occurred to any of those engaged in them— a singular circumstance, if wrn consider the dangers to which so many persons were exposed in consequence of having to cross the sound in crowded boats at a late hour in the evening. P. It was not till after the preceding article had been in type that we were informed that a notice of the Dalkey festivities had recently appeared in the preface to the first volume of the beautiful edition of the poems of our own national poet, Moore, just published ; and as it adds some interesting facts to those furnished by our own recollections, we gladly present them to our readers, in the perfect confidence that they will be read with that intense pleasure which his writings have rarely failed to afford. “ It was in the year 1794, or about the beginning of the next, that I remember having for the first time tried my hand at political satire. In their very worst times of slavery and suffering the happy disposition of my countrymen had kept their cheerfulness still unbroken and buoyant ; and at the pe- riod of which I am speaking the hope of a brighter day dawn- ing upon Ireland had given to the society of the middle class in Dublin a more than usual flow of hilarity and life. Among other gay results of this festive spirit, a club or society was instituted by some of our most convivial citizens, one of whose objects was to burlesque, good-humouredly, the forms and pomps of royalty. With this view they established a sort of mock kingdom, of which Dalkey, a small island near Dublin, was made the seat ; and an eminent pawnbroker named Ste- phen Armitage, much renowned for his agreeable singing, was the chosen and popular monarch. Before public affairs had become too serious for such pas- times, it was usual to celebrate yearly at Dalkey the day of this sovereign’s accession; and among the gay scenes that still live in my memory, there are few it recalls with more freshness than this celebration on a fine Sunday in summer of one of these anniversaries of King Stephen’s coronation. The picturesque sea views of that spot, the gay crowds along the shores, the innumerable boats full of life floating about, and above all, the true spirit of mirth which the Irish temperament never fails to lend to such meetings, rendered the whole a scene not easily forgotten. The state ceremonies of the day were performed with all due gravity within the ruins of an ancient church that stands on the island, where his mock majesty be- stowed the order of knighthood upon certain favoured per- sonages, and among others I recollect upon Incledon the celebrated singer, who rose from under the touch of the royal sword with the appropriate title of Sir Charles Melody. There was also selected for the favours of the crown on that day a lady of no ordinary poetic talent, Mrs Battier, who had gained much fame by some spirited satires in the manner of Churchill, and whose kind encouragement of my early attempts in versi- fication were to me a source of much pride. This lady, as was 164 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. officially announced in the course of the day, had been ap- pointed his Majesty’s Poetess Laureate, under the style and title of Henrietta Countess of Laurel. There could hardly be devised a more apt vehicle for lively political satire than this gay travestie of monarchical power and its showy appurtenances so temptingly supplied. The very day indeed after this commemoration there appeared in the usual record of Dalkey state intelligence, an amusing reclamation from the king, offering a large reward in crone- anes (Irish halfpence) to the finder or finders of his Majesty’s crown, which, owing to his ‘having measured both sides of the road’ in his pedestrian progress from Dalkey on the pre- ceding night, had unluckily fallen from the royal brow.” IRISH SUPERSTITIONS— GHOSTS AND FAIRIES. BT WILLIAM CARLETON. (First Article.) We have met and conversed with every possible representa- tive of the various classes that compose general society, from the sweep to the peer, and we feel ourselves bound to say that in no instance have we ever met any individual, no matter what his class or rank in life, who was really indifferent to the subject of dreams, fairies, and apparitions. They are topics that interest the imagination in all ; and the hoary head of age is inclined with as much interest to a ghost-story, as the young and eager ear of youth, wrought up by all the nimble and apprehensive powers of early fancy. It is true the belief in ghosts is fast disappearing,- and that of fairies is already almost gone ; but with what new wonders they shall be re- placed, it is difficult to say. The physical and natural we sup- pose will give us enough of the marvellous, without having recourse to the spiritual and supernatural. Steam and gas, if Science advance for another half century at the same rate as she has done in the last, will give sufficient exercise to all our faculties for wondering. We know a man who travelled eighty miles to see whether or not it was a fact that light could be conveyed for miles in a pipe under ground ; and this man to our own knowledge possessed the organ of marvellousness to a surprising degree. It is singular, too, that his fear of f hosts was in proportion to this capacious propensity to won- er, as was his disposition when snug in a chimney corner to talk incessantly of such topics as -were calculated to excite it. In our opinion, ghosts and fairies will be seen wherever they are much talked of, and a belief in their existence culti- vated and nourished. So long as the powers of the imagina- tion are kept warm and active by exercise, they will create for themselves such images as they are in the habit of con- ceiving or dwelling upon ; and these, when the individual hap- pens to be in the appropriate position, will even by the mere force of association engender the particular Eidolon which is predominant in the mind. As an illustration of this I shall mention two cases of apparition which occurred in my native parish, one of -which was that of a ghost, and the other of the fairies. To those who have read my “ Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry,” the first which I shall narrate may pos- sess some interest, as being that upon which I founded the tale of the “ Midnight Mass.” The circumstances are sim- ply these : — There lived a man named M'Kenna at the hip of one of the mountainous hills which divide the county of Tyrone from that of Monaghan. This M'Kenna had two sons, one of whom was in the habit of tracing hares of a Sunday, whenever there happened to be a fall of snow. His father it seems had fre- quently remonstrated with him upon what he considered to be a violation of the Lord’s day, as -well as for his general neglect of mass. The young man, however, though otherwise harm- less and inoffensive, vras in this matter quite insensible to pa- ternal reproof, and continued to trace whenever the avocations of labour would allow him. It so happened that upon a Christ- mas morning, I think in the year 1814, there was a deep fall of snow, and young M‘Kenna, instead of going to mass, got down his cock-stick— which is a staff much heavier at one end than at the other — and prepared to set out on his favourite amusement. His father seeing this, reproved him seriously, and insisted that he should attend prayers. His enthusiasm for the sport, however, was stronger than his love of religion, and he refused to be guided by his father’s advice. The old man during the altercation got warm ; and on finding that the son obsti- nately scorned his authority, he knelt down and prayed that if the boy persisted in following his own will, he might never return from themountains unless as a corpse. The imprecation, which was certainly as harsh as it was impious and senseless, might have startled many a mind from a purpose which was, to say the least of it, at variance with religion and the respect due to a father. It had no effect, however, upon the son, who is said to have replied, that whether he ever returned or not, he was determined on going ; and go accordingly he did. He was not, however, alone, for it appears that three or four of the neighbouring young men accompanied him. Whether their sport was good or otherwise, is not to the purpose, neither am I able to say ; but the story goes that towards the latter part of the day they started a larger and darker hare than any they had ever seen, and that she kept dodging on before them bit by bit, leading them to suppose that every succeeding cast of the cock-stick would bring her down. It was observed after- wards that she also led them into the recesses of the moun- tains, and that although they tried to turn her course home- wards, they could not succeed in doing so. As evening advanced, the companions of M‘Kenna began to feel the folly of pursuing her farther, and to perceive the danger of losing their way in the mountains should night or a snow-storm come upon them. They therefore proposed to give over the chase and return home ; but M‘Kenna would not hear of it. “If you wish to go home, you may,” said he ; “ as for me, I’ll never leave the hills till I have her with me.” They begged and en- treated him to desist and return, but all to no purpose : he appeared to be what the Scotch call fey — that is, to act as if he were moved by some impulse that leads to death, and from the influence of which a man cannot withdraw himself. At length, on finding him invincibly obstinate, they left him pursuing the hare directly into the heart of the mountains, and returned to their respective homes. In the mean time, one of the most terrible snow-storms ever remembered in that part of the country came on, and the con- sequence was, that the self-willed young man, who had equally trampled on the sanctions of religion and parental authority, was given over for lost. As soon as the tempest became still, the neighbours assembled in a body and proceeded to look for him. The snow, however, had fallen so heavily that not a sin- gle mark of a footstep could be seen. Nothing but one wide waste of white undulating hills met the eye wherever it turned, and of M'Kenna no trace whatever was visible or could be found. His father now remembering the unnatural character of his imprecation, was nearly distracted ; for although the body had not yet been found, still by every one who witnessed the sudden rage of the' storm and who knew themountains, escape or sur- vival was felt to be impossible. Every day for about a week large parties were out among the hill-ranges seeking him, but to no purpose. At length there came a thaw, and his body was found on a snow-wreath, lying in a supine posture within a circle which he had drawn around him with his cock-stick. His prayer-book lay opened upon his mouth, and his hat was pulled down so as to cover it and his face. It is unnecessai-y to say that the rumour of his death, and of the circumstances under which he left home, created a most extraordinary sen- sation in the country — a sensation that was the greater in proportion to the uncertainty occasioned by his not having been found either alive or dead. Some affirmed that he had crossed the mountains, and was seen in Monaghan ; others, that he had been seen in Clones, in Emy vale, in Fivemiletown ; but despite of all these agreeable reports, the melancholy truth was at length made clear by the appearance of the body as just stated. Now, it so happened that the house nearest the spot where he lay w r as inhabited by a man named Daly, I think — but of the name I am not certain — -who was a herd or care-taker to Dr Porter, then Bishop of Clogher. The situation of this house was the most lonely and desolate-looking that could be imagined. It was at least two miles distant from any human habitation, being surrounded by one wide and dreary waste of dark moor. By this house lay the route of those who had found the corpse, and I believe the door was borrowed for the purpose of conveying it home. Be this as it may, the family witnessed the melancholy procession as it passed slowly through the mountains, and when the place and circumstances are all considered, we may admit that to ignorant and super- stitious people, whose minds even under ordinary occasions were strongly affected by such matters, it was a sight calcu- lated to leave behind it a deep, if not a terrible impression. Time soon proved that it did so. An incident is said to have occurred at the funeral which I have alluded to in the “ Midnight Mass,” and which is cer- THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 165 tainty la fine keeping with the wild spirit of the whole melan- choly event. When the procession had advanced to a place called Mullaghtinny, a large dark-coloured hare, which was instantly recognised, by those who had been out with him on the hills, as the identical one that led him to his fate, is said to have crossed the road about twenty yards or so before the coffin. The story goes, that a man struck it on the side with a stone, and that the blow, which would have killed any ordi- nary hare, not only did it no injury, but occasioned a sound to proceed from the body resembling the hollow one emitted by an empty barrel when struck. In the meantime the interment took place, and the sensa- tion began like every other to die away in the natural pro- gress of time, when, behold, a report ran about like wildfire that, to use the language of the people, “ Frank M‘Kenna was appearing /” Seldom indeed was the rumour of an appa- rition composed of materials so strongly calculated to win po- pular assent or to baffle rational investigation. As every man is not a Ilibbert or a Nicolai, so will many, until such circumstances are made properly intelligible, continue to yield credence to testimony which would convince the judgment on any other subject. The case in question furnished as fine a specimen of a true ghost-story, freed from any suspicion of imposture or design, as could be submitted to a philosopher ; and yet, notwithstanding the array of apparent facts con- nected with it, nothing in the world is simpler or of easier so- lution. One night, about a fortnight after his funeral, the daughter of Daly, the herd, a girl about fourteen, while lying in bed saw what appeared to be the likeness of M'Kenna, who had been lost. She screamed out, and covering her head with the bed-clothes, told her father and mother that Frank M'Kenna was in the house. This alarming intelligence naturally pro- duced great terror ; still, Daly, who notwithstanding his be- lief in such matters possessed a good deal of moral courage, was cool enough to rise and examine the house, which con- sisted of only one apartment. This gave the daughter some courage, who, on finding that her father could not see him, ventured to look out, and she then could see nothing of him herself. She very soon fell asleep, and her father attributed what she saw to fear, or some accidental combination of sha- dows proceeding from the furniture, for it was a clear moon- light night. The light of the following day dispelled a great deal of their apprehensions, and comparatively little was thought of it until evening again advanced, when the fears of the daughter began to return. They appeared to be prophetic, for she said when night came that she knew he would appear again ; and accordingly at the same hour he did so. This was repeated for several successive nights, until the girl, from the very hardihood of terror, began to become so far familiarised to the spectre as to venture to address it. “ In the name of God,” she asked, “what is troubling you, or why do you appear to me instead of to some of your own family or relations?” The ghost’s answer alone might settle the question involved in the authenticity of its appearance, being, as it was, an ac- count pf one of the most ludicrous missions that ever a spirit was dispatched upon. “ I’m not allowed,” said he, “ to spake to any of my friends, for I parted wid them in anger ; but I’m come to tell you that they are quarrellin’ about my breeches — a new pair that I got made for Christmas day ; au’ as I was cornin’ up to thrace in the mountains, I thought the ould ones ’ud do betther, an’ of coorse I didn’t put the new pair an me. My raison for ap- pearin’,” he added, “ is, that you may tell my friends that none of them is to wear them. —they must be given in charity.” This serious and solemn intimation from the ghost was duly communicated to the family, and it was found that the cir- cumstances were exactly as it had represented them. This of course was considered as sufficient proof of the truth of its mission. Their conversations now became not only frequent, but quite friendly and familiar. The girl became a favourite with the spectre, and the spectre on the other hand soon lost all his terrors in her eyes. He told her that whilst his friends were bearing home his body, the handspikes or poles on which they carried him had cut his back, and occasioned him great pain ! The cutting of the back also was found to be true, and strengthened of course the truth and authenticity of their dialogues. The whole neighbourhood was now in a commotion with this story of the apparition, and persons in- cited by curiosity began to visit the girl in order to satisfy themselves of the truth of what they had heard. Every thing, however, was corroborated, and the child herself, with- out any symptoms of anxiety or terror, artlessly related her conversations with the spirit. Hitherto their interviews had been all nocturnal, but now' that the ghost found his footing made good, he put a hardy face on, and ventured to appeal’ by daylight. The girl also fell into states of syncope, and while the fits lasted, long conversations ivith him upon the subject of God, the blessed Virgin, and Heaven, took place between them. Fie was certainly an excellent moralist, and gave the best advice. Swearing, drunkenness, theft, and every evil propensity of our nature, were declaimed against with a degree of spectral eloquence quite surprising. Com- mon fame had now a topic dear to her heart, and never was a ghost made more of by his best friends, than she made of him. The wbole country was in a tumult, and I well remember the crowds which flocked to the lonely little cabin in the moun- tains, now the scene of matters so interesting and important. Not a single day passed in which I should think from ten to twenty, thirty, or fifty persons, were not present at these singular interviews. Nothing else was talked of, thought of, and, as I can well testify, dreamt of. I would myself have gone to Daly’s were it not for a confounded misgiving I had, that perhaps the ghost might take such a fancy of appearing to me, as he had taken to cultivate an intimacy with the girl ; and it so happens, that when I see the face of an individual nailed down in the coffin — chilling and gloomy operation !— I experience no particular wish ever to look upon it again. Many persons might imagine that the herd’s daughter was acting the part of an impostor, by first originating and then sustaining such a delusion. If any one, how r ever, was an impostor, it was the ghost, and not the girl, as her ill health and v'asted cheek might well testify. The appearance of M'Kenna continued to haunt her for months. The reader is aware that he was lost on Christmas day, or rather on the night of it, and I remember seeing her in the early part of the following summer, during which time she was still the victim of a diseased imagination. Every thing in fact that couhl be done for her was done. They brought her to a priest named Donnelly, who lived dowm at Ballynasaggart, for the purpose of getting her cured, as he had the reputation of performing cures of that kind. They brought her also to the doctors, who also did what they could for her ; but all to no purpose. Her fits were longer and of more frequent occurrence ; her appetite left her ; and ere four months had elapsed, she herself looked as lik« a spectre as the ghost himself could do for the life of him. Now, this was a pure case of spectral illusion, and precisely similar to that detailed so philosophically by Nicolai the German bookseller, and to others mentioned by Hibbert. The image of M'Kenna not only appeared to her in daylight at her ow r n house, but subsequently followed her wherever she went ; and what proved this to have been the result of dis- eased organization, produced at first by a heated and excited imagination, was, that, as the story went, she could see him with her eyes shut. Whilst this state of mental and physical feeling lasted, she was the subject of the most intense curiosity. No matter where she went, whether to chapel, to fair, or to market, she was followed by crowds, every one feeling eager to get a glimpse of the girl who had actually seen, and what was more, spoken to a ghost — a live ghost. Now, here was a young girl of an excitable temperament and large imagination, leading an almost solitary life amidst scenery of a lonely and desolate character, who, happening to be strongly impressed with an image of horror — for surely such was the body of a dead man seen in association with such peculiarly frightful circumstances as filial disobedience and a father’s curse were calculated to give it — cannot shake it off, but on the oontrary becomes a victim to the disease which it generates. There is not an image which we see in a fever, or a face whether of angel or devil, or an uncouth shape of any kind, that is not occasioned by cerebral excite- ment, or derangement of the nervous system, analogous to that under which Daly’s daughter laboured. I saw her se- veral times, and remember clearly that her pale face, dark eye, and very intellectual forehead, gave indications of such a temperament as under her circumstances would be apt to receive strong and fearful impressions from images calculated to excite terror, especially of the supernatural. It only now remains for me to mention the simple method of her cure, which was effected without either priest or doctor. It de- pended upon a word or two of advice given to her father by a very sensible man, who was in the habit of thinking on these 166 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL,' maim matters somewhat above the superstitious absurdities of the people. “ If you wish your daughter to be cured,” said he to her father, “ leave the house you are now living in. Take her to some part of the country where she can have companions of her own class and state of life to mingle with ; bring her away from the place altogether ; for you may rest assured that so long as there are objects before her eyes to remind her of what happened, she will not mend on your hands.” The father, although he sat rent free, took this excellent advice, even at a sacrifice of some comfort : for nothing short of the temptation of easy circumstances could have induced any man to reside in so wild and remote a solitude. In the course of a few days he removed from it with his family, and came to reside amidst the cheerful aspect and enlivening in- tercourse of human life. The consequences were precisely as the man had told him. In the course of a few weeks the little girl began to find that the visits of the spectre were like those of angels, few and far between. She was sent to school, and what with the confidence derived from human society, and the substitution of new objects and images, she soon perfectly recovered, and ere long was thoroughly set free from the fear- ful creation of her own brain. Now, there is scarcely one of the people in my native pa- rish who does not believe that the spirit of this man came back to the world, and actually appeared to this little girl. The time, however, is fast coming when these empty bugbears will altogether disappear, and we shall entertain more reverend and becoming notions of God than to suppose such senseless pranks could be played by the soul of a departed being under his permission. We might as well assert that the imaginary beings which surround tbe couch of the madman or hypochon- driac have a real existence, as those that are conjured up by terror, w r eak nerves, or impure blood. The spot where the body of M‘Kenna was found is now marked by a little heap of stones, which has been collected since the melancholy event of his death. Every person who passes it throws a stone upon the heap ; but why this old cus- tom is practised, or what it means, 1 do not know, unless it be simply to mark the spot as a visible means of preserving the memory of the occurrence. Daly’s house, the scene of the supposed apparition, is now a shapeless ruin, which could scarcely be seen were it not for the green spot that was once a garden, and which now shines at a distance like an emerald, but with no agreeable or pleas- ing associations. It is a spot which no solitary schoolboy will ever visit, nor indeed would the unflinching believer in the po- pular nonsense of ghosts wish to pass it without a companion. It is under any circumstances a gloomy and barren place, but when looked upon in connection with what we have just re- cited, it is lonely, desolate, and awful. 2lt) 5bn4JT)e05._ (THE HEDGEHOG.) Some twenty years ago it was not unusual in the south of Ireland to see boys assembled about a fire of straw, loudly exulting over a flame-surrounded victim, whose attempts to escape, rendered nugatory by a timid retraction as it were into himself, served but to call forth louder shouts of triumph from his persecutors, who thought they justified their savage deed by proclaiming its hapless object as a witch, a robber of orchards, and a sucker of cows. Leaving to our antiquarian friends to discover whether the cruel act in question was not a holocaust originating in the mystic rites of Pagan times, it is for us to vindicate the wronged, and show the" absurdity of the charges by which wrong has been maintained, and at the same time to indicate such matter as may serve to direct kind- ness to that innocent victim of ignorance, the inoffensive Hedge- hog. That it is not a witch according to the old law, may be proved in a court of justice spite of the popular opinion and in defiance of the authority of Shakspeare, whose witches in Macbeth are warned that the proper time had come to com- mence their infernal incantations by “ thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.” We have no witness that a hedgehog ever rode a broomstick or vomited knives, skewers, coals of fire, or any such like legal proofs of witchcraft ; neither, per- haps you exclaim, is the writer of so much nonsense a witch. True it is that the creature so named has its place nowhere in the classification of a zoologist, yet still an undefined idea of its existence floats in the imagination of the most ignorant and it is not extraordinary that an opinion once universal should still linger in unenlightened minds. In no way do we consider superstitious prejudices can better be extinguished than by inducing accuracy of observation of natural pheno- mena, which shows that nothing supernatural exists. The second charge, that the hedgehog is a robber of orchards, is a very old one. Pliny, as translated by Holland, states — “ Hedgehogs make thfcir provision beforehand of meat for winter in this wise : they wallow and roll themselves upon apples and such fruit lying under foot, and so catch them up with their prickles, and one more besides they take in their mouth, and so carry them into hollow trees.” Now, this has no foundation in fact. True it is that the hedgehog is very often found in the neighbourhood of or- chards ; but then this may be accounted for by the fact that the fences of such places are usually of exactly the thick and unfrequented kind the animal best likes to inhabit. Our re- peated experience has never enabled us to discover that a hedgehog will eat apples ; on the contrary, in early youth, when imbued with the general belief that this fruit was their diet, we have in more than one or two instances (most cruelly as we now believe) starved to death unfortunate specimens, which we shut up in a box with an ample supply of apples, not one of which they ever ate. That a magpie •will steal and hide silver spoons, or a raven silk stockings, we know, and may use it as an argument that animals steal what they do not want; but that a hedgehog steals apples in the way stated, experiment will at once prove to be untrue, for, from the varied position of the points of the spines when fixed, it is impossible to fasten an apple upon them ; and when they are not fixed, they yield at once to the pressure made in the at- tempt. Though domesticated hedgehogs can easily be brought to feed on bread and milk or dressed vegetables, yet all our observation goes to prove that in a state of nature, or when permitted to stray in a garden, they never eat any but animal food. This is at variance with the generally received opi- nion, which is supported by the authority of White, who, in his admirable History of Selborne, complains that hedgehogs injured his garden by boring with their long snouts under the plantain that grew in his grass walks, eating off the root up- wards, leaving the tufts of leaves untouched, and defacing his grounds by making unsightly holes. He then immediately goes on to prove that these identical animals used beetles as no inconsiderable portion of their food. Now, it strikes us that his previous observation was not made with his usual ac- curacy, and that the hedgehogs did not eat the roots of plan- tain, but dug up where they had been to catch the larvre of beetles that had just devoured them. Thus rooks have been charged with wantonly plucking up grass, while the truth is, that they only pull up plants attacked at the root by the larvie of the cockchaffer or some other of the Phytophagous coleop- tera (as vegetable-eating beetles are called), catch in the fact the destructive insect, and so stop its ravages ; thus rendering important services to those who, for lack of accurate obser- vation, falsely accuse and mischievously shoot them. Trust- ing we have satisfied you that the hedgehog does not steal ap- ples, we come to the next charge, that he sucks cows. To refute this we have the best possible evidence in the animal’s mouth, the structure of which is completely unsuited to the accomplishment of such an object. That he will drink milk with avidity when domesticated, is certain, but this is only a taste he acquires in common with hundreds of other animals : there is scarcely one that may not be induced to relish such diet. Having thus cleared our hero (a name he fully deserves, as he wins battles by passive resistance) from the charges brought against him, we proceed to give some anecdotes of our personal knowledge, and shall finish with a few interesting facts in his history, for the information of those who takeplea^ sure in accurate acquaintance with nature’s works. We have before mentioned our starving of hedgehogs by endeavouring to make them eat apples, in one of these cases we suffered no small retribution. We were at school in these days, and. a practice, existed amongst us called “slating.” It was an innocent imitation of the murderous attacks made in Dublin by short-sighted combinators on such of their fel- low tradesmen as refused obedience to their mischievous laws. M ith us it consisted in waylaying each other in the dark pas- sages, and striking with the open palms the hats or caps of the surprised over the eyes. Having been thus treated many times, we bethought ourselves of turning our starved hedge- hog to account, and proceeded to skin him with the intent of making a cap ; so that when again “slated,” the attacking party would find reason to call out in the words of Chaucer, “ Like sharpe urchins his hair was growe.” THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 16 T Accordingly, having hanged the animal up against a tree, we were essaying, by pulling, to effect a solution of continuity, as a surgeon would call it, between his body and skin, when the nail gave way, and he came down with considerable force on our forehead, accupuncturating us most awfully. The pain at the time was very great, and considerable soreness conti- nued for several days, so much so that we were induced to suspect that some poisonous virus existed. We introduce this story for the purpose of calling attention to the effects of the spines when brought into action. Though experience induces us to believe that their punctures are more painful than those of pins and needles, we have not been able to ascertain why they should be so. Disabled in our attempt, we abandoned the skin, and it became common property. It -was for some time used as one of the instruments for initiating the Johnny Newcomes into the mysteries of school life. Not a few will recollect how, when chilled by a previous salting or seasoning, as we called it, of snow crammed into the mouth, eyes, nose, and down the back, their sense of vitality w'as aroused, when escaping to bed they threw themselves on its thorny pre-occu- pant. Many, doubtless, then heartily wished themselves again within the zone of mamma’s apron-string ; but the affair usu- ally ended by storing up vengeance for, and the implement for executing it on, the next comer. A few years afterwards we procured another hedgehog, and provided him with earth- worms, which he munged with great gusto. We mixed a few of them with bread and milk, and thus initiated him into this new diet. We tried him with frogs, mice, sparrow r s, and va- rious other animal matters, of all of which he partook freely, and he soon became quite domesticated. We provided him a bed made in an old footstool in the kitchen ; in this he remained during daylight rolled up in a ball of hay, from which it was quite a troublesome matter to extricate him ; he could not be disentangled from it at all, without picking it carefully from his spines. Yet when he pleased himself -to move, he came forth quite free, and did not drag a single filament out with him. He soon acquired a habit of making his appearance wnen tea was being served ; the hissing of the water in the urn seemed to be his signal that his only meal was ready, for he regularly followed the servant who bore it into the tea-room, where he was indulged with a saucer of bread and milk on the rug be- fore the fire. Having eaten as much as he desired, he com- menced trotting about the room, taking precisely the same course round the legs of chairs and tables each time ; and so he continued without a moment’s cessation to the latest hour the household remained up. Like the Guinea-pig, he seemed to have the greatest dislike to running across the room. In the morning he was always found snug in his bed. At length he disappeared, but previously did good service by devouring the cockroaches and beetles which infested the house. The desire of the hedgehog to pursue a beaten track was further evidenced by one we kept in a garden, which continued for months the course he first took, though a portion of it con- sisted in climbing with difficulty over some tiles, which a few inches on either side would have avoided. We often put things in his path, and watched his proceedings : he shrunk at first on finding the obstruction, and then tumbled over it in the best way he could. Again we got another, and having heard that he may be at once tamed by indulging him in whisky, we mixed some in a saucer with sugar, and dipping his nose into it, he licked his chops, then ventured to make a lap at the enticing mate- rial, and, “ startled at the sound himself had made,” he shrunk in, but came out again presently and lapped away most eagerly. The spirit soon showed its power, and like other beasts that indulge in it, he was any thing but himself ; and his lack- lustre leaden eye was rendered still less pleasing by its inane drunken expression. He staggered towards us in a ridicu- lously get-out-of-my-way sort of manner ; however, he had not gone far before his potation produced all its effects ; he tottered, then fell on his side ; he w r as drunk in the full sense of the word ; he could not even hold by the ground. We could then pull him about by the feet, open his mouth, twitch his whiskers, &c. : he was unresisting. There w r as a strange expression in his face of that self-confidence which we see in cowards when inspired by drinking. We put him away, and some twelve hours afterwards found him running about, and, as was predicted, quite tame, his spines lying so smoothly and regularly that he could be stroked down the back, and handled freely. We turned him into the kitchen to kill the cockroaches, and know nothing further of him. Having given you so much of his manners, let us turn to his structural peculiarities. He is a small animal, not much larger than a rat when stripped of his spines and the muscular appa- ratus connected with them. It is this that enables him to roll himself up so as to present a chevaux-de-frize - like defence, impregnable to all ordinary enemies ; and as there is much singularity in it, we will endeavour to describe it. On the back of the animal, between the skin and ribs, there is a large oval muscle with thickened edges, partially attached to the skin and spines. From this spring certain muscular bands, which are fixed firmly at the other ends to the head, tail, breast, and other parts of the body. The whole may be likened to a sort of elastic mantle, kept on the back by straps. When the owner wishes to roll up, he bends his body, then tightening the straps, he pulls the edge of the elastic mantle over, which contracting, draws it in as if it were a running string in a bag ; at the same time the spines are fixed rigidly for defence by the straining of the muscles. There are many other interesting points in his anatomy. He possesses, as we do, well developed clavicles or collar-bones, which only exist in a rudimentary form in many quadrupeds. The peculiarities of his structure have exposed him to much, we will not say wanton cruelty, as its object was the increase of knowledge ; it therefore should not be heavily censured, while so many un- meaning barbarities exist under the name of sports. It is stated as a proof of his endurance, that he has died without a groan under the slow process of zootomy inflicted upon him while nailed to a table. Such practices are seldom if ever engaged in at the present time. The hedgehog is certainly a very apathetic creature, and at a low temperature becomes torpid ; when in this condition he is doubtless devoid of feeling. Torpidity in many animals seems to stand in the place of migration in others, as a necessary condition when provision of food depends on season: in this case the fact seems to argue in favour of our position— that the hedgehog is in a state of nature strictly insectivorous ; were it not so, torpidity would not seem necessary, as roots of ve- getables could be had with facility as well at one season as the other. The hedgehog while torpid loses weight rather rapidly, so that the power of its remaining in this state is limited perhaps to a very few months. The French academicians maintained long since that there were two species of hedgehog in their country. In reference to this, Ray, with his usual sagacity, after describing the common species, expresses a disbelief of there being another in Europe ; a doubt since fully confirmed : for the dog and hog urchin, as the supposed species were called, have no more existence than the dog and hog badgers of our sportsmen have as distinct animals. Old authors notice several species under the name of hedgehog ; but it appears by more accurate ob- servation that but two of the animals mentioned by them are entitled to this name, viz. the one in question and the long- eared urchin of Siberia. Since 1832, at least three other species have been enrolled in the records of science. It is said that when hedgehogs are born, their ears as well as their eyes are closed, and the former circumstance is noticed as a unique fact ; however, another instance of imperforate ears occurred to us, in the case of a black bear cubbed at the gardens of the Royal Zoologi- cal Society of Ireland : it lived but a few hours. The ear of the hedgehog, in the structure of its bony parts, presents some peculiarities strikingly different from most other quadrupeds. The hedgehog is said to feed occasionally on cantharides ; a single beetle of which would occasion death or serious injury to most animals. If this be true, it is only another example of what often occurs in nature, illustrating the old proverb “what is one’s meat is another’s poison.” In addition to the use of the hedgehog as the destroyer of cockroaches, Ids skin was an important monopoly in the time of the Romans, being used both as a clothes-brush and an instrument for hackling hemp. His calcined eyes formed part of an ointment which the ancients tell us had such a wonderful efficacy as to enable persons using it to see in the dark. His gall w-as used to take off hair, his fat to put it on, &e. He is still eaten in the south of Europe ; but, judging from his food and appearance, we wmuld not recommend the prac- tice here. The hedgehog, or urchin, as he is sometimes called, belongs to the order of Insectivora, and possesses much of the character and habits of shrews. His scientific name is Erina- ceus Europmus ; but we have headed this article with his Irish appellation, which is perhaps the only one not inserted in our popular authors. B. 168 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. WATERPROOFING OF CLOTH, SILK, &c. T<7 TEE EDITOR. OF THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Sir — I would feel happy should the few remarks I will at present offer be found worthy of insertion in your columns — it is on the subject of waterproofing cloth, or other fabrics, cotton, sil k, leather, &c. When the matter first came before the public, being deter- mined if possible to ascertain the secret, after many unsuccess- ful experiments I found all the requisite properties to consist in a concentrated solution of acetate of alumina, which can be procured at a cheap and a moderate rate, by mixing equal quantities of sulphate of alum (common alum ) and acetate of lead (sugar of lead), and dissolving them in water : one pound of each may be purchased for one shilling, which may he dissolved in one gallon and a half of boiling water, and well mixed; when cold, the supernatant liquid should be removed froth the sediment, which consists of sulphates of lead, potash, &c. Any article of dress, no matter how slight the fabric, if well saturated in it, and allowed to dry slowly, will bear the action of boiling water, and not permit it to pass through : it is a remarkable fact, and there are many others connected with the same solution well worthy of investigation. I should be glad if some of your learned correspondents would favour us with the reason why the boiling water will not pass through, and the steam of the water will. r I hinking it a sub- ject not totally unworthy of examination, I remain, Sir, your most obedient servant, Thomas Irwin, Apothecary and Chemist, 48 Cuffe St. A SCENE AT SEA. « I saw the ship go dancing on before the favouring gale, And like the pinions of a swan was spread each swelling sail ; But ere again uprose the sun, rose many a shriek and wail ; Ere morn the gallant ship was gone— vanished the snowy sail !” The ship rode far upon the silent main ; 'twas night. A beautiful, still night ; no moon was there, But the bright stars were hanging overhead In golden clusters ; and the breathless sea Gave them all back ; while the tall vessel seemed A fairy home, suspended 'twixt two heavens. And there were happy hearts within her then : That eve they had descried the distant shore Of their own land ; and all had gone to rest In the dear hope that ere another day Their feet would press again their native soil : Then the rich merchant dreamed how his gay stores Would well reward his exile ; and the youth Thought of his loved one, and in fancy touch'd Already her rose-lips ; while the fond sire Dreamed of his wife and children, and his hearth With their bright faces gathered round, like stars. To hearken to the marvels of his voyage. * « * * » There is a stillness over sea and heaven— A placid calm, a holy peace : alas ! Whence is that sudden cry — that rising flame That bursts from the fair vessel ? 'Tis no fire Of heaven, no angry lightning, that hath struck And blasted it ! A moment, and the scene That was so fair is changed : the heavens above And still as ever ; but the death-fire glows Upon the burnished waters ! Groans and prayers Rise up all vainly ! There’s a sudden shriek. Like to an earthquake ; and the hopes and fears Of many hearts, the vessel and its freight, Are vanished — scattered into nameless things, And all is swallowed up and lost ! — From the Knickerbocker. True Charity The lowest order of charity is that which is satisfied with relieving the immediate pressure of distress in individual cases. A higher is, that which makes provision on a large scale for the relief of such distress ; as when a na- tion passes on from common almsgiving to a general provi- sion for the destitute. A higher still is, when such provision is made in the way of anticipation, or for distant objects ; as when the civilization of savages, the freeing of slaves, the treatment of the insane, or the education of the blind and deaf and mutes, is undertaken. The highest charity of all is, that which aims at the prevention rather than the alleviation of evil. It is a nobler charity to prevent destitution, crime, and ignorance, than to relieve individuals who never ought to have been made destitute, criminal, and ignorant. Employment for the Unhappy The unhappy are in- disposed to employment : all active occupations are weari- some and disgusting in prospect, at a time when every thing, life itself, is full of weariness and disgust. Yet the unhappy must be employed, or they will go mad. Comparatively blessed are they, if they are set in families, where claims and duties abound, and cannot be escaped. In the pressure of business there is present safety and ultimate relief. Harder is the lot of those who have few necessary occupations, en- forced by other claims than their own harmlessness and pro- fitableness. Reading often fails. Now and then it may be- guile ; but much oftener the attention is languid, the thoughts wander, and associations with the subject of grief are awak- ened. Women who find that reading will not do, will obtain no relief from sewing. Sewing is pleasant enough in modera- tion to those whose minds are at ease the while ; but it is an employment which is trying to the nerves when long continued, at the best ; and nothing can be worse for the harassed, and for those avho want to escape from themselves. Writing is bad. The pen hangs idly suspended over the paper, or the sad thoughts that are alive within write themselves down. The safest and best of all occupations for such sufferers as are fit for it, is intercourse with young children. An infant might have beguiled Satan and his peers the day after they were couched on the lake of fire, if the love of children had chanced to linger amidst the ruins of their angelic nature. Next to this comes honest, genuine acquaintanceship among the poor ; not mere charity-visiting, grounded on soup-tickets and blankets, but intercourse of mind, with real mutual interest between the parties. Gardening is excellent, because it unites bodily exertion with a sufficient engagement of the faculties, while sweet, compassionate nature is ministering cure in every sprouting leaf and scented blossom, and beckoning sleep to draw nigh, and be I'eady to follow up her benignant work. Walking is good, not stepping from shop to shop, or from neighbour to neighbour, but stretching out far into the coun- try, to the freshest fields, and the highest ridges, and the quietest lanes. However sullen the imagination may have been among its griefs at home, here it cheers up and smiles. How- ever listless the limbs may have been when sustaining a too heavy heart, here they are braced, and the lagging gait be- comes buoyant again. However perverse the memory may have been in presenting all that was agonizing, and insisting only on what cannot be retrieved, here it is first disregarded, and then it sleeps ; and the sleep of the memory is the day in Paradise to the unhappy. The mere breathing of the cool wind on the face in the commonest highway is rest and com- fort which must be felt at such times to be believed. It is disbelieved in the shortest intervals between the seasons of en- joyment ; and every time the sufferer has resolution to go forth to meet it, it penetrates to the very heart in glad sur- prise. The fields are better still : for there is the lark to fill up the hours with mirthful music ; or, at worst, the robin and the flocks of fieldfares, to show that the hardest day has its life and hilarity. But the calmest region is the upland, where human life is spread out beneath the bodily eye, where the mind roves from the peasant’s nest to the spiry town, from the schoolhouse to the churchyard, from the diminished team in the patch of fallow, or the fisherman’s boat in the cove, to the viaduct that spans the valley, or the fleet that glides ghostlike on the horizon. This is the perch where the spirit plumes its ruffled and drooping wings, and makes ready to let itself down any wind that heaven may send . — From JDeerbrook, a Tale, by Harriet Martineau. Childhood — Childhood is like a mirror, catching and re- flecting images from all around it. Remember that an im- pious or profane thought, uttered by a parent’s, lips, may operate on the young heart like a careless spray of water thrown upon polished steel, staining it with rust which no after scouring can efface. Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin.— Agents: — R. Groomeridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester ; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool ; J. Drake, Birmingham ; Slocombe & Simms, Leeds ; Frazer and Crawford, George Street, Edinburgh; and David Robertson, Trongate, Glasgow. PENNY Number 22. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1840. Volume I. mmm i~ir&Y iXEp&K mV THE CHURCH AND ROUND TOWER OF DONAGHMORE, COUNTY OF MEATH. English and other visitors to our metropolis who dare the perils of the deep, and various other perils now equally ima- ginary, to see something of our Emerald Isle, are generally directed as a matter of course to our far-famed county of Wicklow as the only picturesque lion within a few hours’ jour- ney ; and certainly in this romantic region they will find much to gratify the taste, and which will remain indelibly fixed on the memory. But, delightful as such excursion undoubtedly is, it will only convey to a stranger’s mind a partial and im- perfect impression of Irish scenery ; and he will be apt to con- clude that however rich we may be in the possession of lakes and mountains — the grand but solitary domains of nature — we are wholly wanting in scenery of a different class, that of the richly wooded pastoral valley, blooming with artificial as well as natural beauty, the anciently chosen abodes of luxury and rank, and, as such, rich in memorials of the past, with their attendant historical associations. Scenery such as this, the proud Briton will most probably think the exclusive boast of his own favoured isle. He will not imagine that it is also to be found in equal perfection in Ireland, and even within a short distance of the metropolis. It is not in the Guide or Tour Book, and is but little known even to the well informed of the citizens of Dublin themselves, more of whom have seen and enjoyed the scenery of the Thames than that of the Boyne, which is within four hours’ journey. Y T et the scenery of the Boyne, following its course upwards from Drogheda to Na- van, a distance of eleven miles, and the scenery of the Black- water, a river tributary to the Boyne, ascending from Navan to Kells, a distance of eight miles more, is, in its way, of a cha- racter as beautiful and luxuriant as could be found anywhere, or even be imagined. Scenery of this class of equal richness may be often found in England ; but we do not know r of any river’s course of the same length in which natural beauty .so happily combines with the artificial, or in which so many in- teresting memorials of past ages could be found. Scattered in rich profusion along the banks of this beautiful river we find the noblest monuments of the various races of men who have held sway in Ireland : the great earthen fortresses, stone circles and dome-roofed sepulchres of the Tuatha de Dananns and the Fir-Bolgs — the raths of the Milesians — the churches and round towers of the earliest Christian times — the proud castles of the Anglo-Norman chiefs and their equally imposing 170 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. architectual structures dedicated to tne services of religion. In the variety, if not the number of such monuments here found, the Boyne is without a rival in any Irish river, nor do we think it could be paralleled by any river in the empire ; and we might truly add, that it is on its luxuriant banks, amid so many instructive memorials of past ages, that the history of our country, as traced in its monuments , would be best stu- died. It is from amongst these interesting remains that we have selected the subject of our prefixed illustration — the Church and Round T ower of Donaghmore, situated a little more than a mile from Navan, on the road to Slane. This religious establishment, which was anciently called Domnach-mor muiyhe Echnach, owes its origin to St Patrick, as will appear from the following passage translated from the life of the Irish apostle, attributed to St Evin : — “ While the man of God was baptising the people called Luaignii, at a place where the church of Domnach-mor in the plain of Echnach stands at this day, he called to him his dis- ciple Cassanus, and committed to him the care of the church recently erected there, preadmonishing him, and with prophetic mouth predicting that he might expect that to be the place of his resurrection ; and that the church committed to his care would always remain diminutive in size and structure, but great and celebrated in honour and veneration. The event has proved this prophecy to be a true one, for St Cassanus’s relics are there to be seen in the highest veneration among the people, remarkable for great miracles, so that scarcely any of the visitors go away without recovering health, or re- ceiving other gifts of grace sought for.” — Tr. Th. p. 130. But though the existing ruins of the Church of Donagh- more sufficiently indicate it to have been a structure “ di- minutive in size,” its architectural features clearly prove that it is not the original church of St Patrick’s erection, but a re-edification of the thirteenth century, in the usual style of the parish churches erected by the Anglo-Norman settlers within the Pale. Neither can the Round Tower, though un- questionably a structure of much higher antiquity than the present church, be referred to the time of the Irish apostle, or perhaps to an earlier age than the ninth or tenth century. At all events, its erection cannot be ascribed to an earlier date than that of the Tower of the Church of Kells — a religious es- tablishment founded by St Columbkille in the sixth century — as these towers so perfectly agree in architectural style and masonwork, that they appear to have been constructed by the same architects or builders. This very beautiful tower is built entirely of limestone un- dressed, except around the doorway and other apertures, and is of admirable masonry. It ha? two projecting ledges or steps at its base, and six rests for stories, with intermediate pro- jecting stones or brackets in its interior. These stories are each, as usual, lighted by a single aperture, with the excep- tion of the upper one, which has two openings, one facing the east, and the other the west ; and the apertures present all the architectural varieties of form observable in our most an- cient churches. The circumference of this tower, near its base, is 66 feet 6 inches, and its height, to the slant of the roof, which is wanting, is about 100 feet. The wall is 3 feet 9 inches in thickness, and the doorway is 12 feet from the ground. This doorway — which is of very beautiful execution, and, as usual, faces the west end of the church — is 5 feet 2 inches in height, and has inclined sides, and a semicircularly arched top. It is 2 feet 3 inches wide at bottom, and 2 feet beneath the spring of the arch at top. Over the door there is a figure of the Saviour sculptured in relief, partly on the key- stone and partly on the stone over it ; and on each side of the architrave there is a human head also in relief, as on the doorway of the church of Kells. Some antiquaries, in their zeal to support the theory of the Pagan origin and the antiquity of the Round Towers, have asserted that this doorway is not the original one, but an “ after work.” But there is not the slightest ground for such a supposition, and this sculpture, as a profoundly skilled ar- chitectural antiquary, the late Sir Richard Colt Hoare, well observed, furnishes “ a decided proof that these buildings were not (as some writers have conjectured) built by the Pagans.” A similar argument against the application of the Round Towers to the purposes of a belfry, has been grounded on the circumstance of the western front of the church having three apertures for bells above its gable. But it should not be for- gotten that this structure has uo claim to au earlier date than the thirteenth century, when a variety of bells, and a different mode of hanging them, were brought into use by the Anglo- Norman settlers. The Church of Donaghmore has been confounded by Arch- dall and subsequent writers with the ancient church of Dom- nach-Tortain, also founded by St Patrick, but which was si- tuated near Ardbraccan. P. THE DRUNKARDS, A TOO TRUE STORY. In one of those admirable tales which Mrs Hall is now pub- lishing with the praiseworthy object of the melioration of the Irish character, the ordinary effects of a too faint resistance to the fascinations of strong drink are faithfully detailed. The moral which our generous countrywoman intended to convey is undoubtedly of universal application, but I am afraid that the circumstances I am about to relate will convey no moral. It is the simple and true record of an appalling calamity which befell the subjects of my story, with all the melancholy unac- countableness and fatality of lunacy. No one would warn his fellow-creatures against the danger of madness — against any unforeseen dispensation of God’s wrath : it is in this sense, then, that I am afraid I have no moral to convey in narrating an event of which I was all but a spectator. It must have struck every observer of human character that there are two classes of drunkards in this country. One class is composed of those persons, who, at first being well enough disposed to be temperate in all things, are insensibly led on by the charm of good fellowship to create for themselves an artificial want, which in the end leaves them the helpless vic- tims of a miserable disease : they begin with a little — they continue the draught under the self-deceiving sophism “ it’s only a drop” — they fall into excess — they lose all sense of de- corum and proper spirit — they become mean and unbashful in their craving after spirituous liquor, which condition unfits them for an upright and honourable course of thought and action in any of the details of daily existence — a mental dissi- pation accompanies the bodily languor : while the hand trem- bles, the brain wanders, and the last scene of the tragedy is delirium tremens. But there is another class of drunkards — God forbid that I should attribute any thing to the decrees of Providence incon- sistent with mercy and justice — but I am almost tempted to designate this class the drunkards by necessity. However worldly condition, education, or other causes, may modify the result in individual cases, it is not the less certain that there are persons — very many of them— who appear to have come into the world predisposed to an inordinate desire for intoxi- cating liquors. These wretched people do not begin with thimblesful, and end with gills — the stroke seizes them like a thief in the night — sometimes in the prime of manhood — some- times in the flush of youth — sometimes (it is a fearful truth) in the thoughlessness of boyhood. It is a passion with them — a madness. You may know one of these unhappy beings, es- pecially if he be a very young man, by the sullen and dogged air with which, early in the morning, he enters the public house, and sits down in solitude and silence to his double- shotted measure of undiluted whisky — whisky is the only drink for one of this calibre — alas ! the worst and fiercest stuff that can be made is the most acceptable to him — his palate is too long palled to distinguish between tastes and flavours — it is the liquid fire he wants ; you may know him at other times by the pitiable imbecility which prompts him in his awful craving to reach his tumbler to his lips with both his hands, till he finishes the draught with all the apparent eagerness of intense thirst; you may know such a one by his frightful sleeps, begun, continued, and closed in terrific dreams ! The wife and family of the progressive or occasional drunkard are wretched enough, as every body knows ; but, oh ! who can possibly estimate the amount of misery which the wife and children of a madman like this are destined to endure. I have not overdrawn the picture in the abstract — take an individual instance : — In the spring of 18 — I was living, on a visit with a friend, in the neighbourhood of a small country town in one of the most fertile and prosperous districts of the island. The po- pulation was almost entirely free from that abject and squalid poverty which is the lot of the Irish peasantry beyond that of all other descriptions of civilized people. I remarked parti- cularly of this neighbourhood that it had a larger proportion of respectable farmers and of that species of country gentle* THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 171 men called squireens, than any other part of the country I had ever lived in. To this latter class belonged the heads of two branches of the same family, both of whom resided in the immediate vicinity of my friend’s house. Their names were Peter and James Kavanagh. Peter was by many years the elder of the two ; his family consisted of three grown-up sons and one daughter. Peter had married in early life, and his wife died in giving birth to a fifth child, which did not long survive its mother. James had a large family of young chil- dren. Peter’s only daughter, Alice, had been brought up in her uncle’s house in order that she might receive the educa- tion and care which a girl of her tender age, without a mo- ther, might expect from the kindness of her nearest female relative. The family of Peter Kavanagh, then, consisted of himself, his three sons, and a single in-door servant as housekeeper, who was already an old woman and of indolent habits. The household of a widower in the middle and humbler ranks of life is rarely ordered with regularity and decorum, and Peter’s was no exception to the general case. Every room had an aspect of untidiness and discomfort. Seldom were the boards of the floors or staircase washed or swept — seldom were the window panes cleansed, or the hearth-flag whitened, or the tables rubbed, or the chairs dusted. Things soiled were never cleaned — things broken were never mended — things lost were never replaced. Each of the family felt in turn the in- convenience of this state of things, but one threw the blame upon the other, and nothing was done to remedy the evil. Every one thought it strange that such a good practical far- mer and shrewd man-of-the-world as Peter Kavanagh should care so little about the comforts or conveniences of every-day existence — but so it was. Peter, however, had or thought he had one especial house- hold virtue to be proud of. Very early in life he had nar- rowly escaped disgrace and ruin by severing himself from a parcel of dissipated associates, who had led him step by step into all the labyrinths of premature debauchery. He receded before it was quite too late, and the recollection of what he suffered (for he did suffer) was sufficient to make him re- solve that his sons should never be tempted in a similar man- ner. The eldest of these, Richard, was now one-and-twenty, the second, Matthew, nineteen, and the youngest, Gerald, fif- teen years of age, at the time I lived near P , and they had never yet partaken of any spirituous liquor at their fa- ther’s table. That father, however, was by no means so ab- stemious as he had compelled his boys to be. Every day since they had first learned the taste of whisky toddy had they been tantalised with the sight of the “ materials” for their fa- ther’s favourite beverage. Peter Kavanagh was indeed a tem- perate man, but he was not a generous man. He was not one of those kind parents who cannot bear to gratify their appe- tite with any delicacy, whether much or little, dear or cheap, while their children are looking on with wistful eyes and wa- tering mouths in vain expectancy. He had his reward. One day the two eldest lads, Dick and Matt, were canned home from a neighbouring fair, stupidly drunk. It was the first time they had ever been so, and the quantity they had taken was perhaps trifling ; but the father was thenceforward more watchful tban ever to prevent them from repeating the excess. In his usual manner to his sons Peter Kavanagh was not par- ticularly harsh, but the least evasion of his strict commands in respect of drink was sure to be visited with great severity. How wretchedly inconsistent was this man’s practice ! Other misdemeanours of infinitely a greater degree of moral crime were winked at, nay encouraged, by him. The young men were not naturally vicious ; but when they found that they could with impunity curse and swear in their father’s hearing . — when they found that even some of the graver offences against society could be committed without their father’s re- prehension, was it any wonder that they should soon grow ripe in wickedness ? Matt and Dick, in their personal appearance, showed every token of the accomplished village scamp — bat- tered hats jauntily carried on one side of the head— rusty shooting coats of bottle green, with an amazing plurality of pockets — knee-breeches of once-white corduroy insufficiently buttoned over coarse worsted stockings, and heavy brogues with nails like the rivets of a steam-boiler. These were the hardiest betters of the ball-alley, the keenest lads at the rou- lette-table — the deadest shots at a mark over all the country side. Plenty of money had they, and who dared to ask them how they came by it ? Their father had lots of cash lying by, and selfish as he was, and knowing as he was, many a heavy handful of hard silver w r as he relieved of by his dutiful sons. Hence the dashing “bit of blood” which carried Dick and Matt alternately over the stubbles — hence the couple of spa- niels and the leash of greyhounds, which had the reputation of being the best noses or the fleetest feet in the county — hence the double-barrelled “ Rigby” belonging to Dick, -which was the admiration and envy of his acquaintances. As they grew up, and cared less for the anger of their father, vicious habits became more settled-looking and systematic with them. They drank to frightful excess whenever they had the slightest op- portunity. No one ever saw them for twenty minutes at a time without having full proof that they were slaves to as odious and disgusting a tyranny as ever the depraved tastes of human creatures created for mankind — I mean, no one ever saw them for so long a time without a tobacco pipe between their teeth, and surrounded by every one of the usual nasti- nesses which accompany the practice when carried to a hate- ful extent ; and yet, even as they were, the county could not boast of two manlier looking fellows than Richard and Matt Kavanagh when dressed for Sunday mass, which they still attended with a punctuality which -would be more praisewor- thy if it sprang from anything but a motive of vanity and pride. Under different culture they might have become ex- cellent members of society. They had still some faint pre- tensions to generosity and spirit, and many a pretty girl of the neighbourhood would have trusted to her sole powers of persuasion for their reclamation. Gerald Kavanagh, the youth of fifteen, was a lad of differ- ent stamp. He was open-featured and open-hearted both. He was never seen with a pipe in his mouth, or a tattered “racing calendar” sticking out of his pocket; and while his brothers were out upon their sporting expeditions, or amus- ing themselves in a less innocent way, it was poor Gerald’s pleasure to scamper across the fields to his uncle James’s gar- den, and walk, or talk, or read, or play wfith his pretty little sister Alley, or romp with his pretty little cousins Bill and Bess, and Peter and Dick, after school hours — the time he knew he would find most company looking out for him. Al- ley and he were as fond as they could be of each other, and not the less so because they did not live entirely together. “ Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” is as true a line as ever was penned, whether we apply it to the lover and his mistress, or the brother and his distant sister. Manv of us, with sighs and tears, can testify this. It was a lovely sight to see that affectionate boy and his fond sister sauntering along the borheens in the wild-strawberry season, with their arms around each other’s necks in the intervals of their fruit- finding, until they bade each other good-bye for another day, and returned, “ with lingering steps and slow,” to homes, alas, how different ! Such were these three youths when Peter Kavanagh, after a short illness, died, and left his property, such as it was, to be equally divided between his children. I may venture to say that Richard and Matt were not sorry for their father’s loss. On the night of the grand “ wake” they collected all the idle and profligate young men of their acquaintance together at the house, and dreadful was the depth of drunkenness to which they sank, as might be ex- pected. Every more prudent person present saw how it was — saw that the previous restraint was about to be amply atoned for, and many a shake of the head was intended to be prophetic of coming calamity. On that same night — early in the night too — little Alley perceived that all was not right with her brother Gerald. She had seen Richard plying him with liquor, which he at first refused, but afterwards accepted — stealthily, however, and with an abashed and crimsoning face as he met the first reproachful glance of Alice. Gradually the temptation worked, and again and again the draught was repeated with less hesi- tation at the request of his brothers, who seemed happy in the idea of making their innocent companion as guilty as them- selves. The devil surely has those in his clutches who find comfort and consolation in the visible abandonment of the fair and innocent to the miserable pleasures for which they have sold their own souls. At length she was frightened to per- ceive that Gerald had grown hardy and boastful of his feat — . he had asked for more whisky, and had been given it by Dick, who, half drunk himself already, was determined to make Gerald drunk for once in his life. The boy was now in the condition wished for by his brother ; he had slunk behind Matt’s chair ; Alice could see his head hanging upon one shoulder, while his eyes were closing in the stupor of intoxi- 172 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. cation — he was about to fall to the ground. Quietly she stole to his side, aud leaning her head upon his shoulder she whis- pered, “ Gerald, darling, I didn’t think you would drink so much — why did you do it ?” “ Don’t tell uncle James, Alley, if he hasn’t seen me this way, and I’ll never drink so much again.” “ Hold up your head for another bucket, you dog,” said Matt, with sundry drunken hiccupings, as he heard the boy speaking behind his chair, and proffering at the same time a fresh bumper. “ Come, Gerald, my boy, it will do you no harm — sorrow’s dry, they say, and Lord knows but you’ve blubbered enough all day for a little fellow.” “ Matt, dear Matt, don’t ask him,” said Alice. Matt, however, was not to be thwarted : with a brutal cuff he struck his little sister to the ground, and tried to force the liquor upon Gerald’s acceptance. In the attempt the glass fell from his hand, and Alice rose and drew her brother softly from the room. The funeral took place, and there was another carouse more disgraceful than the first, and another, and another, and an- other ! until the week was out. When Gerald’s uncle saw how completely besotted his nephews had become, he took Gerald to live with him, but not until it had become too painfully evident that the boy had acquired a liking for the liquor which had turned his two brothers into human beasts. Poor little Alice wept over the change. There was no more reading, or playing, or wandering through the country together. He sat sulky and silent in the house all day, more like a poor relation on charitable allowance than the joint-heir of the largest farm in the parish. But this was to have an end ! A month had passed away since the death of Peter Kava- nagh, and the zeal of the eldest heirs had by this time drunk up his entire stock of “ mountain dew,” when in some out-of- the-way nook or other they discovered five gallons of malt whisky, which perhaps had lain there forgotten for twenty years. It was on a Saturday morning this was found, and one of the Kavanaghs was heard to swear that he would never quit it till the last drop was drained. It was to be the last bout before they set off for Australia, whither they intended to emigrate that very spring, having, with their uncle’s con- sent on behalf of the two younger orphans, converted their land into money for the purpose. One or two choice spirits had been invited to join them, but these begged to be excused — even these were appalled at the dreadful excesses of their boon companions. Towards evening Gerald had been miss- ing from his uncle’s house. James Kavanagh guessed how it was, and with little Alice in his hand repaired to the brothers’ dwelling. The door was locked on the inside, and on asking for Gerald he was told that he was all safe there, with the saucy addition that “ there wasn’t any admission for any d teetotaller.” Shocked and grieved, James Kavanagh went away with his dejected niece. The next day was Easter Sunday. The festival had oc- curred that year unusually late in the spring, and there was already a foretaste of summer in the air. A lovely noon it was when James Kavanagh, his wife, Alice, and the children, walked out in Sunday trim to the parish chapel. The sky was fretted with light silver clouds — the fields were already green with the new growth of the grass — the hawthorn bushes were almost visibly bursting their buds — the whin braes were in a blaze of golden beauty — the birds, especially the red- breast, were chirping away with intense glee, being, in the glorious language of the poet Shelley, “ Many a voice of one delight !” They continued to walk on, and now the bells of the neigh- bouring church struck out their Easter jubilee with such ex- quisite sweetness as we might fancy arrested the sceptical purpose of the despairing Faust in Goethe’s surpassing drama, when the heart-touched metaphysician exclaimed, “ Oh, those deep sounds— those voices, rich and heavenly — Proud bells ! and do your peals already ring To greet the joyous dawn of Easter morn? And ye, rejoicing choristers ! already Flows forth your solemn song of consolation — That song, which once from angels’ lips resounding Around the midnight of the grave, was heard — The pledge and proof of a new covenant.” Yes ! indeed, those bells almost distinctly said to the heart as they swung hi the soft air of that delicious noon, “ Christ our passovcr is sacrificed for us ; therefore let us keep the feast !” They passed the church — groups of joyous children were playing in the graveyard — five or six immense chesnuts towered, coeval and almost coequal with the ancient steeple, and in these there was a rookery, now in full din — the voices of the children and the cawing of the rooks, disturbed by the sudden peal of the bells, mingled with the chime without dis- cord to the ear. Alice’s eyes glistened for a moment when she recognised her youthful playmates ; but she suddenly felt she could not laugh with them — her heart was heavy. At length they stood before the door of the brothers’ house. No signs of wakefulness had it yet exhibited. “ Let us go in, uncle, and tell them to get up,” said the little Alice. “ Let them sleep it out, the scoundrels 1” was the indignant reply of James Kavanagh. They passed on to the place of worship. In about an hour and a half from this time the same group were on their way homewards, with hearts elevated by the imposing service which they had just been witnessing. A gloom was, notwithstanding, perceptible upon the face of James Kavanagh and of his little niece, as they walked along in company with their happy and smiling neighbours. None of the three sons of Peter Kavanagh had ever before been known to have absented himself from Sunday mass, and their absence on that most holy day was of course a subject of much wonder. “ I could not have thought it possible,” said J ames Kavanagh gravely, “ that they could become so wicked all at once — God forgive them ! God help them !” “ Oh, uncle !” cried Alice, as they came in view of the house of guilt once more, “ they are not up yet ! See, the shutters are still closed !” They were now in front of the house. “ Dear uncle, said Alice entreatingly, “ go into them — do, dear uncle, bring out poor Gerald to eat his Easter dinner with us.” A thought struck James — he knocked loudly at the door. There was no answer. Another loud knock, and a long pause ; and still no sound within the house. Alice’s little heart echoed the last unsuccessful knock — it almost said, “ Wake, Gerald, with the knocking.” She could endure the suspense no longer, and, running to the gripe at the road-side, she took up a heavy stone, with which she battered the panels of the hall-door as long as her strength permitted her. When she was obliged to desist, her screams might be heard afar off, and still there was no sound in the house. James Kavanagh had dispatched one of his little boys to a neighbouring cottage for a crow-bar. The boy quickly returned with one, and James, assisted by the crowd who gathei’ed near, was not long in forcing the door. “ Good people,” said he to the anxious company outside, “ don’t come in till I tell you— there’s no use in further expos- ing the shame of my brother’s house.” He and Alice, with one or two particular friends, entered the hall with faltering steps, and they closed the door behind them. The first object which met their eyes was Peggy, the old housekeeper, lying on the mat at the foot of the staircase, in a trance of intoxication : she had evidently fallen down stairs in her attempt to reach the door, and had been for hours perhaps insensible. Alice jumped over her, and darted up stairs with the speed of lightning. James and his companions, after a vain attempt at arousing the housekeeper, slowly fol- lowed her. They entered the room which fronted them on the landing. The thick stench of tobacco-smoke, mingled with the fumes of ale and whisky, almost overpowered them. The room would have been quite dark had it not been for the flickering rem- nants of two candles, which still glared in the heated sockets of a large old-fashioned branch candlestick. James went to the window, opened the shutters, and let down the sash. The glorious sunshine streamed into the reeking apartment, with the blessed air of the Sabbath. How strange — how painful was the paling glimmer of those expiring candles in that holy light ! The three young men were lying on the floor at some distance from each other, around the legs of a crazy table in the centre of the room. On the table were huddled toge- ther the fragments of salt herrings, the parings of cheese, broken glasses, half-emptied decanters, and the other usual paraphernalia of a low debauch. The whole meaning of the scene was taken in at a glance by James Kavanagh, as soon as he had opened the window. He stooped over one of the THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 173 prostrate forms — it was that of Richard. He turned up the face — great God ! it was the face of a livid corpse ! A smo- thered groan burst from James : he rushed towards the next — Matt Kavanagh was dead also, quite dead and stiff ! James and his friends looked at each other solemnly, and without speaking a word. They turned their glance simultaneously to the place where Gerald was lying. They moved or rather tottered to the spot. There he lay, with Alice in a swoon beside him, his eyes glazed, the skin of his face tightened over his nose and cheek-bones, his lips covered with viscid froth, and his beautiful brown hair tossed backwards from his damp forehead, glistening in a streak of sunshine which came full upon it from the window. “ He is alive still !” they all three exclaimed : “ he may yet be saved !” One of them ran to the window and made a sign to the neighbours to come in. The room was soon full of horrified spectators. They parted Alice from her dying brother, and both were brought out into the open air as quickly as possible. Amidst the cries and lamentations of the bystanders Alice recovered. She sat for a while on the grass, trying to recall her scattered senses. The sight of Gerald lying near her, as the crowd opened to admit the air to his face with a freer freshness, brought the whole terrible truth to her mind. She rose with difficulty, but, gathering strength with recollection, she succeeded in breaking from the woman who had her in charge, and in a moment the head of Gerald was pillowed upon her bosom. The soft cooling breeze had restored the unfortunate boy to a momentary consciousness. He was barely able to turn his head towards Alice in recognition of their presence. A faint pleasure was expressed in his glassy eyes as he did so. “ Won’t you speak to me, Gerald ? Won’t you speak to your own Alley?” The boy shook with a convulsive shudder, but could not utter a syllable. “ Don’t die, dear Gerald ; don’t leave poor Alley all alone in the world ! Och, och, och !” said the little girl in the very agony of childish despair, “ he’ll never be the same again — he’ll never speak to me again !” The boy made an effort to bring Alice’s ear to his clammy lips ; she strove to hear the almost inarticulate whisper which hovered upon them. “ Is — uncle James — here ?” gasped the dying lad ; “ tell him — I — couldn’t — help it ! Oh ! Alley ! oh !” Gradually the groan, extorted by the last pang of disso- lution, died away, and with it the spirit of poor Gerald Kavanagh. Alice perceived what had happened as soon as any of the bystanders, but high and shrill her scream mounted over the wailing which arose from the others, ere she once more sank down in the swoon which the excess of her anguish had so mercifully caused. On the following day a coroner’s inquest was held upon the bodies of the three sons of Peter Kavanagh, in a public-house not far distant from the scene of this fatal debauch. A sur- mise had been afloat that poison had somehow or other been the cause of their death, and an examination of one of the bodies was considered needful. I will not shock my readers with a description of the fearful chamber where this most loathsome operation was performed. The result was a verdict to the effect that the three Kavanaghs had died “ from the excessive use of ardent spirits.” I commenced by saying I feared that this narrative might fail in pointing a moral. It has a moral — a moral to selfish and ill-judging parents, and equally ill-judging societies, who lay the flattering unction to their souls that coercion will have a better effect than a fair and consistent example. Verily, the Spartan nobles, who exhibited the drunken slave before their children, and then placed the wine-cup within their reach, had a better knowledge of human nature than the Irish father who would exorcise the demon of alcohol out of his chil- dren by pledges of abstinence, or threats of punishment, while, in the security of his own experience, he feels he can temperately enjoy the luxury of spirituous drink.* R. M. * From the Londonderry Standard. Fine connexions are apt to plunge you into a sea of extra- vagance, and then not to throw you a rope to save you from drowning. SAP IN VEGETABLES. SECOND AND CONCLUDING ARTICLE. We endeavoured in our last article to describe the principal circumstances of interest with respect to the ascending or un- elaborated sap. We have found that it is derived from the aliment which consists of water and carbonic acid ; that it is composed of a solution of sugar and gum in water ; that it as- cends in the ordinary trees of this country through the wood, which is situated between the bark and pith ; that the causes which elevate it are partly a vital attraction or suction exer- cised by the buds, and partly an endosmose, by which, in con- sequence of its superior density, it draws in its aliment through the spongy extremities of the roots ; that its use is not only to furnish materials for the descending or elaborated sap, but by developing the fleshy part of plants to cause the growth of stems in length and roots in thickness. We shall now pro- ceed to show the origin, the course, the composition, and the uses of the descending or elaborated sap. The elaborated sap is formed out of the ascending sap. The place where this change takes place is in the leaves and green parts of vegetables ; it is generally in the spring season that the ascending sap pushes out the buds into branches, and developes the little scales which had surrounded these or- gans into leaves ; but when these leaves are formed, the sap continues to ascend into them, and there undergoes those al- terations from whence the elaborated sap results. Now, these alterations consist in the getting rid of all superfluous water and carbonic acid, which, originally absorbed as aliment, had not undergone the conversion into gum and sugar during the ascent of the sap ; secondly, in the acquisition of additional nutriment from the atmosphere ; and, thirdly, in the conver- sion of these substances into a variety of new compounds. Let us examine each of those changes to which the ascend- ing sap is subjected, in succession ; and, first, with respect to the disengagement of superfluous water and carbonic acid, every one must have observed drops of water collected on the leaves of cabbages and other vegetables, when examined early in the morning. These are commonly supposed to be dew- drops, but are truly in great part the result of a kind of per- spiration which is always taking place from the surface of plants. That this is the case, can be proved by covering a cabbage-plant with a bell-glass, and placing it in a room suf- ficiently heated to prevent the deposition of dew, when drops of water will be found equally to collect upon its leaves. These drops are not observed during the day, because the temperature is then commonly so high as to evaporate them as fast as they are transuded ; but the fact is, that plants ac- tually give off much more water during the day than night. The escape of carbonic acid is not so easily detected as that of water ; it can, however, be proved, through the resources of chemistry. Unlike water, which is liberated both night and day, and indeed in greatest quantity during the latter period of time, carbonic acid is found to be disengaged during the night only. As long as plants are exposed to the light of the sun, their green parts liberate none of this gas. We have mentioned that when the ascending sap arrives into the leaves, it not only throws off superfluous water and carbonic acid, but likewise derives an additional quantity of nutriment from the atmosphere. The presence of light is ne- cessary for this latter circumstance to take place. The nu- triment which, under the influence of sunlight, it acquires from this source, is a substance named “carbon;” this sub- stance is a constituent of carbonic acid, which is indeed com- posed of carbon and oxygen ; carbonic acid is contained in the atmosphere in the proportion of one part in a thousand ; the green parts of plants absorb it, and under the influence of light decompose it ; the carbon is retained, but the oxygen is again liberated. We now may perceive the reason of the fact mentioned in the preceding paragraph : plants give out no carbonic acid during the day, because the superfluous car- bonic acid of the ascending sap becomes decomposed under the influence of light, in the same way as that which has been absorbed from the atmosphere. A great many compound products are obtained from the vegetable kingdom. We need merely recall to the reader’s recollection starch, resin, camphor, bland and aromatic oils, bitter principles, colouring matters, the acids of the grape, the lemon, and the apple, &c. to assure him of this truth. All these different substances form themselves out of the sugar and gum of the ascending sap, together with the carbon ab- sorbed under the influence of light. 174 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. When the ascending sap has parted with its superfluous water and carbonic acid, when under the influence of light it has absorbed carbon from the atmosphere, and when its constituents arrange themselves anew, so as to produce some or all of the substances above enumerated, its name as well as its functions cease : it has now become the descending or elaborated sap. Let us now inquire the course which the descending sap pursues. We have stated in our last article, that if a liga- ture be twisted tightly round a branch of one of our common trees, the portion immediately above the ligature will become swollen, while that beneath it will retain its former thickness. If instead of a ligature we remove a circular ring of bark, the same phenomenon will take place : the part above this annular incision will swell out on every side. From this expe- riment we derive several important inductions. We learn from hence that this kind of sap descends, and moreover that the channel which conveys it is the bark. Having ascertained the course which the elaborated sap pursues, let us now turn our attention to its composition. This is found to vary in different plants : thus in some, bitter principles are the chief constituents ; in others, aromatic sub- stances ; in others it is principally resinous ; but whatever may be the principal components, they may always be divided into two groups — namely, those which are subservient to the growth of the vegetable, and those which, becoming deposited in the different organs, confer on them those properties which entitle them to be employed as articles of medicine or aliment for animals, and by means of which different plants are in this respect distinguished from each other. The portion of the descending sap which serves for the growth of the vege- table, exudes in ordinary trees between the bark and the wood, forming a glutinous layer which separates these organs, and is the cause of the facility with which in autumn the bark can be detached from the stem : this portion is called cam- bium. In palms, and other trees of warm climates, there is no bark, and in such vegetables the nutritive part of the de- scending sap passes down through the centre of the stem. The portion of elaborated sap which becomes deposited in the organs, and which varies more or less in every plant, is called the proper juice : proper vessels is the name given to the reservoirs which contain the proper juices ; and according to the nature of their contents, the proper vessels are called milk-vessels, turpentine-vessels, vesicles of essential oil, &c. In the foregoing paragraphs we have somewhat anticipated the uses of the descending sap : we have found that one por- tion of it is destined for the nutrition of the vegetable. Nov/, the same means which revealed to us the uses of the ascend- ing sap, will also tell us how far the elaborated sap is concerned in vegetable nutrition. In the dark no sap is elaborated, and no vegetable fibre is developed. Are we not therefore justi- fied in supposing that vegetable fibre is formed out of this elaborated sap ? Again, let our readers call to their remem- brance the experiment of tying a ligature around a branch : in that experiment not only does a considerable swelling take place above the ligature, but from this swollen portion cereal roots frequently protrude. These facts afford us a clue to the uses of the descending sap, for by developing vegetable fibre, it increases the thickness of the stem and the length of the roots, just as the ascending sap, by developing vegetable flesh, lengthens the stem, and enlarges the root in diameter. ________ T. A. SONNET ABOUT A NOSE. ’Tis very odd that poets should suppose There is no poetry about a nose, When plain as is the nose upon your face, 1 A noseless face would lack poetic grace. Noses have sympathy ; a lover knows Noses are always “ touched when lips are kissing : And who would care to kiss, where nose was missing ? Why, what would be the fragrance of a rose. And where would be our mortal means of telling Whether a vile or wholesome odour flows Around us, if we owned no sense of smelling ? I know a nose, a nose no other knows, 'Neath starry eyes, o’er ruby lips it grows ; Beauty is in its form, and music in its blows ! A CHAPTER ON MEN, BY A CUR. TO THE EDITOR OF THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Sir — In the 12th number of your Journal you have given insertion to a paper tending to involve our ancient and honour- able race in considerable disrepute — I allude to an article en- titled “ A Chapter on Curs, by a Man.” Every story will on investigation be found to have two sides : you have given publication to the one, and surely you will not, in justice, refuse to give your readers an opportunity of judging of the other. I remain, Sir, your faithful servant, An Aged Cur. By what means I have acquired the facility of expressing my thoughts upon paper, it is not my intention to divulge. It is true that I have made an important discovery — that I have gained possession of a secret which mankind would give worlds to possess ; but I owe too little gratitude to any member of the human race to be induced to part with it. I am old : nearly fifteen winters have passed over my head since I first drew breath, and in the course of nature death cannot be far distant. My discovery shall shortly perish with me ; and the same ditch or dunghill shall witness the dissolution of both. Of my parentage I can record but little, as I remember nothing whatever of my father, and my unfortunate mother was hanged shortly after having given me birth. Alas ! my recollections of her are tinged with any but pleasurable emo- tions, for to her I owe much of the misery with which my career has been chequered. Had she conducted herself with prudence, and been satisfied to have selected a mate from amongst the many dogs of her own degree who solicited her paw, my existence might have been passed in happy, because unnoticed obscurity. But no : stern destiny decreed that it should be otherwise, and had marked me for misfortune ere even I was born. Let not the reader start to hear me men- tion destiny : if he object to my opinions on this subject, he has a wide field open to him for reply in the pages of the daily press, which, cur though 1 be, I am, by virtue of the disco- very already alluded to, in the habit of reading ; and he may- rely upon it I am prepared to defend every position I advance. Why should I not mention destiny ? I am a rigid fatalist, and well for me that I am. What else would enable me to bear up against the scoff and scorn of man ? What else would steel my feelings against the blows of stones, thrown by the hands of such cowardly insensible men as he who published the phi- lippic against our race, which has called forth this reply ? What else would console me, when the staff of the churlish boor comes across my back, or when the urchin-rout attach the terrible kettle to my trembling tail ? What supports me under such heart-rending circumstances, save the feeling that all is fixed — that such is my sad destiny, against which my barking or my struggling would avail me nought ? But I digress — it is facts and not feelings that it is my province to record. My ambitious parent, infatuated with the admiration and as- siduity of her numerous suitors, despised them all, and falling a victim to her vanity, suffered herself to be seduced from the paths of propriety by a designing young pointer, who threw himself in her way, and employed every artifice, until at length he induced her to elope with him from her master’s comfort- able farm-yard. For a while the guilty pair contrived to escape detection. My unhappy mother took up her abode under a hay-stack in the neighbourhood, and for a week or two was well and kindly treated by her gay and youthful lover, who regularly saved a portion of his daily meals for her use. After a little, however, meeting with a new and more beautiful ob- ject on whom to bestow his worthless affections, he abandoned my mother to her own resources, and from that period she saw him no more. Dreading to return to the home she had left, and being pressed with hunger, she was compelled to steal for her subsistence, and the poultry in the neighbouring homesteads visibly diminished in number ; while, to crown all, my parent was brought to the straw, and became the mother of five little ones, including myself. The additional drag which the suckling of so large a family produced, increased my pro- genitor’s rapacity four-fold, and the indulgence of it caused her destruction. One day as she lay beside us, half famished, and ready almost to devour her own offspring, a little pig chanced to pass by. My mother belonged to a fierce breed, that called the bull-terrier, and, accordingly, stimulated by the gnawings of hunger, she sprang upon the little pig, and THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 175 had well nigh silenced it for ever, when its loud squeals brought one of the farm-servants to the spot. We were discovered, the unlucky pig rescued, my mother hanged to a post in the barn, and we — thrown into the horsepond. My brothers and sisters all perished ; but I, who was rather stronger than the rest, contrived to struggle to the bank, and was found there some short time afterwards by a young man belonging to the establishment, who carried me home with the intention of rearing me. Oh, how grateful I felt to that young man, and how I blessed him for his kindness ! But, alas ! I knew little of the cruel race whose servants we are, or I should have preferred being left to die on the brink of the old pond. As soon as he got me home to his father’s, the lad put me into a bag, and having bound me securely with many cords, took a large pair of blunt and rusty scissors, and proceeded to deprive me of my ears. Why should I -weary your patience with a descrip- tion of the excruciating torments I suffered ! Indeed, no de- scription could convey an adequate idea of one-tenth part of the pain I endured while my ears, and then nearly the whole of my tail, were slowly and mercilessly hacked away. As to the manner in which my tail was removed, it betrayed suffi- cient of the savage and bloodthirsty disposition of man, to give me a foretaste of what I might expect at his hands — my tail was actually gnawed asunder by his teeth l When about nine months old, my master came home one day in a great hurry, and summoning me to attend him, left the house as abruptly as he had entered it. He bent his steps to a neighbour’s, where we found a crowd of men and dogs assembled, apparently intent upon some exhilarating sport, for on their countenances much glee was depicted. In a corner of the room a long narrow box was placed, with a sliding door at one end. Wondering what it could contain, I stepped up to a young bull-dog, with whom I was acquainted, and in- quired of him. “ Lord ! how green !” exclaimed he ; “ why, a badger to be sure ; and you’ll see the fun we’ll have drawing him, presently and my friend Boxer licked his lips wnth the anticipation of a fight. I had not long to wait, when Boxer was called by his owner, who held him opposite to the box by the neck, while another person raised the sliding door. Boxer was then let loose ; when, darting with excessive speed into the interior, a growling and struggling was heard, and in about a minute my friend reappeared, dragging forth to view a wild beast called a badger — an animal that I until now had conceived to be a very gentle, harmless creature ; for I at once recognised in this badger one which I had fre- quently met in a neighbouring hedgerow w T hen out by myself, and with which I had begun to form a slight acquaintance. What was the cause of this creature and Boxer being thus in- duced to tear each other, I could not divine. But guess my consternation, when, Boxer having been separated from his antagonist, and the latter restored to his cage, I was dragged forward, and held in front of it, while my master patted and encouraged me, saying, “ Hiss, hurroo ! — good dog, shake him ! — hurroo !” The door was raised, and I was thrown forward towards it. As, however, I had no cause of quarrel with its friendly inmate, I did not, as my acquaintance Boxer had done, rush into the box ; but, determining to investigate the cause of the recent conflict, I entered it slowly, whimper- ing as I put in my head, to let my acquaintance of the hedgerow know that I came as a friend. He had, however, been so enraged by the previous encounter, that he would not listen to my re- monstrances, but growled forth, “ Get out, you cur !” “ Don’t be in a passion,” whimpered I ; “ I come as a friend.” “ That’s a lie,” replied he ; “ you can’t be the friend of that tyrant and be mine. You are but seeking to put me off my guard and with this snarling answer he flew at me and seized me by the nose. This was treatment too gross to be endured, so I accordingly returned the compliment ; and conceiving that I should have more room to fight on the outside, I exerted all my strength, and dragged the irascible inhabitant of the box forth to light. To my utter astonishment, however, no sooner had I re-appeared, pulling old Grey along with me, than I was seized, and my throat compressed so nidely as to give me considerable pain, and indeed almost to strangle me. For this inconvenience, however, I was amply repaid by the ca- resses of my master, and the plaudits of the company, both men and dogs. Among others, Boxer walked up to me, and growled in his usual cynical tone, “You may come to some good yet, if you’ll only be quicker at your work.” I did not at this time understand the human language, and I accord- ingly detail my impressions as they struck me then, not as they appear to me now. After two or three more dogs had had a pull at the badger, many others refusing to face him, or running away when they felt his sharp teeth, on which oc- casions they were well kicked by their owners, 1 observed an unusual bustle, and was amazed at hearing my name and Boxer’s uttered in a very loud tone. The latter at the same time approachedme and said, “ Tell you what, young ’un, they’re talking of a fight ’twixt you and me ; and if so be they’re in earnest, take .care of yourself — that’s all.” “But, dear Boxer,” inquired I, wagging my tail in a conciliatory manner, “ why should we fight ? — surely we have no cause of quarrel ?” “ No business of mine,” answered he ; “ pleases my master ; likes to see us bite and tear each other ; great fun to him ; must please him ; gr-r-r.” So indeed it was, and I, though scarcely more than a puppy, was pitted against the redoubted Boxer. I was very unwilling to fight ; for, besides that I had no quarrel with him, I did not think I was his match, and was sure of being beaten. When he seized me, however, my spirit stirred within me, and I put forth all my strength and determination. For nearly an hour we contested. Boxer at first got the better of me, and threw me down ; but after a little I discovered that his tender point was his legs ; so at them I directed my attack, and, getting hold of one of them, obtained an advantage which I retained to the last ; when, neither being likely to prove victorious, and neither disposed to give up, we were separated. I was dreadfully cut, and my wounds smarted me amazingly ; but how terrible was my tor- ture when my master, taking me by the neck, proceeded to wash them with a liquid of a fiery burning nature, since known to me as spirit of turpentine. This was I believe designed to stop the bleeding ! Such was my initiation into what men call sport. I now found that I must live without a friend, for every strange dog my master compelled me to attack. My course was marked out. My rage was to be directed against every other animal, dog, cat, rat, badger, cow, pig, &c. except such as were the property of my owner. My occupation was henceforth to be slaughter and bloodshed, and my exist- ence was hereafter to be devoted exclusively to violence. In scenes such as I have described passed the first three or four years of my life. My wounds were ever open, ever pain- ful ; for no sooner had one set of cuts closed, than I was forced into a new conflict, in which they were re-opened, and I re- ceived others into the bargain. At length premature old age, the result of the hardships I had endured, came upon me, and I was no longer deemed serviceable for fighting. I now suf- fered less from wounds and cruelties ; but being regarded as a useless member of the household, I was treated with unfeel- ing neglect, and receiving hardly any food at the hands of my master, was driven to seek a scanty subsistence among the bones cast out upon the dunghill; and these, with an occa- sional crust thrown me by a good-natured stranger, were my sole support. My master had an aged father, who lived in the house with him, and whom the neighbours conceived to have laid by a considerable sum of money. I usually slept across the hearth in the kitchen, and was one night awakened by a cry for help in the naif-choking, gurgling accents of a man under the effects of strangulation. The sounds proceeded from the old man’s room. The door was open, and I darted in. The old farmer was lying half naked upon the floor : in his hand was clutched a bag, and numbers of those round yellow pieces of metal so much coveted by the human race, and called guineas, were scattered near him. A man was leaning over him, his knee upon his breast, one hand upon his throat, and the other en- deavouring to drag from him the precious bag. I saw not the face of the spoiler, but perceiving only the danger of my mas- ter’s old father, whom, harsh as he too had been to me, I in- stinctively loved, and felt it my duty to defend, I sprang upon the robber, for such I judged him, and pulled him to the ground. The old man fainted away. A gleam of moonlight at this crisis entered the casement, and disclosed to my horri- fied gaze, in the countenance of the robber whom I was throt- tling, the features of my master ! In the suddenness of my surprise and consternation I relaxed my gripe ; and the vil- lain who had striven to rob his father, and had raised his hand against the person of his aged parent, sprang to his feet and fled. I had by this time learned to understand a little of the human language ; and as the ruffian darted through the door, the word “ damnation /” struck upon my ear. The old man, as I have stated, had fainted. Happy for him that he had not recognised his assailant before my interfer- ence, for further opportunity of recognition he had none, 176 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. From that fit of insensibility he awoke in another and I hope a better world. I was now an outcast — a wanderer over the face of the earth. I went forth, wretched and desponding, moralising upon the dreadful lengths to which their love of gold will lead our mas- ters, mankind. “Oh!” thought I, “if we but take a bone from a larder-shelf to satisfy our hunger, how we are abused, sworn at, and flogged ! Yet the same man who will punish us for a trifling theft, will not hesitate to wrong or murder his neighbour for a few worthless, perishable pieces of yellow metal. Oh, destiny, how I thank thee, despite my sufferings, that I was not born a man ! What sordid, selfish wretches these men are ! Their thoughts from morning until night are occupied with speculations intended to promote their own comfort, their own aggrandizement. The dog alone loves his master better than himself, and will lay down his life in his defence. Man is a base, selfish wretch. The dog alone honours and practises generosity uninfluenced by hope of re- compense.” I soon afterwards met with another master. For a time he treated me well enough, and but for an untoward accident I might still have remained in his service. While sitting one day peaceably beholding the industry of my new master, who was a turf cutter, I heard at a distance a prodigious clamour as if of a number of dogs engaged in conflict. Being old and peaceably inclined, it occurred to me that I could not do bet- ter than hurry to the spot and exert myself to effect a recon- ciliation. Off therefore I set as fast as my old legs would carry me. Before, however, I arrived at the scene of riot, si- lence had ensued, and I was about to return, when I perceived a stout-looking man engaged in pelting with huge stones two or three wretched, half-starved looking little dogs, that were endeavouring, howling with pain, to make their escape from his cruel attack. I raised a loud barking, encouraging the ■dogs in our own language to get out of his way, hoping also that the noise might frighten their assailant, and induce him to desist from his barbarous amusement. I thought that I had succeeded in my design, for the ruffian ran away as fast as he could ; but determined to give him a lesson, I resolved to terrify him to the utmost, and so gave chase. Of the re- sult of this encounter I need not inform you, as you are already acquainted with it from the account of the “ Man” himself, as published in the 12th number of your Journal. I have, how- ever, in justice to my own character, to state, that it was not cowardice which prevented my biting him, and which induced me to put up with his ducking, &c, without resistance. It was not cowardice — it was the singular resemblance which he bore to my wicked master. That alone saved him from a hearty shaking. But he shall not long escape. No ; I am in the daily habit of walking up and down Sackville Street, in hopes of meeting with him, when, old as I am, I shall manage to make my teeth, or rather their stumps, acquainted with his calves. I could not, on my return to the turf bog, find my master ; and as I was on the road to look for him, I met with an old beggarman, who coaxed me over to him, regaled me with a crust, and in short exhibited so kindly a disposition, that, not feeling myself bound to my late owner by similar ties which had linked my destiny with that of him who had rescued me from the horsepond, I resolved I would seek after him no fur- ther, but join company with the good-hearted old beggarman — the same, doubtless, so irreverently spoken of by the “ Man” in his ill-natured paper— (oh ! that- 1 had him by the leg this moment!) I did not, however, remain long with him, for he was taken up by an overfed bloated-looking variety of his species and lodged in prison, for no fault but that involuntary one of being poor ; and as I would not be permitted to share his confinement, I wandered forth, and soon met with another master. Thus going from one to another — now feasting, now en- during the most agonizing hunger, now received with kind- ness, now with blows — passed away the next five or six years of my superannuated being. I longed to know what had be- come of my master, ruffian as he was, and my wanderings had for their object the discovery of his abode. For several years I roamed unsuccessfully : no traces of him could I perceive ; his ancient haunts had all been abandoned ; his former com- panions unvisited. At length, coining one morning into a country town, I observed an unusual bustle in the streets ; great multitudes of people hurrying along ; and, what sur- prised me most, all in one direction. Determined to see what this meant, I followed the stream, and presently came to an open place, crowded with people of all sorts and sizes. Making my way onward amongst their feet, though not without many a bitter curse and hearty kick, I arrived at a singular wooden erection, like a signpost, with a rope hanging from it, and underneath a cart with three men in it. I uttered a yelp of joy, for in one of the three I recognised my long-lost master ! To join him was of course my immediate impulse, and I accord- ingly sprang into the cart, but was rudely hurled out of it by one of the other men ; and ere I could repeat my attempt, the vehicle moved away, the wheel passing over my body, and breaking three of my ribs. I looked again. I saw a human figure swinging in the wind — a single convulsive struggle of the legs, and all was over. It was my master — he died the same death that had been inflicted upon my mother. “ Well,” thought I, “I shall never again express my wonder that men should be so fond of hanging us, for I now perceive that they likewise hang one another.” I was in too great pain from my broken ribs to make my way to the body of my poor master : I strove to crawl as near the post from which it was suspended as I could, and as I lay there I heard an old man say, “ Ah, I knew it would be thus : he began with dog-fighting and badger-baiting — ’twas but the first step to lead him to the gallows !” After a while the body of my master was taken down, but I was not suffered to approach it. It was concealed from my sight in a long narrow box, with a black cloth over it, some- what similar to the one from which in life he used to make me pull the badger. A hole was dug in the ground beneath the post, the box thrown into it, and the earth being shovelled in, falling heavily upon it, recalled me to a sense of my situation, and I went forth once more, a houseless wanderer and an ill- starred cur. H. D. R. Horrors of the Slave Trade. — Commander Castle, R.N., while on service with the preventive squadron in 1828, in command of H.M. S. Medina, captured the Spanish brig El Juan, with 407 slaves on board. It appeared that, owing to a press of sail during the chase, the El Juan had heeled so much as to alarm the negroes, who made a rush to the grat- ing. The crew thought they were attempting to rise, and getting out their arms, they fired upon the wretched slaves | through the grating, till all was quiet in the hold. When Captain Castle went on board, the negroes were brought up, one living and one dead shackled together ; it was an awful scene of carnage and blood ; one mass of human gore. Cap- tain Castle said he never saw anything so horrible in his life. In the year 1831, the Black Joke and Fair Rosamond fell in with the Rapido and Regulo, two slave vessels, off the Bonny river. On perceiving the cruisers they attempted to make their escape up the river ; but finding it impracticable, they ran into a creek, and commenced pitching the negroes overboard. The Fair Rosamond came up in time to save 212 slaves out of the Regulo, but before she could secure the other, she had discharged her whole human cargo into the sea. Captain Huntley, who was then in command of the Ro- samond, in a letter, remarks — “ The scene occasioned by the horrid conduct of the Rapido I am unable to describe ; but the dreadful extent to which the human mind is capable of falling was never shown in a more painfully humiliating man- ner than on this occasion, when, for the mere chance of avert- ing condemnation of property amounting to perhaps 3000/., not less than 250 human beings were hurled into eternity with utter l’emorselessness.” Hypocrisy — Hypocrisy is, of all vices, the most hateful to man ; because it combines the malice of guilt with the mean- ness of deception. Of all vices it is the most dangerous ; be- cause its whole machinery is constructed on treachery, through the means of confidence, on compounding virtue with vice, on making the noblest qualities of our nature minister to the most profligate purposes of our ruin. It erects a false light where it declares a beacon, and destroys by the very instrument bla- zoned as a security. Cant resembles a young wife married to an ancient hus- band : she weds religion, looking forward to live by his death. Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin.— Agents : — R. Groombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London ; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester ; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool ; J. Drake, Birmingham ; Slocombe & Simms, Leeds ; Frazer and Crawford, George Street, Edinburgh ; and David Robertson, Trongate, Glasgow. Number 23 SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1840 Volume I, TULLY CASTLE, COUNTY OF FERMANAGH, LOOKING OVER LOUGH ERNE. We have chosen the prefixed view of the Castle of Tully as a subject for illustration, less from any remarkable picturesque- ness of character or historical interest connected with the castle itself, than for the opportunity which is thus afforded us of making a few remarks on the beautiful lake — the Wi- nandermere of Ireland, as Mr Inglis happily called it — on the bank of which it is situated. We cannot conceive any cir- cumstance that better illustrates the truth of the general prin- ciple that, as Shakspeare expresses it, “ what we have we prize not at its worth,” than the fact that Lough Erne — the admiration and delight of strangers, the most extensive and beautifully diversified sheet of water in Ireland— is scarcely known as an object of interest and beauty to the people of Ireland generally, and is rarely or never visited by them for pleasure. It is ti*ue that the nobility and gentry who reside upon its shores or in their vicinity, are not deficient in a feel- ing of pride in their charming locality, and even boast its su- periority of beauty to the far-famed Lakes of Killarney ; yet till very recently this admiration was almost exclusively con- fined to themselves, and the beauties of Lough Eme were as little known to the people of Ireland generally as those of the gates and highlands of Connemara, neither of which have ever yet been included in the books concocted for the use of plea- sure tourists in Ireland. But Lough Erne will not be thus neglected or unappre- ciated much longer. Its beauties have been discovered and been eulogised by strangers, who have taught us to set a juster value on the landscape beauties which Providence has so bountifully given to our country ; and it will soon be a re- proach to us to be unfamiliar with them. It would be utterly impossible, within the limits necessarily assigned to our topographical articles, to give any detailed account of a lake so extensive as Lough Erne, and whose at- tractive features are so numerous ; but as these features shall from time to time be included among our*subjects for illus- tration, it will be proper at least to give our readers a general idea of its extent, and the pervading character of its scenery, on this our first introduction of it to their notice ; and with this view we shall commence with a description given of it by an author of a History of the County of Fermanagh, written in the seventeenth century, but not hitherto published. “ This lake is plentifully stocked with salmon, pike, bream, eel, trout, &c. Seven miles broad in the broadest part. Said to contain 178 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 365 islands, the land of which is excellent. The largest of the islands is Inismore, containing nine tates and a half of old plantation measure. Bally-Mac-Manus, now called Bell-isle, containing two large tates much improved by Sir Ralph Gore ; Killygowan, Innis Granny, Blath-Ennis, Ennis-Liag, Ennis M‘ Knock, Cluan-Ennis, Ennis-keen, Ennis-M‘ Saint, and Babha. These are the [islands] most notable, except the island of Devenish, of which I’ll speak in its proper place ; however, by the bye, in Devenish is remembered the pious St Molaishe, who herein consecrated two churches and a large aspiring steeple [the round tower], and an abbey, which abbey was rebuilt a. d. 1430 very magnificently by Bartholomew O’Fla- nagan, son of a worthy baron of this county, and was one of the finest in the kingdom. In this island there is a house built by the Saint, to what use is not known, but it is as large as a small chapel-of-ease . it’s of great strength and cunning work- manship that may seem to stand for ever, having no wood in it ; the inside lined and the outside covered with large flat hewn stone, walls and roof alike. On the east of this island runs an arm of the Lough called in Irish Cumhang-Devenish, which is of use to the inhabitants, viz, if cattle infected with murrain, black-leg, &c, be driven through the same, they are exempted from the same that season, as is often experienced. The said waters run northwards for twelve hours daily, and back again the same course for twelve hours more, to the admiration of the many. Some authors write this Lough Erne to have been for- merly a spring well, and being informed by their Druids or philosophers that the well would overflow the country to the North Sea, for the prevention of which they caused the well to be inclosed in a strong wall, and covered with a door hav- ing a lock and key, signifying no danger while the door was secured ; but an unfortunate woman (as by them came more mischief to mankind) opening the door for water, heard her child cry, and running to its relief, forgot to secure the well, and ere she could return, she with her house and family were drowned, and many houses more betwixt that and Ballyshan- non, and so continues a Lough unto this day. But how far this may pass for a reality, I am not to aver — however, it is in the ancient histories of the Irish. If true, it must be of a long standing, seeing this Lough is frequently mentioned in our chronicles amongst the ancientest of Loughs. Fintan calls it Samhir .” We shall not, any more than our old author, “aver for the reality” of this legend, which by the way is related of many other Irish lakes ; but we may remark, in passing, that the story would have more appearance of “ reality” if it had been told of Lough Gawna — or the Lake of the Calf — in the county of Longford, which is the true source of the river Erne, of which Lough Erne is but an expansion. At Lough Gawna, however, they tell a different story, viz, that it was formed by a calf, which, emerging from a well in its immediate vici- nity, still called Tobar-Gawna, or the Well of the Calf, was chased by its water till he entered the sea at Ballyshannon. The expansion of the Samhir or Erne thus miraculously formed, is no less than forty miles in extent from its north- west to its south-east extremities, being the length of the whole county of Fermanagh, through which it forms a great natural canal. Lough Erne, however, properly consists of two lakes connected by a deep and winding strait, of which the northern or lower is more than twenty miles in length, and seven and a half miles in its greatest breadth, and the southern or upper is twelve miles long by four and a half broad. Both lakes are richly studded with islands, mostly wooded, and in many places so thickly clustered together as to present the appearance of a country accidentally flooded ; but these islands are not so numerous as they are stated to be by the old writer we have above quoted, or as popularly believed, .as accurate investigation has ascertained that their number is but one hundred and ninety-nine, of which one hundred and nine .are situated in the lower lake, and ninety in the upper. But these are in truth quite sufficient for picturesqueness, and it may be easily conceived that two sheets of water so enriched, and encircled by shores finely undulating, to a great extent richly wooded, and backed on most points by mountains of considerable elevation, must pos- sess the elements of beauty to a remarkable degree ; and the fact appears to be, that though the Killarney and other moun- tain lakes in Ireland possess more grandeur and sublimity of character, Lough Erne is not surpassed, or perhaps equalled, by any for exquisite pastoral beauty. Perhaps, indeed, we might add, that if it were further improved by planting and agricultural improvements, it might justly claim the rank assigned to it by Mr Inglis, that of “ the most beautiful lake in the three kingdoms.” Long anterior to the arrival of the English in Ireland, the beautiful district on each side of Lough Erne, now constituting the county of Fermanagh, was chiefly possessed by the power- ful family of Maguire, from the senior branch of which the chiefs of the territory were elected. This territory, which was anciently known as “ Maguire’s country,” was made shire ground in the 11th of Elizabeth, by the name which it still bears ; but the family of its ancient chiefs still remained in possession till the plantation of Ulster by James I., when the lands were transferred to the English and Scottish undertak- ers, as they were called, with the exception of two thousand acres, left as a support to Brian Maguire, chief representative of the family. It is not for us to express any opinion on the justice or expediency of this great confiscation, but we may venture to remark, that it was a measure that could hardly have appeared proper to those who were so deprived of their patrimony, or that would have led to any other feeling than one of revenge and desire of retaliation, however reckless, if opportunity ever offered. Unhappily such opportunity did offer, by the breaking out of the great rebellion of 1641. a rebellion originating chiefly with the families of the dis- inherited Irish lords of the confiscated northern counties, and having for its paramount object the repossession of their estates. Amongst the English and Scottish settlers in Fermanagh, the most largely endowed with lands was Sir John Humes, or Hume, the founder of Tully Castle, the subject of our pre- fixed wood-cut, and who was the second son of Patrick, the fifth Baron of Polwarth, in Scotland. The property thus ob- tained, consisting of four thousand five hundred acres, re- mained in the possession of his male descendants till the death of Sir Gustavus Hume, who dying without surviving male issue in 1731, it passed through the female line into the pos- session of the Loftus family, in which it now remains. The Castle of Tully was for a time the principal residence of the Hume family ; and on the breaking out of the rebellion in October 1641, it became the refuge of a considerable number of the English and Scottish settlers in the country. The discon- tented Irish of the county having, however, collected them- selves together under the command of Rory, the brother of the Lord Maguire, they proceeded to the castle on the 24th of December, and having commanded the Lady Hume and the other persons within it to surrender, it was given up to them on a promise of quarter for their lives, protection for their goods, and free liberty and safe conduct to proceed either to Monea or Enniskillen, as they might choose. But what trust can be placed in the promises of men engaged in civil war, and excited by the demoniac feelings of revenge ? With the exception of the Lady Hume, and the individuals immediately belonging to her family, the whole of the persons who had so surrendered, amounting to fifteen men, and, as it is said, sixty women and children, were on the following day stripped and deprived of their goods, and inhumanly massacred, when also the castle was pillaged, burnt, and left in ruins. Let us pray that Ireland may never again witness such frightful scenes ! The Castle of Tully does not appear to have been after- wards re-edified, or used as a residence. After the restora- tion of peace, the Hume family erected a more magnificent mansion, called Castle Hume, nearer Enniskillen, and which is now incorporated in the demesne of Ely lodge. In its general character, as exhibited in its ruins, Tully Castle appears to have been a fortified residence of the usual class erected by the first Scottish settlers in the country — a keep or castle turreted at the angles, and surrounded by a bawn or outer wall, enclosing a court-yard. It is thus de- scribed by Pynnar in 1618 : “ Sir John Humes hath two thousand acres called Carryn- roe. Upon this proportion there is a bawne of lime and stone, an hundred feet square, fourteen feet high, having four flankers for the defence. There is also a lair strong castle fifty feet long and twenty-one feet broad. He hath made a village near unto the bawne, in which is dwelling twenty-four families.” The Castle of Tully is situated on the south-western shore of the lower lake of Lough Erne, about nine miles north-west of Enniskillen. R, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. THE AMERICA LETTER. “ Arrah, Judy !” quoth Biddy Finnegan, running to a neigh- bour’s door. “ Arrah, why ?” answered the party summoned. “ Arrah, did you hear the news ?” “ No, then, what is it ?” “ Sure there’s an Amerikey letter in the post-office.” “Whisht!” “ Sorra a word of lie in it. Mickeen Dunn brought word from the town this morning ; and he says more betoken that it’s from Dinny M‘Daniel to his ould mother.” “ Oh, then, troth I’ll be bound that’s a lie, e’er-a-way : the born vagabond, there wasn’t that much good in him, egg or bird : the idle, worthless ruffian, that was the ruination of every one he kem near : the, the ” “ Softly, Judith, softly,; don’t wrong the absent: it is from Dinny M‘Daniel to his ould mother, and contains money more- over and she then proceeded to tell how the postmistress had desired the poor widow to bring some responsible person that might guarantee her identity, before such a weighty affair was given into her keeping, for who knew what might be inside of it ? though a still greater puzzle was to discover by what means the much reprobated Dinny obtained even the price of the let- ter-paper ; and how old Sibby had borrowed a cloak from one, and a “ clanecap” from another, and the huxter had harnessed his ass and car to bring her in style, and Corney King the con- tingent man,* that knows all the quality, was going along with her to certify that she was the veritable Mrs Sybilla M‘Daniel of Tullybawn ; and how she would have for an escort every man, woman, and child in the village that could make a holiday — compliments cheerfully accorded by each and all, to do ho- nour to the America letter, and the individual whose super- scription it bore. Dinny M‘Daniel was the wndow’s one son, born even in her widowhood, for his father had been killed by the fall of a tree before he had been six months married, and poor Sibby had nothing to lavish her fondness upon but her curly-headed gossoon, who very naturally grew up to be the greatest scape- grace in the parish. He had the most unlucky knack of throw- ing stones ever possessed by any wight for his sins ; not a day passed over his head without a list of damages and disasters being furnished to his poor mother, in the shape of fowls killed and maimed, and children half murdered, or pitchers and occa- sionally windows made smithereens of ; but to do him justice, his breakage in this latter article was not very considerable, there being but few opportunities for practice in Tullybawn. To all these the poor widow had but one reply, “ Arrah, what would you have me do ? — sorra a bit of harm in him ; it’s all element, and what ud be the good of batin’ him ?” At last the neighbours, utterly worn out by the pertinacity of his misdemeanours, hit upon an expedient to render him harmless for at least half the day, and enjoy that much of their lives in peace, with the ultimate chance of perhaps converting the parish nuisance into a useful character. A quarterly sub- scription of a penny for each house would just suffice to send Dinny to school to a neighbouring pedagogue, wonderful in the sciences of reading and writing, and, what was a much greater recommendation under the present circumstances, the “ divil entirely at the taws.” To him accordingly Dinny was sent, and under his discipline spent some five or six years of comparative harmlessness, during which he mastered the Read- ing-made-Easy, the Seven Champions, Don Bellianis, and sundry other of those pleasing narratives whereby the pug- nacity and gallantry of the Irish character used whilom to be formed, to which acquirement he added in process of time that of writing, or at least making pothooks and hangers, with a symmetry that delighted the heart of poor Sibby. The neigh- bours began to think better of him ; but the “ masther” swore he was a prodigy, and openly declared, that if he would but “ turn the Vosther,” he’d be fit company for any lady in the land. Thus encouraged, Dinny attempted and succeeded, for he had some talent. But sure enough the turning of the Voster finished him. It was now high time for Master Dinny to begin to earn his bread, and accordingly his mother sought and obtained for him a place in the garden of a nobleman who resided near the village, and was its landlord: but the dismay of the gos- soon himself when this disparaging piece of good fortune was announced to him, was unbounded. He was speechless, and some moments elapsed before he could ejaculate, 179 “ Fwhy, then, tare-an’-ages, mother, is that what you lay out for me, an’ me afther turnin’ the Vosther ?” Sibby expostulated, but in vain ; his exploits in “ the Vos- ther” had set him beside himself, and he boldly declared that nothing short of a dacint clerkship would ever satisfy his am- bition. A man of one argument was Dinny M‘Daniel, and that one he made serve all purposes “ Is it an’ me afther turnin’ the 'Vosther!” — so that people said it was turn about with him, for the Voster had turned his brain. Be that as it may, there -was one who agreed with P inn y that he could ne- ver think too highly of himself, for, like every other scapegrace on record, he had won the goodwill of the prettiest girl in the parish. Nelly Dolan’s friends, however, were both too snug and too prudent to leave her any hope of their acquiescing in her choice, so the lovers were driven to resort to secrecy. Dinny urged her to elope with him, knowing that her kin, when they had no remedy, would give her a fortune to set matters to rights ; but she had not as yet reached that pitch of evil courage -which would allow her to take such a step, nor, unfor- tunately, had she the good courage to discontinue such a hope- less connection, or the clandestine proceedings which its exis- tence required. Alas, for poor Nelly ! sorrow and shame were the consequence. The bright eyes, that used to pass for a very proverb through the whole barony, grew dim — the rosy cheeks, that more than one ballad-maker had celebrated, grew wan and sallow — and the slim and graceful figure an a word, Dinny had played the ruffian, and had to fly the country to avoid the murderous indignation of her faction. It was to America he shaped his flight, though how he had obtained the means no one could divine ; and now, after the lapse of nearly a year and a half, here was a letter from him to solve all spe- culations. What a hubbub the arrival of “ an America letter” causes in Ireland over the whole district blessed by its visit ! It is quite a public concern — a joint property — being in fact always regarded as a general communication from all the neighbours abroad to all the neighbours at home, and its perusal a matter of intense and agonising interest to all who have a relative even in the degree of thirty-first cousin among the emigrants. Let us take for instance the letter in question, for the caval- cade has returned, and not only is the widow’s cabin full, but the very bawn before her door is crowded, and the door itself completely blocked up with an array of heads, poking forward in the vain attempt to catch atone of the schoolmaster’s voice as he publishes the contents of the desired epistle, and abso- lutely smothering it by the uproar of their squabbles, as they endeavour each to obtain a better place. “ Tare-an’-ounties, Tom Bryan, fwhat are you pushing me away for, an’ me wanting to hear fwhat’s become of my own first cousin !” “ Arrah, don’t be talkin’, man — fwhy wouldn’t I thry to get in, an’ half the letther about my sisther-in-law ?” “ Oh, boys, boys, agra, does any of yees hear e’er a word about my poor Paddy?” The last speaker is a woman, poor Biddy Casey : for the last three years not a letter came from America that she could hear of, whether far or near, but she attended to hear it read, in the hope of getting some information about her husband, who, driven away by bad times and an injudicious agent, had made a last exertion to emigrate, and earn something for his family. Regularly every market-day from that event she called at the post-office, at first with the confident tone of assured expectation, to inquire for an America letter for one Biddy Casey ; then when her heart began to sicken with ap- prehensions arising from the oft-repeated negative, her ques- tion was, “ You haven’t e’er a letter for me to-day, ma’am ?” and then when she could no longer trust herself to ask, she merely presented her well-known face at the window, and received the usual answer in heartbroken silence, now and then broken by the joyless ejaculation, “ God in heaven help me !” But from that time to this not a syllable has she been able to learn of his fate, or even of his existence. Now, however, her labours and anxieties are to have an end — but what an end ! This letter at last affords her the information that, tempted by the delusive promise of higher wages, her husband was induced to set out for the unwholesome south, and long since has found a grave among the deadly swamps of New Orleans. But like every thing else in life, Dinny M‘Daniel’s letter is a chequered matter. See, here comes a lusty, red-cheeked damsel, elbowing her way out of the cabin, her eyes bursting out of her head with joy. “ Well, Peggy — well — well !” is echoed on all sides as they * Collector of county cess. 180 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. crowd around her ; “ any news from Bid ? — though, troth, we needn’t ax you.” “ Oh, grand news !” is the delighted answer. “ Bid has a wonderful fine place for herself an’ another for me, an’ my passage is ped, an’ I’m to be ready in five weeks, an’, widdy ! widdy ! I dunna what to do with myself.” “ And, Peggy agra, was there any thing about our Mick ?” — “or our Sally, Peggy?” — “or Johnny Golloher, asthore?” are the questions with which she is inundated. “ Oh, I dunna, I dunna — I couldn’t listen with the joy, I tell ye.” “ But, Peggy alanna, what will Tom Feeny think of all this ? and what is to become, pray, of all the vows and pro- mises which, to our own certain knowledge, you made each other coming home from the dance the other night ?” Pooh ! that difficulty is removed long ago — the very first money she earns in America is to be dispatched to the care of Father Cahill, to pay Tom’s passage over to her. “ And will she do such a shameless thing ?” some fair reader will pro- bably ask. Ay will she ; and think herself right well off, moreover, to have the shame to bear ; for though Peggy can dig her ridge of potatoes beside the best man in the parish, her heart is soft and leal like nine hundred and ninety-nine out of the thousand of her countrywomen. Another happy face — see, here comes old Malachi Tighe, clasping his hands, and looking up to heaven in silent thank- fulness, for his “ bouchal bawn, the glory of his heart,” is to be home with him before harvest, with as much money as would buy the bit o’ land out and out, and his daughter-in-law is fainting with gladness, and nis grandchildren screaming with delight, and the neighbours wish him joy with all the ear- nestness of sympathy, for Johnny Tighe has been a favourite. Woe, woe, woe ! — Mick Finnegan has sent a message of fond encouragement to his sweetheart, which she never must hear, for typhus, the scourge of Ireland, has made her his victim, and the daisies have already rooted on her grave, and are blooming there as fresh and fair as she used to be herself ; and the wounds of her kindred are opened anew', and the death- wail is raised agaiq, as wild and vehement as if she died but yesterday, although six weeks have passed since they bore her to Saint John’s. What comes next ? — “ Johnny Golloher has got married to a Munster girl with a stocking full of money and Nanny Mulry laughs at the news until you’d think her sides ought to ache, and won’t acknowledge that she cares one pin about it — on the contrary, wishes him the best of good luck, and hopes he may never be made a world’s wrnnder of ; all which pro- ceedings are viewed by the initiated as so many proofs posi- tive of her intention, on the first convenient opportunity, to break her heart for the defaulting Mr Golloher. But among the crowd of earnest listeners who thus attended to gratify their several curiosities by the perusal of Dinny’s unexpected letter, none failed to remark the absence of her who in the course of nature was, or should be, most deeply in- terested in the welfare of the departed swain. Nelly Dolan never came near them. In the hovel wdiere the poor outcast had been permitted to take up her abode when turned out of doors by her justly incensed father, she sat during the busy recital, her head bowed down and resting upon the wheel from which she drew the support of herself and her infant. Now and then a sob, almost loud enough to awaken the baby sleeping in a cleave beside her, broke from her in spite of her- self ; while her mother, who had ventured to visit her on the occasion, sat crouched down on the hearth before her, and angrily upbraided her for her sorrow. “ Whisht, I tell you, whisht!” exclaimed the old crone, “ an’ have a sperrit, what you never had, or it wouldn’t come to your day to be brought to trouble by the likes of him.” “ Och, mother darlint,” answered the sufferer, “ don’t blame me — it’s a poor thing, God knows, that I must sit here quiet, an’ his letter readin’ within a few doors o’ me.” “ Arrah, you’d better go beg for a sight of it,” rejoined the angry parent with a sneer; “do, achorra, ontil you find out what little trouble you give him.” “ It’s not for myself, it’s not for myself,” answered the sob- bing girl. “ I can do without his thoughts or his favours ; all I care to know is, what he says about the babby.” “ Pursuin’ to me!” exclaimed her mother, “but often as you tempted me to brain it, an’ that’s often enough, you never put the devil so strong into my heart as you do this minute. So be quiet, I tell you.” “ Och, mother, that’s the hard heart.” “ Musha, then, it well becomes you to talk that way,” re- plied her mother. “ If your own wasn’t a taste too soft in its time, my darlint, your kith an’ kin wouldn’t have to skulk away as they do when your name’s spoken of.” A fresh burst of tears was all the answer poor Nelly could give to this invective ; an answer, however, as well calculated as any other to stimulate the wrath and arouse the eloquence of Mrs Dolan, the object of whose visit was to induce. Nelly to assume an air of perfect coolness and nonchalance— in fine, to show she had a “ sperrit.” In this it may be perceived she met with a signal failure ; and now the full brunt of her indig- nation fell on the unfortunate recreant. Nelly’s sorrow of course became louder, and between both parties the child was wakened, and naturally added its small hblp to the clamour : nor did the united uproar of the three generations cease until a crowd unexpectedly appeared at the door of the hovel, and the voice of Sibby M‘Daniel, half mad with joy, was beard through the din, internal and external. “ Well, if she won’t come to us,” spoke the elated Sibby, “ we must only go to her, you know, though ye’ll allow the news was worth lookin’ afther and ere the sentence was well concluded, she with her whole train had made their way into the cabin. “ God save all here,” continued Sibby, “ not excepting your- self, Mrs Dolan; for we must forgive and forget everything that was betune us, now'.” “ An’ if I forgive an’ forget, what have you to swop for it ?” asked the irrate individual so addressed. “ Good news an’ the hoith of it,” w r as the answer of Sibby, as she displayed her letter ; but Mrs Dolan was in no humour to listen to news or receive conciliation of any kind, and so she conducted herself like a woman of “ sperrit and gather- ing her garments about her, rose slowly and stately from the undignified posture in which she was discovered, and so de- parted from amongst them. “ Musha, then, fair weather afther you,” was the exclama- tion of Sibby when she recovered from the surprise created by this exhibition of undisguised contempt. “Joy be with you, and if you never come back, it'll be no great loss, for the never a wmrd about you in it anyhow, you ould sarpint. But, Nelly, alanna, it’s you an’ me that ought to spend the livelong day down on our marrowbones with joy and thank- fulness, though you did’nt think his letter worth lookin’ af- ther ;” and down on her marrowbones poor Nelly sank to re- ceive the welcome communication, her baby clasped to her bosom, her glazed eyes raised to heaven, all unconscious of the crowd by which she was surrounded, and her every nerve trembling with excess of joy and thankfulness, while the bust- ling Sibby placed a chair for the schoolmaster near the loop- hole that answered the purposes of a window, and loudly en- joining silence, gave into his hands the epistle of his favoured pupil to read to the assembled auditors for about the sixth time ; and Mr Soolivan, squaring himself for the effort, pro- ceeded to edify Nelly Dolan therewith. The letter went on to state, in the peculiarly felicitous lan- guage of Dinny M‘Daniel, that on his arrival in New York, and finding himself without either friends or money, and thus in some danger of starvation, he began to lower his opinions of his personal worth, and solicit any species of employment that could be given to him. After some difficulty he got to be porter to a large grocery establishment, in which he con- ducted himself pretty well, and secured the confidence of his employers, and a rate of wages moderate, but still sufficient to support him. The sense of his utter dependence upon his character compelled him to be most particularly cautious of doing anything to affect it in the slightest degree, and in pro- cess of time he became a changed gossoon altogether, an ex- ample of the blessed fruits of adversity. The thoughts of Nelly Dolan and his old mother never quitted him, his anxie- ties about the former clinging to him with such intensity that he began forthwith to lay by a little money every week to send her, but was ashamed to write until he should have it ga- thered. An unfortunate event, however, soon put a stop to his accumulation, and drove him to use it for his subsistence. This was no less than the sudden death of the head of the es- tablishment in which he was employed, which, he being the entire manager of the concern, had the consequence of break- ing it up completely. Thus Dinny was cast on the world again, and found employment as difficult to be got as ever. His little hoard was soon spent, and at last he had to turn his steps westward, where labour was more plentiful and hands fewer. After many journies and vicissitudes he at length 181 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. met a friend in the person of one of the partners in the gro- cery establishment which had first given him employment, and who, like himself, had sought a home in the wilderness. This man had some money, but, unfortunately for himself, never having “ turned the Vosther” or learned anything in accounts, was unable to put it to any use that would require a know- ledge of what a facetious alderman once called the three R’s, reading, writing, and ’rithmetic. Now, these happened to be Dinny’s forte. So when his quondam employer was one day lamenting to him the deficiency which forbade him to apply his capital to the lucrative uses which he otherwise might, Dinny modestly suggested a method whereby this desirable object might be effected : the other, after a little considera- tion, thought he might do worse than adopt it, and accord- ingly, before many days elapsed, a grand new store appeared in the township of Prishprashchawmanraw, in which Dinny was book-keeper and junior partner. Having brought him thus far by our assistance, we shall allow him to conclude his letter after his own way : — “ And so you see, dear mother, that notwithstanding all the neighbours said, it’s as lucky after all that I turned the Vosther, for it has made a man of me, and with the help of the holy St Patrick I am well able to spare the twenty pounds you will get inside, which is half for yourself to make your old days comfortable, or to come out to me, if you’d like that better, and the other half for my poor darling Nelly, the colleen dims dhun, that I am afraid spent many a heavy hour on my account ; but you may tell her that with the help of God I will live to make up for them all. I will expect her at New York by the next ship, and you may tell her that the first thing she is to buy with the money must be a grand goold ring, and let her put it on her finger at once, without waiting for either priest or parson, for I’m her s-worn husband already, and will bring her straight to the priest the minute she puts her foot on America shore, and until then who dare sneeze at her ? You must write to me to say where I am to meet her, and by what ship she will come out ; and above all, lohether she is to bring any thing out with her besides herself- — you know what I mean. And, dear mother, when you write to me, you are to put on the back of the letter, Dennis M'Daniel, Esq. for that’s what I am now — not a word of lie in it. So wishing the best of good luck to all the neighbours, and to yourself and to Nelly, I remain, &c. eSec. &c.” “Glory to you, Dinny!” was ejaculated on every side, while they all rushed tumultuously forward to congratulate the unwedded bride. In their uproarious hands we leave her, drawing this moral from the whole thing, that it’s very hard to spoil an Irishman entirely, if there be any good at all in him originally, A. M‘C. THE THREE MONKS. “ It was with the good monks of old that sterling hospitality was to be found.” — IIansbrove’s Irish Gazetteer. Three monks sat by a bogwood fire .’ Shaven their crowns, and their garments grey ; Close they sat to that bogwood fire. Watching the wicket till break of day — Such was ever the rule at Kilcrea ;* For whoever passed, be he baron or squire. Was free to call at that abbey, and stay. Nor guerdon or hire for his lodging pay, Though he tarried a week with the Holy Quire ! Three monks sat by a bogwood fire 1 Dark look'd the night from the window-pane ! They who sat by that bogwood fire Were Eustace, Alleyn, and Giles by name : Long they gazed at the cheerful flame, Till each from his neighbour began to inquire The tale of his life, before he came To Saint Bridget’s shrine, and the cowl had ta’en : So they piled on more wood, and drew their seats nigher ! Three monks sat by a bogwood fire ! Loud wailed the wind through cloister and nave ! With penitent air by that bogwood fire The first that spake it was Eustace grave, And told, “ He had been a soldier brave * Kilcrea Abbey, near Cork, was dedicated to Saint Bridget, and founded, a. d. 1404, by Cormac Lord Muskerry. Its monks belonged to the Fran- ciscan order commonly called “ the Grey briars. In his youth, till a comrade he slew in ire ; Since then he forswore helmet and glaive, And, leaving his home, had crossed the wave, And taken the cross and cowl at Saint Fmbar’s spire !" Three monks sat by a bogwood fire ! Swift through the glen ran the river Lee ! And Alleyn next, by that bogwood fire, Told his tale — a woeful man was he : Alas, he had loved unlawfully The wife of his brother, Sir Hugh Maguire ! And he fled to the cloister to free His soul from sin and ’twas sad to see How sorrow had worn the youthful friar 1 Three monks sat by a bogwood fire ! And red the light on the rafters shone. And the last who spoke by that bogwood fire Was Giles, of the three the only one Whom care or grief had not lit upon ; But rosy and round, throughout city and shire His mate for frolic and glee was none ; And soon he told how “ A peasant’s son, He was reared to the church by their former Prior !” Three monks sat by a bogwood fire ! The moon look’d o’er all with clouded ray ; And there they sat by that bogwood fire. Watching the wicket till break of day ; And many that night did call, and stay, Whose names — if, gentles, ye do not tire — In next strain shall the bard essay — (Many and motley I ween were they'' — Till then, pardon he craves for his humble lyre ! And to each and all, Benedicite ! * * * COMPARATIVE VALUE OF BLACK BOYS IN AMERICA AND IRELAND. It has not unfrequently occurred to us as a thing somewhat remarkable, that there is a vast difference in the comparative value of the black boys of America and those of Ireland ; and this was very forcibly proved to us on a recent occasion. The American little blacks are, as we have been credibly informed, to be bought for forty dollars and upwards, according to their health, strength, and beauty ; the Irish blackies for about a twentieth of that sum; and as everything is valued in propor- tion to its cost, it follows as a matter of course that the Ame- rican urchins are vastly more prized and better taken care of than the Irish. It is not very easy to account for this, but perhaps it is only a consequence of difference of race. The American black boys are supposed to be the descendants of Cham — true woolly-headed chaps, with the colouring matter of their complexion deposited beneath their outer skin, and not washoffable by means of soap and water. The Irish black boys generally are believed to be of the true Caucasian breed —the descendants of Japhet; and their blackness is on the outer surface of the skin, and may, though we believe with difficulty, be removed. But we will not speak dogmatically on this point. In other respects they agree tolerably. They have both the power of bearing heat to a considerable degree, and of dispensing w r ith the incumbrance of much clothing. But it is in their relative value that they most differ, and this is the point we desire to prove, and what we think we can do to the satisfaction of our readers by the following anecdote Being naturally of a most humane and benevolent character, as all our readers are — for none others would support our i pennyworth — we have often lamented the abject condition and sufferings of our black urchins, and have come to the resolution never to assist in encouraging their degradation, but on the contrary to do everything in our power to oppose it. With this praiseworthy intention we recently sent for a gentleman who professes the art of increasing our domestic comforts by the aid of modern science as developed in our improved ma- chinery — or in other words, we sent for him to clean the chim- ney of our study, not with a little boy, but with a proper mo- dern machine constructed for the purpose. The said profes- sor came accordingly, but to our astonishment not merely with his sweeping machine, but also with one of the objects of our pity and commiseration — a little black boy ! The use of this attendant we did not immediately comprehend, nor did we ask, but proceeded at once to inquire of the professor the price of his services in the way we desired. 182 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. “ Three shillings,” was the answer. “ Three shillings !” we rejoined, with a look of astonish- ment ; “ why, we had no idea that your charge would be any thing like so much. What,” we asked, “ is the cause of this unusual demand?” “ Why, sir, the price of my machine. But I’ll sweep the chimney with the boy there for a shilling.” “ And pray, sir, what did your machine cost ?” “Two pounds !” “ Indeed,” I replied; “and what was the cost of the boy ?” “ Ten shillings ; and do you think, sir, I could sweep with my machine, which cost me so much, at the same rate as I could charge for the boy, that cost me only ten shillings ?” There was no replying to logic so conclusive as this ; and we think it right to give it publicity, in the hope that it may meet the eyes of some of our readers at the other side of the Atlan- tic, who may be induced to rid us of some of our superabun- dant population, by importing our black boys, which they can get, even including the expense of carriage, at so much cheaper a rate here than they can procure them at home ! G. ELEVATION OF THE LABOURING CLASSES. We have to express our thanks to the Westminster Review for the publication of two MS. letters to Leonard Horner, Esq. one of the factory inspectors, from the proprietor of a cotton mill in the north of England, whose modesty it is to be regretted prohibits the publication of his name, and has hitherto prevented the publication of these letters. The introductory article in the Review contains some ad- mirable strictures upon the radical defect of governments fail- ing to perceive that the elevation of the people, in a moral and physical point of view, is not only one, but the fundamental duty of legislators. The writer points out that in all coun- tries and ages to the present time, those who have been placed at the head of public affairs have had little or no leisure, if they possessed the inclination, to study schemes of human improve- ment ; their time has been occupied in maintaining order, making Avar, and raising a revenue for these and similar ob- jects, whereas the necessity for police and armies would be les- sened by striking at the root of the evil, and elevating the “hewers of wood and drawers of water” in the scale of intel- ligence and happiness. “ Melancholy,” says the Avriter, “is the result of centuries of mischievous and often wicked legislation, in the impression it has left upon the mind of the public. Long after a govern- ment has ceased to do evil, it is left powerless for good by the universal distrust Avith which it is regarded. The people have yet to learn to place confidence in their own servants, and to support when needed in their persons their OAvn authority, instead of seeking to overturn it as that of tyrants or masters. So numerous have been the evils which have arisen from un- wise interference, that an opinion very widely prevails that a government can do nothing but mischief ; and the almost uni- versal prayer of the people is to be left alone.” Again he says, “ Why should it not be borne in mind that there are higher objects for human exertion, whether for individuals or communities, than the greatest possible aggregate of wealth ? And although the realization of those objects in our time may be but the visionary dream of the philanthropist, let no one say that good wall not arise from keeping them steadily in view.” And to explain his sentiments upon the subject of the elevation of the labouring classes, he quotes the following pa- ragraph from Dr Channing’s first lecture, delivered at a meeting of the Mechanic Apprentices’ Library Association at Boston : “ By the elevation of the labourer I do not understand that he is to be raised above the need of labour. I do not expect a series of improvements by Avhich he is to be released from bis daily work. Still more, I have no desire to dismiss him from his workshop and farm, to take the spade and axe from his hand, and to make his life a long holiday. I have faith in labour, and I see the goodness of God in placing us in a world Avhere labour alone can keep us alive. 1 would not change, if I could, our subjection to physical laAvs, our exposure to hunger and cold, and the necessity of constant conflicts Avith the material Avorld. I Avould not, if I could, so temper the elements that they should infuse into us only grateful sensa- tions, that they should make vegetation so exuberant as to anticipate every Avant, and the minerals so ductile as to offer no resistance to our strength or skill. !Such a Avorld would make a contemptible race. Man owes his growth, his energy, chiefly to that striving of the will, that conflict with difficulty, which Ave call effort. Easy, pleasant work does not make robust minds, does not give men a consciousness of their powers, does not train them to endurance, to perseverance, to steady force of will, that force Avithout whicn all other acquisitions Avill avail nothing. Manual labour is a school in which men are placed to get energy of purpose and character — a vastly more important endowment than all the learning of all other schools. They are placed indeed under hard masters, physi- cal sufferings and wants, the power of fearful elements, and the vicissitudes of all human things ; but these stern teachers do a Avork which no compassionate indulgent friend could do for us, and true wisdom will bless Providence for their sharp ministry. I have great faith in hard work. The material Avorld does much for the mind by its beauty and order ; but it does more by the pains it inflicts ; by its obstinate resist- ance, Avhich nothing but patient toil can overcome ; by its vast forces, which nothing but unremitting skill and effort can turn to our use ; by its perils, which demand continual vigi- lance ; and by its tendencies to decay. I believe that difficul- ties are more important to the human mind than what we call assistances. Work we all must, if we mean to bring out and per- fect our nature. Even if we do not work Avith the hands, we must undergo equivalent toil in some other direction. * * * * You Avill here see that to me labour has gi’eat dignity. Alas for the man who has not learned to work ! He is a poor crea- ture ; he does not knoAv himself.” That the labouring classes can be greatly, immeasurably elevated in the social scale, without relieving them from the least portion of that labour entailed upon the race of Adam, is beautifully exemplified in the mill-OAvner’s letters which follow the article from which the foregoing has been extracted. We regret that their length far exceeds the utmost space which we could afford them, or we should present them to our readers in full. The account which they give of the social condition of the operatives employed in the writer’s factory, more resembles the details of a Utopian scheme than of one actually carried into effect by a single philanthropic individual. The first letter describes the wretched and dilapidated state of the mill, and destitute condition of the few persons living about it, at the time (1832) that the writer and his brothers took it, and proceeded to rebuild and furnish it. This and the collection of the necessary hands occupied two years. In em- ploying operatives they selected only the most respectable, such as were likely to settle down permanently wherever they should feel comfortably situated ; and in order to hold out induce- ments, these gentlemen broke up three fields in front of the workmen’s cottages into gardens of about six roods each, sepa- rated by neat thorn hedges. Besides which, each house had a small flower-garden either in front or rear, and the houses themselves were made as comfortable as possible. When the mill Avas completed and the population numerous, the proprietor called a meeting of all the workmen, and pro- posed the establishment of a Sunday school for the children. The proposal was gladly received, and some of the men were appointed teachers. He then built a schoolroom for the girls, and the boys had the use of a cellar ; but he subsequently built a schoolroom for them also. In the girls’ school were 160 children, and in the boys’ 120. Each was placed under the management of a superintendent and a certain number of teachers, Avhose services were given gratuitously ; and they relieved each other, so that each Avas obliged to attend only every third Sunday. They were all young men and Avomen belonging to the mill, the proprietor taking no further part in the management than spending an hour or tAvo in the room. As soon as the school was fairly established, the proprietor turned his attention to the establishment of games and gym- nastic exercises amongst the people, and having set apart a field he called together some of the boys one fine afternoon, and com- menced operations with quoits, trap and cricket balls, and leap- frog. The numbers quickly increased, regulations and rules Avere made, the girls got a portion of the field to themselves, and there were persons appointed to preserve order. The fol- loAving summer he put up a swing, introduced the game called Les Graces, and boAvls, a leaping-bar, atight-rope, and a see- saw. Quoits became the favourite game of the men, hoops and tight-rope of the boys, and hoops and swing of the girls, the latter being in constant requisition. He at first found some difficulty in checking rudeness, but being constantly on the spot, it was soon corrected, and gradually quite Avore away. The play-ground was only opened on Saturday evenings or holidays during the summer. He next gut up drawing and The IRISH PENNY JOURNAL, 183 singing classes. The drawing-class, taught by himself, on Saturday evenings during the winter, from six to half past seven — half the time being spent in drawing, and the remain- der with geography or natural history. To those pupils he lent drawings to copy during the evenings of the week, thereby giving them useful and agreeable employment for their leisure hours, aud attracting them to their home fireside. The breaking up of the drawing-class at half past seven gave room to the singing-class until nine. The superinten- dent of the Sunday school took charge of this class, which became at once very popular, especially with the girls. But what he seems to consider the most successful of his plans for the civilising of his people, was the establishment of regular evening parties during the winter, the number invited to each being about thirty, an equal number of boys and girls, and specially invited by a little printed card being sent to each. This afforded a mark of high distinction, only the best be- haved and most respectable, or, as he calls them, “ the aristo- cracy,” being invited. These parties are held in the school- room, which he fitted up handsomely, and furnished with pictures, busts, &c, and a piano-forte. When the party first assemble, they have books, magazines, and drawings, to amuse them. Tea and coffee are then handed round, and the pro- prietor walks about and converses with them, so as to render their manners and conversation unembarrassed ; and after tea, games are introduced, such as dissected maps or pictures, spilieans, chess, draughts, card-houses, phantasmagoria, and others, whilst some prefer reading or chatting. Sometimes there is music and singing, and then a wind-up with Christ- mas games, such as tiercely, my lady’s toilet, blindman’s-buff, &c, previous to retiring, the party usually breaking up a little after nine. These parties are given to the grown-up boys and girls, but he sometimes also treats the juniors, when they have great diversion. The parties are given on Saturday evenings about once in three weeks, the drawing and singing being given up for that day. He next established warm baths at an expense of £80, and issued bathing tickets for Id. each, or families subscribing Is. per month were entitled to five baths weekly ; and with an account of the arrangements of the baths, the receipts, &c, he concludes his first letter, which appears to have been written about the year 1835. In the second letter, dated March 1838, he developes the principles upon which he acted, and the objects which he had in view, in answer to the request of Mr Horner. His object he avows to be “ the elevation of the labouring classes,” or, to use his own language, “ promoting the welfare of the manu- facturing population, and raising them to that degree of in- tellectual and social advancement of which I believe them ca- pable.” And amongst the matters which he considers necessary to the attainment of the object in view, he enumerates fair wages, comfortable houses, gardens for their vegetables and flowers, schools and other means of improvement for their children, sundry little accommodations and conveniencies in the mill, attention to them when sick or in distress, and inte- rest taken in their general comfort and welfare.” He says that attention to these things, and gently preventing rather than chiding rudeness, ignorance, or immorality — treating people as though they were possessed of the virtues and man- ners which you wish them to acquire — is the best means of attaining the wished-for end ; and that he has little faith in the efficacy of mere moral lectures. He established the order of the silver cross amongst the girls above the age of 17. It im- mediately became an object of great ambition, and a power- ful means of forwarding the great object of refining the minds, tastes, and manners of the maidens, and through their influ- ence, of softening and humanising the sterner part of the po- pulation. He says that he does not want to establish amongst the humbler classes the mere conventional forms of politeness as practised in the upper, but he would refine them consi- derably. He would have the most beautiful and tender forms of Christian charity exhibited in all their actions and habits, and mere preaching, rules, sermons, lectures, or legislation, can never change poor human nature if the people are not per- mitted to see what they are taught they should practise, and to hold intercourse with those whose manners are superior to their own. He points out the necessity of supplying innocent, pleasing, and profitable modes of filling up the leisure hours of the working-classes as the best mode of weaning them from drinking, and the vulgar amusements alone within their reach. He also points out that merely intellectual pursuits are not suited to uncultivated minds, aud that resources should be provided of sufficient variety to supply the different tastes and capacities which are to be dealt with. It is with these views that he provided various objects of interesting pursuit or in- nocent amusement for his colony, and established prizes for their horticultural exhibitions ; and to show how the taste for music had progressed, he mentions that a glee class had been established, and a more numerous one of sacred music that meets every Wednesday and Saturday during winter, and a band had been formed with clarionets, horns, and other wind instruments, which practised twice a-week, besides blowing nightly at home ; and a few families had got pianos, besides which there were guitars, violins, violoncellos, serpents, flutes, and dulcimers, and he adds that it must be observed that they are all of their own purchasing. He goes on to observe that his object is “not to raise the manufacturing operative or la- bourer above his condition, but to make him an ornament to it, and thus elevate the condition itself — to make the labour- ing classes feel that they have within their reach all the ele- ments of earthly happiness as abundantly as those to whose station their ambition sometimes leads them to aspire — that domestic happiness, real wealth, social pleasures, means of intellectual improvement, endless source's of rational amuse- ment, all the freedom and independence possessed by any class of men, are all before them — that they are all within their reach, and that they are not enjoyed only because they have not been developed and pointed out, and therefore are not known. His object is to show them this, to show his own people and others that there is nothing in the nature of their employment, or in the condition of their humble lot, that con- demns them to be rough, vulgar, ignorant, miserable, or poor — that there is nothing in either that forbids them to be well bred, well informed, well mannered, and surrounded by every comfort and enjoyment that can make life happy ; in short., to ascertain and prove what the condition of this class of people might be made, what it ought to be made — what it is the in- terest of all parties that it should be made.” In the name of our common humanity we thank him for the experiment which has so satisfactorily proved the truth of his propositions ; and whilst wishing him God speed, we shall do what in our power lies to promote the benevolent object, by directing the attention of philanthropists to the good that may be effected by the unassisted efforts of a practical individual. N. THE FORMATION OF DEW. During summer, when the weather is sultry, and the sky as- sumes that beautiful blue tinge so entirely its own, dew is formed in the greatest abundance, owing to the phenomena which are requisite for its deposition being then most favour- ably combined. It was long supposed by naturalists that this precipitation depended on the cooling of the atmosphere to- wards evening, wffien the solar rays began to decline ; but it was not properly understood until M. Prevost published his theory of the radiation of caloric (which has since been gene- rally adopted), which was as follows : — “ That all bodies ra- diate caloric constantly, whether the objects that surround them be of the same temperature of themselves, or not.” Ac- cording to this view, the temperature of a body falls whenever it radiates more caloric than it absorbs, and rises whenever it receives more than it radiates ; w r hich law serves to produce an equality of temperature. Such is exactly the case as re- gards the earth : during the day it receives a supply of heat from the sun’s rays, and as it is an excellent radiator of ca- loric, as soon as the shades of evening begin to fall, the earth imparts a portion of its caloric to the air, and the atmosphere having no means of imparting its caloric in turn, except by contact with the earth’s surface, the stratum nearest the earth becomes cooled, and consequently loses the property of hold- ing so much moisture in the state of vapour, which becomes deposited in small globular drops. The stratum of air in im- mediate contact with the earth having thus precipitated its moisture, becomes specifically lighter than that immediately above it, which consequently rushes down and supplies its place ; and in this manner the process is carried on until some physical cause puts a stop to it either partly or wholly. It is well known that dew is deposited sparingly, or not at all, in cloudy weather, the clouds preventing free radiation, which is so essential for its formation ; that good radiators, as grass, leaves of plants, and filamentous substances in general, reduce their temperature in favourable states of the weather to an extent of ten or fifteen degrees below the circumambient air ; 184 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. and whilst these substances are completely drenched with dew, others that are bad radiators, such as rocks, polished metal, sand, &c., are scarcely moistened. From the above remarks it will appear evident that dew is formed most abundantly in hot climates, and during summer in our own, which tends to renovate the vegetable kingdom by producing all the salubri- ous effects of rain without any of its injurious consequences, when all nature seems to languish under the scorching influ- ence of a meridian sun. Hoarfrost is formed when the temperature becomes so low as 32 degrees Fahrenheit ; the dew being then frozen on falling, sometimes assuming very fantastic forms on the boughs and leaves of trees, &c., which sparkle in the sunshine like so many gems of purest ray. M. RANDOM SKETCHES. NO. Ill BLOWING MEN. What makes men blow ? “ I’ll be blow' ed if I know.” Such might be the answer in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of a thousand ; and the object of this paper is to invite that thousandth individual who is versed in the philosophy of blowing to come forth and settle the question. Every body knows why butchers blow, and flute-players, and glass-blowers, & c, and why some men puff at auctions ; but the question is, why, without any conceivable motive either of business or pleasure, certain men, while circulating through the streets of Dublin perhaps on a breezeless day, have been seen to distend their cheeks, and discharge a great volume of breath into the face of the serene and unoffending atmosphere. One of the introductory chapters in Tom Jones is devoted to proving that authors always write the better for being ac- quainted with the subjects on which they write. If this posi- tion be true (as I believe it is), I may seem deserving of a blowing up for venturing on my present theme. However, my object (as I have already hinted) in this, as in my first sketch, is rather to court than to convey information. If my brief notices of Fox and Smut contained in said sketch could at all serve to promote the study of catoptrics, I would not consider the time it cost me misspent. (And, by the bye, Mr Editor, I know somebody who, if he chose, could inform your readers how he once saw one of his own cats actually assisting at a surgical operation /) In like manner, if the following meagre result of my attempt towards developing the philosophy of blowing should excite inquiry on a subject never, I believe, broached before, I would feel very thankful for any informa- tion anent it that might reach me through the medium of the Irish Penny Journal. Blowing men form a small, a very small, part of the com- munity. During some forty years’ experience of the Dublin flags, I have met with only four specimens of this genus. Yet limited as is the number of my specimens, I am constrained to distribute them into two classes — one consisting of three indi- viduals, the other, of the remaining one. My first-class men blew all alike — right “ahead,” as the Americans say; my fourth man protruded his chin, and breathed rather than blew somewhat upwards, as if he wanted to treat the tip of his nose to a vapour-bath. What characteristics, then, did my triad of blowers possess in common, and from what community of idiosyncrasy did they agree in a practice unknown to the generality of mankind ? The latter question I avow my inability to answer : on the former I can perhaps throw a little twilight. The principal man among them in point of rank — a late noble and facetious judge — -was by far the most inveterate blower in the class : his puff was perpetual, like the mahogany dye of his boot-tops. One point of resemblance I have traced between the peer and his two compeers : he was a proud man. In proof of this alle- gation I have the evidence of his own avowal : — “ I’m the first peer of my family, but I’m as proud as the old nobility of Eng- land.” Of the other pair, one I know to be proud, the other I believe to be so. Here then is one element — pride : an- other I conceive to be wealth. My first-class blowers were all rich men : nay, the youngest among them never ven- tured on blowing, to the best of my belief, till he had gotten a good slice of a quarter of a million whereof his uncle died possessed. I was standing one day at the door of a booksel- ler’s shop in Suffolk Street, deeply intent upon nothing, when my gentleman passed by on the opposite side. My eyes, ready for any new object, idly followed him, and as he crossed to Nassau Street he blew. The offer was fair enough for a be- ginner, but it would not do — he wanted fat. No man much under the episcopal standard of girth should think of blowing : of this I feel a perfect conviction. As for my solitary second-class man, the unique character of his blowing, or breathing, may have been but an emanation of his unique mind. He was, as the song says, “ werry pe- cooliar” — an extensive medical practitioner among the poor, though not a medical man — the editor of an agricultural jour- nal, though unacquainted with farming — a moral man, yet the avowed admirer of the lady of an invalid whose expected death was to be the signal for their union : the death came, but the union ivas never effected. Groping then, as I do, in the dark, I would with great diffi- dence submit, that certain individuals, being encumbered with pride, "wealth, and fat, are hence, somehow, under both a mental and physical necessity of blowing : why all individuals thus encumbered do not adopt the practice, is matter for con- sideration. As a further clue to investigation I may add, that although the union of the above three qualifications in one in- dividual is by no means peculiar to Dublin, yet in Dublin alone have I ever seen men blow, and that none of my qua- ternion of blowing men was of Milesian descent : one was of Saxon, another of Scottish race, and the remaining two were sprung from Huguenots. I now conclude, submissively craving “ a word and a blow” from any of the readers or writers of the Irish Penny Journal who may be able to give them to me in the shape of facts or fancies likely to lead to the full solution of a question which has been for years my torment, namely — “ What makes men blow?” G. D. Heaping up Wealth It is often ludicrous as well as pitiable to witness the miserable ends in which the heaping up of wealth not unusually terminates. A life spent in the drudgery of the counting-house, warehouse, or factory, is ex- changed for the dignified ease of a suburban villa ; but what a joyless seclusion it mostly proves ! Retirement has been postponed until all the faculties of enjoyment have become effete or paralysed. “ Sans eyes, sans teeth, sans taste, sans everything,” scarcely any inlet or pulsation remains for old, much less new pleasures and associations. Nature is not to be won by such superannuated suitors. She is not intelligi- ble to them ; and the language of fields and woods, of mur- muring brooks, mountain tops, and tumbling torrents, cannot be understood by men familiar only with the noise of crowded streets, loaded vans, bustling taverns, and postmen’s knocks. The chief provincial towns are environed with luckless pyrites of this description, who, dropped from their accustomed sphere, become lumps and dross in a new element. Happily their race is mostly short ; death kindly comes to terminate their wea- riness, and, like plants too late transplanted, they perish from the sudden change in long-established habits, air, and diet. An Old Newspaper. — There is nothing more beneficial to the reflecting mind than the perusal of an old newspaper. Though a silent preacher, it is one which conveys a moral more palpable and forcible than the most elaborate discourse. As the eye runs down its diminutive and old-fashioned co- lumns, and peruses its quaint advertisements and bygone pa- ragraphs, the question forces itself on the mind — where are now the busy multitudes whose names appear on these pages ? — where is the puffing auctioneer, the pushing tradesman, the bustling merchant, the calculating lawyer, who each oc- cupies a space in this chronicle of departed time ? Alas ! their names are now only to be read on the sculptured marble which covers their ashes ! They have passed away like their fore- fathers. and are no more seen ! From these considerations the mind naturally turns to the period when we, who now enjoy our little span of existence in this chequered scene, shall have gone down into the dust, and shall furnish the same moral to our children that our fathers do to us ! The sun will then shine as bright, the flowers will bloom as fair, the face of na- ture will be as pleasing as ever, while we are reposing in our narrow cell, heedless of every thing that once charmed and de- lighted us ! Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin. — Agents R. Groomeridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool ; J. Drake, Birmingham ; Slocombe & Simms, Leeds; Frazer and Crawford, George Street, Edinburgh; and David Robertson, Trongate, Glasgow. THE CASTLE < The ruins of the old castellated Mansion of Donegal are not < only interesting as affording, to use the words of Sir R. Colt Hoare, “ a good subject for the pencil,” but still more as a touching memorial of the fallen fortunes of a long-time pow- erful and illustrious family, the ancient lords of Tirconnell. These ruins are situated on the north bank of the little river Easky, or the fishy river, at the extremity of the town to which, as well as to the county, it has given its name. This name, however, which signifies literally the Dun, or Fort of the Foreigners, is of much higher antiquity than the castle erected here by the O’Donnells, and was, there can be no doubt, originally applied to a fortress, most probably of earth, raised here by the Danes or Northmen anterior to the twelfth century ; for it appears unquestionable that the Irish applied the appellations Gaill exclusively to the northern rovers, ante- rior to the arrival of the English. Of the early history of this dun or fortress there is nothing preserved beyond the bare fact recorded in the Annals of Ulster, that it was burnt by Murtogh M‘Loughlin, the head of the northern Hy-Niall race, in the year 1159. We have, however, an evidence of*the con- nection of the Danes with this locality more than two centu- 1 ries earlier, in a very valuable poem which we shall at no re- mote time present to our readers, addressed by the Tircon- nellian bard, Flan Mac Lonan, to Aighleann and Cathbar, the brothers of Domhnall. from whom the name of O’Donnell OF DONEGAL. is derived. In this poem, which was composed at the com- mencement of the tenth century, the poet relates that Eg- neachan, the father of Donnell, gave his three beautiful daugh- ters, Duibhlin, Bebua, and Bebinn, in marriage to three Danish princes, Caithis, Torges, and Tor, for the purpose of obtain- ing their friendship, and to secure his territory from their de- predations ; and these marriages were solemnised at Donegal, where Egneachan then resided. But. though we have therefore evidence that a fort or dun existed here from a very remote time, it would appear cer- tain, from a passage in the Annals of the Foxir Masters, that a castle, properly so called, was not erected at Donegal by the O Donnells till the year 1474. In this passage, which records the death of Hugh R,oe, the son of Niall Garve O’Donnell, at the year 1505, it is distinctly stated that he was the first that erected a castle at Donegal, that it might serve as a fortress for his descendants ; and that he also erected as it would appear, at the same time, a monastery for Obser- vantine Franciscans near the same place, and in which he was interred in the seventy-eighth year of his age, and forty- ’ fourth of his reign. From this period forward the Castle of Donegal became the chief residence of the chiefs of Tircon- nell, till their final extinction in the reign of James I., and was the scene of many a petty domestic feud and conflict. From a notice of one of these intestine broils, as recorded in the 186 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Annals of the Four Masters, at the year 1504, it would ap- pear that shortly previous to that period a tower, called “the New Tower,” had been added to the older structure. This tower being at that time in the possession of Hugh, the grand- son of the builder of the original castle, while the latter was inhabited by his fraternal nephews, Con, the son of Cal- varch, then Prince of Tirconnell, in the absence of his father, attempted to get possession of both, and nearly succeeded, when he was made captive by O’Neill. Towards the close of the great war wdth the Earl of Tyrone in 1601, this castle, as well as the adjacent monastery, having been placed in the hands of the Queen’s troops, through the instrumentality of Niall Garve O’Donnell, it was besieged and taken by the celebrated leader, Red Hugh O’Donnell, who afterwards blockaded the English in the monastery, from the end of September till the end of October following. But though the besieged -were reduced to the utmost extremity, in consequence of the explosion of their powder by some acci- dent, which reduced the greater part of the monastery to ruins, they maintained their position with undaunted bravery, and O’Donnell finally raised the siege, and passed into Mun- ster to join the Spaniards. It appears, however, from a cotemporaneous poem, addressed to the ruins of this castle, a translation of which we shall presently lay before our read- ers, that O’Donnell did not depart from his native territory, never to return, till he had reduced the proud castle of his an- cestors to a ruined pile, assigning as a reason, that it should never become what its name indicated — -a fortress for stran- gers ! Whether this castle was subsequently repaired or recon- structed by Red Hugh’s brother Rory, the Earl of Tirconnell, during the few years for which he held his earldom previous to his flight to Rome, does not appear from any document which has fallen under our notice, and we are inclined to believe that he did not do so. But be this as it may, the existing ruins retain no feature of a castle of the 15th century, but on the contrary are in every respect characteristic of the castellated residences of the reign of James I. ; so that if it be of Rory O’Donnell’s age, he must have rebuilt the mansion from its foundation. It appears, however, at least equally probable that the pi-esent structure may owe its re-erection to Sir Basil Brooke, to whom a grant of the castle was made in 1610. But it is certain, at all events, that he repaired the castle and resided in it until his death in 1633 ; and two chimney-pieces which still remain are unquestionably of his time, as the arms on one of them testify. These arms, which are sculptured on two shields, are, on the first, those of Brooke impaling Lei- cester— the family name of Sir Basil’s lady ; and on the se- cond, those of Brooke only. These chimney-pieces, which are very splendid specimens of the architectural taste of the age, are faithfully represented in wood-cuts in the second vo- lume of the Dublin Penny Journal, and are accompanied by an excellent notice from the pen, as we believe, of Sir William Betham. In this notice it is stated that the Castle of Done- gal “was granted by patent, dated the 16th November 1610, to Captain Basil Brooke, for twenty-one years, if he should live so long, with one hundred acres of land, and the fishings, customs, and duties extending along the river from the castle to the sea. Captain Brooke was knighted 2d February 1616, by Sir Arthur Chichester, knight, Lord Deputy, and had a re-grant of twenty-one years, or his life, of the castle by pa- tent, dated 27th July 1620, and on the 12th February 1623, he had a grant of the fee of the castle for ever.” According to the same authority, this “ Sir Basil Brooke was a scion of the family of Brooke of Norton, in Cheshire, and his lady was Anne, daughter of Thomas Leicester of Toft, in that county. Henry Vaughan Brooke, Esq. Member of Parliament for the county of Donegal, was his descendant and heir-at-law, who left the estates of his family to his ne- phew Thomas Grove, Esq. who took the name and arms of Brooke by royal sign-manual in 1808. He died without issue, and the estates of the family went to Thomas Young, Esq. of Lough Esk, who also took the name of Brooke by royal sign-manual, dated 16th July 1830, and is the present pos- sessor.” During the troubles of 1641, the Castle of Donegal was garrisoned for the king by Sir Henry Brooke, the son of Sir Basil ; but was taken in May 1651 by the Marquess of Clan? ricarde, who was joined by the Ulster forces under Sir Phelim O’Neill, when the O’Reillys and the MacMahons joined with him. But the castle was shortly afterwards abandoned by him, on receiving intelligence of the advance of Sir Charles Coote, into whose possession it then fell. Since that period the Castle of Donegal has never we believe been used as a residence, and no care has been taken to save it from the ruined state in which it now appears. It is, however, to the credit of its present possessor that he has taken every care to delay as much as possible the further ravages of time on a structure so interesting in its associations with the past. It is indeed impossible to look on this venerable pile with- out carrying our minds back to the days of its proud but un- fortunate chiefs ; and in our feelings of pity for their fate, indulging such sentiments as one of their last bards has attempted to express in the following poem, addressed to its ruins, and of which we give a literal translation. It is the composition of Malmurry Mac-an-Ward, or the son of the bard, and was written on the demolition of the castle by Red Hugh O’Donnel in 1601. ADDRESS TO THE RUINS OF DONEGAL CASTLE. O, solitary fort that standest yonder, What desolation dost thou not reveal ! How tarnished is the beauty of thine aspect, Thou mansion of the chaste and gentle melodies ! Demolished lie thy towering battlements — The dark loam of the earth has risen up Over the whiteness of thy polished stones ; And solitude and ruin gird thee round. Thy end is come, fair fortress, thou art fallen — Thy magical prestige has been stripped off — Thy well-shaped corner-stones have been displaced And cast forth to the outside of thy ramparts. In lieu of thy rich wine-feasts, thou hast now % Nought but the cold stream from the firmament ; It penetrates thee on all sides, Thou mansion like Emania the golden. Tlyy doorways are, alas ! filled up, Thou fortress of the once bright doors ! The limestones of thy top lie at thy base, On all the sides of thy fair walls. Over the mouldings of thy shattered windows. The music that to-day breaks forth Is the wild music of the birds and winds, The voices of the stormy elements ! O, many-gated Court of Donegal, What spell of slumber overcame thee, Thou mansion of the board of flowing goblets, To make thee undergo this rueful change ? Thou wert, O, happy one of the bright walls, The Fortress of the Meetings of Clann-Connell, The Tara of Assemblies to Conn’s offspring, O, thou resplendent fount of nobleness ! Thou rivalledst Emania in Ulster, Thou wert the peer of Cruachan in Connaught, Or of the mansion over the bright Boyne, Thou Rome of all delight for Erin ! In thee, thou fair, capacious dome, Where Ulster’s tributes prodigally spent, And Connaught’s tributes were poured into thee, Deserted though thou art this night ! From thee have we beheld — delightful sight ! — From the high pinnacles of thy purple turrets, Long lines of ships at the approach of May, With masts and snow-white sails. From the high pinnacles of thy white watch-towers We have seen the fleetness of the youthful steeds, The bounding of the hounds, the joyous chase, Thou pleasant fastness of unnumbered plains ! Within thee at the festive board We have seen the strong battalions of the Gael, And outside on thy wide green court, After the meeting and the feasting. Alas for this event, O Dun-na-Gall ! Sad is the lethargy that trances thee, It>is my grief to see thee thus deserted, Without thy nobles, without mirth to-night ! Although thy ruins now bestrew the soil, There have come of the race of Connell Some men who would have mourned thy downfall, O, thou fair fortress of the smooth-clad nobles 1 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 187 Manus O’Donnell’s noble mind, ITad he but heard of thy disasters, O, fortress of the regal towers, Would suffer deepest anguish for thee ! Could Hugh, the son of Hugh, behold The desolation of thy once white walls, How bitter, O, thou palace of the kings, His grief would be for thy decline and fall ! If thus thou couldst have been beheld By Hugh Roe, who demolished thee, Methinks his triumph and delight would cease, Thou beautiful, time-hallowed house of Fertas ! O, never was it dreamed that one like him, That one sprung from the Tirconnellians, Could bring thee to this woeful state, Thou bright-streamed fortress of the embellished walls ! From Hugh O’Donnell, thine own king, From him has come this melancholy blow, This demolition of thy walls and towers, O, thou forsaken fortress o’er the Easky ! Yet was it not because he wished thee ill That he thus left thee void and desolate ; The king of the successful tribe of Dalach Did not destroy thee out of hatred. The reason that he left thee as thou art Was lest the black ferocious strangers Should dare to dwell within thy walls, Thou fair-proportioned, speckled mansion ! Lest w r e should ever call thee theirs, Should call thee in good earnest Dun-na-gall, This was the reason, Fortress of the Gaels, That thy fair turrets were o’erthrown. Now that our kinsrs have all been exiled hence T o dwell among the reptiles of strange lands, It is a woe for us to see thy towers, O, bright fort of the glossy w r alls ! Yet, better for thee to be thus destroyed By thine own king than that the truculent Galls Should raise dry mounds and circles of great stones Around thee and thy running waters ! He who has brought thee to this feebleness, Will soon again heal all thy wounds, So that thou shalt not sorrow any more, Thou smooth and bright-walled mansion ! As doth the surgeon, if he be a true one, On due examination of his patient, Thy royal chief has done by thee, Thou shield and bulwark of the race of Coffey ! The surgeon, on examining his patient. Knows how his illness is to be removed, Knows where the secret of his health lies hid, And where the secret of his malady. Those members that are gangrened or unsound He cuts away from the more healthy trunk Before they mortify, and so bring death Without remead upon the sufferer. Now, thy disease is obviously the Galls, And thy good surgeon is thy chief, O’Donnell. And thou thyself, thou art the prostrate patient O, green-hued mansion of the race of Dolach ! With God’s will, and by God’s permission, Thy beauty shall yet put to shame thy meanness , Thy variegated courts shall be rebuilt By that great Chief who laid thee low ! As Hugh Roe, king of the Connell ians Was he who laid thy speckled walls in ruins, He will again renew' thy greatness, Yes, he will be thy best physician ! P. Wickedness may well be compared to a bottomless pit, into which it is easier to keep oneself from falling, than having fallen into, to stay oneself from falling infinitely . — Sir P. Sydney. If there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, it is an American patriot, signing resolutions of independence with the one hand, and with the other brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves — Day. OUR SENSATIONS. FIRST ARTICLE. Man has been somewhere described as a “bundle of sensa- tions and certainly if ever sensations were capable of being packed together, they would make a bundle, and a good large one too. I am not a physiologist, or even a doctor, so cannot pretend to speak very learnedly on this subject : but as we all in common have “ our sensations,” he must be rather a dull fellow', I should think, who would have nothing to say when they w r ere laid upon the table for discussion. Even if he were a Jew, he might repeat with Shylock, “ Hath not a Jew eyes ? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions ?” and so on. When one considers the amazing number and variety of the feelings, or perceptions arising out of impressions on the senses, of which we are capable, we discover a new and inte- resting proof that we are indeed “ fearfully and wonderfully made.” I was struck by this fact the other day, on hearing a young medical student say that he had been reading a “ de- scriptive catalogue” of “ pains,” which had been made out with great care for the use of the profession. People, when going to consult a physician, are often at a loss to describe the manner in which “they are affected, and particularly the nature and character of the painful sensation that afflicts them. To assist them in this respect, and the physician in obtaining a correct idea of the case, this catalogue was made out, and highly useful I think it must be for the proposed end. _ The patient may thus readily meet with something answering to his own case, and lay his finger on the classincation that suits him. I am sorry I have not the list by me, for I am sure it would be a curious novelty to many. There are however in it the “ dull, aching pain,” the “ sharp pricking pain,” the pen- dulum-like “ going-and-returning pain,” the “throbbing pain,” the “ flying-to-the-head and sickening pain,” the hot- scalding or burning pain, the pins and needles or nettle pain, pains deep seated and pains superficial, and, in short, an infinite va- riety, made out with nice discrimination, and all taken, I dare say, from life. None indeed could have drawn it out but one who had studied in some lazar-house, wherein, as Milton de- scribes, “ were laid Numbers of all diseased ; all maladies Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture ; qualms Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds ; Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs— Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs” — &c, &c. There is a variety in pain, then, as well as in every thing else ; but it is a variety in which few, I believe, ever found a “ charm” experimentally. But there is a special wonder in the matter which forces us to exclaim, “ What a piece of workmanship is man!” We are here speaking of sensations, or of perceptions arising from our bodily structure ; and to these perceptions it is plainly necessary that there should be a chain of communication between the part of the body affected, and the sensorium, or seat of perception in the brain. I remember being amused with the surprise of an intelligent little girl, who complained of a soi’e finger, and a pain “in the finger,” on hearing for the first time that the pain was not “in her finger,” but in her own perception of it. It seemed a contradiction to her immediate experience ; but on being shown that the pain she felt ceased when the nervous commu- nication between the finger and the brain was interrupted, which could be easily done by a ligature placed above the part affected, she readily understood the distinction sought to be conveyed to her mind, namely, the difference between a diseased action in any part of the body, and our painful perception of its existence. There must be a “ nerve” to “ tele- graph” the fact to the mind, otherwise the fact would not be consciously known. Well, then, this being the case, only con- sider what an infinite number of these nerves there must be in the human body, merely for the purpose of conveying dis- agreeable impressions, or what I may call had news, to head- quarters ! They are very useful, it is true ; but like other messengers of unpleasant intelligence, not much in favour. It is dangerous, however, to do them any harm. My readers have heard perhaps of the farrier who used to cure lame horses so rapidly, that he was the astonishment of all who consulted him. A horse would be brought to him scarce put- ting his toe to the ground, limping and shambling- in a miser- able manner, and, as if by magic, this veterinary artist would send him trotting oft to all appearance quite cured. His 188 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. secret consisted in dividing the nerve, or, as I may say, slay- ing the messenger of evil : the consequence of which was, that the poor horse, no longer conscious of the malady in his hoof, leaned heavily upon it, and ultimately became incurably lamed for life. So much as to our sensations of pain. But fortunately for us there is another class, and this comprising, according to some, a family very nearly if not altogether as numerous — I mean our sensations of the pleasurable lcind. “ Man,” saith the Scripture, “ roasteth roast, and is satisfied : yea, he warmeth himself, and saith, Aha, I am warm, I have seen the fire.” This includes the comforts of a good dinner, and a cheerful fire-side on a winter’s evening, and most people will agree with me these are no bad things, especially with a group of happy smiling faces about us. The inlets to our agreeable perceptions are certainly not so numerous as those to the op- posite kind, as we are approachable by pain from every part of the body without exception, but it is otherwise with our “notions of the agreeable.” However, they can reach us in tolerable abundance through the eye, the ear, the taste (inclu- ding the smell), and the touch. It may be as well to record here, for the benefit of posterity — as with the rapid increase of railroads, and other improved modes of travelling and living in these days, it stands a chance of being forgotten hereafter — that to one who has been up all night in a close coach, “ four inside,” or has dined at a Lord’s Mayor’s inau- guration dinner, partaking largely of the good things, the warm bath is a highly agreeable and efficacious restorative, and that he is indebted in this case to the entire envelope of his epidermis, and not to any one part in particular, for the pleasing sensation he experiences. There are other modes of exciting the pleasurable on this wholesale plan, such as shampooing, as it is practised in the east, and suddenly plunging into the snow after stewing in vapour, as they do in Russia, and so on ; but as I have never myself been “ done” by any of these processes, I do not take upon me to recommend them. I am not an advocate for tickling. The laughter which it excites is one to which we give way with reluctance, and its pleasure is equivocal. I have seen poor children tickled nearly to death, and feel a great horror of that mode of making my exit from all the consciousnesses that belong to this mortal coil. As to the innumerable sensations of agreeableness wdiich we may receive through the eye, including all that may be seen — the ear encompassing all the concords of sweet sounds— the warbling of birds — the voice of the beloved, and all the melody of song— through the taste, with all its varieties — what gives to the peach its melting richness ? — to generous wine its elevating gentlemanliness of flavour ?— to meats, soups, and sauces, all their delicious gusto ? — to the rose its sweetness ?— to the cinnamon tree and the orange grove their spicy fragrance ? Whence come all the delightful visions of the opium-eater ? He lives whilst under the influence of the drug in a world of ecstacy : his soul teems with the most pleas- ing fancies ; all around him is soft and soothing ; whatever he sees or hears, ministers to delight. If you have never lit your cigar as you sallied forth with dog and gun on a fine December morning, let me tell you, gen- tle reader, that you have missed a sensation worth getting up to enjoy. But not to lose ourselves in a wilderness of sw r eets, or to forget our great argument, what is the immediate cause of all these so agreeable effects ? Why, a peculiar organization of our bodies, fitted to receive every imaginable impression from without, whether of the painful or the agreeable kind, and to transmit that impression, when received, to the seat of perception within. We call it the nervous system; and what I would beg my readers to consider is, how wonderful, how curious, above ail comprehension or explanation, that appai’atus in our construc- tion must be, to which we owe such an infinite variety of sen- sations, and those of the most opposite kinds ! It baffles the skill of the anatomist to unveil its mysteries : no needle can trace its ligaments ; yet it is a real, substantial thing, of whose existence we have perfect assurance by the very palpable effects which it produces. Thus much for our different and various sensations arising from outward impressions ; but there is yet a third class, in which, by a sort of reflection, our nerves perform an impor- tant function, and transmit the action begun in the mind to the seat of emotion, or the -soul. Hence the joy of the mathe- matician at the discovery of some important problem, or of the poet at hitting upon some long-sought-for rhyme with an- swering metre. In such cases the mind, or pure intellect, originates, and the body “ takes the signal” from it. There is a reciprocity between them, and it is well when, like some loving couples, they dwell on good terms together. When, happily, this is the case, there is much peace “ at home the senses do not seek for gratifications which the mind disap- proves, and the mind does not apply to them for pleasures which are forbidden. However, I shall not enter upon this further disquisition — highly interesting though it be— at present, but shall reserve it in order that we may resume it with due deliberation, and do it that justice which it so well deserves, at another oppor- tunity. F . IRISH SUPERSTITIONS— GHOSTS AND FAIRIES. THE RIVAL KEMPERS. BY WILLIAYC CABLE TON. (Second Article.) In a former paper we gave an authentic account of what the country folks, and we ourselves at the time, looked upon as a genuine instance of apparition. It appeared to the simple- minded to be a clear and distinct case, exhibiting all those minute and subordinate details which, by an arrangement na- turally happy and without concert, go to the formation of truth. There was, however, but one drawback in the matter, and that was the ludicrous and inadequate nature of the mo- ral motive ; for what unsteady and derogatory notions of Pro- vidence must we not entertain when we see the order and pur- poses of his divine will so completely degraded and travestied by the fact of a human soul returning to this earth again for the l'idiculous object of settling the claim to a pair of breeches ! When we see the succession to crowns and kingdoms, and the inheritance to large territorial property and great perso- nal rank, all left so completely undecided that ruin and deso- lation have come upon nations and families in attempting their adjustment, and when we see a laughable dispute about a pair of breeches settled by a personal revelation from another life, we cannot help asking why the supernatural intimation was permitted in the one case and not in the other, especially when their relative importance differed so essentially ? To follow up this question, however, by insisting upon a principle so ab- surd, would place Providence in a position so perfectly unrea- sonable and capricious, that we do not wish to press the infe- rence so far as admission of divine interference in such a manner would justify us in doing. Having detailed the case of Daly’s daughter, however, we take our leave of the girl and the ghost, and turn now to an- other case which came under our own observation in connection with Frank Martin and the fairies. Before commencing, how- ever, we shall by way of introduction endeavour to give our readers a few short particulars as to fairies, their origin, cha- racter, and conduct. And as we happen to be on this sub- ject, we cannot avoid regretting that we have not by us co- pies of two most valuable works upon it from the pen of our learned and admirable countryman, Thomas Keightly — we allude to his Fairy Mythology and his History of the Trans- mission of Popular Fictions ; two works which cannot be per- used without delight at the happy manner in which so much learning and amusement, so much solid information, and all that is agreeable in extensive research, are inimitably com- bined. We are sorry, we repeat, that we have them not by us ; but we trust that we may on some early occasion be al- lowed to notice them at greater length, and to give them a more formal recommendation to our countrymen. With the etymology of the word fairy we do not intend in a publication like this to puzzle our readers. It is with the tradition connected with the thing that we have to do, and not with a variety of learned speculations, which appear after all to be yet unsettled. The general opinion, in Ireland at least, is, that during the war of Lucifer in heaven the angels were divided into three classes. The first class consisted of those faithful spirits who at once and without hesitation ad- hered to the standard of the Omnipotent ; the next consisted of those who openly rebelled and followed the great apostate, sharing eternal perdition along with him ; the third and last consisted of those who, during the mighty clash and uproar of the contending hosts, stood timidly aloof and refused to join either power. These, says the tradition, were hurled out | of heaven, some upon earth and some into the waters of the i earth, where they are to remain ignorant of their fate until THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 189 the day of judgment. They know their own power, however, and it is said that nothing but their hopes of salvation pre- vent them from at once annihilating the whole human race. Such is the broad basis of the general superstition ; but our traditional history and conception of the popular fairy falls far short of the historical dignity associated with its origin. The fairy of the people is a diminutive creature, generally dressed in green, irritable, capricious, and quite unsteady in all its principles and dealings with mankind. Sometimes it exhibits singular proofs of ingenuity, but, on the contrary, is frequently overreached by mere mortal capacity. It is im- possible to say in dealing with it whether its conduct will be found benevolent or otherwise, for it often has happened that its threats of injury have ended in kindness, and its promises of protection terminated in malice and treachery. What is very remai-kable too is, that it by no means appears to be a mere spirit, but a being with passions, appetites, and other natural wants like ourselves. Indeed, the society or commu- nity of fairies appears to be less self-dependent than ours, inasmuch as there are several offices among them which they not only cannot perform, but -which render it necessary that we should be stolen and domiciled with them, for the express purpose of performing for them. Like us they are married and given in marriage, and rear families ; but whether their off- spring are subject to death, is a matter not exactly of the clearest. Some traditions affirm that they are, and others that they are as immortal as the angels, although possessing material bodies aualogous to our own. The fairy, in fact, is supposed to be a singular mixture of good and evil, not very moral in its actions or objects, often very thievish, and some- times benevolent when kindness is least expected from it. It is generally supposed by the people that this singular class of fictitious creatures enjoy as a kind of right the richest and best of all the fruits of the earth, and that the top grain of -wheat, oats, &c., and the ripest apple, pear, &c., all belong to them, and are taken as their own exclusive property. They have also other acknowledged rights which they never suffer to be violated with impunity. For instance, wherever a meal is eaten upon the grass in an open field, and the crumbs are not shaken down upon the spot for their use, there they are sure to leave one of their curses called the far gurtlia, or the hungry man : for whoever passes over that particular spot for ever afterwards is liable to be struck down with weakness and hunger ; and unless he can taste a morsel of bread, he nei- ther will nor can recover. The weakness in this instance, how- ever, is not natural, for if the person affected but tastes as much meal or flour as would lie on the point of a penknife, he will instantaneously break the spell of the fairies, and recover his former strength. Such spots are said to be generally known by their superior verdure : they are always round, and the diameter of these little circles is seldom more than a single step. The grass which grow T s upon them is called in the north and parts of the north-west hungry-grass, and is accounted for as we have already stated. Indeed, the v r alks and haunts of the fairies are to be considered as very sacred and inviolate. For instance, it is dangerous to throw out dirty water after dusk or before sunrise, lest in doing so you bespatter them with a liquid as unsavoury to the smell as it is unclean to the touch : for these little gentry are peculiarly fond of cleanliness and neatness, both in dress and person. Bishop Andrews’s Lamentation for the Fairies gives as humorous and correct a notion of their personal habits in this way, and their disposition to reward cleanliness in servants, as could be written. We shall ourselves relate a short anecdote or two touching them, before we come to Frank Martin’s case ; premising to our readers that we could if we wished fill a volume — ay, three of them — with anecdotes and legends connected with our irri- table but good-humoured little friends. Paddy Corcoran’s wife w-as for several years afflicted with a kind of complaint which nobody could properly understand. She was sick, and she was not sick ; she was well, and she was not well ; she was as ladies wish to be who love their lords, and she was not as such ladies wish to be. In fact, nobody could tell what the matter with her was. She had a gnawing at the heart which came heavily upon her husband ; for, with the help of God, a keener appetite than the same gnawing amounted to could not be met with of a summer’s day. The poor woman wms delicate beyond belief, and had no appetite at all, so she hadn’t, barring a little relish for a mutton-chop, or a “ staik,” or a bit o’ mait, anyway ; for sure, God help her ! she hadn’t the laist inclination for the dhry pratie, or the dhrop o’ sour butthermilk along wid it, especially as she was so poorly : and indeed for a woman in her condition — for, sick as she was, poor Paddy always was made to believe her in that condition — but God’s wall be done ! she did’nt care. A pratie an’ a grain o’ salt was as welcome to her — glory be to his name ! — as the best roast an’ boiled that ever was dressed ; an’ why not ? There was one comfort : she wouldn’t be long wid him — long throublin’ him ; it matthered little what she got ; but sure she knew herself that from the gnawin’ at her heart, she could never do good widout the little bit o’ mait now and then ; an’, sure, if her own husband begridged it to her, who else had she a betther right to expect it from ? Well, as we said, she lay a bedridden invalid for long enough, trying doctors and quacks of all sorts, sexes, and sizes, and all without a farthing’s benefit, until at the long run poor Paddy was nearly brought to the last pass in striving to keep her in “ the bit o’ mait.” The seventh year was now on the point of closing, when one harvest day, as she lay bemoaning her hard condition on her bed beyond the kitchen fire, a little weeshy woman, dressed in a neat red cloak, comes in, and, sit- ting down by the hearth, says, “ Well, Kitty Corcoran, you’ve had a long lair of it there on the broad o’ yer back for seven years, an’ you’re jist as far from bein’ cured as ever.” “ Mavrone, ay,” said the other ; “ in troth that’s what I was this minnit thinkin’ ov, and a sorrowful thought it is to me.” “ It’s yer own fau’t, thin,” says the little woman ; “ an’ in- deed for that matter, it’s yer fau’t that ever you wor there at all.” “ Arra. how is that ?” asked Kitty ; “ sure I wouldn’t be hero if I could help it ? Do you think it’s a comfort or a pleasure to me to be sick and bedridden ?” “ No,” said the other, “ I do not ; but I’ll tell you the truth : for the last seven years you have been annoyin’ us. I am one o’ the good people ; an’ as I have a regard for you, I’m come to let you know the raison why you’ve been sick so long as you are. For all the time you’ve been ill, if you’ll take the thrub- ble to remimber, you’ve threwn out yer dirty wather afther dusk an’ before sunrise, at the very time we’re passin’ yer door, which we pass twice a-day. Now, if you avoid this, if you throw it out in a different place, an’ at a different time, the complaint you have will lave you : so will the gnawin’ at the heart ; an’ you’ll be as well as ever you wor. If you don’t follow this advice, why, remain as you are, an’ all the art o’ man can’t cure you.” She then bade her good-bye, and dis- appeared. Kitty, who was glad to be cured on such easy terms, imme- diately complied with the injunction of the fairy ; and the con- sequence was, that the next day she found herself in as good health as ever she enjoyed during her life. Lanty M‘Clusky had married a wife, and of course it was necessary to hire a house in which to keep her. Now, Lanty had taken a bit of a farm, about six acres ; but as there was no house on it, he resolved to build one ; and that it might be as comfortable as possible, he selected for the site of it one of those beautiful green circles that are supposed to be the play- ground of the fairies. Lanty was warned against this ; but as he was a headstrong man, and not much given to fear, he said he would not change such a pleasant situation for his house to oblige all the fairies in Europe. He accordingly pro- ceeded with the building, which he finished off very neatly ; and as it is usual on these occasions to give one’s neighbours and friends a house-warming, so, in compliance with this good and pleasant old custom, Lanty having brought home the wife in the course of the day, got a fiddler, and gave those who had come to see him a dance in the evening. This was all very well, and the fun and hilarity were proceeding briskly, when a noise was heard after night had set in, like a crushing and straining of ribs and rafters on the top of the house. The folks assembled all listened, and without doubt there w-as no- thing heard but crushing, and heaving, and pushing, and groan- ing, and panting, as if a thousand little men w-ere engaged in pulling down the roof. “ Come,” said a voice, wfflich spoke in a tone of command, “ work hard : you know we must have Lanty’s house down before midnight.” This was an unwelcome piece of intelligence to Lanty, w-ho, finding that his enemies were such as he could not cope with, walked out, and addressed them as follows : — “ Gintlemen, I humbly ax yer pardon for buildin’ on any place belongin’ to you ; but if you’ll have the civilitude to let 190 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL me alone this night, I’ll begin to pull down and remove the house to-morrow morning.” This was followed by a noise like the clapping of a thousand tiny little hands, and a shout of “ Bravo, Lanty ! build half way between the two Whitethorns above the boreen and after another hearty little shout of exultation, there was a brisk rushing noise, and they were heard no more. The story, however, does not end here ; for Lanty, when digging the foundation of his new house, found the full of a kam of gold : so that in leaving the fairies to their play-ground, he became a richer man than ever he otherwise would have been, had he never come in contact with them at all. There is another instance of their interference mentioned, in which it is difficult to say whether their simplicity or benevo- lence is the most amusing. In the north of Ireland there are spinning meetings of unmarried females frequently held at the houses of farmers, called hemps. Every young woman who has got the reputation of being a quick and expert spinner, attends where the kemp is to be held, at an hour usually before daylight, and on these occasions she is accompanied by her sweetheart or some male relative, who carries her wheel, and conducts her safely across the fields or along the road as the case may be. A kemp is indeed an animated and joyous scene, and one, besides, which is calculated to promote industry and decent pride. Scarcely any thing can be more cheering and agreeable than to hear at a distance, breaking the silence of morning, the light-hearted voices of many girls either in mirth or song, the humming sound of the busy wheels — -jarred upon a little, it is true, by the stridulous noise and checkings of the reels, and the voices of the reelers, as they call aloud the checks, together with the name of the girl and the quantity she has spun up to that period ; for the contest is generally commenced two or three hours before daybreak. This mirth- ful spirit is also sustained by the prospect of a dance — with which, by the way, every kemp closes ; and when the fair vic- tor is declared, she is to be looked upon as the queen of the meeting, and treated with the necessary respect. But to our tale. Every one knew Shaun Buie M ! Gaveran to be the cleanest, best-conducted boy, and the most industri- ous too, in the whole parish of Faugh-a-balla. Hard was it to find a young fellow who could handle a flail, spade, or reaping- hook, in better style, or who could go through his day’s work in a more creditable or workmanlike manner. In addition to this he was a fine, well-built, handsome young man as you coidd meet in a fair ; and so sign was on it, maybe the pretty girls weren’t likely to pull each other’s caps about him. Shaun, however, was as prudent as he was good-looking; and although he wanted a wife, yet the sorrow one of him but preferred tak- ing a well-handed, smart girl, who was known to be well be- haved and industrious like himself. Here, however, was where the puzzle lay on him, for instead of one girl of that kind, there were in the neighbourhood no less than a dozen of them— all equally fit and willing to become his wife, and all equally good- looking. There were two, however, whom he thought a trifle above the rest ; but so nicely balanced were Biddy Corrigan and Sally Gorman, that for the life of him he could not make up his mind to decide between them. Each of them had won her kemp ; and it was currently said by them who ought to know, that neither of them could overmatch the other. No two girls in the parish were better respected, nor more de- served to be so ; and the consequence was, they had every one’s good word and good wish. Now, it so happened that Shaun had been pulling a cord with each ; and as he knew not how to decide between, he thought he would allow them to do that themselves if they could. He accordingly gave out to the neighbours that he would hold a kemp on that day week, and he told Biddy and Sally especially that he had made up his mind to marry whichever of them won the kemp, for he knew right well, as did all the parish, that one of them must. The girls agreed to this very good-humouredly — Biddy tell- ing Sally, that she (Sally) would surely win it; and Sally, not to be outdone in civility, telling the same thing to her. Well, the week was nearly past, there being but two days till that of the kemp, when, about three o’clock, there walks into the house of old Paddy Corrigan, a little woman dressed in high-heeled shoes and a short red cloak. There was no one in the house but Biddy at the time, who rose up and placed a chair near the fire, and asked the little red woman to sit down and rest herself. She accordingly did so, and in a short time a lively chat commenced between them. “So,” said the strange woman, “there’s to be a great kemp in Shaun Buie M‘Gaveran’s ?” “ Indeed there is that, good woman,” replied Biddy, smil- ing a little, and blushing tp the back of that again, because she knew her own fate depended on it. “ And,” continued the little woman, “ whoever wins the kemp, wins a husband?” “ Ay, so it seems.” “ Well, whoever gets Shaun will be a happy woman, for he’s the moral of a good boy.” “ That’s nothing but the truth, any how,” replied Bickly, sighing for fear, you may be sure, that she herself might lose him ; and indeed a young woman might sigh from many a worse reason. “ But,” said she, changing the subject, “ you appear to be tired, honest woman, an’ I think you had better eat a bit, an’ take a good drink of buinnhe ramwher (thick milk) to help you on your journey.” “ Thank you kindly, a colleen,” said the woman ; “ I’ll take a bit, if you plase, hopin’ at the same time that you won’t be the poorer of it this day twelve months.” “ Sure,” said the girl, “you know that what we give from kindness, ever and always leaves a blessing behind it.” “Yes, acushla, when it is given from kindness.” She accordingly helped herself to the food that Biddy placed before her, and appeared after eating to be very much re- freshed. “ Now,” said she, rising up, “ you’re a very good girl, an’ if you are able to find out my name before Tuesday morning, the kemp-day, I tell you that- you’ll win it, and gain the hus- band.” “ Why,” said Biddy, “ I never saw you before. I don’t know who you are, nor where you live; how then can I ever find out your name ?” “ You never saw me before, sure enough,” said the old wo- man, “ an’ I tell you that you will never see me again but once ; an’ yet if you have not my name for me at the close of the kemp, you’ll lose all, an’ that will leave you a sore heart, for well I know you love Shaun Buie.” So saying, she went away, and left poor Biddy quite cast down at what she had said, for, to tell the truth, she loved Shaun very much, and had no hopes of being able to find out the name of the little woman, on which it appeared so much to her depended. It was very near the same hour of the same day that Sally Gorman was sitting alone in her father’s house, thinking of the kemp, when who should walk into her but our friend the little red woman ? “ God save you, honest woman,” said Sally; “ this is a fine day that’s in it, the Lord be praised !”, “ It is,” said the woman, “ as fine a day as one could wish for ; indeed it is.” “ Have you no news on your travels ?” asked Sally. “ The only news in the neighbourhood,” replied the other, “is this great kemp that’s to take place at Shaun Buie M‘Ga- veran’s. They say you’re either to win him or lose him then,” she added, looking closely at Sally as she spoke. “ I’m not very much afraid of that,” said Sally with confi- dence ; “ but even if I do lose him, I may get as good.” “ It’s not easy gettin’ as good,” rejoined the old woman, “ an’ you ought to be very glad to win him if you can.” “ Let me alone for that,” said Sally. “ Biddy’s a good girl, I allow ; but as for spinnin’, she never saw the day she could leave me behind her. Won’t you sit an’ rest you ?” she added ; “ you’re maybe tired.” “ It’s time for you to think of it,” thought the woman, but she spoke nothing ; “but,” she added to herself on reflection, “it’s better late than never — I’ll sit awhile, till I see a little closer what she’s made of.” She accordingly sat down and chatted upon several sub- jects, such as young women like to talk about, for about half an hour ; after which she arose, and taking her little staff in hand, she bade Sally good-bye and went her way. After passing a little from the house she looked back, and could not help speaking to herself as follow's : — “ She’s smooth and smart. But she wants the heart ; She’s tight and neat, But she gave no meat.” Poor Biddy now made all possible inquiries about the old tvo- man, but to no purpose. Not a soul she spoke to about her had ever seen or heard of such a woman. She felt very dis- spirited and began to lose heart, for there is no doubt that if she missed Shaun, it would have cost her many a sorrowful. TBE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 191 day. She knew she would never get his equal, or at least any one that she loved so well. At last the keinp day came, and with it all the pretty girls of the neighbourhood, to Shaun Buie’s. Among the rest, the two that were to decide their right to him were doubtless the handsomest pair by far, and every one admired them. To be sure, it was a blythe and merry place, and many a light laugh and sweet song rang out from pretty lips that day. Biddy and Sally, as every one expected, were far ahead of the rest, but so even in their spin- ning that the reelers could not for the life of them declare which was the best. It was neck and neck and head and head between the pretty creatures, and all who were at the kemp felt themselves wound up to the highest pitch of interest and curiosity to know which of them would be successful. The day was now more than half gone, and no difference was between them, when, to the surprise and sorrow of every one present, Biddy Corrigan’s heck broke in two, and so to all appearance ended the contest in favour of her rival ; and what added to her mortification, she w T as as ignorant of the red little woman’s name as ever. What was to be done ? All that could be done was done. Her brother, a boy of about fourteen years of age, happened to be present when the acci- dent took place, having been sent by his father and mother to bring them word how the match went on between the rival spinsters. Johnny Corrigan was accordingly dispatched with all speed to Donnel M‘Cusker’s, the wheelwright, in order to get the heck mended, that being Biddy’s last but hopeless chance. Johnny’s anxiety that his sister should win was of course very great, and in order to lose as little time as possi- ble he struck across the country, passing through, or rather close by, Kilrudden forth, a place celebrated as a resort of the fairies. What was his astonishment, however, as he passed a whitethorn tree, to hear a female voice singing, in accompa- niment to the sound of a spinning-wheel, the following words : “ There’s a girl in this town doesn’t know my name ; But my name’s Even Trot — Even Trot.” “ There’s a girl in this town,” said the lad, “ who’s in great distress, for she has broken her heck and lost a husband. I’m now goin’ to Donnel M‘Cusker’s to get it mended.” “ What’s her name?” said the little red woman. “ Biddy Corrigan.” The little woman immediately whipped out the heck from her own wheel, and giving it to the boy, desired him to bring it to his sister, and never mind Donnel M‘Cusker. “ You have little time to lose,” she added, “ so go back and give her this ; but don’t tell her how you got it, nor, above all things, that it was Even Trot that gave it to you.” The lad returned, and after giving the heck to his sister, as a matter of course told her that it was a little red woman called Even Trot that sent it to her, a circumstance which made the tears of delight start to Biddy’s eyes, for she knew now that Even Trot was the name of the old woman, and having known that, she felt that something good would hap- pen to her. She now resumed her spinning, and never did human fingers let down the thread so rapidly. The whole kemp were amazed at the quantity which from time to time filled her pirn. The hearts of her friends began to rise, and those of Sally’s party to sink, as hour after hour she was fast approaching her rival, who now spun if possible with double speed on finding Biddy coming up with her. At length they were again even, and just at that moment in came her friend the little red woman, and asks aloud, “ is there any one in this kemp that knows my name ?” This question she asked three times before Biddy could pluck up courage to answer her. She at last said, “ There’s a girl in this town does know your name— Your name is Even Trot — Even Trot.” “ Ay,” said the old woman, “ and so it is ; and let that name be your guide and your husband’s through life. Go steadily along, but let your step be even ; stop little ; keep al- ways advancing ; and you’ll never have cause to rue the day that you first saw Even Trot.” We need scarcely add that Biddy won the kemp and the husband, and that she and Shaun lived long and happily toge- ther ; and I have only now to wish, kind reader, that you and I may live longer and more happily still. Men no more desire another’s secrets, to conceal them, than they would another’s purse, for the pleasure only of carrying it. — Fieldiny, ■ ■ ■ - — - - — WHAT ARE COMFORTS ? BY MARTIN DOYLE. A few months ago I had the honour of passing a day in Eng- land with a gentleman of considerable property, who took the trouble of showing me a very extensive park and tillage farm near his manor-house, around which every thing indicated good taste and abundant wealth in the possessor. It has rarely been my good fortune to view more beautiful scenery than that which the demesne of F possesses within itself, or a place in which it would be more difficult to find a want, either in the nature or extent of the landscape : yet as we walked along, and were admiring some undulating land, about six miles distant, Mr F suddenly stopped, and remarked “ that he had long wished for that hill, in order to plant on it a clump or two of trees, as a picturesque termination to his prospect : it w r ould be such a comfort to have it ! I have offered forty years’ purchase for that land,” said he ; “ but the possessor is an obstinate fellow, and won’t part with it.” I ventured to suggest that he should endeavour to prevail upon the owner of the hill to plant the desired clumps ; but to this he gave a decided negative, saying, that it would be very uncomfortable indeed to be indebted to such an unaccommo- dating person for any thing. At dinner, the lady of the house, after asking me if I had been pleased with Mr F ’s farming, and proposing some other questions of that nature, which she considerately accom- modated to my capacity, in order to relieve me if possible from the embarrassment natural to a man of my station in life when sitting at table with his betters, and surrounded with luxuries quite new to him, inquired with great suavity of manner if I did not think that the owner of the hill property was very “ tiresome” in refusing Mr F the little comfort on which his heart was fixed ; and in the course of the dessert in- formed me that the governess was a very “ comfortable” per- son to have about children : that the King of the French had no “ comfort” in his ministers, and must find the attempts upon his life very “ tiresome” indeed. Having got over the dinner business, during which I had been really uncomfortable from the dread of doing something- very awkward, I became composed and familiar by degrees, and asked questions in my turn ; and was assured that there is very little comfort to be had in a mere country life with- out a first-rate bailiff and gardener, newspapers, new publi- cations, a billiard table, and society of a certain class within visiting distance ; that hot baths are indispensable comforts within the house, and that one adjoining the stables is also a great comfort to a hunter after a hard day’s work. It was also among their comforts to have the nursery in a remote wing, where the cry of a child could not reach the seniors of the family in their apartments, and a very great comfort to have a pew in the church with a fireplace in it. My host, who w r ould not allow me to leave Castle F that night, passed much of the evening in reading the papers of that day, standing at intervals with his back to the fire, which comfort he seemed to enjoy extremely, while I threw in a word now and then to him or his lady, to whom I detailed the receipt for making catsup from nettles, as it ap- pears in my Cyclopaedia of Agriculture. “ This economical method of making catsup,” she was pleased to say, “ would be a great comfort to the poor and so it w-ould, as I ventured to observe, if they had any thing to eat that required such sauce. I w r as conducted at night to a bedroom, with large mirrors, a pair of wax candles on the dressing-table, a luxurious chair placed opposite the fire, and an immensely high bedstead, curtained with damask satin. Being subject to the nightmare, I mounted this (by a step-ladder) with fear and trembling, lest I should roll out in the night ; and the apprehension of this calamity in a strange house, and among great people, kept me from sleeping all night, and rendered me extremely uncomfortable. I could not help thinking what Mrs Doyle and the children would say if they saw- me tucked under such fine bed-clothes, and stretched under such a grand canopy ; and to tell the truth, I wished myself safely out of it, and in my own crib at Ballyorley. Y r et to the obliging inquiries of my enter- tainers, on the ensuing morning, “ if my bed had been com- fortable?” I was unable to say Ao. But what are comforts ? thought I to myself all the time. Indeed, the consideration of this question has occupied my mind a good deal since, for I find the notions attached to the term “ comfort’ are infinitely varied. 192 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. When I left Castle F. , the weather was cold ; I mounted, however, the roof of a coach, and proceeded with many other passengers for Salisbury. We had not gone far when rain fell in torrents, driven by a piercing blast; umbrellas and coats were not waterproof, and when we alighted at the inn- door at Salisbury, there were none of the outsides who were not more or less wet and miserable. Four of us determined to remain at the inn all night ; and as we threw off dripping cloaks and mufflers, and approached a blazing fire in a small snug parlour, where a cloth, and knives and forks, and a plate-warmer, gave indications of a hot dinner, we all agreed that this was true comfort ; nor was this opinion changed when soon afterwards we sat in dry clothes by a fire, with — but let no one mention this to Father Mathew — a hot tumbler of brandy punch before each of us. But though we were unanimous on this occasion, I soon found that the utmost difference of opinion prevailed on other points, as to real comfort. One of the gentlemen, who sat at my right hand, whispered to me in confidence that there was no comfort in a single life, that his house was cheerless, his servants great plagues from want of a mistress to keep them in order, and his furniture going to destruction. My compa- nion on the other side, whose wife I understood to be a virago, gave a groan, shook his head two or three times, and whis- pered to me, “ If the gentleman wishes to enjoy comfort, he will leave matrimony alone.” Having occasion to hire a good brieltmaker to bring over with me to teach my workmen how bricks ought to be made, I went into several cottages inhabited by labourers in Shrop- shire. In the first into which I went, and this was very well furnished, were a man and his wife at breakfast. They had tea and sugar, a large white quartern loaf, and some crock but- ter. Very good, said I to myself ; these people are exceed- ingly comfortable. The man was a common field labourer, and earned twelve shillings a-week the year round. They had a piece of meat every day at dinner with their greens or potatoes, and bread into the bargain, and bread and butter in the evening. There stood a little boiler in a back kitchen, which I un- derstood was for brewing small beer occasionally ; and no- thing seemed wanting in the way of comforts to this couple. 1 was not offered a chair, nor did either of them ask me to sit down, but they answered such questions as I put to them. “ I’m glad to see you so comfortable,” said I. “ May I ask if you have any others in family ?” “ No, we’re only ourselves. " We han’t no children, boys nor girls,” said the woman in rather a dissatisfied tone. “ Well, then,” I rejoined, “you have the less cause for anxiety. Children are uncertain blessings, though certain cares ; and depend upon it, you are much better off than many parents who have them.” “ That is very true,” replied the woman ; “ but still a child or two would be a great comfort to us in our old age.” Their next-door neighbours had four noisy children and the same weekly wages. Here I was told by the parents, who were also at a tea breakfast, that their childless neighbours were far better off than they, as they had comforts beyond their own reach. “We can’t drink no beer,” said the man — (this was a lie, by the way, for he spent a shilling every week in the jerry-shop, to the real discomfort of his family), “ nor eat no good wittals, nor have nothing comfortable.” In short, in every house into which I went there was some- thing wanting to constitute comfort. In the dwelling of an artizan it was the want of a hot joint and a pudding on Sundays, or the substitution of an occa- sional dish of potatoes for bread or meat ; and sometimes it was the house itself which was uncomfortable from some cause or other. One or two of the very poorest families which I visited were disposed to think they would have comforts in the Union house which they could not afford under their own roofs, although those who were within that establishment de- clared that they had no comforts at all. An old woman in one of the cottages complained to me that John Snook had stolen one of her geese w'hen it was just ready for the market, and that it would be a great comfort to her if John Snook could be taken and transported. A parish schoolmaster assured me that he had no perfect comfort except in vacation time ; the boys when at school were so unruly that he had little peace or comfort except by flog- ging them. The boys, on the other hand, derived no comfort from being flogged. A sick man "told me that a bowl of wine whey would be of the greatest comfort to him ; and a woman recovering from fever, whose bed linen had been just changed, spoke within my hearing to her sister of the comfort which she felt in con- sequence. I hired a brickmaker in the course of that tour, and set off with him for Ireland. When I reached Liverpool, a steamer was about to leave for Wexford. Into this I entered. The steward showed me a comfortable berth, in which I was dread- fully sick during a passage of twenty hours, loathing the sight and smell of food ; yet he often came to ask me if there was any little comfort in the way of meat and drink that he could supply. A few days after I had reached home, I went into the cot- tages of my own workpeople, and there the distinction between them and those of the corresponding class in England in their estimate of what is comfortable, struck me very forcibly. Although the principle which leads most of us to desire something more than we possess in the way of comforts, as they are called — but of extreme luxuries in many instances— operates in the Irish labourer as among nine-tenths of his fel- low men, his notions of what is comfortable are truly moderate. One of my ploughmen was at breakfast as I walked into his house. He and his family were seated round a table— it had no cloth I must admit — helping themselves at pleasure from a dish of stirabout, and dipping each spoonful into a mug of milk. This I thought a far more suitable breakfast for them than weak and adulterated tea and white bread, at a much greater expense than an oatmeal diet. I asked Pat what he would think of bread and tea every morning and evening, to which he very sensibly replied that it wasn’t fit for him nor the likes of him ! but that a cup of tea and some bread would be very agreeable to them every Sunday evening, especially so to hiis old mother, who would think a little tea now and then a great comfort. As to meat, he would like that once or twice a-week, but was not so un- reasonable as to wish for it oftener. As long as the potatoes and the milk stood to him, he had no reason to complain ! Then what are comforts ? I again asked myself. Returning home, I called at the house of a dying widow whose character I had long respected. She was very poor, but always contented, though she could hardly be said at any time to have enjoyed what are considered the blessings of this life. I asked her if she wanted anything that I could send her — any little comforts. The word excited her languid spirit. “ I have wanted for nothing,” said she, “ that was really need- ful for me ; and now, O God ! ‘ thy comforts delight my soul.’ ” After a little time she said, “ Blessed be the God of all com- fort and again, “lam filled with comfort.” These words gave another turn to my thoughts : the sub- ject was placed in a new point of contemplation. Let my reader now in his turn, entering into the widow’s application of the term comfort, ponder upon the question, “ What is com- fort ?” and I am much mistaken if he does not discover that it is something which the world cannot give. Malaria. — It is not a mere theory, but a well-founded opinion, that all the destructive epidemics that have afflicted this globe have had their origin in malaria, which in a cold climate has produced typhus fever, in a more temperate one plague and yellow fever, and within the tropics cholera, each modified according to the idiosyncratic state of the sufferers. A few examples may be enumerated. Ancient Rome was subject to frequent epidemics, generally caused by inundations of the Tiber ; but in the year 81 of the Christian era, after a severe rainy season succeeded by intense heat, the mortality was so great as to carry off 10,000 citizens daily. It is nar- rated by historians that the year 1374 was marked by a comet, by excessive rain and heat, and succeeded by the most dread- ful mortality that we have any record of, and by which two- thirds of the human race wrnre destroyed in a very brief period ; many places were entirely depopulated ; 20,000,000 died in the east in one year, 100,000 perished in Venice, 50,000 were buried in one graveyard in London, grass grew up in the streets of cities hitherto most populous, and people fled in boats and ships to sea, regardless of property and friends. Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin. — . Agents : — R. Groombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster ltow, London ; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester ; C. Davies, North John Street., Liverpool ; J. Drake, Birmingham ; Slocoj^be & Simms, Leeds ; Frazer and Crawford, George Street, Edinburgh ; and David Robertson, Trongate, Glasgow, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 25. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1840. Volume I. THE MONUMENT TO THE MEMORY OF DR DOYLE, BY HOGAN. ; In presenting our readers with a drawing, made expressly for the purpose, of the Monumental Sculpture intended to memorise the mortal form of an illustrious Irishman, who was beloved and honoured by the great mass of his country- men, and respected for his talents by all, we have done that which we trust will give as much pleasure to most of our readers, as it has afforded gratification to ourselves. This monument is indeed a truly interesting one, whether considered in reference to its subject — the character of the distinguished individual whose memory it is designed to ho- nour — the circumstances which have given it existence — or, lastly, as a work of high art, the production of an Irishman whose talents reflect lustre on his country. It is, however, in this last point of view only, that, consistently with the plan originally laid down for the conduct of our little periodical, wejcan, yeatvtre to treat of jit i and considered in this way, we cannot conceive a subject more worthy of attracting public attention or more legitimately within the scope of one of the primary objects our Journal was designed to effect — namely, to make our country, and its people, without reference to sect or party, more intimately known than they had been previously, not only to strangers, but even to Irishmen themselves. In our present object, therefore, of lending our influence, such as it is, to make the merits of a great Irish artist more thoroughly known and justly appreciated, by our countrymen in particular, than they have hitherto been, we are only dis- charging a duty necessarily imposed upon us ; and the plea- sure which we feel in doing so wmuld be great indeed, if it were not diminished by the saddening reflection that it should be so necessary in the case of an artist of his eminence. . But, alas ! the scriptural adage, that no man is a prophet in his own country, is unfortunately nowhere so strikingly illustrated 194 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. as in Ireland, and of this fact Mr Hogan is a remarkable ex- ample. Holding, as he unquestionably does, a high place among the most eminent sculptors of Europe, he is as yet un- patronized by the aristocracy of his native country — is indeed perhaps scarcely known to them. Mr Hogan is not, as generally supposed, a native of Cork : he was born at Tallow, in the county of Waterford, in 1800, where his father carried on the business of a builder. He is of good family, both by the paternal and maternal sides ; his father being of the old Dalcassian tribe of the O’Hogans, the chiefs of whom were located in the seventeenth century at Ard- crony, in the county of Tipperary, four miles and a half to the north of Nenagh, where the remains of their castle and church are still to be seen. By the mother’s side he is de- scended from the celebrated Sir Richard Cox, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland in the reign of William and Mary, and Lord Chancellor in that of Queen Anne, his mother, Frances Cox, being the great-grandaughter of that eminent individual. Having received the ordinary school education, he was placed by his father, in the year 1812, under an attorney in Cork, named Michael Footte, with a view to his ultimately embracing the legal profession, and in this situation he re- mained for two years. This was the most unhappy period of his existence ; for, like Chantrey, the greatest of British sculptors, who was also articled to an attorney, being en- dowed by nature expressly to become an artist, the original bias of his mind to drawing and carving had by this time be- come a passion; and despite of the frequent chastisements his master bestowed on him, in the exuberance of his zeal to curb what he considered his idle propensities, his whole soul Avas given, not to law, but to the Fine Arts, and an artist he became accordingly. His father and his master seeing the utter use- lessness of any further attempts to divert his mind from its apparently destined course, he was released from his irksome employment, and at the age of fourteen entered the office of Mr Deane, now Sir Thomas Deane, of Cork, as an appren- tice, where he was soon employed as a draughtsman and carver of models, with a view to his becoming ultimately an architect. In Mr Deane he found a master who had the intellect to enable him to appreciate his talents, and the good feeling to induce him to encourage them ; and the first use he made of the chisels with which his patron supplied him, was to produce a carving in wood of a female skeleton the size of life, on which Dr Woodroffe for a season was able to lec- ture his pupils, as if it were, what it actually seems, a real ske- leton in form and colour. Under the instruction of this gen- tleman Mr Hogan studied anatomy for several years, during which period he made for his improvement many carvings in wood of hands and feet, and also essayed his talents on a figure of Minerva the size of life, which still remains over the entrance of the Life and Fire Insurance Office in the South Mall. Rut though Mr Hogan was thus employed in pursuits con- genial to his tastes, and to a great degree conducive to his future eminence as a sculptor, the idea of embracing sculp- ture as a profession did not occur to him for several years after, nor were the requisite means of study for that profes- sion provided for the student in Cork at this time. There was as yet in that city no Academy of Arts or other institu- tion like those in Dublin, provided, for the use of students, with those objects which are so essential to the formation of a cor- rect taste in the higher departments of the Fine Arts, namely, a selection of casts from the antique statues ; and until such subjects for study were acquired, the efforts of genius, how- ever ardent, in the pursuit of beauty and excellence, were ne- cessarily blind and fortuitous. Happily, however, this desi- deratum was at length supplied in Cork, where a Society for Promoting the Fine Arts was formed in February 1816; and to this Society the Prince Regent, in 1818, through the in- tercession of the late Marquis of Conyngham and other Irish noblemen who had influence with him, was induced to present a selection of the finest casts from the antique statues, which had been sent him as a gift by the Roman Pontiff, and the value of which the Prince but little appreciated. The result was not only beyond anything that the most sanguine could have anticipated in the rapid creation of artists of first-rate excellence, but also in establishing the fact that among our own countrymen the finest genius for art abundantly exists, and that it only requires the requisite objects for study, with encouragement, to develope it. The presence of these newly acquired treasures of ancient art, which consisted of one hun- dred and fifteen subjects selected by Canova, and cast under Ws direction, kindled a flame in Mr Hogan’s mind never to be extinguished but with life, and he immediately applied himself to their study with his whole heart and soul. Thus occupied he remained till 1823, surrounded and excited to emulation by the kindred spirits of Mac Oise, Scottowe, Ford — the glorious Ford ! — Buckley the architect, equally glorious — Keller, his own brother Richard, and many other of lesser names — many of whom, alas for their own and their country’s fame ! paid the price of their early distinction with their lives. Well may the people of Cork feel proud of this constellation of youthful genius — a brighter one was never as- sembled together in recent times. The period, however, had now arrived when the eagle wing of Hogan was to try its strength ; and most fortunately for him, an accident at this time brought to Cork a man more than ordinarily gifted with the power to assist him in its flight. The person we allude to was the late William Paulett Carey, an Irishman no less distinguished for his abilities as a critical writer on works of art, than for his ardent zeal in aiding the struggles of genius, by making their merit known to the world. In August 1823, this gentleman, on the occasion of paying a visit to the gallery of the Cork Society, “ accidentally saw a small figure of a Torso, carved in pine timber, which had fallen down under one of the benches. On taking it up,” to continue Mr Carey’s own interesting narrative, “ he was struck by the correctness and good taste of the design, and the newness of the execution. He was surprised to find a piece of so much ex- cellence, apparently fresh from the tool, in a place where the arts had been so recently introduced, and where he did not expect to meet anything but the crude essays of uninstructed beginners. On inquiry he was informed it was the work of a young native of Cork, named Hogan, who had been appren- ticed to the trade of a carpenter under Mr Deane, an eminent builder, and had at his leisure hours studied from the Papal casts, and practised carving and modelling with intense ap- plication. Hogan was then at work above stairs, in a small apartment in the Academy. The stranger immediately paid him a visit, and was astonished at the rich composition of a Triumph of Silenus, consisting of fifteen figures, about four- teen inches high, designed in an antique style, by this self- taught artist, and cut in bas-relief, in pine timber. He also saw various studies of hands and feet ; a grand head of an Apostle, of a small size; a copy of Michael Angelo’s mask; some groups in bas-relief after designs by Barry ; and a female skeleton, the full size, after nature ; all cut with delicacy and beauty, in the same material. A copy of the antique Silenus and Satyrs, in stone, was chiselled with great spirit ; and the model of a Roman soldier, about two feet high, would have done credit to a veteran sculptor. A number of his drawings in black and white chalks, from the Papal casts, marked nis progressive improvement and sense of ideal excellence. The defects in his performances were such as are inseparable from an early stage of untaught study, and were far overbalanced by their merits. When his work for his master was over for the day, he usually employed his hours in the evening in these performances. The female skeleton had been all executed during the long winter nights.” Becoming thus acquainted with Mr Hogan’s abilities, Mr Carey, with that surprising prophetic judgment with which he was so eminently gifted, at once predicted the young sculptor’s future fame, and proclaimed his genius in every quarter in which he hoped it might prove serviceable to him. He commenced by writing a series of letters, which were in- serted in the Cork Advertiser, “ addressed to the nobility, gen- try, and opulent merchants, entreating them to raise "a fund by subscription, to defray the expense of sending Hogan to Italy, and supporting him therefor three or four years, to afford him the advantages of studying at Rome.” But for some time these letters proved ineffectual, and would probably have failed totally in their object but for Mr Carey’s untiring zeal. Acting under his direction, Mr Hogan was induced to address a letter to that noble patron of British genius, the late Lord de Tabley, then Sir John Fleming Leicester, and to send him at the same time two specimens of his carvings, *• as the humble offering of a young self-taught artist.” ’ibis letter, which was backed by one from Mr Carey himself, was responded to at once in a letter written in the kindest spirit, and which con- tained an enclosure of twenty-five pounds as Sir John’s sub- scription to the proposed fund. This was the first money ac- tually paid in, and subscriptions soon followed from others. Through Mr Carey’s enthusiastic representations, the Royal Irish Institution was induced to contribute the sum of one hun- dred pounds, and the Royal Dublin Society to vote twenty- THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 195 five pounds for some specimens of his carvings which Mr Hogan submitted to their notice. These acts of liberality were honourable to those public bodies ; yet, as Mr Carey well ob- served, it was to Lord de Tabley’s generosity that Mr Hogan’s gratitude was most due. Here, as he said, “ was a young man of genius in obscurity, and wholly unknown to his lordship, re- scued from adversity in the unpromising morning of life — a self-taught artist built up to fame and fortune by his munifi- cence — a torch lighted, which I hope will burn bright for ages, to the honour of the empire. Hogan may receive thousands of pounds from future patrons, but it is to Lord de Tabley’s timely encouragement that he will be indebted for every thing.” The subscriptions collected for Mr Hogan amounted in all to the sum of two hundred and fifty pounds ; and thus pro- vided, he set out for Italy, visiting London on his way, for the purpose of presenting letters to Sir Thomas Lawrence and Sir Francis Chantrey, which Lord de Tabley had given him, in the hope that they would procure him recommendatory letters from those great artists that would be serviceable to him in Rome. But these introductions proved of little value to him. Chantrey expressed regret that he knew no one in the “ Eternal City” to whom he could give him a letter ; and though Lawrence kindly gave him an introduction to the Duchess of Devonshire, that distinguished lady had died a few days before Mr Hogan reached Rome ; “ so that,” as Mr Carey remarks, “he found himself an entire stranger, with little knowledge of the world, without acquaintance or pa- tron, and incapable of speaking the language, at the moment of commencing his studies in Italy.” But the young sculptor, on leaving his native country, was provided by Lord de Tabley with something more valuable than these letters to British artists — namely, a commission to execute a statue in marble for him, as soon as he should think himself qualified by his preparatory studies for the undertaking. The statue, which was to launch the young sculptor into professional life in Italy, was commenced soon after, but was not completed before his noble patron had paid the debt of nature. Its subject, which is taken from Gessner’s Death of Abel, is Eve, who shortly after her expulsion from Paradise picks up a dead bird, which being the first inanimate creature that she has seen, fills her with emotions of surprise, terror, and pity. This statue, which is the size of life, and which is of ex- quisite beauty, is now at Lord de Tabley’s seat in Cheshire. While this statue was in progress, Mr Hogan conceived the subject and completed the model of his second great work — one in which the peculiar powers of his genius were more fully developed, and on the execution of which, from peculiar circumstances, he entei'ed with the most excited enthusiasm. During the first year of his residence at Rome, Mr Hogan happening to be present at an evening meeting of artists of eminence, the conversation turned on the difficulty of pro- ducing any thing in sculpture perfectly original ; and to Mr Hogan’s astonishment, the celebrated British sculptor Gibson stated as his opinion that it was impossible now to imagine an attitude or expression in the human figure which had not been already appropriated by the great sculptors of antiquity. This opinion, though coming from one to whom our country- man then looked up. appeared to him a strange and unsound one, and with the diffidence of an artist whose powers were as yet untried, he ventured to express his dissent from it ; when Gibson, astonished at his presumption, somewhat pettishly re- plied, “ Then let us see if you are able to produce such an original work !” The challenge thus publicly offered could not be refused by one of Hogan’s temperament ; and the young sculptor, stung with the taunt, lost no time in entering upon a work which was to test his abilities as an artist, and to rescue his character from the imputation of vanity and rashness. Under such feelings Mr Hogan toiled day and night at his ■work, till he submitted to the artists in whose presence the challenge had been offered, the result of his labours — his statue of the Drunken Faun — a work which the great Thor- w'aldsen pronounced a miracle of art, and which, if Hogan had never produced another, would have been alone sufficient to immortalize his name. It is to be regretted that this figure, which has all the beauty and truth of the antique sculpture, combined with the most perfect originality, and w'hich Mr Hogan himself has recently expressed his conviction that it is beyond his power to excel, should never have been executed in marble ; but a cast of it, presented by Lord de Tabley to the Royal Irish Institution (though intended by Mr Hogan for the Dublin Society), may still be seen in their deserted hall. We have given these, as we trust, not uninteresting details of Mr Hogan’s early life, at greater length than the limits as- signed to our article can well allow, and we must notice his subsequent career in briefer terms. Though enrolled now among the resident sculptors in Rome, his difficulties were not yet over ; and in spite of the most enthusiastic efforts on his part, they might and probably would have been ineffectual in sus- taining him, if no friendly aid had come to his assistance. In two years after his arrival in Rome, or at the end of the year 1825, Hogan found himself again in a state of embarrassment, without a commission, his funds exhausted, or at least reduced to a state inadequate to the necessary outlay of a sculptor in the purchase of marble, the rent of a studio, and the payment of living models. For his extrication from these difficulties he was again indebted to the liberality of Lord de Tabley and the zeal of his advocate Mr Carey, by whom a second sub- scription was collected, chiefly in England, amounting to one hundred and fifty pounds ; of which sum twenty-five pounds was contributed by Lord de Tabley in the first instance, and twenty-five pounds by the Royal Irish Institution. Trifling as this amount was, it proved sufficient for its object, and Mr Hogan was never again necessitated to receive pecuniary as- sistance from the public. He applied himself forthwith to the production of a marble figure intended for his friend and former master Sir Thomas Deane, but which when finished his necessities obliged him to dispose of to the present Lord Powerscourt, and for which he received one hundred pounds, being barely the cost of the marble and roughing out or boasting. This statue, which is about half the size of life, is now preserved in Powerscourt House ; and we may remark, that it is the only work of our countryman in the possession of an Irish nobleman. His next important work was the exquisite statue of the Dead Christ, now placed beneath the altar of the Roman Catholic church in Clarendon Street. This work was originally ordered for a chapel in Cork by the Rev. Mr O’Keeffe; but that gentle- man, on its arrival in Dublin, not being able to raise the funds required for its payment, permitted Mr Hogan to dispose of it to the clergymen of Clarendon Street, who paid for it the sum originally stipulated, namely, four hundred and fifty pounds ; and we need scarcely add, that this statue is one of the most interesting objects of art adorning our metropolitan city. Mr Hogan subsequently executed a duplicate of this statue, but with some changes in the design, for the city of Cork ; but we regret to have to add that he has been as yet but very inadequate y rewarded for his labours on that work, a sum of two hundred and thirty-seven pounds being still due him, and the amount which he has actually received (two hun- dred pounds) being barely the cost of the marble and rough workmanship. The execution of this statue was followed by that of a large sepulchral monument in basso relievo to the memory of the late Dr Collins, Roman Catholic Bishop of Clovne — a figure of Religion holding in her lap a medallion portrait of the bishop. For this work Mr Hogan was to have received two hundred, pounds, but there is still a balance of thirty pounds due to him. We next find Mr Hogan engaged on a second work for our city — the Pieta, or figures of the Virgin and the Redeemer, of colossal size, executed in plaster for the Rev. Dr Flanagan, Roman Catholic Rector of the chapel in Francis Street, which it now adorns. Of this work, an engraving, with a masterly description and eulogium from the pen of the Marchese Mel- ehiori, a great authority in matters of critical taste in the fine arts, has been published in the Ape Italiana — a work of the highest authority, published monthly in Rome ; and we should state for the honour of our country, that our own Ho- gan and the sculptor Gibson are the only "British artists whose works have as yet found a place in it. Mr Hogan’s subsequent works, exclusive of a number of busts, may now be briefly enumerated. First, a marble figure of the late Archbishop of Paris, about two and a half feet high, executed for the Lord de Clifford ; second, the Judg- ment of Paris — two figures in marble about the same height as the last — for General Sir James Riall, an Irish baronet re- sident in Bath ; third, a monumental alto relievo to the me- mory of Miss Farrell of Dublin, executed for her mother, and considered by Gibson as the best of all our sculptor’s w'orks ; fourth, a Genio on a sarcophagus, a monument for the family of the late Mr Murphy of Cork ; and, lastly, the Monument to i Dr Doyle, on which we have now to offer a lew remarks. Of the general design of this noble monument our prefixed ■ illustration will afford a tolerably correct idea ; but it would 196 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. require more than one illustration of this kind to convey an adequate notion of its various beauties and merits, for there is scarcely a point in which it can be viewed in which it is not equally effective and striking. The subject, as a sculptural one should be, is of the most extreme simplicity, and yet of the most impressive interest — a Christian prelate in the act of offering up a last appeal to heaven for the regeneration of his country, which is personified by a beautiful female figure, who is represented in an attitude of dejection at his side. In this combination of the real and the allegorical there is nothing obscure or unintelligible even to the most illiterate mind. In the figure of the prostrate female we recognise at a glance the attributes of our country, and there existed no necessity for the name “ Erin,” inserted in very questionable taste upon her zone, to determine her character. She is represented as rest- ing on one knee, her body bent and humbled, yet in her ma- jestic form retaining a fullness of beauty and dignity of cha- racter ; her turret- crowned head resting on one arm, while the other, with an expression of melancholy abandonment, re- clines on and sustains her ancient harp. In the male figure which stands beside her in an attitude of the most unaffected E 'ace and dignity, we see a personification of the sublime in the piscopal character. He stands erect, his enthusiastic and deeply intellectual countenance directed upwards imploringly, while with one hand he touches with delicate affection his earthly mistress, and with the other, stretched forth with passionate devotion, he appeals to heaven for her protection. This is true and enduring poetry ; and, as expressive of the sentiment of religious patriotism unalloyed by any selfish con- sideration, is far superior to the thought which Moore has so exquisitely expressed in the well-known lines — “ In my last humble prayer to the spirit above. Thy name shall be mingled with mine !” Such is the touching poetical sentiment embodied in this work, which, considered merely as a work of art, has merits above all praise. In the beauty of its forms, its classical purity of design, its simplicity and freedom from affectation or mannerism, its exquisite finish and characteristic execu- tion, and its pervading grace, truth, and naturalness, it is be- yond question the finest production of art in monumental sculpture that Irish genius has hitherto achieved ; and, taken all and all, is, as we honestly believe, without a rival in any work of the same class in the British empire. We regret to have to state that Mr Hogan is, as we are in- formed, as yet unpaid for this great national work, or that at least there is more than a moiety of the sum agreed for, which was one thousand pounds, remaining due to him. But surely his country, which has the deepest interest in sustaining him in his career of glory, will not suffer him to depart from her shores without fulfilling her part of a compact with one who has so nobly completed his. We cannot believe it. It will be seen by a retrospective glance at the details which we have given of Mr Hogan’s labours during the past seven- teen years in which he has been toiling as a professional artist, that those labours have been any thing but commensu- rately rewarded ; they have indeed been barely sufficient to enable him to sustain existence. But brighter prospects are opening upon him for the future. His character as a sculptor is now established beyond the possibility of controversy. His merits have been recently recognised and honoured by the highest tribunal in the City of the Arts with a tribute of appro- bation never before bestowed on a native of the British Isles : he has been elected unanimously, and without any solicita- tion or anticipation on his part, a member of the oldest Aca- demy of the Fine Arts in Europe — that which enrolled amongst its members the divine Raphael, and all the other illustrious artists of the age of Leo, and which holds its meetings upon their graves — the Academy of the Virtuosi del Pantheon. His fellow-countrymen are also beginning to have a just appre- ciation of his merits, and are coming forward nobly to supply him with employment for future years ; and when lie returns to his Roman studio, it will be to labour on works worthy of his country’s liberality, and calculated to raise her fame amongst the civilized nations of the world. Need we add, that he has our most ardent wishes for his future success and happi- ness S P. For the satisfaction of our readers we are induced to append to the pre- ceding notice of Mr Hogan the following list of some of the principal com- missions which he has recently received in Ireland : — The Monument to the late Mr Secretary Drummond. A Statue of the late Mr William Crawford of Cork, for which Mr Hogan Is to receive L.1000. A monumental alto relievo, consisting of three figures, to the memory of the late Mr William Beamish, for Blackrock Chapel, Cork — L.650. Monument to the late Dr Brinkley, Bishop of Cloyne. A colossal figure in relievo for the Cathedral of Cloyne. An alto relievo for the Convent at Rathfarnham. An alto relievo for the Chapel at Ross, county of Wexford, commissioned from John Maher, Esq. M. P.— &c. &c. ON ANIMAL TAMING. FIRST ARTICLE. That all animals, however fierce and ungovernable may be their natural dispositions, have nevertheless implanted by a wise Providence within their breasts a certain awe, a vague, indefinable dread of man, which, although meeting with him for the first time, will induce them to fly his presence, or at all events shun encounter, is, we think, a fact which no ob- server of nature will deny. This instinct of submission to human beings exists among all creatures, and the greater the intelligence they possess, the more powerful is its operation. When we meet with instances of a nature calculated to over- turn this theory — such as wild animals attacking and destroy- ing travellers, or preying upon the shepherd as he guards his flock, with others of a similar description — instead of hastily presuming upon the falsity of the above position, we should rather seek for some explanation of the reasons which in these cases checked for the time the workings of the animal’s natu- ral instinct. These will be for the most part easily enough discovered, if sought for in a spirit of impartial inquiry. The lion and the tiger are prompted by natural instinct to shun the haunts and the presence of man — they choose for their lairs dark and impenetrable forests — they select for their habitation a situation whither man has not as yet approached — and ac- cording as the work of settlement and cultivation advances, they retreat before it into their dark and gloomy fastnesses. Does the traveller encounter a lion or a tiger ? The animal is prompted by nature to give place to him, and usually slinks off, growling with the thirst for blood, but still fearing to attack man. The shouts of women and children suffice to scare the fierce and rapacious wolves, as they descend in troops from the mountains to appease their hunger with vic- tims from the flocks of the shepherds. The bear meets with the bold hunter or woodcutter in the American backwoods, but is never known to attack him, unless the instinct of sub- mission to man is overruled by other instincts for the time more imperative in their demands. True, if the lion be hun- gry when the traveller shall cross his path, he wall sometimes, though such instances are of rare occurrence, attack and de- vour him. True, if the wolves are unable to satisfy their appetite by other means, they will attack and devour human beings ; and if the bear be likewise rendered furious by the calls of hunger, she will treat the woodsman with little ceremony. Still these instances only show that hunger over- comes fear — an explanation which no one can refuse to admit. What indeed will not the gnawings of hunger effect ? Has it not caused fathers to butcher their sons, mothers to devour the infant at their breast? When capable, then, of overcom- ing the most powerful of instincts, maternal affection, and that too in the teeth of reason, how can we wonder at its overcoming an inferior instinct, and that in a brute animal where there existed nothing to be overcome beyond that in- stinct ? I might write a vast deal upon this subject ; but my object is merely to show, at starting, that an instinctive awe of man, and a disposition to yield to his authority, is inherent in the lower animals. This, then, being the case, it will rea- dily be perceived that the domestication of any animal by man only requires that he should carefully remove all obsta- cles to the operation of this instinctive principle ; and on the other hand, employ suitable means to strengthen and estab- lish it. There are, doubtless, but few of my readers who have not witnessed the performances of Van Amburgh, and likewise those of Van Buren with Batty’s collection. They have, I am sure, been greatly astonished at the degree of sub- jection to which these wild animals were reduced, and they are doubtless curious to learn how this end was attained. As I happened to make myself acquainted with the mode in which the subjection of these fierce brutes was effected, I am happy to be able to render them some information. The treatment was simple enough. It consisted mainly of two in- gredients — 1st, ample feeding, in order that the instinct of appetite should not present itself in opposition to that of dread 197 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. of man ; and, 2d, liberal chastisement and severe blows on the slightest appearance of rebellion, in order to strengthen and firmly establish their awe of him. I myself have devoted a good deal of time to the domestica- tion of animals, and by following out the two principles just laid down, I found myself invariably successful. The polecat, although of inconsiderable size, is an animal of infinitely greater fierceness than the tiger ; yet I had one so thoroughly domesticated that it was permitted to enjoy perfect liberty. I succeeded equally with the fox, the badger, and the otter , as a paper which recently appeared in the Penny Journal was designed to show. In fact, I should say that mere fierceness is but a very slight obstacle to domestication — timidity is much harder to be overcome. The timid races of animals require a mode of treatment directly opposed to the above. They require to have their dread of man diminished, and their bold- ness encouraged. If you wish to tame a very timid animal, instead of supplying it with food you must let it fast, in order to render it so bold with hunger that it will eat in your pre- sence and from your hand. If you can get its confidence raised to such a degree that it will bite you or attempt to do so, so much the better — those little vices will afterwards be easily eradicated. I have succeeded in familiarizing the most timid creatures — the rat and the mouse, for instance. The public has already had an account of how I succeeded with the former of these animals in the pages of the “ Medical Press” and “Naturalist.” Some of these days I shall give a paper on the latter in the Penny Journal. Van Amburgh has done much with his animals ; but in con- sequence of exhibiting with specimens not as yet perfectly subdued, he has met with some severe accidents. More cau- tion and less haste would have prevented these. One of the principal ingredients that should enter into the composition of an amimal tamer, is courage. If the animal you are en- deavouring to domesticate perceive that you fear it — and ani- mals are instinctively sharp-sighted — from that instant all chance of control ceases. You must be prepared to endure bites, scratches, &c. with, at all events apparent, recklessness, and should never suffer any thing to delay your chastisement : the severer it is, the less frequently will you have to repeat it. Van Amburgh possesses this ingredient in an eminent degree. I once saw him exhibiting with his superb Barbary lion, since dead ; as he left the cage, the animal rushed at him, and succeeded in inflicting a sharp scratch upon his hand. Now, had Van Amburgh displayed fear, or in short acted otherwise than he did, his reign had been over, and the lion would in all probability have renewed his attack the next op- portunity, and have killed him. But what did he do ? He returned into the cage, and advancing sternly and undauntedly towards the lion, saluted him with a shower of blows over the head and face, with the small iron rod which he always carried with him. And mark the result. The brute at once yielded, quailed before his master, who, planting a foot upon the pros- trate body of his late assailant, coolly wiped the blood from his hand, amidst the deafening plaudits of the spectators, who had witnessed the appalling scene with feelings more easily imagined than described. There is another description of animal taming, which I must not omit to mention, viz, by charms or drugs. There were, and are indeed still to be met with, although more rarely than formerly, persons who profess to be able, by some secret spell or charm, to tame the fiercest horse, or calm the fury of the most ferocious watch-dog. There are also per- sons who follow the trade of rat-catching, and pretend that by means of certain drugs they can entice away all the rats from the premises to which they are called in to exercise their skill. There are also a set of men in India and Persia who profess to charm serpents, and draw them from their holes. Of these last it is not at present my design to speak. I may, however, return to them in a future paper. The first of these, or those who pretend to possess the power of quelling the spirit of the horse, or appeasing the vi- gilant fury of the dog, are now but few in number, and very seldom to be met with. They abounded more in Ireland than they did in the sister kingdom, and were called “ whisperers.” Perhaps the best mode in which I can bring them and their practices before my readers, is by giving them an account of the last and most celebrated whisperer that we recollect . His name was James Sullivan, and he possessed the power of taming the most furious horse, if left alone with him for about half an hour. The name of this singular man is recorded by Townsend in his “ Survey of the County of Cork,” and we shall quote his account of Sullivan’s performances, to which he states himself to have been an eye-witness : — “ James Sullivan was a native of the county of Cork, and an awkward ignorant rustic of the lowest class, generally known by the appellation of ‘ the Whisperer and his profession was horse-breaking. The credulity of the vulgar bestowed that epithet upon him from an opinion that he communicated his wishes to the animal by means of a whisper, and the singu- larity of his method gave some colour to the superstitious be- lief. As far as the sphere of his control extended, the boast of veni, vidi , vici, was more justly claimed by James Sullivan than by Caesar, or even Bonaparte himself. How his art was acquired, or in what it consisted, is likely to remain for ever unknown, as he has lately left the world without divulgingit.. His son, who follows the same occupation, possesses but a small portion of the art, having either never learned its true secret, or being incapable of putting it in practice. The wonder of his skill consisted in the short time requisite to ac- complish his design, which was performed in private, and without any apparent means of coercion. Every description of horse, or even mule, whether previously broke, or unhan- dled, whatever their peculiar vices or ill habits might have been, submitted without show of resistance to the magical influ- ence of his art, and in the short space of half an hour became gentle and tractable. The effect, though instantaneously pro- duced, was generally durable ; though more submissive to him than to others, yet they seemed to have acquired a docility unknown before. When sent for to tame a vicious horse, he directed the stable in which he and the object of his experi- ment were placed, to be shut, with orders not to open the door until a signal was given. After a tete-a-tete between him and the horse for about half an hour, during which little or no bustle was heard, the signal was made ; and on opening the door, the horse was seen lying down, and the man by his side, playing familiarly with him, like a child with a puppy dog. From that time he was found perfectly willing to submit to discipline, however repugnant to his nature before. Some saw his skill tried on a horse which could never before be brought to stand for a smith to shoe him. The day after Sullivan’s half-hour lecture, I went, not without some incredulity, to the smith’s shop, with many other curious spectators, where we were eye-witnesses of the complete success of his art. This, too, had been a troop horse, and it was supposed, not without reason, that after re- gimental discipline had failed, no other would be found avail- ing. I observed that the animal seemed afraid whenever Sul- livan either spoke or looked at him. How that extraordinary ascendancy could have been obtained, it is difficult to conjec- ture. In common cases this mysterious preparation was un- necessary. He seemed to possess an instinctive power of in- spiring axve, the result perhaps of natural intrepidity, in which I believe a great part of his art consisted ; though the circum- stance of the tete-a-tete shows that upon particular occasions something more must have been added to it. A faculty like this would in other hands have made a fortune, and great of- fers have been made to him for the exercise of his art abroad ; but hunting, and attachment to his native soil, were his ruling passions. He lived at home in the style most agreeable to his disposition, and nothing could induce him to quit Dunhal- low and the foxhounds.” Other whisperers have lived since Sullivan, but none of them have attained an equal degree of fame. I met with one some years ago of the name of O’Hara, and I can truly affirm that his performances were indeed won- derful, and precisely similar to those of Sullivan. How O'Hara discovered the secret, I know not ; neither am I sure that it was identical with that possessed by Sullivan. On one occasion, while under the influence of liquor, O’Hara was heard to declare that the secret lay in rocking the horse ; but on another, when equally tipsy, he mentioned biting the animal’s ear. It is already I believe known to those acquainted with horses, that by grasping the shoulder with one hand just where the mane begins, and laying the other with firmness upon the crupper, and then swaying the animal backwards and forwards, beginning with a very gentle motion and gradually increasing it, you will in a few minutes be able to throw the horse on his side with a comparatively trifling degree of exertion ; and it is certain that this treatment is frequently resorted to by knowing jockeys to break the spirit of a stubborn horse ; for after having been thrown twice, or at most thrice, the spirit of the animal seems wholly subdued, and he appears possessed with the most unqualified respect and dread of the person who threw him. This was in all probability what O’Hara meant 198 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. by rocking, and I have little doubt but that this was one of the component parts, at all events, of the treatment resorted to by the whisperers. As to biting the ear, 1 have seen this tried, and that successfully. If you succeed in getting the ear of the most vicious horse between your teeth, and bite it with all your force, you will find the rage of the animal sud- denly subside, his spirit will appear to have forsaken him, and a word or a look from you will cause him to start and trem- ble with excess of terror. Once the ferocity of an animal is removed, it is an easy matter to conciliate his affections. May not these two modes of treatment combined, or one or the other, as the occasion seemed to require, have constituted the secret of the wonder-working whisperers ? The sugges- tion is at least plausible, and the experiment should be fully tried ere it be rejected. In an article which appeared lately on the subject of ani- mal taming in the Times newspaper, mention is made of Mr King, owner of the “ learned horse” at present exhibiting in London. This person states that his secret depends upon pressing a certain nerve in the horse’s mouth, which he calls the “ nerve of susceptibility.” May not the act of whispering- have likewise depended upon compressing with the teeth some similar nerve in the ear ? H. D. It. RELICS. BY J. U. U. “ Raphael was buried in the Pantheon (Sta. Maria della Rotonda), in a chapel which he had himself endowed, and near the place where his betrothed bride had been laid. The im- mediate neighbourhood was afterwards selected by other painters as their place of rest. Raldassane Peruzzi, Gio- vanni da Udine, Pierino del Vaga, Taddeo Zuccaro, and others, are buried near. No question had ever existed as to the pre- cise spot where the remains of the master lay ; but a few years since the Roman antiquaries began to raise doubts even re- specting the church in which Raphael was buried. In the end, permission was obtained to make actual search; and Vasari’s account was in this instance verified. The tomb was found as he describes it, behind the altar itself of the chapel above mentioned. Four views of the tomb and its contents were engraved from drawings by Cammucini, and thus pre- serve the appearance that presented itself. The shroud had been fastened with a number of metal rings and points ; some of these were kept by the sculptor Fabrio of Rome, who is also in possession of casts from the skull and right hand. Passa- vant remarks, judging from the cast, that the skull was of a singularly fine form. The bones of the hand were all perfect, but they crumbled into dust after the mould was taken. The skeleton measured about five feet seven inches. The coffin was extremely narrow, indicating a very slender frame. The precious relics were ultimately restored to the same spot, after being placed in a magnificent sarcophagus, presented by the present Pope .” — Quarterly Review. Ay, there are glorious things even in the dust Which still must ever from the human heart Win homage next devotion. ’Tis in vain To ask the wherefore, or demand what are they Amid the keen realities of life ? Old coin, or broken casque, or fretted stone — The waste of Time— -the rack upon life’s shore Thrown up by the spent waves of centuries — They have no meaning in the vulgar tongue ; Their very uses know them not — things past Into the chaos of forgotten forms. But here the root of this deep error lies. The world’s deep Lethe onward blindly glides, A perishable Present ! glorious only Because no Future and no Past are seen To scare or shame its dreamy voyager. In dull forgetfulness the error lies, That hath no feeling of the mighty Past Espoused to sense, and purblind as the mole To all that meets the intellectual eye : To such Iona is a heap of stones, And Marathon a desert. * * * * * * O, how changed ! The meanest thing on which great Time hath set. His awful stamp (the long-surviving thought Left by the mind of other days) appears To knowledge and the gaze of memory, More instantaneous than those words of power W T hich ancient legends say the tomb obeyed — , The broken pillar, and the moss-grown pile, Dilate into antique magnificence : At once the stern old rampart crowns its height — The donjon keep, the tower of ancient pride, The rock-built fortress of old robber kings, Start into life, and from their portals pour Mailed foray forth, or pomp of feudal war. The temple swells from vacancy, o’erarching With pillared roof, and dim solemnity, The worship of old time. The dry bones live Of ancient ages : monarch, sage, and bard, Stand in their living lineaments, invested With power, or wisdom, or the gift of song. These still are common ruins — the remains Of those who were the vulgar of their day, Who battkd, built, and traded, and so died, Leaving no trace but nameless monuments, The cast attire of ages, which but serve To show the present how the past went mad, And, like Cassandra, prophesy in vain. The earth yet bears more glorious vestiges Of Time’s illustrious few, whose memory Is greater than the greatest thing that lives — Haloed by veneration, wonder, love — Whose very tombs stand in life’s calendar Eras of thought once seen. Is there an eye Could coldly gaze on aught that bears a trace Of Avon’s matchless master of the breast ? Who could approach old Drvburgh’s tombs, and feel not The illustrious presence of his great compeer, Whose tomb yet moistens with a nation’s woe, Whose star is young in heaven ? Or who can walk Unmoved the cloisters and religious aisles Where Milton lies, renowned with “ prophets old,” And honoured Newton, to whom the starred vault Is an enduring monument, as much As the Pantheon’s dome is Angelo’s ? What is the pride of kings, the world’s vain splendour, To such a presence as they witnessed there Who disinterred the bones of Raphael, Awful from the repose of centuries ? There stood that day a solemn, anxious crowd Around that altar which conceals beneath The mighty master’s relics— for there was a doubt If it were truly there that he was laid. And there they found all the dull grave could keep Of that Immortal. With no common awe They bent o’er his dark cell, as it disclosed Its treasure to the selfsame holy light That gladdened oft of old the master’s heart, And w-aked his heaven-eyed genius ; while beneath The shadowy splendour of that spacious dome He stood in living sanctity, a pure And heavenly -minded man — even where they stood To gaze upon his dust — and all around He scattered bright and hallowed images Of perfect beauty — in their brightness there Still lying as he left them. Shadows fair Of angel form and feature — ye who gaz.e In clouded splendour through those cloisters old, Looking as things of life — could ye behold Those slender bones, they were the living hand Beneath whose touch ye started into being And grew to light and beauty, covering Your storied frescoes with the lines of grace, Harmonious hues and features of the sky. And yonder is your birthplace, yon light skull The slight and delicate shrine of all that, mind ! ’Tis a strange thought how vast a world revolved In thy small compass ! Senseless as thou art, Who could behold thee as a mouldering bone, The mere dust of unsphered humanity ? There, from that lowly cell as rose to light The canonized remains of one whose mind Hath been a worship to the eye of ages, They were not seen thus coldly— time gave back Its venerable honours registered Deep in the heart of living Italy — THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 199 A crown of many-tinted sanctities. Thy beauty, goodness, and pure innocence, Thy faculty of vision, gift divine, Rushed round thee as a glory — thou wert seen With all thy laurels round thy honoured tomb. Thine is no pile of unrecording stone — Pale marble column or tall pyramid, That vainly robs oblivion of its prey : Thy name lives on each lip — thy monuments Are treasures fondly kept midst precious things, Sought out in every land which the sun warms To nobler thoughts — thine are perennial wreaths Of trophies yet surviving, when the fame Of fields that rang through Europe, and made pale The peaceful hamlets of an hundred realms, Have shrunk within the fretted register, The silent scroll, named History — still the halls Of national state or regal pomp are bright With thy far-sought creations, costliest Among the treasured trophies of the mind ; And as thy time on earth was consecrated To sacred labours meet for holy walls — • So would I deem thy gifted spirit still, Invested in its light of heavenly thoughts, The minister of some pure temple, where No human errors mingle with the work. ON THE POWER OF FLUIDS. That weight is a property of liquids, has been acknowledged by the earliest observers ; but the amount of that weight, its mode of acting, and application to practice, have been left for recent times to discover. A pint of water weighs somewhat more than a pound avoirdupois; and one unacquainted with the facts in hydrostatics might deem it of little consequence what shape the vessel that contained it might be, or what the disposition and length of the column of water— for, after all, what is it but apound of water? No idea can be more erroneous. Under most circumstances, it is not so much the quantity of the fluid as the manner in which its particles are disposed, that determines its weight ; and what may appear still more extra- ordinary, a small quantity of fluid may be made to balance, that is, to be of the same apparent weight as, a very large quantity. This may be proved by taking a pair of scales, putting" a tumbler full of water into one dish, and balancing it by weights in the other, then inverting a smaller glass and immersing it in the tumbler, having the glass perfectly sup- ported in the hand to prevent it touching the sides or bottom ; a portion of the water will now flow over the sides of the tum- bler say one-half — yet the scales are still balanced ; one-half of the water is of the same weight apparently as the whole. A piece of wood may be used instead of the glass with the same result, and it may be of a size nearly to fill the cavity of the tumbler; yet if the remaining water, which may amount to no more than a couple of spoonfuls, rise to the same level as it did when full, it will exactly balance the weights. This cannot be ac- counted for by saying that the wrnod or the glass w'as equal to the w r ater displaced, for if w r e use lead, which is much hea- vier, or cork, and even card, which are much lighter, we shall meet with no difference. This property belongs to the water ; and as the only constant fact w r as the same height of the fluid, to it must the explanation be referred ; and we thus arrive at a first principle, a law r in hydrostatics — that the pressure, or weight considered as a pow r er, of any fluid, is not in propor- tion to its quantity, but to its depth. Aware of this principle, if we wish to use water as a power, we can economize it wonderfully, exerting a great pressure with a small quantity. If we take a small wooden box, water- tight, bore a hole in it, and fill it with water, adapt a long narrow tube to the hole, and fill it up with water, the box w'ill now be burst, and that by the very small quantity contained in the tube. This tube may be a yard long, and very nar- row in diameter, not holding more than two ounces of fluid, vet the pressure, being always in proportion to its depth, is the same as if it had been as broad as the box. This pressure amounts to nearly one pound on the square inch for every two feet of water. In the deepest parts of the ocean the pressure must be exceedingly great, so much so that it is probable they are uninhabitable, the pressure being too great for the exist- ence of fishes. This pressure, together with the total absence of light at great depths, renders the existence of vegetable life also a doubtful matter. There is a certain depth beyond which divers cannot go, owing to the pressure of water on the surface of their chests being greater than the resistance of air inside, respiration being thereby impeded. A pipe a yard long, and acting on a yard square of fluid, will give a pressure equal to the w r eight of fifteen cwt. if we use water. Should we use quicksilver, the power of a ton weight may be obtained within the space of a square foot in breadth, by a tube somewhat less than three feet long, and not larger than a common goose quill — the pressure per square inch in these cases depending on the height of the column of fluid. We can now understand what extensive and sometimes irremediable injury may arise from the collection of a small but loftv column of water, opening into a wide but confined space below. This sometimes occurs when water gets into a narrow chink between buildings, and, finding its way down, opens finally into some cavity under the floor. The pressure exerted here is immense, and there are few bodies able to resist it. It is owing to this that the pipes for conveying wa- ter are burst, on account of the pressure exerted on the insides of the pipes ; and this occurs the more frequently, the higher the source from which they are filled. In practice, every vessel containing liquid should increase in strength in propor- tion to its depth. We have no doubt that a process similar to this takes place on the large scale in nature, which is capa- , ble of uprooting trees, rending rocks, producing earthquakes ; | for if we suppose that some collections of water on the surface of a hill have found their way down through crevices into a cavity in the body of the mountain which has no external opening, as long as this cavity remains unfilled no evil arises, but when it and the crevices also are completely filled, the pressure exercised here is so immense, that even the sides of the hill cannot withstand it. Perhaps this occurrence has not been sufficiently noticed in explaining natural phenomena. It is usual to consider earthquakes and volcanoes as solely the result of chemical action, excluding entirely physical agency. The pressure of water may be rendered vi ible by blowing through a tube under water into a tall glass jar. The bubMe of air, small at the bottom, as it rises, gradually enlarges from the diminution of the pressure. The hydrostatic bellows, formed upon this principle, consists of nothing more than a water-tight bellows, with a long pipe fixed into the valve aperture. If this pipe be three feet long, and hold a quarter of a pint of fluid, it will exert a pressure sufficient to raise three cwt. laid upon a bellows, the area of the upper side of which is equal to about a square foot and a half. Many are the uses to which this principle might be ap- plied in the several arts. Bramah’s Press is almost the only machine which has been extensively used. By its means solid bars of iron can be cut through with ease. "Hay and cotton have been compressed by its means into a very small compass. In the East Indies, where water-power is used, bales of cotton are compressed into one-half the size of those from the West Indies By its means power may be multiplied, or rather concentrated, a thousand-fold. As commonly made, a man working it may, by using the same force that would raise half a cwt., apply a" force amounting to twenty tons to the wmrk in hand ; and by varying the proportions of the machine, pressure might be brought to bear upon any body which would be perfectly irre- sistible. There is, however, in reality, be it distinctly understood, no power absolutely gained ; but the man’s force is concet,- trated, as for instance in compressing the bale of cotton, to an extent which, if the ordinary mechanical pov.*ers of the lever or screw were employed, would require the aid of pon- derous machinery. Mr Bramah was therefore greatly mistaken when he pub- lished it as the discovery of a new mechanical power : but he invented a beautiful and most effective means of simply accu- mulating a prodigious force by the very simple means of the hydrostatic pressure of fluids. Hydraulic or Bramah presses are applied in New York and other American ports for the purpose of raising large vessels on strong wooden platforms out of the water, for effecting repairs, &e. They are also employed in removing houses — some of them brick, and three stones high — from one part of a street to another. In this case strong wooden beams, like the ways used in ship-launching, are placed under the house, and in the direction of the intended site, and hy- draulic presses are then employed for pushing the house along, with prodigious force, and so gradually and gently as 200 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. not even to crack the plaster of a room ceiling. By the same means the roof of a large cotton factory near Aberdeen was raised entire, and an additional story added to the building, without displacing a single slate ! In this instance the roof was lifted gradually about four inches at a time, progressing from end to end of the building, the height of the walls being increased by a single row of bricks at a time. Such are a few of the results of a single principle, a rule to which there is no exception, which holds equally good in the organic as in the inorganic world. Even the blood-vessels of the body are subject to this law — the sides of all vessels below the level of the heart enduring an additional outward pressure of half an ounce for every inch in height, which at the toes would amount to somewhere about two pounds. When a erson stands erect in a bath, the pressure on all parts of the ody is not equal ; it is greater upon the legs than upon the trunk ; the former are pressed upward, and hence in part the difficulty experienced in standing upon the bottom in deep water. T. A. Disagreeable People Some persons are of so teazing and fidgetty a turn of mind, that they do not give you a mo- ment’s rest. Everything goes wrong with them. They com- plain of a headache or the weather. They take up a book, and lay it down again— -venture an opinion, and retract it be- fore they have half done — offer to serve you, and prevent some one else from doing it. If you dine with them at a tavern, in order to be more at your ease, the fish is too little done — the sauce is not the right one ; they ask for a sort of wine which they think is not to be had, or if it is, after some trouble, pro- cured, do not touch it ; they give the waiter fifty contradic- tory orders, and are restless and sit on thorns the whole of dinner time. All this is owing to a want of robust health, and of a strong spirit of enjoyment ; it is a fastidious habit of mind, produced by a valetudinary habit of body : they are out of sorts with everything, and of course their ill-humour and captiousness communicates itself to you, who are as little de- lighted with them as they are with other things. Another sort of people, equally objectionable with this helpless class, who are disconcerted by a shower of heaven’s rain, or stopped by an insect’s wing, are those who, in the opposite spirit, will have everything their own way, and carry all before them — who cannot brook the slightest shadow of opposition — who are always in the heat of an argument, unless where they disdain your understanding so much as not to condescend to grgue with you — who knit their brows and roll their eyes and clench their teeth in some speculative discussion, as if they were en- gaged in a personal quarrel — and who, though successful over almost every competitor, seem still to resent the very offer of resistance to their supposed authority, and are as angry as if they had sustained some premeditated injury. There is an impatience of temper and an intolerance of opinion in this that conciliates neither our affection nor esteem. To such persons nothing appears of any moment but the indulgence of a domi- neering intellectual superiority, to the disregard and discom- fiture of their own and everybody else’s comfort. Mounted on an abstract proposition, they trample on every courtesy and decency of behaviour ; and though, perhaps, they do not intend the gross personalities they are guilty of, yet they can- not be acquitted of a want of due consideration for others, and of an intolerable egotism in the support of truth and jus- tice. You may hear one of these impetuous declaimers plead- ing the cause of humanity in a voice of thunder, or expatiat- ing on the beauty of a Guido, with features distorted with rage and scorn. This is not- a very amiable or edifying spectacle. . — Hazlitt’s Table-Talk. Necessity of a Thorough Education Good educa- tion being a preparation for social life, necessarily embraces the whole man — body, head, and heart — for in social life the whole man is necessarily called into exertion in one way or another almost every hour. But this is not sufficient. There must be no preponderance, as well as no exclusion : a limited or biassed education produces monsters. Some are satisfied with the cultivation of a single faculty — some with the par- tial cultivation of each. A child is trained up to working ; he is hammered into a hardy labourer — a stout material for the physical bone and muscle of the state. This is good, so far as it goes ; but it is bad, because it goes no farther. He is not taught reading ; he is not taught religion; above all, he is not taught thinking. He never looks into his other self ; he soon forgets its oxistence ; the man becomes all body ; his intellectual and moral being lies fallow. The growth of such a system will be a sturdy race of machines — delvers and soldiers, but not men : so much brute physical energy swinging loosely through society at the discretion of those more spiritual natures to whom their education, neglected or perverted in another way, gives wickedness with power, and teaches the secrets of mind only as instruments to crush or bend men for their own selfish purposes. Others educate the intellectual and moral being only ; the physical, once the build- ing is raised, like an idle scaffolding, is cast by. But the omission is injurious — often fatal : malady is laid up, in all its thousand forms, in the infant and the child. It spreads out upon the man. When his spirit is in the flush of its strength, and his moral rivals his intellectual nature in compass and power, then it is that the despised portion of his being* rises up and avenges itself for this contempt. The studious man feels, as he walks down life, a thousand minute retaliations for the prodigal waste of his youthful vigour. The body bows down beneath the burden of the mind ; it wears gradu- ally away into weakness and incompetency ; clouds of sick- ness, pangs of pain, obscure, distort, weigh it to the earth. Health is not a thing of organization only, but of training ; it is to be laid up bit by bit. We are to be made healthy — tutored and practised into health. Omit health in favour of the intellectual and moral faculties, and you provide instru- ments, it is true, for mind, but instruments which, when wmnted, cannot be used. Intellectual and moral education may rank before physical, but they are not more essential; the physical powers are the hewers of wood and the drawers of water for the spiritual. The base of the column is in the earth ; but, without it, neither could the shaft stand firm above it, nor the capital ascend to the sky. — Wyse on Educa- tion. Home The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendour cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate. Those soft intervals of unbended amuse- ment, in which a man shrinks to his natural dimensions, and throws aside the ornaments or disguises which he feels in pri- vacy to be useless incumbrances, and to lose all effect when they become familiar. To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, and of which every desire prompts the prose- cution. It is indeed at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate of his virtue or fe- licity ; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honour and fic- titious benevolence Johnson. If it were enacted that only persons of high rank should dine upon three dishes, the lower sort would desire to have three ; but if commoners were permitted to have as many dishes as they pleased, whilst the nobility were limited to two, the inferior sort would not exceed that number. An order to abolish the wearing of jewels has set a whole country in an uproar ; but if the order had only prohibited earings to ladies of the first quality, other women would not have desired to wear them The Reflector. The very consciousness of being beloved by the object of our attachment, will disarm of its terrors even death itself. — D' Israeli. The petty sovereign of an insignificant tribe of North Ame- rica every morning stalks out of his hovel, bids the sun good morrow*, and points out to him with his finger the course he is to take for the day. Love labour ; if vou do not want it for food, you may for physic. Industry often prevents what lazy folly thinks inevitable. Industry argues an ingenuous, great, and generous disposi- tion of soul, by unweariedly pursuing tilings in the fairest light, and disdains to enjoy the fruit of other men's labours with- out deserving it. He who lies under the dominion of any one vice must expect the common effects of it. If lazy, to bepoor ; if intemperate, to be diseased ; if luxurious, to die betimes, &c. With discretion the vicious preserve their honour, and with- out it the virtuous lose it. A good conscience is the finest opiate Knox. Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin.— Agents: — R. Groombridge, Panver Alley, Paternoster Row, London; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool ; ,T. Drake, Birmingham ; Slocombe & Simms, Leeds ; Frazer and Crawford, George Street, Edinburgh ; and David Robertson, Trongate, Glasgow. Number 26. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 26, 1840. Volume R THE CASTLE OF TERMGN MAG RATH, COUNTY OF DONEGAL. In a recent number of our journal we called the attention of our readers to the little-appreciated beauties of Lough Erne ; and we now present them with another vista of that delightful locality in connection with the Castle of Termon Magrath, or T ermon, as it is more usually called, which is situated at its northern extremity, in the county of Donegal. Considered as a sheet of -water, the lower lake appears from this side to the greatest advantage ; but its distant shores are but little im- proved by plantations, and consequently look comparatively bleak and barren. In the immediate vicinity of our subject, however, the scenery is of the rich character for which Lough Erne is so remarkable, the shores of the lake being fringed with the plantations of the glebe of Templecarn and those of Waterfoot, the beautiful seat of Colonel Barton. The Castle of Termon is situated in the parish of Temple- carn, about half a mile to the west of the pleasant and im- proving little town of Pettigoe, which, if it had a comfortable inn, would be a good station for pleasure tourists wishing to enjoy the scenery of the lower Lough Erne and that of Lough Derg, with its celebrated purgatory of St Patrick. The foundation of this castle, according to popular tradi- tion, is ascribed to the celebrated Malmurry, or, as he w r as usually called, Myler Magrath, the first Protestant Bishop of Clogher ; and there is ever y reason to believe this tradition correct. The lands on which the castle is situated anciently constituted the Termon of St Daveog of Lough Derg, of which the Magraths -were hereditarily the termoners or churchwar- dens ; and of this family Myler Magrath was the head ; so that these lands properly belonged to him anteriorly to any grant of them derived through his bishopric. He was originally a Franciscan friar, and being a man of distinguished abilities, was advanced by Pope Pius V. to the see of Dowm ; but hav- ing afterwards embraced Protestantism, he was placed in the see of Clogher by letter of Queen Elizabeth, dated 18th May 1570, and by grant dated the 18th September, in the same year. He remained, however, but a short time in this see, in which he received but little or nothing of the revenues, and in which he -was probably surrounded by enemies even among his own kindred, and was translated to the archbishopric of Cashel on the 3d of February, in the year following. He died at Cashel at the age of one hundred, in the year 1622, and was interred in the choir of that ancient cathedral, where a splendid monument to his memory still exists, with a Latin inscription penned by himself, of which the following quaint translation is given in Harris’s Ware : — Patrick, the glory of our isle and gown. First sat a bishop in the see of Down. I wish that I, succeeding him in place As bishop, had an equal share of grace, j 202 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. I served thee, England, fifty years in jars, And pleased thy princes in the midst of wars ; Here where I’m placed I’m not ; and thus the case is, I’m not in both, yet am in both the places. 1621. lie that judgcth me is the Lord. — 1 Cor. iv. Let him who stands take care lest he fall. Harris remarks, that the Roman Catholics of his diocese have a tradition that he returned to his original faith previously to his death, and that though it was pretended that he was bu- ried in his own cathedral, yet he had given private orders for burying his body elsewhere, to which circumstance, as they say, the two last lines of his epitaph allude. “But,” says Harris, “ although he was no good man, and had impoverished his see by stripping it of much of its ancient estate, yet I do not find any room to call his sincerity as to his religious pro- fession in question, living or dying. These lines rather seem to hint at the separate existence of the soul and body.”. But however this may be, there is another tradition relative to him less doubtful, inasmuch as it is common to the peasantry of different creeds, namely, that he was the handsomest man in Ireland in his day ! The Castle of Termon, like most edifices of the kind erected in the sixteenth century, consisted of a strong keep with circular towers at two of its angles, and encompassed by out- works. It was battered by Ireton from the neighbouring hill in the parliamentary wars ; but its ruins are considerable, and by their picturesqueness add interest to the northern shore of the lower Lough Erne. P- THE IRISH MIDWIFE. BY WILLIAM CARLETON. Introductory. Of the many remarkable characters that have been formed by the spirit and habits of Irish feeling among the peasantry, there is not one so clear, distinct, and well traced, as that of the Midwife. We could mention several that are certainly marked with great precision, and that stand out in fine relief to the eve of the spectator, but none at all, who in richness of colouring, in boldness of outline, or in firmness and force, can for a moment be compared with the Midwife. The Fid- dler for instance lives a life sufficiently graphic and distinct ; so does the Dancing -master, and so also does the Match- maker, but with some abatement of colouring. As for the Cosherer, the Shanahie, the Keener, and the Foster-nurse, although all mellow toned, and well individualized by the strong power of hereditary usage, yet do they stand dim and sha- dowy, when placed face to face with this great exponent of national temperament. It is almost impossible to conceive a character of greater self-importance than an Irish Midwife, or who exhibits in her whole hearing a more complacent consciousness of her own privileges. The Fiddler might be dispensed with, and the Dancing-master might follow him off the stage ; the Cosherer, Shanahie, Keener, might all disappear, and the general bu- siness of life still go on as before. But not so with her whom we are describing ; and this conviction is the very basis of her power, the secret source from which she draws the con- fidence that bears down every rival claim upon the affections of the people. Before we introduce Rose Moan to our kind readers, we shall briefly relate a few points of character peculiar to the Irish Midwife, because they are probably not in general known to a very numerous class of our readers. This is a matter which we are the more anxious to do, because it is undeniable that an acquaintance with many of the old legendary powers with which she was supposed to be invested, is fast fading out of the public memory ; and unless put into timely record, it is to be feared that in the course of one or two generations more, they may altogether disappear and be forgotten. One of the least known of the secrets which old traditionary lore affirmed to have been in possession of the Midwife, was the knowledge of how beer might be brewed from heather. The Irish people believe that the Danes understood and practised this valuable process, and will assure you that the liquor pre- oared from materials so cheap and abundant was superior in strength and flavour to any ever produced from malt. Nay, they will tell you how it conferred such bodily strength and cou- rage upon those who drank it. that it was to the influence and virtue of this alone that the Danes held such a protracted sway, and won so many victories in Ireland. It was a secret, however, too valuable to be disclosed, especially to enemies, who would lose no time in turning the important consequences of it against the Danes themselves. The consequence was, that from the day the first Dane set foot upon the soil of Ire- land, until that upon which they bade it adieu for ever, no Irishman was ever able to get possession of it. It came to be known, however, and the knowledge of it is saidto be still in the country, but must remain unavailable until the fulfilment of a certain prophecy connected with the liberation of Ireland shall take away the obligation of a most solemn oath, which bound the original recipient of the secret to this conditional silence. The circumstances are said to have been these : — On the evening previous to the final embarkation of the Danes for their own country, the wife of their prince was seized with the pains of childbirth, and there being no midwife among themselves, an Irish one was brought, who, as the en- mity between the nations was both strong and bitter, reso- lutely withheld her services, unless upon the condition of being made acquainted with this invaluable process. The crisis it seems being a very trying one, the condition was complied with ; but the midwife was solemnly sworn never to commu- nicate it to any but a woman, and never to put it in practice until Ireland should be free, and any two of its provinces at peace with each other. The midwife, thinking very naturally that there remained no obstacle to the accomplishment of these conditions but the presence of the Danes themselves, and seeing that they were on the eve of leaving the country for ever, imagined herself perfectly safe in entering into the obligation ; but it so happened, says the tradition, that al- though the knowledge of the secret is among the Irish mid wives still, yet it never could be applied, and never will, until Ireland shall be in the state required by the terms of her oath. So runs the tradition. There is, however, one species of power with which some of the old midwives were said to be gifted, so exquisitely ludi- crous, and yet at the same time so firmly fixed in the belief of many among the people, that we cannot do justice to the cha- racter without mentioning so strange an acquisition. . It is this, that where a husband happens to be cruel to his wife, or suspects her unjustly, the Midwife is able, by some mysterious charm, to inflict upon him and remove from the wife the suf- ferings annexed to her confinement, as the penalty mentioned by holy writ which is to follow the sex in consequence of the transgression of our mother Eve. Some of our readers may perhaps imagine this to be incredible, but we assure them that it is strictly true. Such a superstition did prevail in Ire- land among the humbler classes, and still does, to an extent which would surprise any one not as well acquainted with old Irish usages and superstitions as we happen to be. The man- ner in which the Midwife got possession of this power is as follows : — It sometimes happened that the “ good people,” or Dhoine Shee — that is, the fairies— were put to the necessity of having recourse to the aid of the Midwife. On one of those occasions it seems, the good woman discharged her duties so successfully, that the fairy matron, in requital for her services and promptitude of attendance, communicated to her this secret, so formidable to all bad husbands. From the period alluded to, say the people, it has of course been gladly trans- mitted from hand to hand, and on many occasions resorted to with fearful but salutary effect. Within our own memory several instances of its application were pointed out to us, and the very individuals themselves, when closely interro- gated, were forced to an assertion that was at least equiva- lent to an admission, “ it was nothing but an attack of the cholic,” which by the way was little else than a libel upon that departed malady. Many are the tales told of cases in which midwives were professionally serviceable to the good people; but unless their assistance was repaid by the communication, of some secret piece of knowledge, it was better to receive no payment, any other description of remuneration being consi- dered unfortunate. Some of those stories have been well told, and with others of them we may probably amuse our readers upon some future occasion. From this source also was derived another most valuable quality said to be possessed by the Irish Midwife, but one which we should suppose the virtue of our fair countrywomen rendered of very unfrequent application. This was the power of destroying jealousy between man and wife. We forget whether it was said to be efficacious in cases of guilt, but we should imagine that the contrary would rather hold good, as an Irishman is not exactly that description of husband who would suffer himself to be charmed back iato the arms of a THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 203 polluted wife. This was effected by the knowledge of a cer- tain herb, a decoction of which the parties were to drink nine successive times, each time before sunrise and after sunset. Of course the name of the herb was kept a profound secret ; but even if it had been known, it Could have proved of little value, for the full force of its influence depended on a charm which the Midwife had learned among the fairies. "Whether it was the Anacampserotes of the middle ages or not, is diffi- cult to say ; but one thing is certain, that not only have mid- wives, but other persons of both sexes, gone about through the country professing to cure jealousy bv the juice or decoction of a mysterious herb, which was known only to themselves. It is not unlikely to suppose that this great secret after all was nothing more than a perverted application of the Waters of Jealousy mentioned by Moses, and that it only resembled many other charms practised in this and other countries, which are- generally founded upon certain passages of Scripture. Indeed, there is little doubt that the practice, of attempting to cure jealousy by herbs existed elsewhere as well as in Ireland ; and one would certainly imagine that Shakspeare, who left nothing connected with the human heart untouched, must have alluded to the very custom we are treating of, when he makes lago, speaking of Othello’s jealousy, say, “ Look where he comes ! not poppy nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou hadst yesterday.” Here it is quite evident that the efficacy of the “ syrups” spoken of was to be tried upon the mind only in which the Moor’s horrible malady existed. That Shakspeare, in the passage quoted, alluded to this singular custom, is, we think, at least extremely probable. We have said that the "Midwife stood high as a matchmaker, and so unquestionably she did. IXo woman was better ac- quainted with charms of all kinds, especially with those that were calculated to aid or throw light upon the progress of love. If for instance young persons of either sex felt doubt as to whether their passion was returned, they generally con- sulted the Midwife, who, on hearing a statement of their ap- prehensions, appointed a day on which she promised to satisfy them. Accordingly, at the time agreed upon, she and the party interested repaired as secretly as might be, and with much mystery, to some lonely place, where she produced a Bible and key, both of which she held in a particular position — that is, the Bible suspended by a string which passed through the key. She then uttered with a grave and solemn face the following verses from the Book of Ruth, which the young per- son accompanying her was made to repeat slowly and delibe- rately after her : — “ And Ruth said, entreat me not to leave thee or to return from following after thee : for whither thou goest I will go ; and where thou lodgest I will lodge : thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God : “ Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried : the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.” If at the conclusion of these words the Bible turned, she affirmed, with the air of a prophetess, not only that the affec- tion of the parties was mutual, but that their courtship would terminate in marriage. If, on the contrary, it remained sta- tionary, the passion existed only on one side, and the parties wore not destined for each other. Oh, credulous love ! not to see that the venerable sybil could allow the Bible to turn or not, just as she may have previously ascertained from either arty whether their attachment was reciprocal or otherwise ! Ye dare say the above charm is seldom resorted to now, and of course this harmless imposition on the lovers will soon cease to be practised at all. The Midwife’s aid to lovers, however, did not stop here. If they wished to create a passion in some heart where it had not previously exi ted, she told them to get a dormouse and reduce it to powder, a pinch of which, if put into the drink of the person beloved, would immediately rivet his or her affec- tions upon the individual by whose hands it was administered. Many anecdotes are told of humorous miscarriages that re- sulted from a neglect of this condition. One is especially well known, of a young woman who gave the potion through the hands of her grandmother ; and the consequence was, that the bachelor immediately made love to the old lady instead of the young one, and eventually became grandfather to the lat- ter instead of her husband. Indeed, the administering of philtres and the use of charms in Ireland were formerly very frequent, and occasionally attended by results which had not been anticipated. The use especially of can /.liar ides, or French flies, in the hands of the ignorant, has often been said to induce madness, and not unfrequently to occasion death. It is not very long since a melancholy case of the latter from this very cause appeared in an Irish newspaper. The Midwife was also a great interpreter of dreams, omens* auguries, and signs of all possible sorts, and no youngsters who ever consulted her need be long at a loss for a personal view of the object of their love. They had only to seek in some remote glen or dell for a briar whose top had taken root in the ground ; this they were to put under their pillow and sleep upon, and the certain consequence was, that the image of the future wife or husband would appear to them in a dream. She was also famous at cup- tossing; and nothing could sur-> pass the shrewd and sapient expression of her face as she sat solemnly peering into the grounds of the tea for the imaginary forms of rings, and love-letters, and carriages, which were necessary to the happy purport of her divination, for she felt great reluctance to foretell calamity. She seldom, however, had recourse to card-cutting, which she looked upon as an unholy practice ; the cards, as every one knows, being the only book on which the devil says his prayers night and morning. Who has not heard of his prayer-book i We are now to consider the Midwife in the capacity of a woman not only brimful of medicinal knowledge, but possessed of many secrets, which the mere physician or apothecary could never penetrate. As a doctress, she possessed a very high re- putation for all complaints incident to children and females ; and where herbal skill failed, unlike the mere scientific man of diplomas, she could set physical causes and effects aside, and have recourse at once to the supernatural and miraculous. For instance, there are two complaints which she is, beyond any other individual, celebrated for managing — that is to say, headache, and another malady which is anonymous, or only known to country folk by what is termed “ the spool or bone of the breast being down.” The first she cures by a very for- mal and serious process called “measuring the head.” This is done by a ribbon, which she puts round the cranium, repeat- ing dm’ing the admeasurement a certain prayer or charm from which the operation is to derive its whole efficacy. The mea- suring is performed twice — in the first instance, to show that its sutures are separated by disease, or, to speak more plainly, that the bones of the head are absolutely opened, and that as a natural consequence the head must be much larger than when the patient is in a state of health. The circumference of the first admeasurement is marked upon a ribbon, after which she repeats the charm that is to remove the headache, and mea- sures the cranium again, in order to show, by a comparison of the two ribbons, that the sutures have been closed, the charm successful, and the headache consequently removed. It is impossible to say how the discrepancy in the measurement is brought about ; but be that as it may, the writer of this has frequently seen the operation performed in such a way as to defy the most scrutinising eye to detect any appearance of imposture, and he is convinced that in the majority of cases there is not the slightest imposture intended. The operator is in truth a dupe to a strong and delusive enthusiasm. When the Midwife raises the spool of the breast, the opera- tion is conducted without anv assistance from the supernatu- ral. If a boy or girl diminishes in flesh, is troubled with want of rest or of appetite, without being afflicted with any parti- cular disease, either acute or local, the Midwife puts her finger under the bone which projects over the pit of the sto- mach, and immediately feels that “ the spool of the breast is down — in other words, she informs the parents that the bone is bent inwards, and presses upon the heart ! The raising of this precisely resembles the operation of cupping. She gets a penny piece, which she places upon the spot affected, the patient having been first laid in a supine posture ; after this she burns a little spirits in a tumbler in order to exhaust the air in it ; she then presses it quickly against the part which is under the penny piece ; and in a few moments, to the amaze- ment of the lookers-on, it is drawn strongly up, and remains so until the heart-bone is supposed to be raised in such a man- ner as that it will not return. The next charm for which she is remarkable among the people, is that by which a mote is taken out of the eye. The manner of doing this is as follows : — A white basin is got, and a jug of the purest water ; the midwife repeatedly rinses her mouth with the water, until it returns as pure and clear 204 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. nun as when she took it in. She then walks to and fro, repeating the words of the charm, her mouth all the time filled with the water. When the charm is finished, she pours the water out of her mouth into the clean basin, and will point out the mote, or whatever it may have been, floating in the water, or lying in the bottom of the vessel. In fact, you could scarcely men- tion a malady with which the Midwife of the old school was not prepared to grapple by the aid of a charm. The tooth- ache, the cholic, measles, childbirth, all had their respective charms. The latter especially required one of a very pithy cast. Every one knows that the power of fairies in Ireland is never so strong, nor so earnestly put forth, as in the moment of parturition, when they strive by all possible means to se- cure the new-born infant before it is christened, and leave a thangeling in its stead. Invaluable indeed is the midwife who is possessed of a charm to prevent this, and knows how to ar- range all the ceremonies that are to be observed upon the occasion without making any mistake, for that would vitiate all. Many a time on such occasions have the ribs of the roof been made to crack, the windows rattled out, the door pushed with violence, and the whole house shaken as if it would tum- ble about their heads — and all by the fairies — but to no pur- pose : the charm of the midwife was a rock of defence ; the necessary precautions had been taken, and they were ulti- mately forced to depart in a strong blast of wind, screaming and howling with rage and disappointment as they went. There were also charms for the diseases of cattle, to cure which there exist in Ireland some processes of very distant antiquity. We ourselves have seen elemental tire produced by the friction of two green boughs together, applied as a remedy for the black-leg and murrain. This is evidently of Pagan origin, and must have some remote affinity with the old doc- trines of Baal, the ancient god of fire, whose worship was once so general in Ireland. Of these charms it may be said that they are all of a reli- gious character, some of them evidently the production of imposture, and others apparently of those who seriously be- lieved in their efficacy. There is one thing peculiar about them, which is, that they must be taught to persons of the opposite sex : a man, for instance, cannot teach a charm to a man, nor a woman to a woman, but he may to a woman, as a woman may to a man. If taught or learned in violation of this principle, they possess no virtue. In treating of the Irish Midwife, we cannot permit ourselves to overlook the superstition of the “ lucky caul,” which comes so clearly within her province. The caul is a thin membrane, about the consistence of very fine silk, which covers the head of a new-born infant like a cap. It is always the omen of great good fortune to the infant and parents ; and in Ireland, when any one has unexpectedly fallen into the receipt of pro- perty, or any other temporal good, it is customary to say “ such a person was born with a ‘ lucky caul’ on his head.” Why these are considered lucky, it would be a very difficult matter to ascertain. Several instances of good fortune, hap- pening to such as were born with them, might by their coinci- dences form a basis for the superstition ; just as the fact of three men during one severe winter having been found drowned, each with two shirts on, generated an opinion which has now become fixed and general in that parish, that it is unlucky to wear two shirts at once. We are not certain whe- ther the caul is in general the perquisite of the Midwife— some- times we believe it is ; at all events, her integrity occasionally yields to the desire of possessing it. In many cases she con- ceals its existence, in order that she may secretly dispose of it to good advantage, which she frequently does ; for it is con- sidered to be the herald of good fortune to those who ca-n get Xt into their possession. Now, let not our English neighbours smile at us for those things until they wash their own hands clear of such practices. At this day a caul will bring a good price in the most civilized city in the world — to wit, the good city of London — the British metropolis. Nay, to such lengths has the mania for cauls been carried there, that they have been actually advertised for in the Times newspaper. Of a winter evening, at the fireside, there can be few more amusing companions than a Midwife of the old school. She has the smack of old times and old usages about her, and tastes of that agreeable simplicity of manners which always betokens a harmless and inoffensive heart. Her language is at once easy, copious, and minute, and if a good deal pedan- tic, the pedantry is rather the traditionary phraseology and antique humour which descends with her profession, than the peculiar property or bias of her individual mind. She affects much mystery, and intimates that she could tell many strange stories of high life ; but she is always too honourable to betray the confidence that has been reposed in her good faith and secrecy. In her dress she always consults warmth and com- fort, and seldom or never looks to appearance. Flannel and cotton she heaps on herself in abundant folds, and the conse- quence is, that although subject to all the inclemency of the seasons both by night and day, she is hardly ever known to be sick. The cottage of the Midwife may in general be known by the mounting-stone which is beside her door, and which enables her without difficulty or loss of time to get on horse- back behind the impatient messenger. The window of her bedroom is also remarkable for its opening on hinges like a door, a thing not usual in the country. This is to enable her to thrust forth her well-flannelled head without any possible delay, in order to inquire the name of the party requiring her aid, the length of journey before her, and such other particu- lars as she usually deems necessary. The sleep of the Mid- wife is almost peculiar in its character to herself. No person sleeps more soundly and deeply than she does, unless to a knock at the door or a tap at the window, to both of which it may be said she is ever instinctively awake. We question if a peal of cannon discharged at her house-side would dis- turb her ; but give on the other hand the slightest possible knock or tap at either her door or window, and ere you could imagine she had time to awaken, the roll of flannel that con- tains her head is thrust out of the window. Having thus recited everything, so far as we could remem- ber it, connected with the social antiquities of her calling, and detailed some matters not generally known, that may, we trust, be interesting to those who are fond of looking at the springs which often move rustic society, we now close this “Essay on Midwifery,” hoping to be able to bring the Midwife herself personally on the stage in our next, or at least in an early number. GLIMPSES IN THE MOUNTAINS. BY COUL GOPPAGH. What can have become of the old world I remember long long ago — -almost twenty years ago ? It is a weary look backward, and the distance hides it. This is not the world I was born in. I remember when the old men used to show me the ways they walked in, scores of years before, and the very corners and the footpaths through the fields. Here they met an old friend— there they took shelter from a storm. On this lake they skated all day — from that hill they saw the ships returning with victory from foreign war. Men walked quietly together then in silence or friendly talk, and did not jostle each other from the way ; they went to bed and rose as the sun did ; they followed in their fathers’ ways — read the same books, laughed at the same fine old jokes, and believed their posterity would do the same. Old men then wore grey hairs, and saw their children’s children, and were venerable. But they are all gone ; and could they look out of their graves (if indeed their very graves be spared), they would not know the old world they used to live in. It is all changed now ivith us old fellows of five-and-twenty. We are left doting among the ruins of our youth. There is nothing left to us of our early days. The old crooked grassy byeways where we went to gather blackberries and idle away a summer day, have been gone over by the surveyor’s chain, and some straight cut, with prim, bare fences, has run it down. The little stream has been piped over, and, where it “ babbled o’ green fields,” is a noisy, muddy thoroughfare. Over the green glen where the hazels nourished their brown clusters, strides a cursed viaduct ; the execrable railway has frighted the linnets from the boughs, and a bird’s nest shall never more be found. In the lonely bay where we used to gather shells, thinking ourselves in fairy land, and wondering what lay be- yond the dim horizon, the steamboat roars and splashes. Riot and swearing and slang and vice of cities have usurped the quiet haunts of country calm and charity. It is for a coming age all these things are preparing : to us is allotted only the vexation and bewilderment. I have no associations to link me to these horrors, and I prefer the old repose to all the luxuries they bring. What is it to me that I can go to East or West in so many days sooner, or even il the sun that sets on me to-night should rise for me to-morrow by the Ganges ? Here is my “ fortunate isle this is my home where my heart is. I have no business with Egypt or the Nile. I wish to sit undisturbed by my own fireside, tc THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. £05 walk under the old trees, to look on my own fields, to be warmed by my own sun. But they will dig a canal through my silent walks, and the infernal city will pour through these banks its restless impurity, and make them echo with the laugh- ter of brutal debauchery. It is something for a man to look on the same scenes he looked on in his childhood, among the same fields and trees and household ways his forefathers tilled and planted, and knew before him. There is a sanctity grows round them year by year, enriching the heart, that cannot be broken through nor profaned without a loss never to be repaired. The exile can still listen to the whispering of the woods and the sound of the streams, but he remembers the woods and waters of his native land with tears. In twenty years I have grown old and an exile where I was born. Huge piles have covered the green where 1 played. The roar of busy streets insults the memory of the green lanes where I strolled at evening. There is no country now. The city has invaded the soli- tude, and vice and impudent folly march in its rear. The bumpkin imitates the SAvagger of the citizen — the ploughman talks politics — the haymaker shakes the SAvathe and discourses of political economy — the reaper questions the revenue. The mountains yet remain ! I can see them, still, from my door ; I can see them from the city streets. I can climb up their rugged sides still, and bless God that no discoverer as yet has uprooted the hills. My heart is Avith them, for they have not changed. With them I have still a sovereign sympathy, for I can look on them and renew the fancies of my infancy. There is not a torrent pouring down their sides, not a crag nor a bramble, that is not reverend in my eye. The Avorld is drunk, and raves. Come avvay from these reeling bacchanals, and let us fare among the hills ! Long ago, before the time of history, some naked savage here has worshipped the sunrise ; some Druid sacrificed his victims ; some barbarian Spartacus, lurking among the Avild deer and the Avolves, has defied his nation ; some young warrior, Avith tears on his hardy cheek, has pointed up thither, Avhispering to one beside him dearer than his name, his clan, or his life, and sped aAvay on the wings of love to the peace and safety of the mountains. These noble fronts have never varied. The clouds float here 0A r er the same ridges on which the eyes of our childhood rested, and of the men of old time. The clank of monstrous engines has never yet dismayed the primeval stillness. The skeleton of creation is visible here, and vve see the be- ginnings of the Avorld. This solid granite sparkled in the sun when “ the evening and the morning were the first day,” and was as firm and solid to the centre when the world was “ Avith- out form and void.” This whinstone rock has been hardened in some earthquake furnace long since then, and these flints are nevv, though they held fire before Prometheus suffered. This soft soil is the relics of the life and death of a thousand green years, and the fresh bloom that feeds on its decay will nourish succeeding blossoms. The Western nations look here for the dawn, and the people of the East for sunset. Young children look up here from cottage doors at evening, and see the portals of Paradise opened, gazing through vistas brighter than imagination, un- folding far into the heart of heaven, and hold their breath, waiting for the passage of the archangels. This is a glori- fied soil. On these peaks hang the morning and the evening stars. The sun and the moon come here to do them honour ; and they clothe themselves Avith gold and azure, and purple, deeper than the Tyrian, to receive their celestial guests. High up herein this blessed solitude there is life, and liberty of heart, and sacred peace. No fenced-in space confines me here. I breathe in a domain as Avide as the horizon, as high as the planets and the sun. The clouds are my fellow-Avan- derers here, and enjoy with me the liberal bosom of the air. Their ethereal hills and dales invite my fancy to a real heaven, where I gather all I love around me. Their shadows cover me as they pass over, and I bid them “ God speed” as they carry cool showers doAvn to the thirsting land. No miser- able "moan of Avant or sickness, no sob of long-breaking hearts, no choked sigh of cheated hope, nor any human woe, alarms me here. I see no loathsome household, plague-stricken with poverty, and festering in filth, despised of men, and famish- ing into horrors and crime : no form of woman (black shame before God !) wading in foetid rags through mire and suoav, with those awful human (!) children of hers, debased as the HAvine with whom they sleep (for charity !) and on whom the rich man looks — poor unreckoning fool ! — and never pauses to think and tremble. Here the wild bee sings among the rich fragrance of the heather-bells and thyme, gathering pure honey, fresh from the breath of the immediate sunrise. The larks have their nests among the heath by thousands, and make the Avhole mountain musical. Many strange insects, born and dying in the hour, that live on deAv-drops, buzz by, and a thousand un- knoAvn creatures, gifted Avith voice, inhabiting small tAvigs in labyrinths of greenest moss, join in the hymn. The invisible w r ind, like a ruler of the strings, pours in a sovereign master- note that blends in all one solemn harmony, filling the air till the valleys sing for joy. Here is Solitude, unforced, and free as the wandering wind. Here is peace like the summer life of untrodden blossoms. Here is a lofty quiet as of the dreams of the heart over its holy memories. Here are e\'erlasting rocks, steadfast as ho- nour, and true. Here is wealth for Fancy, and a dAvelling for Imagination. Wide and far as the peaks can seek the hea- vens, there is no place for Envy or Hate, where the glens are vocal, and the holy silence compels the heart to adoration, making a haven for religion among the mighty hills What throes of central agony heaved up these huge moun- tains, twisting and folding each into each aAvay as far as the eye can folloAv ! What pangs and convulsions at the heart ! What startling from chaotic trance, long before man or his mammoth ancestors, at the creative song of some Avandering star-messenger, millions of years upon its way ! My heart enlarges here, and recognises an aerial amity with the sky. I am filled Avith celestial promptings. I shake off all incumbrance of the earth. I stretch out my arms to the blue heaven, and its breath comes into my bosom as a friend. The stir of humanity is dumb beneath me. I leap among the heathy knolls. 1 sing beside the infant rivers. I shout, and hear answers from the lurking echoes, like the mysterious voices of infinite years. I drink in unused air with “ Fair creatures of the element. That in the colours of the rainbow live, And play i’ the plighted clouds.” I stand wrapt in mute visions, growing into the majesty of the mountains. I spurn Decay and Time. I share the en- during strength, and carry lightly the burden of centuries. The mountains swell up around me like a sea with billows. My footfall is inaudible, and I fleet to and fro like the unbo- died soul of a great poet that makes the worlds it sees. There are no furrows on this soil : the curse has not fallen here. The sweat of the brow has not dropped here, nor aught save the rain and the dew of heaven. I am still nearer to the an- gels, and my spirit begins to put forth unaccustomed wings. The ancient gods still linger here, and Antiquity has not yet groAvn old. The world has not yet heard “ the voice of one crying in the AA r ilderness,” nor has Paul yet preached. Here 1 am a devout Pagan. I am the friend of Plato ; I re- member the voice of Socrates. I Avorship the Gods reve- rently, and have come up hither Avith sacrifice according to the voice of the oracle. I have drunk with the muses at this fountain. Here, under the hanging ivy from the rock, I behold the real Castaly ; and wherever the stream may wander, it will carry music on its way from divinest voices. From this clump I have listened to Apollo teaching the shepherds. Yea, I feel my veins tingling with a more celestial liquor ; I own invulnerable limbs, and am myself a God ! It was not Mercury, but I, who passed swiftly doAvn yon green declivity with feathered feet, and aAvay over the hill- tops like the shadow of a cloud. Those cattle brousing in the thicket, far doAvn the ravine, I stole from Pieria. I bear the imperial mandates, and the breeze carries the sound of my eloquence through all thefforests. But I aspire to loftier seats. This is the high Olympus ; Saturn is baffled, and immortal Jove laughs at the terrible pro- phecies of the enduring Titan. Let him rend his rivets. Let him melt the heart of Caucasus, or appease the Vulture ! Would that I could as easily escape the reproaches of Juno, or overcome Danae ! But it shall rain gold to-morrow in her lap, and Leda shall fondle in her snowder bosom a snoAvy swan. Meanwhile let the nectar be poured ! The laughing gods sur- round me, and I know immortal vigour. How Mercury jeered at the grinning Vulcan ereAA'hile as he Avrithed his iron sinews, Avhen I held him over the edge of heaven ! Here I compel the clouds around me ; I sit throned, and thunder. 206 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Lo ! to mv ears comes up a solemn strain, and the Eagle shrieks and flies. The thunderbolt withers from my hand : “ The Oracles are dumb ; No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof with words deceiving ; Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving ; No nightly trance, or breathed spell, Inspires the pale-eyed priest in his prophetic cell.” A louder thunder has been heard than Jove’s. There is a mountain more venerable than Olympus. Moses went up there to talk with God, and came down with the brightness of the sun in his countenance that could not be looked upon, bearing in his hand an eternal law. That thunder still echoes which shook Babylon, and quelled the Assyrian. The Persian rolled away before it like a cloud. The Egyptian, Greek, and Roman, have fled from it for ever. But a greater than Moses has made the mountains holy. A greater hierophant opened up there the law and the prophets. On a mountain Satan confessed his conqueror. Who shall conceive of that tremendous hour, pregnant with the fate of man, when “Jesus went up alone into the mountain to pray !” And we know what deed was done on Calvary. APOLOGUES AND FABLES FROM FOREIGN LANGUAGES. (Translated for the Irish Penny Journal.) No. V.— THE OLD MAN AND THE YOUTHS. (FROM THE FRENCH OF LAFONTAINE.) A man of eighty years was planting trees : — “ Ha ! ha !” laughed out three striplings from the village, “ Planting at eighty ! — Had his task been tillage, Or building houses, or aught else you please, The folly might have passed as less worth noting. But — planting trees ! He must indeed be doting ! Why, in the name of all that’s odd, old neighbour, What fruit can such as you expect to gather From this ridiculous and driftless labour? You, who already are a great-grandfather ! What ! do you think to rival in his years Methuselah? For shame ! Do penance rather For your past errors ! Mourn your sins with tears ! Abandon hopes and plans that so ill suit your Age and grey hairs ! Give over looking wildly Out through the vista of a boundless future ! All these are but for us, and such as we.” “ They are not even for you,” replied the Old Man mildly. “ Youth may be just as nigh Eternity As Age. What though the pitfalls of Existence Be covered o’er with flowers in lieu of snows, Who shall foremeasure the brief distance Between this dim dream’s birth and close ? The winged bolts of Death are swift to strike Life in its dawning as decline ; The pallid Parcse play their game alike With your days and with mine. Who knows which of us four shall be the one To gaze last on the glory of the sun ? Molest me not, then. Leave me to employ The hours that yet remain to me. I love To think my great-grandchildren will enjoy The shade and shelter of this embryo grove. Meantime I live, I breathe, and I may even Share for some years to come the gifts of Heaven. Alas ! even I may see the morning-light Shine more than once, young men ! upon your graves !” The Old Man spake a truth which Time revealed : — . Boating soon after, on a stormy night, One of these youths was buried in the waves . A second was cut off upon the battle-field— The third fell ill, and in four fleeting weeks His bier was dressed with Death’s pale plumes ; So died the Three — thus early fated ! And while the tears rolled down his cheeks. The Old Man sculptured on their tombs The story I have here narrated. M. Learning, it has been said, may be an instrument of fraud : so may bread, if discharged from the mouth of a cannon, be an instrument of death — Bentham. THE SNUFF SHOP. Few, we dare say, ever entered a shop of the description named in the title of this paper with any other idea than that they were entering merely a repository of Lundy Foot, cigars, and small twist. Few, we suppose, ever looked on such a place in any other light, or ever considered its keeper in any other point of view than that simply of a tobacconist. Yet is there another light, and a dismal one it is, in -which both the snuff shop and the snuff dealer himself may be looked upon ; and it is in such alight that we ourselves always do look upon them. This is, viewing the one as a charnel-house of defunct authors; the other as a goul, battening on their mortal re- mains. We sometimes vary this horrifying, but, alas ! too correct view of the snuff shop and the snuff dealer, by suppos- ing the one a sort of literary shambles or slaughter-house, and the other a cold-blooded, merciless literary butcher. Taking either of these views of the snuff shop, what a change takes plane in its aspect, and in that of everything and person pertaining to it ! What a dismal and hideous den it then be- comes, and what a truculent, savage-looking fiend becomes that smiling and simpering tobacconist ! No bowels of com- passion has he for the mangled and mutilated authors that are lying thick around him, cruelly Burked by his own merciless hands. No ; there he sits in the midst of the dire carnage as calm and unconcerned as if he had nothing whatever to do with it — the callous monster ! Pursuing the idea just broached, let us enter this horrid den, and for a moment contemplate its interior in a spirit in accordance with that idea ; for, not being authors, we have nothing to fear for ourselves, it being that class only that need stand in awe of the snuff shop — to all others it is a harm- less place enough. Lo ! then, behold (giving us the advantage here of a little stretch of imagination), the walls bespattered with the blood and brains of murdered authors ; and see that blood-stained bench which the demon of the place calls a counter ; and in various other depositories around lie their dismembered limbs and mangled carcases. Oh, it is a shocking and heart-rend- sight ! Some of these unfortunates have evidently died hard : they have the appearance of having struggled desperately for life. But, alas, in vain ! An irresistible destiny thrust them into the fatal snuff shop, where they perished quickly and miserably by the hand of the ruthless savage within. Others, again, (eem to have quietly resigned themselves to their fate, and, indeed, to have been more than half dead before they were brought in ; while others, again, appear to have been wholly defunct, having died a natural death. These, then, have been con- veyed thither merely to be cut up, and converted to the de- grading uses of the tobacconist. Although some of the unhappy authors whose mangled remains strew this den of horrors seem to have attained a land of maturity before they were cruelly torn to pieces as we now see them, by far the greater number are a sort of mur- dered innocents, having been strangled in their birth, or shortly after. A good many there are, too, who seem to have been dead born, or to have perished while yet in embryo. Piteous as it is to look on the heavy, sturdy corpses of the murdered prose writers that lie thickly up and dowm this chamber of death, yet infinitely more piteous is it to contem- plate the delicate, fragile forms of the poets thus cruelly man- gled and mutilated that lie no less thickly around us/ Poor dear, unfledged things ! What a fate has been thine ! what a destiny, to be consigned, ere ye had yet opportunity to open your little musical throats, to the tender mercies of that lite- rary Burke — that ruthless monster whom the world, thinking of him only in connection with cigars and pigtail, calls a tobacconist. Where now, sweet little humming birds, be those soft and tender notes with which ye sought, alas, how vainly! to charm the huge, rude ear of an uncouth and barbarous world that would not listen to ye ? Alas, they have ceased for ever ! How little does that savage, the demon of the place, mind your sw 7 eet, small voices, that give forth a piteous wail, like the last notes of the dying swan, every time he lays his merciless hands on you. Little, indeed ! Let but a customer come in for half an ounce of “ Blackguard,” and he will, with- out the smallest hesitation or compunction, seize one of you, dear unfortunates, and tear you limb from limb for his own and that customer’s conveniency : ay, for a paltry three half- pence, mayhap less — a pennyworth of “ Scotch” — will he per- petrate this atrocious deed. That sanguinary bench, that hor- THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. S07 rid counter, is strewn over with your slim carcases and fragile limbs ; and your murderer is hanging over your mutilated re- mains, laughing and chatting and joking with his customers as pleasantly and unconcernedly as if you were so much waste paper. Oh, it is atrocious ! Such, then, dear reader, is the light — a terrible one, indeed, but as thou wilt acknowledge, •we have no doubt, a correct one — in which we look upon snuff shops, which, as thou well knowest, have long lain, and not unjustly, under the stigma of being fatal to authors. If thou art one, pray, then, eschew it ; for if thou dost once enter its dismal portals, thou wilt never, never more be heard of in this world ! C. ANIMAL TAMING. SECOND AND CONCLUDING ARTICLE. In my last paper on the taming of animals, I treated the sub- ject generally rather than in detail. It is probable that the curious reader may not be displeased to learn a little more of the mode of keeping and domesticating wild and savage ani- mals, as well as the methods to be adopted in order to bring together fierce animals of different species, and induce them to occupy the same cage in peace and harmony, and without danger of contention. It is, as will be at once recognised, this latter circumstance which renders the exhibitions of Van Amburgh and his rivals as wonderful as they are ; it being a far easier matter to reconcile a lion or a tiger to yourself, and even familiarize it to the furthest possible degree, than it is to induce the tiger and the lion to consort together, and refrain from engaging in deadly conflict. Let us suppose, for the sake of illustration of the mode •which should be adopted to tame two or more animals, that you are made a present of a lion and a tiger. If the animals be very young, you will have very little trouble wdth them for a long time — none, indeed, beyond the necessity of attending to their health, for the larger felines are difficult to be reared ; but as they grow older, they will be very apt to quarrel be- tween themselves ; wounds will be given and received, and the death or maiming of either, or perhaps of both, will pretty speedily result. To guard against any unpleasantness of this nature, it should be your business the instant you receive the animals to commence operations. Let them be kept at first far apart ; for it is not advisable, as their dispositions may be very different, that one should be witness of the severity you may be compelled to exercise towards the other. This done, take, according to the animals’ ages, a stout cane, a supplejack, or an iron rod. If the creatures be very young, that is, under three months, or perhaps four, the cane wall be sufficient. If greater, or from that to half grown, you wall require the supplejack, and let it be thicker at one end than at the other. For a half-grown animal the iron rod wall be absolutely ne- cessary, and it must be of sufficient weight that a. blow' of it on the skull may be sufficient to produce a temporary insen- sibility — the only chance you will have of escape, should the fierce brutes at any time take it into their heads to rebel. Having thus provided yourself with arms offensive, you must be equally cautious as to your costume. That must be of strong material, hard, and fitting close. You must have no loose flapping skirts, no open jackets. All must be tight, and buttoned closely to the body. An under-w r aistcoat (sleeved) of strong buff, wdth a stout pea-jacket over it, lea- ther or corduroy breeches, and top boots, is about the best dress for the experimentalist in animal taming that I can sug- gest at this moment. The reason — for I like to give a reason for everything I recommend — of this necessity for a firm, tight- fitting dress, is, that if a wild animal, although to all appear- ance perfectly domesticated, chances even in play to get his claws fastened in your clothes, the sensation of seizing upon prey involuntarily presents itself to his imagination. The ac- cidental entanglement is succeeded by a plunge of the claws, the jaws are brought into requisition, and your life is by no means in a safe position. Hence the necessity for tight dress. Thus accoutred, with your rod in your hand, and, if the animal be more than half grown, a brace of pistols in your breast — the one loaded with ball, the other wdth powder, upon W'hich a quantity of tow has been crammed down — approach the cage of the young animal which you design to tame. I commence with this stage of the process, because I presume that you have already rendered your protege sufficiently fa- miliar by feeding and caressing it through the bars, and by spending some time each day in its company, I presume therefore that it has already begun to recognise vour appear- ance, and to come over to your hand when called, a3 well as to permit you to stroke and pat it, wdthout attempting to bite you. Approach the cage, hold in your left hand a heavy cloak or blanket wrapped round your hand and arm ; let there be two assistants near at hand, and a small stove in which half a dozen iron rods are heating ; let the door of the cage be a real door, opening upon hinges, and shutting with a good and deeply-notched latch— not a sliding door, as such a mode of entering the cage might be as much as your life w : as worth. Speak kindly to the animal, and caress it through the bars of its cage ere you enter, or the suddenness of your entrance may irritate or alarm it, and thus induce it to attack you. Your costume should likewise by no means have been put on for the first time. You should have dressed in a simi- lar manner during all your former visits, so that your intended pet might be acquainted with your appearance. Let a plat- form be erected outside the cage, to its level, and ascend this, where stand a few minutes, boldly caressing and speaking to the animal. Then throw open the door, enter with a firm and resolute step, push the door behind you, but see that you do not for an instant remove your eyes from those of the ani- mal you are visiting. Do not advance from the door ; stand near the bars of the cage, that you may have a better chance of escape, and may be more readily assisted by your atten- dants in the event of an attack. Speak kindly towards the animal, and if it, as it most likely will, comes over to you, fear nothing, but stretch forth your hand and caress it. The crea- ture will then probably purr, and rub against you. Permit it to do so, and encourage it in its familiarity ; but if it offer to play wdth you, repress such disposition with firmness ; and if you perceive that the animal is bent on frolic, leave the cage at once, for it is unsafe longer to remain, the play of these savage creatures always leading to mischief, just as the cat sports with the captured mouse ere she gives it the finishing blow', and buries it in her maw. Repress, therefore, every at- tempt to play. Use your rod freely and severely. Do so not merely for a grievous fault, but for the most distant appear- ance of insubordination. Let your corrections be terrible when- you do inflict them, and you will have to repeat them so much the less frequently. Some, and Van Amburgh I be- lieve among the rest, are in favour of beating the animals every morning, whether they deserve such chastisement or not, just by way of keeping up a salutary awn of their mas- ters. I object to this, as I conceive it to be both cruel and unnecessary. If animals are of an unruly disposition, and re- quire frequent correction, I should rather recommend that they should be visited every morning, and an opportunity of misbehaving themselves thus afforded, when indeed a good thrashing might be administered with much greater justice. Never display either timidity or ill-humour. The former will make the animals despise your menaces, and perhaps give you a bite or a claw — the latter will cause them to hate you, to regard you as a tyrant, and probably seize on the first fa- vourable opportunity for your destruction. Be just, therefore, in your punishments, and do not be too familiar. Never for an instant permit any animal to make too free with you. Re- collect the old copybook adage, “ Familiarity breeds con- tempt and recollect that if a young lion or a tiger so far forgets himself as to despise your authority, you will stand a fair chance of being torn to pieces some fine morning, and de- voured for their breakfast. I conceive that the preceding rapidly sketched hints will serve as a sufficient ground-work for the animal-tamer to act upon. He must not be discouraged if he do not succeed at ! first, and he must be satisfied to take time, and persevere. Without this he need not hope for success. The animal-tamer must be fearless — such a thing as terror must be a feeling w'holly foreign to his soul. He must be as brave as a lion : for how can he otherwdse hope to subdue the bravest of the animal creation ? I have said “ bravest,” and so let the word stand ; but I wrns perhaps led to employ the expression rather from popular prejudice, than from a convic- tion of its truth. The feline tribes are very powerful and very fierce animals, but they are by no means brave. A bulldog has more courage in his pigmy body, than exists in the prodigious carcasses of a dozen lions or tigers. Let the animal-tamer recollect this, and the knowdedge of this fact will probably en- courage him. To give a case in point : — I was once endeavour- ing to make friends wdth the tigress in the Zoological Gardens, Phoenix Park — a beautiful animal, subsequently purchased from the Zoological Society by the proprietors of the Portobello 208 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL Gardens, and since unfortunately dead. I had got so far as to be able to stroke the creature on the head and back, and even tc open her mouth with my hand, and leave it within her terrible jaws. This I did on my third visit to her, in presence of the animal’s keeper. One day I was alone Avith the tigress, and my hand was upon her neck : she with equal good nature had placed her enormous paw upon my shoulder, and was purring in a most affectionate manner, when a sud- den noise from one of the other animals caused me to start ; instantly the paw was brought down upon my arm with some violence, and before I could extricate my hand, Kate, as the tigress was called, had closed her teeth upon the limb, which she held firmly, though as yet uninjured. I strove to withdraw my hand, but to no purpose. I felt in a most uncomfortable po- sition, reader, for I feared that I should lose a very useful member of my frame : it was my right hand. Had I lost it, I should have been unable to have written this or any of the other papers I have given you. The teeth of the tigress be- came more and more firmly closed, and my efforts to disengage my hand were unavailing ; I called for assistance, but no one was within hearing ; when, calling courage and resolution to my aid, I bethought me of my own principles, and, raising mv other hand, dealt Kate as severe a blow as I Avas able Avith my clenched fist upon her nose. The experiment was suc- cessful. The animal, at once releasing my hand, sprang with an angry howl to the opposite side of her cage, from Avhich in a few moments she returned cowering and submissive, ap- parently eager to regain that portion of my good opinion that she seemed conscious of having forfeited. If, then, you are attacked, act with promptness and decision. Use your rod freely ; but if you find yourself in danger, employ your pistol, not, however, that loaded with ball (reserve it as a last resource, when there is nought else between you and death), but that loaded only Avith powder and tOAv ; fire it into the animal’s face, and I think there is no doubt but it will afford yoAi ample time for escape ; nay, it may in all likelihood render you conqueror ; and if you perceive that the shock has terrified your assailant, hand the pistol to be re-loaded by an assistant, while you advance and finish with your rod what the pistol began. If you be seized and overpowered, let your attendants use the heated irons ; they should be of a sufficient length to reach to any part of the cage, and should be applied to the nose and mouth. They will generally be found suc- cessful in turning the current of affairs. Ere taking leave of my readers, I must say a feAv Avords as to introducing animals of different species to each other. A very brief notice, comprised under one or two heads, will suf- fice. First, let each animal be perfectly and individually under your control. Secondly, do not put the strangers into the same cage all at once, but put them into a cage partitioned by an iron railing, in which leave them for a feAv weeks, until you begin to perceive that they have made each other’s acquaint- ance, and may be trusted together ; and do you enter the cage with them Avhen first brought together, and visit the least symptom of hostility with instant and effective chastisement. They should not at first be left together entirely, but only for an hour or tAvo each day while it is convenient to you to attend. By and bye, when they become sufficiently familiarized, you need be under no apprehension. When tAvo animals have been brought together, it will be comparatively easy and safe to in- troduce a third, then a fourth, and so on ; the safety increas- ing in proportion to their numbers. Make it also your busi- ness to select your animals with judgment. To an old leopard introduce a young lion, for instance, because the leopard Avill, in consequence of the youth of his new acquaintance, croAv over him, and aid you in subduing him. This advantage, to be gained by observing dissimilarity of ages, is by no means to be overlooked, as it is a powerful agent in the work of domesti- cation and association of the different species of animals. When one animal is of a timid kind — the natural prey proba- bly of the other, Avhich latter is fierce and poAverful— you have nothing to do but to make the more powerful animal afraid of its timid and defenceless companion. This may be done in various modes, just as the time or opportunities may suggest. A simple illustration may serve. Take a young cat and put her into a cage. Take a rat’s or a mouse’s skin, and fill it with hot scalding bran ; throw it to the cat, and Avhen she runs at it, take hold of her and thrust the hot skin into her mouth ; keep it there for a minute till she is well burned, and you have rendered that cat ever afterwards harmless toAvards mice, at least towards such as you may introduce to her ; a •wild one which she wet with at large wight fare differently, though I hardly think she would even attempt to injure it. Treat a bird-skin in this manner, and, after the scalding, tie it for a Avhile around puss’s neck, and you have secured your aviary from molestation. Sometimes the first experiment of this kind is not successful. When such is the case, however, be not disheartened, but repeat it ; and one or two such in- flictions cannot fail being effective. You may thus have cats, rats, mice, birds, &c, &c, all in one cage ; a curiosity I have often beheld, and which I have myself succeeded in forming in the manner I have described. Let not the reader Avho may endeavour to put the above rules in practice he disheartened by a little difficulty at start- ing. The power of nature is strong, and it is not until after a long and severe course of training that art can expect to overcome it. Let, therefore, the experimenter ever bear in mind the extraordinary force of nature, and the vast labour necessary to keep it in abeyance ; and in order that he should do so, I shall tell him the folloAving anecdote: — “ Cecco maintained that nature was more potent than art, Avhile Dante asserted the contrary. To prove his principle the great Italian bard referred to his cat, Avhich by repeated practice he had taught to hold a candle in its paw while he supped or read. Cecco desired to Avitness the experiment, and came not unprepared for his purpose. When Dante’s cat was performing its part, Cecco lifted up the lid of a pot which he had filled Avith mice ; the creature of art instantly showed the weakness of a talent merely acquired, and, dropping the candle, sprang on the mice with all its instinctive propensity. Dante Avas himself disconcerted ; and it Avas adjudged that the advocate for the occult principle of natural faculties had gained his cause.” Bear this anecdote therefore in mind. Do not forget the power of natural instinct, even over the most careful artificial training ; and let it be your anxious care to keep far distant every circumstance that might pro- voke the awakening of the one, or tend to shake or to subvert the influence of the other. This short sketch has, I trust, given my readers an insight into the mode by Avhich Van Amburgh and his rivals perform their wonders ; and I can assure them, that by following the principles I have here laid down, they may themselves, if they choose, equal in their oAvn private menageries the perform- ances of those public exhibitors. H. D. R. Philosophy — Philosophy can add to our happiness in no other manner but by diminishing our misery : it should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what Ave are possessed of. The great source of calamity lies in regret or anticipation ; he therefore is most wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future. This is impossible to a man of pleasure ; it is difficult to the man of business, and is in some degree attainable by the phi- losopher. Happy were we all born philosophers — all born wuth a talent of thus dissipating our own cares by spreading them upon all mankind Goldsmith. There are but two means in the Avorld of gaining by other men — by being either agreeable or useful. Artificial modesty disparages a woman’s real virtue as much as the use of paint does the natural complexion. It is a common fault never to be satisfied with our fortune, nor dissatisfied with our understanding Rochefoucault. A prison is a grave to bury men alive Mynshul. A titled nobility is the most undisputed progeny of feudal barbarism. — Sir James Mackintosh. The Avorthiest people are the most injured by slander ; as Ave usually find that to be the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at Swift. A miser groAvs rich by seeming poor, an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich Shenstone. There is not greater difference between the living and the dead, than between a wise man and a blockhead. Aristotle. A man who has good judgment has the same advantage over men of any other qualifications Avhatsoever, as one that can see Avould have over a blind man of ten times the strength. — Steele. Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin. — Agents: — R. Groombiudge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool ; J. Drake, Birmingham ; Slocombe and Simms, Leeds ; Fraser and Crawford, George Street, Edinburgh ; and David Robertson, Trongate, Glasgow. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 27. SATURDAY, JANUARY 2, 1841. Volume I. THE IRISH MIDWIFE. — Pakt II. BY WILLIAM CAKLETON. The village of Ballycomaisv was as pleasant a little place as one might wish to see of a summer’s day. To be sure, like all other Irish villages, it was remarkable for a superfluity of 4< pigs, praties, and childre,” which being the stock in trade of an Irish cabin, it is to be presumed that very few vil- lages either in Ireland or elsewhere could go on properly without them. It consisted principally of one long street, which you entered from the north-west side by one of those old-fashioned bridges, the arches of which were much more akin to the Gothic than the Roman. Most of the houses were of mud, a few of stone, one or two of which had the honour of being slated on the front side of the roof, and rustically thatched on the back, where ostentation was not necessary. There were two or three shops, a liberal sprinkling. of public- houses, a chapel a little out of the town, and an old dilapida- ted market-house near the centre. A few little bye-streets projected in a lateral direction from the main one, which was terminated on the side opposite to the north-west by a pound, through which, as usual, ran a shallow stream, that was gathered into a little gutter as it crossed the road. A crazy antiquated mill, all covered and cobwebbed with grey mealy dust, stood about a couple of hundred yards out of the town, to which two straggling rows of houses, that looked like an abortive street, led you. This mill was surrounded by a green common, which was again hemmed in by a fine river, that ran round in a curving line from under the hunchbacked arch of the bridge we mentioned at the beginning. Now, a little behind, or rather above this mill, on the skirt of the aforesaid common, stood a rather neat-looking whitish cabin, with about half a rood of garden behind it. It was but 210 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. small, and consisted merely of a sleeping-room and kit- chen. On one side of the door there was a window, open- ing on hinges ; and on the outside, to the right as you en- tered the house, there was placed a large stone, about four feet high, backed by a sloping mound of earth, so graduated as to allow a person to ascend the stone without any difficul- ty, In this cabin lived Rose Moan, the Midwife ; and we need scarcely inform our readers that the stone in question was her mounting-stone, by which she was enabled to place herself on pillion or crupper, as the case happened, when called out upon her usual avocation. Rose was what might be called a Jlahoolagli, or portly avo- man, with a good-humoured set of Milesian features ; that is to say, a pair of red, broad cheeks, a well-set nose, allowing for the disposition to turn up, and tAvo black twinkling eyes, with a mellow expression that betokened good nature, and a peculiar description of knowing professional humour that is never to be met with in any but a Midwife. Rose was dressed in a red flannel petticoat, a Avarm cotton sack or wrapper, which pinned easily over a large bust, and a comfortable woollen shawl. She always wore a long-bordered morning cap, over which, while travelling, she pinned a second shawl of Scotch plaid ; and to protect her from the cold night air, she enfolded her precious person in a deep blue cloak of the true indigo tint. On her head, over cloak and shaAvl and morning cap, Avas fixed a black “ splush hat,” with the leaf strapped doAvn by her ears on each side, so that in point of fact she cared little how it blew, and never once dreamed that such a process as that of Raper or Mackintosh was necessary to keep the liege subjects of these realms warm and Avater- proof, nor that two systems should exist in Ireland so strongly antithetical to each other as those of Raper and Father Mathew. Having thus given a brief sketch of her local habitation and personal appearance, we shall transfer our readers to the house of a young new-married farmer named Keho, who lived in a distant part of the parish. Keho Avas a comfort- able fellow, full of good nature and credulity ; but his wife happened to be one of the sharpest, meanest, most suspicious, and miserable devils that ever was raised in good-humoured Ireland. Her voice was as sharp and her heart as cold as an icicle ; and as for her tongue, it was incessant, and in- terminable. Were it not that her husband, who, though good-natured, Avas fiery and resolute when provoked, exer- cised a firm and salutary control over her, she would have starved both him and her servants into perfect skeletons. And what was still worse, with a temper that Avas vindic- tive and tyrannical, she affected to be religious, and upon those who did not know her, actually attempted to pass herself off as a saint. One night, about ten or twelve months after his mar- riage, honest Corny Keho came out to the barn, where slept his two farm servants, named Phil Hannigan and Barny Casey. He had been sitting by himself, composing his mind for a calm night’s sleep, or probably for a curtain lecture, by taking a contemplative whiff of the pipe, Avhen the ser- vant wench, with a certain air of hurry, importance, and authority, entered the kitchen, and informed him that Rose Moan must immediately be sent for. “ The misthress isn’t well, Masther, an’ the sooner she’s sint for, the betther. So mind my words, sir, if you plaise, an’ pack aff either Phil or Barny for Rose Moan, an’ I hope I won’t have to ax it again — hem !” Handy Keho — for so Corny was called, as being remark- able for his slovenliness — started up hastily, and having taken the pipe out of his mouth, was about to place it on the hob ; but reflecting that the whiff could not much re- tard him in the delivery of his orders, he sallied out to the barn, and knocked. “ Who’s there ? Lave that, wid you, unless you wish to be shotted.” This was followed by a loud laugh from within. “Boys, get up wid all haste: it’s the misthress. Phil, saddle Hollowback and fly — (puff) — fly in a jiffy for Rose Moan ; an’ do you, Barny, clap a back-sugaun — (puff) — an Sobersides, an’ be aff for the Misthress’s mother — (puff.) ’ Both were dressing themselves before he had concluded, and in a very few minutes were off in different directions, each according to the orders he had received. With Barny we have nothing to do, unless to say that he lost little time in bringing Mrs Keho’s mother to her aid ; but as Phil is gone for a much more important character, we beg our readers to return with us to the cabin of Rose Moan, who is now fast asleep ; for it is tAvelve o’clock of a beautiful moonlight night, in the pleasant month of August. Tap-tap. “ Is Mrs Moan at home?” In about half a minute her warm good-looking face, enveloped in flannel, is protruded from the window. “ Who’s that, in God’s name?” The words in italics were added, lest the message might be one from the fairies. “ I’m Dandy Keho’s servant — one of them, at any rate — an’ my Misthress has got a stitch in her side — ha ! ha ! ha !” “ Aisy, avick — so, she’s down, thin — aisy — I’ll be wid you like a bow out of an arroAv. Put your horse over to ‘ the stone,’ an’ have him ready. The Lord bring her over her difficulties, any way, amin !” She then pulled in her head, and in about three or four minutes sallied out, dressed as we have described her ; and having placed herself on the crupper, coolly put her right arm round Phil’s body, and desired him to ride on with all possi- ble haste. “ Push an, avouchah push an — -time’s precious at all times, but on business like this every minute is worth a life. But there’s always one comfort, that God is marciful. Push forrid, avick.” “ Never fear, Mrs Moan. If it’s in Hollowback, bedad I’m the babe that ’ll take it out of him. Come, ould Hack- ball, trot out — you don’t Icuoav the message you’re an, nor Avho you’re carryin’.” “ Isn’t your misthress — manin’ the Dandy’s Avife— a daugh- ther of ould Fitzy Finnegan’s, the schrew of Glendhu?'’ “ Faith, you may say that, Rose, as Ave all know to our cost. Be me song, she does have us sometimes that you might see through us ; an’ only for the masther but, dang it, no matther — she’s doAvn noAv, poor woman, an’ it’s not just the time to be rakin’ up her failins.” “ It is not, an’ God mark you to grace for sayin’ so. At a time like this Ave must forget every thing, only to do the best we can for our felloAV-creatures. What are you lookin’ at, avick ?” Noav, this question naturally arose from the fact that honest Phil had been, during their short conversation, peering keenly on each side of him, as if he expected an apparition to rise from every furze-bush on the common. The truth is, he Avas almost proverbial for his terror of ghosts and fairies, and all supernatural visitants whatever ; but upon this occasion his fears arose to a painful height, in consequence of the popular belief, that, when a midwife is sent for, the Good People throw every possible obstruction in her way, either by lam- ing the horse, if she rides, or by disqualifying the guide from performing his duty as such. Phil, however, felt ashamed to avow his fears on these points, but still could not help un- consciously turning the conversation to the very topic he ought to have avoided. “ What Avar you looking at, avick ?” “ Why, bedad, there appeared something there beyant, like a man, only it was darker. But be this and be that — . hem, ehem ! — if I could get my hands on him, whatsomever he” “ Hushth, boy, hould your tongue : you don’t know but it’s the very Avord you Avar goin’ to say might do us harm.” “ — Whatsomever he is, that I’d give him a lift on Hollowback if ho happened to be any poor fellow that stood in need of it. Oh ! the sorra word I was goin’ to say against any thing or any body.” “ You’re right, dear. If you knew as much as I could tell you — push an — you’d have a dhrop o’ sweat at the ind of every hair on your head.” “ Be my song, I’m tould you know a power o’ quare things, Mrs Moan ; an’ if all that’s said is thrue, you sartinly do.” Now, had Mrs Moan and her heroic guide passed through the village of Ballycomaisy, the latter would not have felt his fears so strong upon him. The road, however, along which they were noAV going Avas a grass-groAvn bohreen, that led them from behind her cabin through a waste and lonely part of. the country; and as it Avas a saving of better than two miles in point of distance, Mrs Moan would not hear of their proceeding by any other direction. The tenor of her conversation, however, Avas fast bringing Phil to the state she so graphically and pithily described. “ What’s your name?” she asked. “ Phil fHannigan, a son of fat Phil’s of Ralnasaggart, an’ a cousin to Paddy who lost a finger in the Gansy (Guernsey) wars.” “ I know. Well, Phil, in throth the hairs ’ud stand like 211 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. stalks o’ barley upon your head, if you heard all I could mintion.” Phil instinctively put his hand up and pressed down his hat, as if it had been disposed to fly from off his head. “ Hem ! ahem ! Why, I’m tould it’s wonderful. But is it thrue, Mrs Moan, that you have been brought on business to some o’ the” — here Phil looked about him cautiously, and lowered his voice to a whisper — “ to some o’ the fairy women ?” Husth, man alive — what, the sorra timpted you to call them anything but the Good People ? This day’s Thursday — God stand betune us an’ harm. No, Phil, I name nobody. But there w r as a woman, a midwife — mind, avick, that I don’t say who she was — may be I know why too, an’ may be it would be as much as my life is worth” “ Aisey, Mrs Moan ! God presarve us ! what is that tall thing there to the right !” — and he commenced the Lord’s Prayer in Irish as fast as he could get out the words. “ Why, don’t you see, boy, its a fir-tree, but sorra movin’ it’s movin.” “ Ay, faix, an’ so it is ; bedad I thought it was gettin’ taller an’ taller. Ay !— hut ! it is only a tree.” “ Well, dear, thei’e w r as a woman, an’ she was called away one night by a little gentleman dressed in green. I’ll tell you the story some time — only this, that hayin’ done her duty, an’ tuck no payment, she was called out the same night to a neigh- bour’s wife, an’ a purtier boy you couldn’t see than she left behind her. But it seems she happened to touch one of Ins eyes wid a hand that had a taste of their panado an it ; an’ as the child grew up, every one wondhered to hear him speak of the multitudes o’ thim that he seen in all directions. Well, my dear, he kept never sayin’ anything to them until one day when he was in the fair of Ballycomaisy, that he saw them whippin’ away meal and cotton and butther, an’ everything that they thought serviceable to thorn ; so you see he could hould in no longer, an’ says he to a little fellow that was very active an’ thievish among them, * Why duv you take what doesn’t belong to you ?’ says he. The little fellow looked up at him” — “ God be about us, Rose, what is that white thing goin’ along thJ^ditch to the left of us ?” “ It’s a sheep, don’t you see ? Faix, I believe you’re cow- ardly at night.” “ Ay, faix, an’ so it is, but it looked very quare somehow.” “ — An’ says he, * How do you know’ that ?’ ‘ Bekase I see you all,’ says the other. ‘ An’ which eye do you see us all ■wid ?’ says he again. ‘ Why, w-id the left,’ says the boy. Wid that he gave a short whiff of a blast up into the eye, an’ from that day not a stime the poor boy was never able to see wid it. No, Phil, I did’nt say it was myself— I named nobody .” “ An’, Mrs Moan, is it thrue that you can put the dughaughs upon them that trate their wives badly ?” “ Whisht, Phil. When you marry, keep your timper — that’s all. — You knew long Ned Donnelly ?” “ Ay, bedad, sure enough ; there was quare things said about” “ Push an, avick, push an; for who knows how some of us is wanted? You have a good masther, I believe, Phil ? It’s poison the same Ned would give me if he could. Push an, dear.” Phil felt that he had got his answer. The abrupt mystery of her manner and her curt allusions left him little indeed to guess at. In this way did the conversation continue, Phil fe- loniously filching, as he thought, from her owii lips, a corro- boration of the various knowledge and extraordinary powers wdiich she was believed to possess, and she ingeniously feed- ing his credulity, merely by enigmatical hints and masked allusions ; for although she took care to affirm nothing direct- ly or personally of herself, yet did she contrive to answer him in such a manner as to confirm every report that had gone abroad of the strange purposes she could effect. “ Phil, wasn’t there an uncle o’ yours up in the Mountain Bar that didn’t live happily for some time wid his wife ?” “ I believe so, Rose ; but it was before my time, or any way when I was only a young shaver.” “ An’ did you ever hear how the reconcilement .came be- tune them ?” “ No, bedad,” replied Phil, “ I never did ; an’ that’s no wondher, for it was a thing they never liked to spake of.” “ Throth, it’s thrue for you, boy. Well, I brought about .Push an, dear, push an — They’re as happy a couple now as breaks bread, any wav, and that’s all they wanted.” “ I’d -wager a thirteen it was you did that, Rose.” “ Hut, gorsoon, hould your tongue. Sure they’re happy now, I say, whosomever did it. I named nobody, nor I take no pride to myself, Phil, out o’ sich things. Some people’s gifted above others, an’ that’s all. But, Phil ?” “ Well, ma’am?” “ How does the Dandy an’ his scald of a wife agree? for, throth, I’m tould she’s nothing else.” “ Faix, but middlin’ itself. As I tould you, she often Pas us as empty as a paper lanthern, wid divil a thing but the light of a good conscience inside of us. If we pray ourselves, be- gorra she’ll take care we’ll have the fastin’ at first cost ; so that you see, ma’am, -we hould a devout situation undher her.” “ An’ so that’s the way wid you ?” “ Ay, the downright thruth, an’ no mistake. Why, the stirabout she makes would run nine miles along a deal boord, an’ scald a man at the far end of it.” “ Throth, Phil, I never like to go next or near sich women or sich places, but for the sake o’ the innocent we must forget the guilty. So push an, avick, push an. Who knows but it’s life an’ death wid us ? Have you ne’er a spur on ?” “ The divil a spur I tuck tune to wait for.” “ Well, afther all, it’s not right to let a messager come for a woman like me, widout what is called the Midwife’s Spur — a spur in the head — for it has long been said that one in the head is worth two in the heel, an’ so indeed it is, — on busi- ness like this, anyway.” “ Sirs Moan, do you know the Moriartys of Ballaghmore, ma’am ?” “ Which o’ them, honey?” “ Mick o’ the Esker Beg.” “ To be sure I do. A well-favoured dacent family they are, an’ full o’ the world too, the Lord spare it to them.” “ Bedad, they are, ma’am, a well-favoured* family. Well, ma’am, isn’t it odd, but somehow there’s neither man, woman, nor child in the parish but gives you the good word above all the women in it; but as for a midwife, why, T heard my aunt say that if ever mother an’ child owended their lives to another, she did her and the babby’s to you.” The reader may here perceive that Phil’s flattery must have had some peculiar design in it, in connection with the Mori- artys, and such indeed was the fact. But we had better al- low him to explain matters himself. “ Well, honey, sure that was but my duty ; but God be praised for all, for every thing depinds on the Man above. She should call in one o’ those newfangled women who take out their Dispatches from the Lying-in College in Dublin be- low; for you see, Phil, there is sich a place there — an’ it stands to raison that there should be a Fondlin’ Hospital be- side it, which there is too, they say ; but, honey, what are these poor ignorant cratures but new lights, every one o’ them, that a dacent woman’s life isn’t safe wid ?” “ To be sure, Mrs Moan; an’ everyone knows they're not to be put in comparishment wid a woman like you, that knows sich a power. But how does it happen, ma’am, that the Moriartys does be spakin’ but middlin’ of you ?” “ Of me, avick ?” “ Ay, faix ; I’m tould they spread the mouth at you some- times, espishily when the people does be talkin’ about all the quare things you can do.” “ Well, well, dear, let them have their laugh — they may laugh that win, you know. Still one doesn’t like to be pro- voked — no indeed.” “Faix, an’ Mick Moriarty has a purty daughther, Mrs Moan, an’ a purty penny he can give her, by all accounts. The nerra one o’ myself but w r ould be glad to put my comedher on her, if I knew how. I hope you find yourself aisey on your sate, ma’am?” “ I do, honey. Let them talk, Phil, let them talk ; it may come their turn yet — only I didn’t expect it from them. You! hut, avick, what chance would you have with Mick Moriarty’s daughther ?” “ Ay, every chance an’ sartinty too, if some one that I know, and that every one that knows her, respects, -would only give me a lift. There’s no use in cornin’ about the bush, Mrs Moan — bedad it’s yourself I mane. You could do it. An’, whisper, betune you and me it would be only sarvin’ them right, in regard of the way they spake of you — savin’, indeed, an’ galivantin’ to the world that you know no more than another woman, an’ that ould Pol Doolin of Ballyma- gowan knows oceans more than you do.” This was perhaps as artful a plot as could be laid for en- gaging the assistance of Mrs Moan in Phil’s design upon * This term in Ireland means " handsome”— “ good-lookin%” 212 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Moriarty’s daughter. He knew perfectly well that she would not, unless strongly influenced, lend herself to any thing, of the kind between two persons whose circumstances in life dif- fered so widely as those of a respectable farmer’s daughter with a good portion, and a penniless labouring boy. With reat adroitness, therefore, he contrived to excite her preju- ices against them by the most successful arguments he could possibly use, namely, a contempt for her imputed knowledge, and praise of her rival. Still she was in the habit of acting coolly, and less from impulse than from a shrewd knowledge of the best way to sustain her own reputation, without un- dertaking too much. “ Well, honey, an’ so you wish me to assist you? Maybe I could do it, and maybe — But push an, dear, move him an ; we’ll think of it, an’ spake more about it some other time. I must think of what’s afore me now — so move, move, acushla; push an.” Much conversation of the same nature took place between them, in which each bore a somewhat characteristic part ; for to say truth, Phil was as knowing a “ boy” as you might wish to become acquainted with. In Rose, however, he had a woman of no ordinary shrewdness to encounter ; and the con- sequence was, that each after a little more chat began to un- derstand the other a little too well to render the topic of the Moriartys, to which Phil again reverted, so interesting as it had been. Rose soon saw that Phil was only a plasthey, or sweetener, and only “ soothered” her for his own purposes ; and Phil perceived that Rose understood his tactics too well to render any further tampering with her vanity either safe or successful. At length they arrived at Dandy Keho’s house, and in a moment the Dandy himself took her in his arms, and, placing her gently on the ground, shook hands with and cordially welcomed her. It is very singular, but no less true, that the moment a midwife enters the house of her patient, she always uses the plural number, whether speaking in her own person or in that of the former. “ You’re welcome, Rose, an’ I’m proud an’ happy to see you here, an’ it’ll make poor Bridget strong, an’ give her courage, to know you’re near her.” “ How are we, Dandy ? how are we, avick ?” “ Oh, bedad, middlin’, wishin’ very much for you of coorse, as I hear” “ Well, honey, go away now. I have some words to say afore I go in, that’ll sarve us, maybe — a charm it is that has great vai*tue in it.” The Dandy then withdrew to the barn, where the male por- tion of the family were staying until the ultimatum should be known. A good bottle of potteen, however, was circulating among them, for every one knows that occasions of this na- ture usually generate a festive and hospitable spirit. Rose now went round the house in the direction from east to west, stopping for a short time at each of the windows, which she marked with the sign of the cross five times ; that is to say, once at each corner and once in the middle. At each corner also of the house she signed the cross, and re- peated the following words or charm : — The four Evangels and the four Divines, God bless the moon an us when it shines. New moon,* true moon, God bless me, God bless this house an’ this family. Matthew, Mark, Luke, an’ John, God bless the bed that she lies on. God bless the manger where Christ was born, An’ lave joy an’ comfort here in the morn. St Bridget an’ St Patrick, an’ the holy spouse, Keep the fairies for ever far from this house. Amen. Glora yea, Glora yea, Glora yea yeolish, Glora n’ahir, Glora n’vac, Glora n’ spirid neev. Amen. These are the veritable words of the charm, which she ut- tered in the manner and with the forms aforesaid. Having concluded them, she then entered into the house, where we leave her for a time wfith our best wishes. In the barn the company were very merry, Dandy himself being as pleasant as any of them, unless when his brow be- came shaded by the very natural anxiety for the welfare of his wife and child, which from time to time returned upon him. Stories were told, songs sung, and jokes passed, all full of good nature and not a little fun, some of it at the expense of the Dandy himself, who laughed at and took it all in good part. An occasional bulletin came out through a servant maid, that matters were just the same way ; a piece of intelligence which * If it did not happen to be new moon, the words were “ good moon,” See. damped Keho’s mirth considerably. At length he himself was sent for by the Midwife, who wished to speak with him at the door. “ I hope there’s nothing' like danger, Rose ?” “ Not at all, honey ; but the truth is, we want a seventh son who isn’t left-handed.” “ A seventh son ! Why, what do you want him for ?” “ Why, dear, just to give her three shakes in his arms ; — - it never fails.” “ Bedad, an’ that’s fortunate ; for there’s Mickey M'Sorley of the Broad Bog’s a seventh son, an’ he’s not two gunshots from this.” “Well, aroon, hurry off one or two o’ the boys for him, and tell Phil, if he makes haste, that I’ll have a word to say to him afore I go.” This intimation to Phil put feathers to his heels ; for from the moment that he and Barny started, he did not once cease to go at the top of his speed. It followed as a matter of course that honest Micky M‘ Sorely dressed himself and was back at Keho’s house before the family believed it possible the parties could have been there. This ceremony of getting a seventh son to shake the sick woman, in cases where difficulty or danger may be apprehended, is one which frequently occurs in remote parts of the country. To be sure, it is only a form, the man merely taking her in his arms, and moving her gently three times. The writer of this, when young, saw it performed with his own eyes, as the saying is ; but in his case the man was not a seventh son, for no such person could be procured. When this difficulty arises, any man who has the character of being lucky, provided he is not married to a red-haired wife, may be called in to give the three shakes. In other and more dangerous cases Rose would send out persons to gather half a dozen heads of blast- ed barley ; and having stripped them of the black fine pow- der with which they were covered, she would administer it in a little new milk, and this was always attended by the best effects. It is somewhat surprising that the whole Faculty should have adopted this singular medicine in cases of similar difficulty, for in truth it is that which is now administered under the more scientific name of Ergot of rye. In the case before us, the seventh son sustained his reputa- tion for good luck. In about three quarters of an hour Dandy was called in “to kiss a strange young gintleman that wanted to see him.” This was an agreeable ceremony to Dandy, as it always is, to catch the first glimpse of one’s own first-born. On entering he found Rose sitting beside the bed in all the pomp of authority and pride of success, bearing the infant in her arms, and dandling it up and down, more from habit than any necessity that then existed for doing so. “Well,” said she, “here we are all safe and sound, God willin’ ; an’ if you’re not the father of as purty a young man as ever I laid eyes on, I’m not here. Corny Keho, come an’ kiss your son, I say.” Corny advanced, somewhat puzzled whether to laugh or cry, and taking the child up with a smile, he kissed it five times — for that is the mystic number — and as he placed it once more in Rose’s arms, there was a solitary tear on its cheek. “ Arra, go an’ kiss your wife, man alive, an’ tell her to have a good heart, an’ to be as kind to all her fellow-creatures as God has been to her this night. It isn’t upon this world the heart ought to be fixed, for we see how small a thing an’ how short a time erm take us out of it.” “ Oh, bedad,” said Dandy, who had now recovered the touch of feeling excited by the child, “ it would be too bad if I’d grudge her a smack.” He accordingly stooped, and kissed her ; but, truth to confess, he did it with a very cool and business-like air. “ I know,” he proceeded, “ that she’ll have a heart like a jyant, now that the son is come.” “ To be sure she will, an’ she must ; or if not, I’ll play the sorra, an’ break things. Well, well, let her get strength a bit first, an’ rest and quiet ; an’ in the mean time get the groanin’-malt ready, until every one in the house drinks the health of the stranger. My sowl to happiness, but he’s a born beauty. The nerra Keho of you all ever was the aiquails of what he’ll be yet, plaise God. Troth, Corny, he has daddy’s nose upon him, any how. Ay, you may laugh ; but, faix, it’s thrue. You may take with him, you may own to him, any where. Arra, look at that ! My soul to happiness, if one egg’s liker another! Eh, my posey ! Where was it, alanna? Ay, you’re there, my duck o’ diamonds 1 Troth, you’ll be the flower o’ the flock, so you will. An’ now, Mrs Keho, honey, we’ll la^e you to yourself awhile, till we thrate these poor THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 213 cratures of sarvints ; the likes o’ them oughtn’t to be over- looked ; an’ indeed they did feel a great dale itself, poor things, about you; an’ moreover they’ll belongin’ of coorse to see the darlin’ here.” Mrs Keho’s mother and Rose superintended the birth-treat between them. It is unnecessary to say that the young men and girls had their own sly fun upon the occasion ; and now that Dandy’s apprehension of danger was over, he joined in their mirth with as much glee as any of them. This being over, they all retired to rest; and honest Mickey M‘Sorley went home very hearty* in consequence of Dandy’s grateful sense of the aid he had rendered his wife. The next morning Rose, after dressing the infant and performing all the usual duties that one expected from her, took her leave in these words : — “Now, Mrs Keho, God bless you an’ yours, and take care of yourself. I’ll see you agin on Sunday next, when it’s to be christened. Until then, throw out no dirty wather before sun- rise or afther sunset; an’ when Father Molloy is goin’ to christen it, let Corny tell him not to forget to christen it against the fairies, an’ thin it’ll be safe. Good bye, ma’am ; an’ look you to her, Mrs Finnegan,” said she, addressing her patient’s mother, “ an’ hanaght lath till I see all again.” * Tipsy. THE MINSTREL’S WALK. BY J. U. U. (To the old Irish air of “ Bidh mid a gol sa poga na mban.”,) Green hills of the west, where I carolled along In the Mayday of life with my harp and my song, Though the winter of time o'er my spirit hath rolled. And the breast of the minstrel is weary and cold ; Though no more by those famous old haunts shall I stray, Once the themes of my song, and the guides of my way, That each had its story, and true-hearted friend. Before I forget ye, life’s journey shall end ! Oh, 'twas joy in the prime of life’s morning to go On the tracks of Clan Connell, led on by Hugh Roe, O’er the hill of Keiscorran, renowned Ballimote, By the Boyle, or by Newport, all passes of note, Where the foe their vain armaments haughtily kept ; But the foot of th’ avenger went by while they slept : The hills told no tale, but the night-cloud was red, And the friends of the Sassenagh quaked at their tread. By the plains of Rath Croghan, fields famous of yore. Though stronghold and seat of the kingly no more. By Tulsk and Tomona, hill, valley, and plain, To grey Ballintubber, O’Connors’ domain ; While ages rolled backwards in lengthened array. In song and old story, the long summer day ; And cloud-like the glories of Connaught rolled by, Till they sank in the horrors of grim Athenry ! Through the heaths of Kiltullagh, kind, simple, though rude, To Aeluin’s bright waters, where Willesborough stood, Ballinlough then spoke welcome from many a door. Where smiles lit kind faces that now smile no more ; Then away to the Moyne, o’er the moors of Mayo, Still onward, still welcomed by high and by low, Blake, Burke, and O’Malley, Lynch, Kirwan, and Browne, By forest, lake, mountain, through village and town. Then kind were the voices that greeted my way, ’Twas Cead mi lie faille at closing of day, When young hearts beat lightly, and labour was done, For joy tracked my steps, as light follows the sun ; I had tales for the hamlet, and news for the hall. And the tune of old times, ever welcome to all. The praise of thy glory, dear land of the west ; But thy praises are still, and thy kind bosoms rest ! My blessing rest with you, dear friends, though no more Shall the poor and the weary rej oice at your door ; Though like stars to your homes I have seen you depart, Still ye live, O ye live in each vein of my heart. Still the light of your looks on my darkness is thrown. Still your voices breathe round me when weary and lone ; Like shades ye come back with each feeling old strain. But the world shall ne’er look on your equals again. The difference between a rich man and a poor man is this — the former eats when he pleases, the latter when he can get it Sir W. Raleigh. APOLOGUES AND FABLES FROM FOREIGN LANGUAGES. (Translated far the Irish Penny Journal.) No. VI— THE REMORSE OF A NIGHT. The last night of the year was about to expire ; the winds, after a day of storminess, had subsided into slumber ; the white earth lay outspread, like a shrouded map, under the moon; and innumerable stars arose out from the remotest abysses of heaven, twinkling as brightly as though they had but then begun their existence, and were never to suffer im- pairment. Eleven o’clock had tolled from the tower of an ancient Gothic church ; and as the vibrations died away on the transparent air, an Old Man drew nigh to the window of a dark room in the desolate dwelling of which he had long; been the solitary tenant, and cast his dull despairful eyes up- wards towards the immoveable firmament, and from "thence down on the blank waste of the earth, and then breathed a groaning prayer, that those eyes might never survey that fir- mament or that earth again. Wretched was he, in truth, that Old Man, beyond all parallel and beyond all consolation — - for his grave lay open for him, as it seemed, by his side ; it was thinly covered over, not by the flowers of Youth, but by the snows of Age ; and when, heartsick of the sight, he looked away from it into himself, he saw that the sole fruits that he had gathered from a long and eventful life were sins, regrets, and maladies— a decayed body, a plague-smitten soul, a bo- som full of bitterness, and an old age full of remorse. The beautiful days of his youth now came again before him like ghosts, and resummoned to his remembrance the cheerful morning upon which his venerable father had first placed him upon the great Cross-road of Life — a road which, trod- den on the right hand, conducts the pilgrim along the noon- day path of Virtue into a spacious, joyous land, abounding in sunbeams, harvests, and angelic spirits, but which, followed on the left, betrays him through lampless and miry ways, into the rueful wildernesses of Vice, where serpents for ever swarm, and pestilence chokes the atmosphere, and to quench his burn- ing thirst the sluggish black rivers yield him but slime and poison. Alas ! the serpents were now coiled about him — the poison was rilling through his heart ! Alas for him ! he knew too well which road he had chosen — where he was— and what he must undergo — for eternity — for eternity ! With an anguish, with an agony, with a despair, that lan- guage cannot even faintly pourtray, he uplifted his withered arms towards heaven, clasped his hands, and cried aloud, O ! give me back, give me back my youth ! O ! my father, lead me once more to the Cross-road, that I may once more choose, and this time choose with foreknowledge ! But his cries wasted themselves idlyyupon the frozen air, for his father was no more, and his youth, was no more both had alike long, long ago evanished, never to reappear. He knew this, and he wept — yes, that miserable old man wept ; but his tears relieved him not ; they were like drops of hot lava, for they trickled from a burning brain. He looked forth, and he saw flitting lights — wills-o’-tbe- wisp — dancing over the morasses and becoming extinguished in the burial-grounds ; and he said, Such were my riotous days of folly ! He again looked forth, and he beheld a star fall from heaven to earth, and there melt away in blackness that left no trace behind, and he said, I am that star ! and with that woeful thought were torn open anew the leprous wounds in his bosom which the serpents that clung around him would never suffer to be healed. His morbid imagination, wandering abroad till it touched on the confines of frenzy, showed him figures of sleep-walkers traversing like shadows the roofs of the houses : — the chimneys widened into furnaces vomiting forth flames and monsters— the windmills lifted up their giant arms, and threatened to crush him — -and a forgotten spectre, left behind in a deserted charnel-house, glared on him with a horrible expression of malignity, and then mocked his terror by assuming his features. On a sudden there flowed out upon the air a deep, rich, and solemn stream of music. It came from the steeple of the old Gothic church, as the bells announced the birth of the new year, for it was now the twelfth hour. Its cadences fell with a thrilling distinctness upon the ear and the heart of the Old Man ; and every tone in the melody, through the agency of that mysterious power which sound possesses of re-assembling within the forsaken halls of the soul images long departed, 214 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. brought before his minrl some past scone of his life, vivid as a panoramic picture. Again he looked round upon the lucid horizon and over the frosted earth; and ho thought on the opportunities he had forfeited— the warnings he had slighted— the examples he had scoffed at. He thought ujmn the friends of his youth, and how they, better and more fortunate than he, were now good men, at peace with themselves — teachers of wisdom to others, fathers of blessed families, torchlights for the world — and he exclaimed, Oh ! and I also, had I but willed it, I also might, like them, have seen with tearless eyes, with tranquil heart, this night depart into eternity ! Oh, my dear father — my dear, dear mother ! I, even I, might have been now happy, had 1 but hearkened to your affectionate admonitions — had I but chosen to profit by the blessings which on every returning New Year’s Morn like this your tenderness led you to invoke on my head ! Amid these feverish reminiscences of his youth, it appeared to him as though the spectre which had assumed his features in the charnel-house gradually approached nearer .and nearer to him — losing, however, as it advanced, one trait after an- other of its spectral character — till at length, as if under the dominion of that supernatural influence which on the last night of the old year is popularly said to compel even the Dead to undergo a change of form, it took the appearance of a living young man — -the same young man that he had himself been fifty years before. He was unable to gaze any longer : he covered his face with his hands ; and, as the blistering tears gushed from his eyes, he sank down, powerless and trembling, on his knees — and again he cried out, as if his heart would break, O ! come back to me, lost days of my youth ! — come back, come back to me once more ! And the supplication of the Penitent was not made in vain, for they came back to him, those days of his youth, but not yet lost. ! He started from his bed — the blue moonbeams were shining in through the windows — the midnight chimes were announcing the beginning of a new year. Yes !— all had been but an appalling dream — all, except his sins and trans- gressions : these, alas 1 were but too l'cal, for conscience, even in sleep, is a faithful monitor. But he was still young — he had not grown old in iniquity — and with tears of repent- ance ho thanked God for having, even by means of so terrific a. vision, awakened in his heart a feeling of horror for the criminal career he had been pursuing, and for having revealed to him in that glimpse of a land full of sunbeams, harvests, and angelic spirits, the blissful goal in which, if he pleased, the path of his existence might yet terminate. Youthful reader! on which of these two paths art thou ? On the right-hand path? Go forward, then, with the bless- ing of thy Maker, and fear nothing ! On the left-hand path ? If so, pause: be forewarned — turn while yet thou mayest. — retrace thy steps — make a happier choice ! I will pray that the terrors of this ghastly Dream may not hereafter be arrayed in judgment against thee ! Alas for thee, if the time ever come when thou shalt call aloud in thy despair, Come back, ye precious days of my youth ! — unlike the dreamer, thou wilt but be mocked by the barren echo of thine own lamentation — the precious days of thy youth will never, never come back to thee ’ ‘ M. TEETOTALLERS AND TOPERS. It is not a little curious, and perhaps not a little amusing in its way, to mark the feelings with which these two very dif- ferent classes contemplate each other. The introduction of teetotallism was a thing for which the toper was wholly unprepared. It was a thing of which, a priori, he could have formed no conception— a thing of which he never dreamt. It therefore took him quite by surprise ; and when it came, his opinion of it was, and to this good hour is, that it is one of the most absurd and monstrous ideas that ever entered into the human head. That a class of men should arise who would forswear the use of those exhilarating stimulants in which he himself so much delighted — that there should ever appear on the face of the earth such an ass as the man who would refuse a glass of generous liquor whon offered him, is to him a thing sur- passing belief ; and in fact he does not, or rather will not, relieve in it. He insists upon it that it is all humbug, and that its professors, the professors of teetotallism, may say what they please, but that they can and do take their drink as freely as he does ; the only real difference being, that they take theirs secretly. No evidence whatever will con vince him that it is otherwise, or at least will induce him to admit that it is so. He is, in short, determined not to believe in so monstrous a doctrine. But should conviction at any time be too strong for him, he then falls back on the consolatory be- lief that it cannot long prevail — that it will not, cannot stand. An association whose rules should enjoin every mem- ber always to walk backwards instead of forwards, or which should enjoin any other equally ridiculous absurdity, might live and prosper ; but teetotallism, the abstaining from the dear potations — no, no, that cannot stand any time — ridicu- lous, impossible— not in the nature of things. As might be expected, the toper entertains a most cordial hatred of the teetotaller ; he abhors him, and detests his principles he in fact cannot hear him spoken of with any de- gree of patience. Oh, what a triumph to him when he catches a teetotaller tripping ! With what delight he treasures up anecdotes of backsliding on the part of the professors of ab- stinence ! And of such anecdotes he has a large store ; for he is constantly on the look-out for them, and is not very par- ticular on the score of authenticity. With what glee he re- lates these anecdotes to his club ! and with what glee his club listens to the edifying and refreshing relation ! They will chuckle over a story of this kind for a month. Nor, in the matter of anecdote, is the teetotaller a whit behind his unre- generated brother. The two parties, in fact, carry on a war of anecdote against each other — the tetotaller’s being stories of ruin and misery resulting from dissipation — the toper’s, face- tious little tales of hypocrisy and backsliding. Both collect their anecdotes with great industry, and propagate them with great zeal and diligence. The toper’s attitude, as regards the teetotaller, is of course a hostile one. But it is not a bold one. There is nothing of defiance in it, although he sometimes affects it. For although he hates the teetotaller, he also stands in awe of him ; being oppressed with an awkward consciousness that the latter has the right side of the argument, and the weight of general opinion is on his side — that, in short, the teetotaller is right and he is wrong. This consciousness gives to his hostility a sneaking and timid character, and induces him to confine himself in the matter of retaliation to the facetious joke and sly insinuation. On more open warfare he dare not venture. The teetotaller is thus the assailing party : he takes and keeps the field manfully, and with bold front and loud voice dares the toper to the combat. The latter, in conscious weakness, shrinks at the sound, as do the small animals of the forest when they hear the roar of the lion ; and getting out of his way as fast as he can, retires to his fastnesses, the drinking-shops, and hedges himself round with bottles and quart-pots. The toper always carefully eschews any thing like direct and open personal contact with the enemy, in the shape of discussions on the merits of the question of abstinence. There is, in fact, nothing he so much abominates as any at- tempt at reasoning on the subject, where such reasoning has for its object to show the advantages of temperance or intemper- ance. The toper thus at all times prefers keeping out of the teetotaller’s way, and, although professing the most entire disregard of him, will at any time go a mile about to avoid him. He has an instinctive dislike of him, and this because he is a living personified reflection on himself. Turning now to the teetotaller, we find two or three things in his conduct, too, with reference to the toper, that are rather curious in their way. In the first place, it is curious to mark the deep interest he takes in what may be called the tippling statistics of his neighbourhood ; and the amount of knowledge which he contrives to acquire on this subject is really amazing. He knows all the topers in his vicinity, and keeps a sharp eye on their proceedings. He knows every one of their haunts too — knows the different degrees of dissipa- tion to which each has attained, and could almost tell on any given day what quantity each drank on the preceding night. In short, so vigilantly does he watch all the outgoings and incomings of these marked men, and yet without seeming to notice them, that they can hardly swallow a single cropper without his knowing it. The whole thing, in fact, is a sort of private study of his own, and one to which he devotes a great deal of quiet observation and secret reflection : be takes a deep interest in it, and hence the proficiency he makes out in the knowledge of its details. But our teetotaller not only knows all the professed, un- disguised topers of his locality ; he knows — much more 215 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. striking proof of his vigilance — every man also whose habits, although not yet sufficiently intemperate to attract the at- tention of any one but a teetotaller, exhibit signs and symptoms of becoming gradually worse. The tippling pro- gress of these persons he watches with the deepest interest, and keeps himself accurately informed regarding the extent and frequency of their debauches. The teetotaller, in short, keeps a vigilant eye over the entire drinking system of his neighbourhood, and professes an astonishing knowledge of what every one is doing in this way. If the teetotaller’s residence be in a small town, his surveillance then embraces its whole extent, and hardly can a single bumper be swallowed within its limits, of which he does not, somehow or other, obtain notice. Abhorring dissipation itself, the teetotaller naturally ex- tends that abhorrence to its signs and symptoms. On flushed and pimpled faces he looks with aversion and distrust, but on a red nose with absolute horror. We once saw a curious in- stance of this : — A gentleman with a highly illumed probos- cis one evening entered a teetotal coffee-room in which we happened to be seated. The nose — for we sink the gentle- man, its owner, altogether, as an unnecessary incumbrance — passed, although with deliberate movement, like a fiery meteor, up the entire length of the room, exciting in its progress the utmost horror and dismay amongst the teetotallers with whom the apartment was thronged. The sensation, in fact, created by the red nose was immense, although not noisy in its ex- pression. It was indicated merely by an extensive and earnest whis- pering, by a shuffling of feet, and a general fidgetty sort of movement, giving, though in an unobtrusive form, a very vivid idea of the presence of some exceedingly disagreeable object. The whole room, in short, was shocked by the red nose, although they refrained from expressing that feeling by any more marked demonstration than those w r e have mentioned. The red nose seemed for some time unconscious of the effects it was producing, but the detection of a number of horror- stricken faces peering eagerly over the edges and round the corners of boxes, to get a glimpse of the detestable object, betrayed the real state of the case. The red nose, however, evinced no emotion on making the discovery, but passed quiet- ly into an unoccupied box, took up a paper, and ordered a glass of lemonade. The landlord looked queer at the nose as he tabled the order, but of course said nothing. Now, w r e thought at the time, how different would have been the reception of the gentleman with the red nose by a club of topers ! In such case, his nose, in place of being looked on with horror, would have been viewed with respect. It would have been a passport to the highest favour of the jolly frater- nity, and would have at once admitted its owner to their con- fidence and good-fellowship. We do not know, indeed, that its entrance would not have been hailed by a shout, of accla- mation ; for, viewed as one of the chief insignia of a boon com- panion, it was truly a splendid nose. C. MORAL EVIL MAN’S OWN CREATION. Man brings upon himself a thousand calamities, as conse- quences of his artifices and pride, and then, overlooking his own follies, gravely investigates the origin of what he calls evil : — He compromises every natural pleasure to acquire fame among transient beings, who forget him nightly in sleep, and eternally in death ; and seeks to render his name celebrated among posterity, though it has no identity with his person, and though posterity and himself can have no contempora- neous feeling. He deprives himself and all around him of every passing enjoyment, to accumulate wealth that he may purchase other men’s labour, in the vain hope of adding happiness to his own. He omits to make effective laws to protect the poor against the oppressions of the rich, and then wears out his existence under the fear of becoming poor, and being the victim of his own neglect and injustice. He arms himself with murderous weapons ; and on the slightest instigation, and for hire, practises murder as a science, follows this science as a regular profession, and honours its chiefs above benefactors and philosophers, in pro- portion to the quantity of blood they have shed, or the mis- chiefs they have perpetrated. He disguises the most worthless of the people in showy liveries, and then excites them to murder men whom they never saw, by the fear of being killed if they do not kill. He revels in luxury and gluttony, and then complains of the diseases which result from repletion. He tries in all things to counteract or improve the provisions of nature, and then afflicts himself at his disappointments. He multiplies the chances against his own life and health by his numerous artifices, and then wonders at their fatal results. He shuts his eyes against the volume of truth as presented by Nature, and, vainly considering that all was made for him, founds on this false assumption various doubts in regard to the justice of eternal causation. He interdicts the enjoyment of all other creatures, and re- gardingtheworldas his property, in mere wantonness destroys myriads on whom have been bestowed beauties and perfections. He forgets that to live and let live is a maxim of universal justice, extending not only to his fellow creatures, but to in- ferior ones, to whom his moral obligations are greater, be- cause they are more in his power. He afflicts himself that he cannot live for ever, though his forefathers have successively died to make room for him. He repines at the thought of losing that life, the use of which he so often perverts : and though he began to exist but yes- terday, thinks the world was made for him, and that he ought to continue to enjoy it for ever. He desires to govern others, but, regardless of their de- pendence upon his benevolence, is commonly gratified in dis- playing the power entrusted to him by a tyrannical abuse of it. He makes laws, which, in the hands of mercenary lawyers, serve as snares to unwary poverty — but as shields to crafty wealth. He acknowledges the importance of educating youth, yet teaches them any thing but their social duties in the political state in which they live. He passes his days in questioning the providence of Nature, in ascribing evil to supernatural causes, in feverish expecta- tion of results contrary to the necessary harmony of the world. The Labour of Study — It is impossible for any man to be a determined student without endangering his health. Man was made to be active. The hunter who roams through the forest, or climbs the rocks of the Alps, is the man who is hardy, and in the most robust health. The sailor who has been rocked by a thousand storms, and who labours day and night, is a hardy man, unless dissipation has broken his con- stitution. Any man of active habits is likely to enjoy good health, if he does not too frequently over-exert himself. But the student’s habits are all unnatural, and by them nature is continually cramped and restrained. Men err in nothing more than in the estimate which they make of human labour. The hero of the world is the man that makes a bustle the man that makes the road smoke under his chaise-and-four . the man that raises a dust about him — the man that ravages or devastates empires. But what is the real labour of this man, compared with that of a silent sufferer ? He lives on his projects : he encounters, perhaps, rough roads, incom- modious inns, bad food, storms and perils ; but what are these ? His project, his point, the thing that has laid hold on his heart — glory— a name — consequence — pleasure wealth . these render the man callous to the pains and efforts of the body. I have been in both states, and therefore understand them ; and I know that men form this false estimate. Besides, there is .something in bustle, and stir, and activity, that supports itself. At one period I preached and read five times on a Sunday, and rode sixteen miles. But what did it cost me ? Nothing ! Yet most men would have looked on, while I was rattling from village to village, with all the dogs barking at my heels, and would have called me a hero ; whereas, if they were to look at me now, they would call me an idle, lounging fellow. “ He gets into his study (they would say)— he walks from end to end — he scribbles on a scrap of paper — - he throws it away and scribbles on another — he sits down— scribbles again — walks about !” They cannot see that here is an exhaustion of the spirit which, at night, will leave me worn to the extremity of endurance. They cannot see the numberless efforts of mind which are crossed and stifled, and recoil on the spirits like the fruitless efforts of a traveller to get firm footing among the ashes on the steep sides of Mount Etna — Rev. John'Todd — Student's Guide. Necessity of a Steadfast Character — The man who is perpetually hesitating which of two things he will do first, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. ‘210 will do neither. The man who resolves, but suffers his reso- lution to be changed by the first counter-suggestion of a friend — who fluctuate., from opinion to opinion, from plan to plan — and veers, like a weathercock, to every point of the compass, with every breath of caprice that blows — can never accomplish anything great or useful. Instead of being pro- gressive in anything, he will be at best stationary, and more probably retrograde, in all. It is only the man who first consults wisely, then resolves firmly, and then executes his purpose with inflexible perseverance, undismayed by those petty difficulties which daunt a weaker spirit — that can ad- vance to eminence in any line. Let us take, by way of illus- tration, the case of a student. He commences the study of the dead languages ; but presently a friend comes, and tells him that he is wasting his time, and that, instead of obsolete words, he had much better employ himself in acquiring new ideas. He changes his plan, and sets to work at the ma- thematics. Then comes another friend, who asks him, with a grave and sapient face, whether he intends to become a professor in a college ; because, if he does not, he is mis- employing his time ; and that, for the business of life, com- mon mathemat’nics is quite enough of mathematical science. He throws up his Euclid, and addresses himself to some other study, which in its turn is again relinquished, on some equally wise suggestion : and thus life is spent in changing his plans. You cannot but perceive the folly of this course; and the worse effect of it is, the fixing on your mind a habit of indecision, sufficient of itself to blast the fairest prospects. No — take your course wisely, but firmly: and having taken it, hold upon it with heroic resolution ; and the Alps and Pyrenees will sink before you — the whole empire of learning will lie at your feet ; while those who set out with you, but stopped to change their plans, are yet employed in the very profitable business of changing their plans. Let your motto be Perseverance. Practise upon it, and you will be convinced of its value by the distinguished eminence to which it will conduct you. — Wirt's Essays. III. Temper. — Mankind are ignorant enough, both in the mass, about general interests, and individually, about the things which belong to their peace ; but of all mortals none perhaps are so awfully self-deluded as the unamiable. They do not, any more than others, sin for the sake of sinning ; but the amount of woe caused by their selfish unconsciousness is such as may well make their weakness an equivalent for other men’s gravest crimes. There are great diversities of hiding- places for their consciences — many mansions in the dim prison of discontent ; but it may be doubted whether, in the hour when all shall be uncovered to the eternal day, there will be revealed a lower deep than the hell which they have made. They perhaps are the only order of evil ones who suffer hell without seeing and knowing that it is hell. But they are un- der a heavier curse even than this ; they inflict torments, se- cond only to their own, with an unconsciousness almost worthy of spirits of light. While they complacently conclude them- selves the victims of others, or pronounce that they are too singular, or too refined, for common appreciation, they are putting in motion an enginery of torture whose aspect will one day blast their minds’ sight. The dumb groans of their victims will sooner or later return upon their ears from the heights of the heaven to which the sorrows of men daily ascend. The spirit sinks under the prospect of the retribution of the unamiable ; if there be indeed an eternal record — an impress on some one or other human spirit — of every chilling frown, of every querulous tone, of every bitter jest, of every insulting word — of all abuses of that tremendous power which mind has over mind. The throbbing pulses, the quivering nerves, the wrung hearts, that surround the unamiable— what “ a, cloud of witnesses” is here ! and what plea shall avail against them ? The terror of innocents who should know no fear — the vin- dictive emotions of dependents who dare not complain — the faintness of heart of life-long companions — the apguish of those who love — the unholy exultation of those who hate— what an array of judges is here ! and where can an appeal be lodged against their sentence ? Is pride of singularity a ra- tional plea ? Is super-refinement, or circumstance from God, or uncongeniality in man, a sufficient ground of appeal, when the refinement of one is a grace granted for the luxury of all, when circumstance is given to be conquered, and uncongenia- lity is appointed for discipline? The sensualist has brutified the seraphic nature with which lie was endowed— the depre- dator has intercepted the rewards of toil, marred the image of justice, and dimmed the lustre of faith in men’s minds — the imperial tyrant has invoked a whirlwind to lay waste, for an hour of God’s eternal year, some region of society. But the unamiable — the domestic torturer — has heaped wrong on wrong and woe on woe, through the whole portion of time that was given him, until it would be rash to say that there are any others more guilty than he. If there be hope or solace for the domestic torturer, it is that there may have been tempers about him the opposite of his own. It is matter of humiliating gratitude that there were some which he could not ruin, and that he was the medium of discipline by which they were exercised in forbearance, in divine forgiveness and love. If there be solace in such an occasional result, let it be made the most of by those who need it ; for it is the only possible alleviation to their remorse. Let them accept it as the free gift of a mercy which they have insulted, and a long- suffering which they have defied From Deerbrooh, a Tale, by Harriet Martincau. Slander and Vindication Vindication in some cases partakes of the same qualities that Homer ascribes to prayer. Slander, “ strong, and sound of wing, Hies through the world, afflicting men ;” but Vindication, lame, wrinkled, and imbecile, for ever seeking its object, and never obtaining it, follows after, only to make the person in whose behalf it is employed more completely the scorn of mankind. The charge against him is heard by thousands, the vindication by few. Wher- ever Vindication comes, is not the first thing it tells of the unhappy subject of it, that his character has been tarnished, his integrity suspected — that base motives and vile actions have been imputed to him — that he has been scoffed at by some, reviled by others, and looked at askance by all? Yes ; the worst thing I would wish to my worst enemy is, that his character should be the subject of vindication. And what is the well-known disposition of mankind in this particular ? All love the scandal. It constitutes a tale that seizes upon the curiosit y of our species ; it has something deep and obscure, and mysterious in it ; it has been whispered from man to man, and communicated by winks, and nods, and shrugs, the shaking of the head, and the speaking motion of the finger. But Vindication is poor, and dry, and cold, and repulsive. It rests in detections and distinctions, explanations to be given to the meaning of a hundred phrases, and the setting right what- ever belongs to the circumstances of time and place. What by- stander will bend himself to the drudgery of thoroughly appre- ciating it ? Add to which, that all men are endowed with the levelling principle, as with an instinct. Scandal includes in it, as an element, that change of fortune which is required by the critic from the writer of an epic poem or a tragedy. The person respecting whom a scandal is propagated is of suffi- cient importance, at least in the eyes of the propagator and the listener, to be made a subject for censure. He is found, or he is erected into, an adequate centre of attack ; he is first set up as a statue to be gazed at, that he may afterwards be thrown down and broken to pieces, crumbled into dust, and made the prey of all the winds of heaven. — Godwin’s Mandeville. 'The weather is not a safe topic of discourse ; your company may be hippish : nor is health ; your associate may be a hy- pochondriac : nor is money ; you may be suspected as a bor- ro wer.- — Zimmerman. When all is done, human life is at the best but like a fro- ward child, that must be played with and humoured a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over. — Sir W. Temple. Time runs on, and when youth and beauty vanish, a fine lady who had never entertained a thought into which an admirer did not enter, finds in herself a lamentable void. The poorest of all family goods are indolent females. If a wife knows nothing of domestic duties beyond the parlour or the boudoir, she is a dangerous partner in these times of pecuniary uncertainty. Friendship, love, and piety, ought to be handled with a sort of mysterious secrecy ; they ought to be spoken of only in the rare moments of perfect confidence — to be mutually under- stood in silence. Many things are too delicate to be thought — many more to be spoken. Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. G, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin.— Agents: — It. Groombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London; Simms and Din ham, Exchange Street, Manchester; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool; J. Drake, Birmingham; Slocombe & Simms, Leeds ; Eraser and Crawford, George Street, Edinburgh; and David Robertson, Trongate, Glasgow. THE 9 V Number 28. SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 1841. Volume I. CASTLE-CAULFIELD, The subject of our prefixed illustration is one of no small interest, whether considered as a fine example— for Ireland— of the domestic architecture of the reign of James I, or as an historical memorial of the fortunes of the illustrious family whose name it bears — the noble house of Cliarlemont, of which it was the original residence. It is situated near the village of the same name, in the parish of Donaghmore, barony of Dungannon, and about three miles west of Dungannon, the county town. Castle-Caulfield owes its erection to Sir Toby Caulfield, af- terwards Lord Charlemont — a distinguished English soldier who had fought in Spain and the Low Countries in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and commanded a company of one hundred and fifty men in Ireland in the war with O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, at the close of her reign. For these ser- vices he was rewarded by the Queen with a grant of part of Tyrone’s estate, and other lands in the province of Ulster ; and on King James’s accession to the British crown, was honoured with knighthood, and made governor of the fort of Charlemont, and of the counties of T yrone and Armagh. At the plantation of Ulster he received further grants of lands, and among them 1000 acres called Ballydonnelly, or O’Don- nelly’s town, in the barony of Dungannon, on which, in 1614, he commenced the erection of the mansion subsequently called Castle-Caulfield. This mansion is described by Pynnar in his Survey of Ulster in 1618-19, in the following words : — “ Sir Toby Caulfield hath one thousand acres called Bally- donnell [ recte Ballydonnelly], whereunto is added beside what COUNTY OF TYRONE. was certified by Sir Josias Bodley, a fair house or castle, the front whereof is eighty feet in length and twenty-eight feet in breadth from outside to outside, two cross ends fifty feet in length and twenty-eight feet in breadth : the walls are five feet thick at the bottom, and four at the top, very good cellars under ground, and all the windows are of hewn stone. Between the two cross ends there goeth a wall, which is eighteen feet high, and maketh a small court within the building. This work at this time is but thirteen feet high, and a number of men at work for the sudden finishing of it. There is also a strong bridge over the river, which is of lime and stone, with strong buttresses for the supporting of it. And to this is joined a good water-mill for corn, all built of lime and stone. This is at this time the fairest building I have seen. Near unto this Bawne there is built a town, in which there is fifteen English families, who are able to make twenty men with arms.” The ruins of this celebrated mansion seem to justify the opinion expressed by Pynnar, that it was the fairest building he had seen, that is, in the counties of the plantation, for there are no existing remains of any house erected by the English or Scottish undertakers equal to it in architectural style. It received, however, from the second Lord Charle- mont, the addition of a large gate-house with towers, and also of a strong keep or donjon. From the ancient maps of Ulster of Queen Elizabeth’s time, preserved in the State Paper Office, Castle- Caulfi eld appears to have been erected on the site of a more ancient eastle op 218 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. fort, called Fort O’Donallie, from the chief of the ancient Irish family of O’Donghaile or O’Donnelly, whose residence it was, previously to the confiscation of the northern counties ; and the small lake in its vicinity was called Lough O’Donallie. This family of O’Donnelly were a distinguished branch of the Kinel-Owen, or northern Hy-Niall race, of which the O’Neills were the chiefs in the sixteenth century ; and it was by one of the former that the celebrated Shane or John O’Neill, sur- named the proud, and who also bore the cognomen of Dongliail- ach, or the Donnellian, was fostered, as appears from the following entry in the Annals of the Four Masters, at the year 1531 : — “ Ballydonnelly was assaulted by Niall Oge, the son of Art, who was the son of Con O’Neill. He demolished the castle, and having made a prisoner of the son of O’Neill, who was the foster-son of O’Donnelly, he carried him off, together with several horses and the other spoils of the place.” We have felt it necessary to state the preceding facts rela- tive to the ancient history of Ballydonnelly, or Castle- Caulfield, as it is now denominated, because an error of Pynnar’s, in writing the ancient name as Ballydonnell — not Ballydon- nelly, as it should have been — has been copied by Lodge, Archdall, and all subsequent writers ; some of whom have fallen into a still more serious mistake, by translating the name as “ the town of O’Donnell,” thus attributing the ancient possession of the locality to a family to whom it never belonged. That Ballydonnelly was truly, as we have stated, the ancient name of the place, and that it was the patrimonial residence of the chief of that ancient fami- ly, previously to the plantation of Ulster, must be suffici- ently indicated by the authorities we have already addu- ced ; but if any doubt on this fact could exist, it would be removed by the following passage in an' unpublished Irish MS. Journal of the Rebellion of 1641, in our own posses- sion, from which it appears that, as usual with the repre- sentatives of the dispossessed Irish families on the breaking out of that unhappy conflict, the chief of the O’Donnellys seized upon the Castle-Caulfield mansion as of right his own : — “ October 1641. Lord Caulfield’s castle in Ballydonnelly (. Baile I Donghoile) was taken by Patrick Moder (the gloomy) O’Donnelly.” The Lord Charlemont, with his family, was at this time ab- sent from his home in command of the garrison of Charle- mont, and it was not his fate ever to see it afterwards ; he was treacherously captured in his fortress about the same period by the ci’uel Sir Phelim O’Neill, and was barbarously murdered while under his protection, if not, as seems the fact, by his direction, on the 1st of March following. Nor was this costly and fairest house of its kind in “ the north” ever after inhabited by any of his family ; it was burned in those unhappy “troubles,” and left the melancholy, though picturesque memorial of sad events which we now see it. THE LAKE OF THE LOVERS, A LEGEND OF LEITRIM. How many lovely spots in this our beautiful country are never embraced within those pilgrimages after the picturesque, which numbers periodically undertake, rather to see what is known to many, and therefore should be so to them, than to visit nature, for her own sweet sake, in her more devious and undistinguished haunts ! For mv part, I am well pleased that the case stands thus. I love to think that I am treading upon ground unsullied by the footsteps of the now numerous tribe of mere professional peripatetics — that my eyes are wander- ing over scenery, the freshness of which has been impaired by no transfer to the portfolio of the artist or the tablets of the poetaster : that, save the scattered rustic residents, there is no human link to connect its memorials with the days of old, and, save their traditionary legends, no story to tell of its fortunes in ancient times. The sentiment is no doubt selfish as web as anti-utilitarian ; but then I must add that it is only occasional, and will so far be pardoned by all who know how delightful it is to take refuge in the indulgent twilight of tra- dition from the rugged realities of recorded story. At all events, a rambler in any of our old, and especially mountainous tracts, will rarely lack abundant aliment for his thus modified sense of beauty, sublimity, or antiquarianfascination ; and scenes have unexpectedly opened upon me in the solitudes of the hills and lakes of some almost untrodden and altogether unwritten districts, that have had more power to stir my spirit than the lauded and typographed, the versified and pictured magnifi- cence of Killarney or of Cumberland, of Glendalough or of Lomond. It may have been perverseness of taste, or the fit- ness of mood, or the influence of circumstance, but I have been filled with a feeling of the beautiful when wandering among noteless and almost nameless localities to which I have been a stranger, when standing amid the most boasted beau- ties with the appliances of hand-book and of guide, with ap- petite prepared, and sensibilities on the alert. It is I suppose partly because the power of beauty being relative, a high pitch of expectancy requires a proportionate augmentation of excellence, and partly because the tincture of contrariety in our nature ever inclines us to enact the perverse critic, when called on to be the implicit votary. This in common with most others I have often felt, but rarely more so than during a casual residence some short time since among the little cele- brated, and therefore perhaps a little more charming, moun- tain scenery of the county, which either has been, or might be, called Leitrim of the Lakes ; for a tract more pleasantly diversified with well-set sheets of water, it would 1 think be difficult to name. Almost every hill you top has its still and solitary tarn, and almost every amphitheatre you enter, en- compasses its wild and secluded lake — not seldom bearing on its placid bosom some little islet, linked with the generations past, by monastic or castellated ruins, as its seclusion or its strength may have invited the world-wearied anchorite to contemplation, or the predatory chieftain to defence. On such a remote and lonely spot I lately chanced to alight, in the course of a long summer day’s ramble among the heights and hollows of that lofty range which for a considerable space abuts upon the borders of Sligo and Roscommon. The ground was previously unknown to me, and with all the zest which novelty and indefiniteness can impart, I started staff in hand with the early sun, and ere the mists had melted from the purple heather of their cloud-like summits, was drawing pure and balmy breath within the lonely magnificence of the hills. About noon, as I was casting about for some pre- eminently happy spot to fling my length for an hour or two’s re- pose, I reached the crest of a long gradual ascent that had been some time tempting me to look what lay beyond ; and surely enough I found beauty sufficient to dissolve my weariness, had it been tenfold multiplied, and to allay my pulse, had it throbbed with the vehemence of fever. An oblong valley girdled a lovely lake on every side ; here with precipitous impending cliffs, and there with grassy slopes of freshest emerald that seemed to woo the dimpling waters to lave their loving mar- gins, and, as if moved with a like impulse, the little wavelets met the call with the gentle dalliance of their ebb and flow. A small wooded island, Avith its fringe of willoivs trailing in the water, stood about a furlong from the hither side, and in the centre of its tangled brake, my elevation enabled me to descry what I may call the remnants of a ruin — for so far had it gone in its decay — here green, there grey, as the moss, the ivy, or the pallid stains of time, had happened to prevail. A wild duck, with its half-fledged clutch, floated fearless from its sedgy shore. More remote, a fishing heron stood motion- less on a stone, intent on its expected prey ; and the only other animated feature in the quiet scene was a fisherman who had just moored his little boat, and having settled his tackle, Avas slinging his basket on his arm and turning upAvard in the di- rection Avhere I lay. I watched the old man toiling up the steep, and as he dreAv nigh, hailed him, as I could not suffer him to pass AAdthout learning at least the name, if it had one, of this miniature Amhara. He readily complied, and placing his fish-basket on the ground, seated himself beside it, not unwilling to recover his breath and recruit his scanty stock of strength almost expended in the ascent. “We call it,” said he in answer to my query, “ the Lake of the Ruin, or sometimes, to such as knoAV the story, the Lake of the Lovers, after the two over whom the tombstone is placed inside yon mouldering walls. It is an old story. My grandfather told me, when a child, that he minded his grandfather telling it to him, and for anything he could say, it might have come down much farther. Had I time, I’d be proud to tell it to your honour, who seems a stranger in these parts, for it’s not over long ; but I have to go to the Flail, and that’s five long miles off, Avith my fish for dinner, and little time you’ll say I have to spare, though it be down hill nearly all the way.” It would have been too bad to rIIoav such a Avell-met chronicler to pass unpumped, and, putting more faith in the attractions of mv pocket than of my person, I produced, on the instant TI-IE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 219 my luncheon-case and flask, and handing him a handsome half of the contents of the former, made pretty sure of his company for a time, by keeping the latter in my own posses- sion till I got him regularly launched in the story, when, to quicken at once his recollection and his elocution, I treated him to an inspiring draught. When he had told his tale, he left me with many thanks for the refection ; and I descending to his boat, entered it, and with the aid of a broken oar con- trived to scull myself over to the island, the scene of the final fortunes of Connor O’Rourke and Norah MvDiarmod, the faithful-hearted but evil-fated pair who were in some sort per- petuated in its name. There, in sooth, within the crumbled walls, was the gravestone which covered the dust of him the brave and her the beautiful ; and seating myself on the frag- ment of a sculptured capital, that showed how elaborately reared the ruined edifice had been, I bethought me how poorly man’s existence shows even beside the work of his own hands, and endeavoured for a time to make my thoughts run parallel with the history of this once-venerated but now forsaken, and, save by a few, forgotten structure ; but finding myself fail in the attempt, settled my retrospect on that brief period wherein it was identified -with the two departed lovers whose story I had just heard, and which, as I sat by their lowly sepulchre, I again repeated to myself. This lake, as my informant told me, once formed a part of the boundary between the possessions of O’Rourke the Left- handed and M‘Diarmod the Dark-faced, as they were respec- tively distinguished, two small rival chiefs, petty in property but pre-eminent in passion, to whom a most magnificent mu- tual hatred had been from generations’back “bequeathed from bleeding sire to son” — a legacy constantly swelled by accru- ing outrages, for their paramount pursuits were plotting each other’s detriment or destruction, planning or parrying plun- dering inroads, inflicting or avenging injuries by open violence or secret subtlety, as seemed more likely to promote their purposes. At the name of an O’Rourke, M‘Diarmod would clutch his battle-axe, and brandish it as if one of the detested clan were within its sweep : and his rival, nothing behind in hatred, would make the air echo to his deep-drawn impreca- tion on M‘Diarmod and all his abominated breed when any thing like an opportunity was afforded him. Their retainers of course shared the same spirit of mutual abhorrence, exag- gerated indeed, if that were possible, by their more frequent exposure to loss in cattle and in crops, for, as is wont to be the case, the cottage was incontinently ravaged when the stronghold was prudentially respected. O’Rourke had a son, an only one, who promised to sustain or even raise the repu- tation of the clan, for the youth knew not what it was to blench before flesh and blood — his feet were ever foremost in the wolf-hunt or the foray, and in agility, in valour, or in vigour, none within the compass of a long day’s travel could stand in comparison with young Connor O’Rourke. Detesta- tion of the JNTDiarmods had been studiously instilled from in- fancy, of course ; but although the youth’s cheek would flush and his heart beat high when any perilous adventure was the theme, yet, so far at least, it sprang more from the love of prowess and applause than from the deadly hostility that thrilled in the pulses of his father and his followers. In the necessary intervals of forbearance, as in seed-time, harvest, or other brief breathing-spaces, he would follow the somewhat analogous and bracing pleasures of the chase ; and often would the wolf or the stag — for shaggy forests then clothed these bare and desert hills — fall before his spear or his dogs, as he fleetly urged the sport afoot. It chanced one evening that in the ardour of pursuit he had followed a tough, long-winded stag into the dangerous territory of M‘Diarmod. The chase had taken to the water of the lake, and he with his dogs had plunged in after in the hope of heading it ; but having failed in this, and in the hot flush of a hunter’s blood scorning to turn back, he pressed it till brought down within a few spear- casts of the M'Diarmod’s dwelling. Proud of having killed his venison under the very nose of the latter, he turned home- ward with rapid steps ; for, the fire of the chase abated, he felt how fatal would be the discovery of his presence, and was thinking with complacency upon the wrath of the old chief on hearing of the contemptuous feat, when his eye was arrested by a white figure moving slowly in the shimmering mists of nightfall by the margin of the lake. Though insensible to the fear of what was carnal and of the earth, he was very far from being so to what savoured of the supernatural, and, with a slight ejaculation half of surprise and half of prayer, he was about changing his course to give it a wider berth, when his dogs espied it, and, recking little of the spiritual in its appear- ance, bounded after it in pursuit. With a slight scream that proclaimed it feminine as well as human, the figure fled, and the youth had much to do both with legs and lungs to reach her in time to preserve her from the rough respects of his un- gallant escort. Beautiful indignation lightened from the dark eyes and sat on the pouting lip of Norah M‘Diarmod — for it was the chieftain’s daughter — as she turned disdainfully towards him. “Is it the bravery of an O’Rourke to hunt a woman with his dogs ? Young chief, you stand upon the ground of M‘Diar- mod, and your name from the lips of her” — she stopped, for she had time to glance again upon his features, and had no longer heart to upbraid one who owned a countenance so hand- some and so gallant, so eloquent of embarrassment as well as admiration. Her tone of asperity and wounded pride declined into a mur- mur of acquiescence as she hearkened to the apologies and de- precations of the youth, whose gallantry and feats had so often rung in her ears, though his person she had but casually seen, and his voice she had never before heard. The case stood similar with Connor. He had often listened to the praises of Norah’s beauty ; he had occasionally caught distant glimpses of her graceful figure ; and the present sight, or after recol- lection, often mitigated his feelings to her hostile clan, and, to his advantage, the rugged old chief was generally associated with the lovely dark-eyed girl who was his only child. Such being their respective feelings, what could be the re- sult of their romantic rencounter ? They were both young, generous children of nature, with hearts fraught with the un- hacknied feelings of youth and inexperience : they had drunk in sentiment with the sublimities of their mountain homes, and were fitted for higher things than the vulgar interchange of animosity and contempt. Of this they soon were conscious, and they did not separate until the stars began to burn above them, and not even then, before they had made arrangements for at least another — one more secret interview. The islet possessed a beautiful fitness for their trysting place, as being accessible from either side, and little obnoxious to observation ; and many a moonlight meeting — for the one was inevitably multiplied — had these children of hostile fathers, perchance on the very spot on which my eyes now rested, and the unbroken stillness around had echoed to their gladsome greetings or their faltering farewells. Neither dared to divulge an inter- course that would have stirred to frenzy the treasured rancour of their respective parents, each of whom would doubtless have preferred a connexion with a blackamoor — if such were then in circulation — to their doing such grievous despite to that ancient feud which as an heirloom had been transmitted from ancestors whose very names they scarcely knew. M‘Diar- mod the Dark-faced was at best but a gentle tiger even to his only child ; and though his stern cast-iron countenance would now and then relax beneath her artless blandishments, yet even with the lovely vision at his side, he would often grimly deplore that she had not been a son, to uphold the name and inherit the headship of the clan, which on his demise would probably pass from its lineal course ; and when he heard of the bold bearing of the heir of O’Rourke, he thought he read therein the downfall of the M‘Diarmods when he their chief was gone. With such ill-smothered feelings of discontent he could not but in some measure repulse the*filial regards of Norah, and thus the confiding submission that would have sprung to meet the endearments of his love, was gradually re- fused to the inconsistencies of his caprice ; and the maiden in her intercourse with her proscribed lover rarely thought of her father, except as one from whom it should be diligently concealed. But unfortunately this was not to be. One of the night marauders of his clan chanced in an evil hour to see Connor O’Rourke guiding his coracle to the island, and at the same time a cloaked female push cautiously from the opposite shore for the same spot. Surprised, he crouched among the fern till their landing and joyous greeting put all doubt of their friendly understanding to flight ; and then, thinking only of revenge or ransom, the unsentimental scoundrel hurried round the lake to M‘Diarmod, and informed him that the son of his mortal foe was within his reach. The old man leaped from his couch of rushes at the thrilling news, and, standing on his threshold, uttered a low gathering-cry, which speedily brought a dozen of his more immediate retainers to his pre- sence. As he passed his daughter’s apartment, he for the first time asked himself who can the woman be ? and at the 220 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. same moment almost casually glanced at Norah’s chamber, to see that all there was quiet for the night. A shudder of vague terror ran through his sturdy frame as his eye fell on the low open window. He thrust in his head, but no sleeper drew breath within ; he re-entered the house and called aloud upon his daughter, but the echo of her name was the only answer. A kern coming up put an end to the search, by telling that he had seen his young mistress walking down to the water’s edge about an hour before, but that, as she had been in the habit of doing so by night for some time past, he had thought but little of it. The odious truth was now revealed, and, trembling with the sudden gust of fury, the old chief with dif- ficulty rushed to the lake, and, filling a couple of boats with his men, told them to pull for the honour of their name and for the head of the O’Rourke’s first-born. During this stormy prelude to a bloody drama, the doomed but unconscious Connor was sitting secure within the dilapi- dated chapel by the side of her whom he had won. Her quickened ear first caught the dip of an oar, and she told her lover ; but he said it was the moaning of the night-breeze through the willows, or the ripple of the water among the stones, and went on with his gentle dalliance. A few minutes, however, and the shock of the keels upon the ground, the tread of many feet, and the no longer suppressed cries of the M‘Diarmods, warned him to stand on his defence ; and as he sprang from his seat to meet the call, the soft illumination of love was changed with fearful suddenness into the baleful fire of fierce hostility. “ My Norah, leave me ; you may by chance be rudely han- dled in the scuffle.” The terrified but faithful girl fell upon his breast. “ Connor, your fate is mine ; hasten to your boat, if it be not yet too late.” An iron-shod hunting pole was his only weapon ; and using it with his right arm, while Norah hung upon his left, he sprang without further parley through an aperture in the wall, and made for the water. But his assailants were upon him, the M‘Diarmod himself with upraised battle-axe at their head. “ Spare my father,” faltered Norah; and Connor, with a mercifully directed stroke, only dashed the weapon from the old man’s hand, and then, clearing a passage with a vigorous sweep, accompanied with the well-known charging cry, before which they had so often quailed, bounded through it to the water’s brink. An instant, and with her who was now more than his second self, he was once more in his little boat ; but, alas ! it was aground, and so quickly fell the blows against him, that he dare not adventure to shove it off. Letting Norah slip from his hold, she sank backwards to the bottom of the boat ; and then, with both arms free, he redoubled his efforts, and after a short but furious struggle succeeded in getting the little skiff afloat. Maddened at the sight, the old chief rushed breast-deep into the water ; but his right arm had been disabled by a casual blow, and his disheartened followers feared, under the circumstances, to come within range of that well-wielded club. But a crafty one among them had already seized on a safer and surer plan. He had clambered up an adjacent tree, armed with a heavy stone, and now stood on one of the branches above the devoted boat, and summoned him to yield, if he would not perish. The young chief’s renewed exertions were his only answer. “ Let him escape, and your head shall pay for it,” shouted the infuriated father. The fellow hesitated. “ My young mistress ?” “ There are enough here to save her, if I will it. Down with the stone, or by the blood ” He needed not to finish the sentence, for down at the word it came, striking helpless the youth’s right arm, and shivering the frail timber of the boat, which filled at once, and all went down. For an instant an arm re-appeared, feebly beat- ing the water in vain — it was the young chief’s broken one : the other held his Norah in its embrace, as was seen by her white dress flaunting for a few moments on and above the troubled surface. The lake at this point was deep, and though there was a rush of the M'Diarmods towards it, yet in their confusion they were but awkward aids, and the flut- tering ensign that marked the fatal spot had sunk before they reached it. The strength of Connor, disabled as he was by his broken limb, and trammelled bv her from whom even the final struggle could not dissever him, had failed ; and with her he loved locked in his last embrace, they were after a time recovered from the water, and laid side by side upon the bank, in all their touching, though, ala#, lifeless beauty ! Remorse reached the rugged hearts even of those who had so ruthlessly dealt by them ; and as they looked on their goodly forms, thus cold and senseless by a common fate, the rudest felt that it would be an impious and unpardonable deed to do violence to their memory, by the separation of that union which death itself had sanctified. Thus were they laid in one grave ; and, strange as it may appear, their fathers, crushed and sub- dued, exhausted even of resentment by the overwhelming stroke for nothing can quell the stubborn spirit like the extremity of sorrow — crossed their arms in amity over their remains, and grief wrought the reconciliation which even centuries of time, that great pacificator, had failed to do. The westering sun now warning me that the day was on the wane, I gave but another look to the time-worn tomb- stone, another sigh to the early doom of those whom it en- closed, and then, with a feeling of regret, again left the little island to its still, unshared, and pensive loneliness. ANCIENT IRISH LITERATURE— No. IV. The composition which we have selected as our fourth speci- men of the ancient literature of Ireland, is a poem, more re- markable, perhaps, for its antiquity and historical interest, than for its poetic merits, though we do not think it altogether deficient in those. It is ascribed, apparently with truth, to the celebrated poet Mac Liag, the secretary of the renowned monarch Brian Boru, who, as our readers are aware, fell at the battle of Clontarf in 1014 ; and the subject of it is a lamen- tation for the fallen condition of Kincora, the palace of that monarch, consequent on his death. The decease of Mac Liag, whose proper name was Muir- cheartach, is thus recorded in the Annals of the Four Mas- ters, at the year 1015 : — “ Mac Liag, i. e. Muirkeartach, son of Conkeartach, at this time laureate of Ireland, died.” A great number of his productions are still in existence ; but none of them have obtained a popularity so widely extended as the poem before us. Of the palace of Kincora, which was situated on the banks of the Shannon, near Killaloe, there are at present no vestiges. LAMENTATION OF MAC LIAG FOR KINCORA. 21 C1jllR)-COp4'©l) C4J'ol tjj B]H4T)? Oh, where, Kincora! is Brian the Great? And where is the beauty that once was thine ? Oh, where are the princes and nobles that sate At the feast in thy halls, and drank the red wine ? Where, oh, Kincora? Oh, where, Kincora ! are thy valorous lords ? Oh, whither, thou Hospitable ! are they gone ? Oh, where are the Dalcassians of the Golden Swords ?* And where are the warriors that Brian led on ? Where, oh, Kincora? And where is Morogh, the descendant of kings — ■ The defeater of a hundred — the daringly brave — Who set but slight store by jewels and rings — Who swam down the torrent and laughed at its wave ? Where, oh, Kincora? And where is Donogh, King Brian’s worthy son? And where is Conaing, the Beautiful Chief? And Kian, and Core ? Alas ! they are gone — They have left me this night alone with my grief ! Left me, Kincora ! And where are the chiefs with whom Brian went forth, The never-vanquished son of Evin the Brave, The great King of Onaght, renowned for his worth, And the hosts of Baskinn, from the western wave ? Where, oh, Kincora ? Oh, where is Duvlann of the Swiftfooted Steeds? And where is Kian, who was son of Molloy ? And where is King Lonergan, the fame of whose deeds In the red battle-field no time can destroy ? Where, oh, Kincora ? And where is that youth of majestic height, The faith-keeping Prince of the Scots ? — Even he, As wide as his fame was, as great as was his might, W as tributary, oh, Kincora, to me ! Me, oh, Kincora ! * Ccjlg n-or , of the swords of -gold, i. e. of the gold-hilled swords. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 221 They are gone, those heroes of royal birth, Who plundered no churches, and broke no trust, ’Tis weary for me to be living on the earth When they, oh, Kincora, lie low in the dust ! Low, oh, Kincora! Oh, never again will Princes appear, To rival the Dalcassians of the Cleaving Swords ! I can never dream of meeting afar or anear, In the east or the west, such heroes and lords ! Never, Kincora ! Oh, dear are the images my memory calls up Of Brian Boru ! — how he never would miss To give me at the banquet the first bright cup ! Ah ! why did he heap on me honour like this ? Why, oh, Kincora ? I am Mac Liag. and my home is on the Lake : Thither often, to that palace whose beauty is fled, Came Brian to ask me, and I went for his sake. Oh, my grief ! that I should live, and Brian be dead ! Dead, oh, Kincora ! M. COLUMN FOR THE YOUNG. BIOGRAPHY OF A MOUSE. “ Biography of a mouse !” cries the reader ; “ well, what shall we have next ? — what can the writer mean by offering such nonsense for our perusal ?” There is no creature, reader, however insignificant and unimportant in the great scale of creation it may appear to us, short-sighted mortals that we are, which is forgotten in the care of our own common Creator ; not a sparrow falls to the ground unknown and unpermitted by Him ; and whether or not you may derive interest from the biography even of a mouse, you will be able to form a better judgment after, than before, having read my paper. The mouse belongs to the class Mammalia, or the animals which rear their young by suckling them ; to the order Roden- tia, or animals whose teeth are adapted for gnawing ; to the genus Mas, or Rat kind, and the family of Mus musculus, or domestic mouse. The mouse is a singularly beautiful little animal, as no one who examines it attentively, and without pre- judice, can fail to discover. Its little body is plump and sleek ; its neck short ; its head tapering and graceful ; and its eyes large, prominent, and sparkling. Its manners are lively and interesting, its agility surprising, and its habits extremely cleanly. There are several varieties of this little creature, amongst which the best known is the common brown mouse of our granaries and store-rooms ; the Albino, or white mouse, with red eyes ; and the black and white mouse, which is more rare and very delicate. I mention these as varieties, for I think we may safely regard them as such, from the fact of their propagating unchanged, preserving their difference of hue to the fiftieth generation, and never accidentally oc- curring amongst the offspring of differently coloured parents. It is of the white mouse that I am now about to treat, and it is an account of a tame individual of that extremely pretty variety that is designed to form the subject of my present paper. When I was a boy of about sixteen, I got possession of a white mouse ; the little creature was very wild and unsocial at first, but by dint of care and discipline I succeeded in ren- dering it familiar. The principal agent I employed towards effecting its domestication was a singular one, and which, though I can assure the reader its effects are speedy and certain, still remains to me inexplicable : this was, ducking in cold water ; and by resorting to this simple expedient, I have since succeeded in rendering even the rat as tame and as playful as a kitten. It is out of my power to explain the manner in which ducking operates on the animal subjected to it, but I wish that some physiologist more experienced than I am would give his attention to the subject, and favour the public with the result of his reflections. At the time that I obtained possession of this mouse, I was residing at Olney, in Buckinghamshire, a village which I pre- sume my readers will recollect as connected with the names of Newton and Cowper ; but shortly after having succeeded in rendering it pretty tame, circumstances required my re- moval to Gloucester, whither I carried my little favourite with me. During the journey I kept the mouse confined in a small wire cage ; but while resting at the inn where I passed the night, I adopted the precaution of enveloping the cage in a handkerchief, lest by some untoward circumstance its active little inmate might make its escape. Having thus, as I thought, made all safe, I retired to rest. The moment I awoke in the morning, I sprang from my bed, and went to examine the cage, when, to my infinite consternation, I found it empty ! I searched the bed, the room, raised the carpet, examined every nook and corner, but all to no purpose. I dressed myself as hastily as I could, and summoning one of the waiters, an intelligent, good-natured man, I informed him of my loss, and got him to search every room in the house. His investigations, however, proved equally unavailing, and I gave my poor little pet completely up, inwardly hoping, de- spite of its ingratitude in leaving me, that it might meet with some agreeable mate amongst its brown congeners, and might lead a long and happy life, unchequered by the terrors of the prowling cat, and unendangered by the more insidious artifi- ces of the fatal trap. With these reflections I was just get- ting into the coach which was to convey me upon my road, when a waiter came running to the door, out of breath, ex- claiming, “ Mr R., Mr R., I declare your little mouse is in the kitchen.” Begging the coachman to wait an instant, I followed the man to the kitchen, and there, on the hob, seated contentedly in a pudding dish, and devouring its contents with considerable gout, was my truant protege. Once more se- cured within its cage, and the latter carefully enveloped in a sheet of strong brown paper, upon my knee, I reached Gloucester. I was here soon subjected to a similar alarm, for one morn- ing the cage -was again empty, and my efforts to discover the retreat of the wanderer unavailing as before. This time I had lost him for a week, when one night, in getting into bed, I heard a scrambling in the curtains, and on relighting my candle found the noise to have been occasioned by my mouse, who seemed equally pleased with myself at our reunion. After having thus lost and found my little friend a number of times, I gave up the idea of confining him ; and, accordingly, leav- ing the door of his cage open, I placed it in a corner of my bedroom, and allowed him to go in and out as he pleased. Of this permission he gladly availed himself, but would regu- larly return to me at intervals of a week or a fortnight, and at such periods of return he was usually much thinner than ordi- nary ; and it was pretty clear that during his visits to his brown acquaintances he fared by no means so well as he did at home. Sometimes, when he happened to return, as he often did, in the night-time, on which occasions his general custom was to come into bed to me, I used, in order to induce him to remain with me until morning, to immerse him in a basin of water, and then let him lie in my bosom, the warmth of which, after his cold bath, commonly ensured his stay. Frequently, while absent on one of his excursions, I would hear an unusual noise in the wainscot, as I lay in bed, of do- zens of mice running backwards and forwards in all directions, and squeaking in much apparent glee. For some time I was puzzled to know whether this unusual disturbance was the re- sult of merriment or quarrelling, and I often trembled for the safety of my pet, alone and unaided, among so many strangers. But a very interesting circumstance occurred one morning, which perfectly reassured me. It was a bright summer morn- ing, about four o’clock, and I was lying awake, reflecting as to the propriety of turning on my pillow to take another sleep, or at once rising, and going forth to enjoy the beauties of awakening nature. While thus meditating, I heard a slight scratching in the wainscot, and looking towards the spot whence the noise proceeded, perceived the head of a mouse peering from a hole. It was instantly withdrawn, but a second was thrust forth. This latter I at once recognised as my own white friend, but so begrimed by soot and dirt that it required an experienced eye to distinguish him from his darker-coated entertainers. He emerged from the hole, and running over to his cage, entered it, and remained for a couple of seconds within it ; he then returned to the wainscot, and, re-entering the hole, some scrambling and squeaking took place. A second time he came forth, and on this occasion was followed closely, to my no small astonishment, by a brown mouse, who followed him, with much apparent timidity and caution, to his box, and entered it along with him. More astonished at this singular proceeding than I can well express, I lay fixed in mute and breathless attention, to see what would follow next. In about a minute the two mice came forth from the cage, each bearing in its mouth a large piece of bread, 222 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. which they dragged towards the hole they had previously left. On arriving at it, they entered, but speedily re-appeared, having deposited their burden ; and repairing once more to the cage, again loaded themselves with provision, and con- veyed it away. This second time they remained within the hole for a much longer period than the first time ; and when they again made their appearance, they were attended by three other mice, who, following their leaders to the cage, loaded themselves with bread as did they, and carried away their burdens to the hole. After this I saw them no more that morning, and on rising I discovered that they had carried away every particle of food that the cage contained. Nor was this an isolated instance of their white guest loading them forth to where he knew they should find provender. Day after day, whatever bread or grain I left in the cage was re- gularly removed, and the duration of my pet’s absence was proportionately long. Wishing to learn whether hunger was the actual cause of his return, I no longer left food in his box ; and in about a week afterwards, on awaking one morning, I found him sleeping upon the pillow, close to my face, having partly wormed his way under my cheek. There was a cat in the house, an excellent mouser, and I dreaded lest she should one day meet with and destroy my poor mouse, and I accordingly used all my exertions with those in whose power it was, to obtain her dismissal. She was, however, regarded by those persons as infinitely better en- titled to protection and patronage than a mouse, so I was compelled to put up with her presence. People are fond of imputing to cats a supernatural degree of sagacity : they will sometimes go so far as to pronounce them to be genuine witches ; and really I am scarcely surprised at it, nor per- haps will the reader be, when I tell him the following anecdote. I was one day entering my apartment, when I was filled with horror at perceiving my mouse picking up some crumbs upon the carpet, beneath the table, and the terrible cat seated upon a chair watching him with what appeared to me to be an expression of sensual anticipation and concentrated desire. Before I had time to interfere, Puss sprang from her chair, and bounded towards the mouse, who, however, far from being terrified at the approach of his natural enemy, scarcely so much as favoured her with a single look. Puss raised her paw and dealt him a gentle tap, when, judge of my astonishment if you can, the little mouse, far from running away, or betraying any marks of fear, raised himself on his legs, cocked his tail, and with a shrill and angry squeak, with which any that have kept tame mice are well acquainted, sprang at and positively bit the paw which had struck him. I was paralysed. I could not jump forward to the rescue. I was, as it were, petrified where I stood. But, stranger than all, the cat, instead of appearing irritated, or seeming to design mischief, merely stretched out her nose and smelt at her diminutive assailant, and then resuming her place upon the chair, purred herself to sleep. I need not say that I immediately secured the mouse within his cage. Whether the cat on this occasion knew the little animal to be a pet, and as such feared to meddle with it, or whether its boldness had disarmed her, I cannot pretend to explain : I merely state the fact ; and I think the reader will allow that it is sufficiently extraordinary. In order to guard against such a dangerous encounter for the future, I got a more secure cage made, of which the bars were so close as to preclude the possibility of egress ; and singularly enough, many a morning was I amused by be- holding brown mice coming from their holes in the wainscot, and approaching the cage in which their friend was kept, as if in order to condole with him on the subject of his unwonted captivity. Secure, however, as I conceived this new cage to be, my industrious pet contrived to make Iris escape from it, and in doing so met his death. In my room was a large bureau, with deep, old-fashioned, capacious drawers. Being obliged to go from home for a day, I put the cage containing my little friend into one of these drawers, lest any one should attempt to meddle with it during my absence. On returning, I opened the drawer, and just as I did so, heard a faint squeak, and at the same instant my poor little pet fell from the back of the drawer — lifeless. I took up his body, and, placing it in my bosom, did my best to restore it to animation. Alas ! it was to no purpose. His little body had been crushed in the crevice at the back part of the drawer, through which he had been endeavouring to escape, and he was really and irrecoverably gone. of my juvenile readers as may be disposed to make a pet of one of these interesting little animals, would do well to ob- serve the following rules : — Clean the cage out daily, and keep it dry ; do not keep it in too cold a place ; in winter it should be kept in a room in which there is a fire. Feed the mice on bread steeped in milk, having first squeezed the milk out, as too moist food is bad for them. Never give them cheese, as it is apt to produce fatal disorders, though the more hardy brown mice eat it with impunity. If you want to give them a treat, give them grains of wheat or barley, or if these are not to be procured, oats or rice. A little tin box of water should be constantly left in their cage, but securely fixed, so that they cannot overturn it. Let the wires be not too slight, or too long, otherwise the little animals will easily squeeze themselves between them, and let them be of iron, never of copper, as the animals are fond of nibbling at them, and the rust of the latter, or verdigris, would quickly poison them. White mice are to be procured at most of the bird- shops in Patrick’s Close, Dublin ; of the wire-workers and bird-cage makers in Edinburgh ; and from all the animal fanciers in London, whose residences are to be found chiefly on the New Road and about Knightsbridge. Their prices vary from one shilling to two-and-sixpence per pair, accord- ing to their age and beauty. H. D. R. THE PROFESSIONS. If what are called the liberal professions could speak, they would all utter the one cry, “ we are overstocked and echo would reply “ overstocked.” This has long been a subject of complaint, and yet nobody seems inclined to mend the matter by making any sacrifice on his own part — just as in a crowd, to use a familiar illustration, the man who is loudest in ex- claiming “ dear me, what pressing and jostling people do keep here !” never thinks of lightening the pressure by withdraw- ing his own person from the mass. There is, however, an advantage to be derived from the utterance and reiteration of the complaint, if not by those already in the press, at least by those who are still happily clear of it. There are many “ vanities and vexations of spirit” under the sun, but this evil of professional redundancy seems to be one of very great magnitude. It involves not merely an outlay of much precious time and substance to no purpose, but in most cases unfits those who constitute the “ excess” from applying themselves afterwards to other pursuits. Such persons are the primary sufferers ; but the community at large partici- pates in the loss. It cannot but be interesting to inquire to what this tendency may be owing, and what remedy it might be useful to apply to the evil. Now, it strikes me that the great cause is the ex- clusive attention which people pay to the great prizes, and their total inconsideration of the number of blanks which ac- company them. Life itself has been compared to a lottery ; but in some departments the scheme may be so particularly bad, that it is nothing short of absolute gambling to purchase a share in it. So it is in the professions. A few arrive at great eminence, and these few excite the envy and admiration of all beholders ; but they are only a few compared with the number of those who linger in the shade, and, however anxious to enjoy the sport, never once get a rap at the ball. Again, parents are apt to look upon the mere name of a profession as a provision for their children. They calculate all the expenses of general education, professional education, and then of admission to “liberty to practise;” and finding all these items amount to a tolerably large sum, they conceive they have bestowed an ample portion on the son who has cost them “ thus much monies.” But unfortunately they soon learn by experience that the elevation of a profession, great as it is, does not always possess that homely recommendation of causing the “ pot to boil,” and that the individual for whom this costly provision has been made, cannot be so soon left to shift for himself. Here then is another cause of this evil, namely, that people do not adequately and fairly calculate the whole cost. Of our liberal professions, the army is the only one that yields a certain income as the produce of the purchase money. But in these “ piping times of peace,” a private soldier in the ranks might as well attempt to verify the old song, and “ Spend half a crown out of sixpence a-day,” as an ensign to pay mess-money and band-money, and all other regulation monies, keep himself in dress coat and epaulettes, and all the other ct ceteras, upon his mere pay. The thing cannot be done. To live in any comfort in the army, a sub- Note on the Feeding, &c., of White Mice — S uch THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 223 altern should have an income from some other source, equal at least in amount to that which he receives through the hands of the paymaster. The army is, in fact, an expensive profession, and of all others the least agreable to one who is prevented, by circumscribed means, from doing as his bro- ther officers do. Yet the mistake of venturing to meet all these difficulties is not unfrequently admitted, with what vain expectation it is needless to inquire. The usual result is such as one would anticipate, namely, that the rash adven- turer, after incurring debts, or putting his friends to un- looked-for charges, is obliged after a short time to sell out, and bid farewell for ever to the unprofitable profession of arms. It would be painful to dwell upon the situation of those who enter other professions without being duly prepared to wait their turn of employment. It is recognised as a poignantly applicable truth in the profession of the bar, that “ many are called but few are chosen but with very few and rare ex- ceptions indeed, the necessity of biding the time is certain. In the legal and medical professions there is no fixed income, however small, insured to the adventurer ; and unless his circle of friends and connections be very wide and serviceable indeed, he should make up his mind for a procrastinated return and a late harvest. But how many from day to day, and from year to year, do launch their bark upon the ocean, without any such prudent foresight ! The result therefore is, that vast proportion of disastrous voyages aud shipwrecks of which we hear so constantly. Such is the admitted evil — it is granted on all sides. The question is, what is to be done ? — what is the remedy ? Now, the remedy for an overstocked profession very evidently is, that people should forbear to enter it. I am no Malthusian on the subject of population : I desire no unnatural checks upon the increase and multiplication of her Majesty’s subjects ; but I should like to drain off a surplus from certain situations, and turn off the in-flowing stream into more profitable chan- nels. I would advise parents, then, to leave the choice of a liberal profession to those who are able to live without one. Such parties can afford to wait for advancement, however long it may be in coming, or to bear up against disappoint- ment, if such should be their lot. With such it is a safe spe- culation, and they may be left to indulge in it, if they think proper. With others it is not so. But it will be asked, what is to be done with the multitudes who would be diverted from the professions, if this advice were acted upon ? I answer, that the money unprofitably spent upon their education, and in fees of admission to these expensive pursuits, would insure them a “good location” and a certain provision for life in Canada, or some of the colonies ; and that any honourable occupation which would yield a competency ought to be pre- ferred to “ professions” which, huwever “ liberal,” hold out to the many but a very doubtful prospect of that result. It is much to be regretted that there is a prevalent notion among certain of my countrymen that “ trade” is not a “ gen- teel” thing, and that it must be eschewed by those who have any pretensions to fashion. This unfortunate, and I must say unsound state of opinion, contributes also, I fear, in no small degree, to that professional redundancy of which we have been speaking. The supposed absolute necessity of a high classical education is a natural concomitant of this opi- nion. All our schools therefore are eminently classical. The University follows, as a matter of course, and then the University leads to a liberal profession, as surely as one step of a ladder conducts to another. Thus the evil is nourished at the very root. Now, I would take the liberty of advising those parents who may concur with me in the main point of over-supply in the professions, to begin at the beginning, and in the education of their children, to exchange this super- abundance of Greek and Latin for the less elegant but more Useful accomplishment of “ ciphering.” I am disposed to concur with that facetious but shrewd fellow, Mr Samuel Slick, upon the inestimable advantages of that too much ne- glected art — neglected, I mean, in our country here, Ireland. He has demonstrated that they do every thing by it in the States, and that without it they could do nothing. With the most profound respect to my countrymen, then, I would ear- nestly recommend them to cultivate it. But it may perhaps be said that there is no encouragement to mercantile pursuits in Ireland, and that if there were, there would be no necessity for me to recommend “ ciphering” and its virtues to the people. To this I answer, that merchandize offers its prizes to the ingenious and venturous much rather than to those who wait for a “ highway” to be made for them. If people were resolved to live by trade, I think they would contrive to do so — many more, at least, than at present operate successfully in that department. If more of education, and more ofmind, were turned in that direction, new sources of profitable indus- try, at present unthought of, would probably discover them- selves. Much might be said on this subject, but I shall not enter further into the speculation, quite satisfied if I have thrown out a hint which may be found capable of improve-' ment by others. F. GEESE. BY MARTIN DOYLE. The rearing of geese might be more an object of attention to our small farmers and labourers in the vicinity of bogs and mountain tracts than it is. The general season for the consumption of fat geese is from Michaelmas to Christmas, and the high prices paid for them in the English markets — to which they can be so rapidly con- veyed from many parts of Ireland — appear to offer sufficient temptation to the speculator who has the capital and accom- modation necessary for fattening them. A well-organized system of feeding this hardy and nutriti- ous species of poultry, in favourable localities, would give a considerable impulse to the rearing of them, and consequently promote the comforts of many poor Irish families, who under existing circumstances do not find it worth while to rear them except in very small numbers. I am led to offer a few suggestions on this subject from having ascertained that in the Fens of Lincolnshire, notwith- standing a great decrease there in the breeding of geese from extensive drainage, one individual, Mr Clarke of Boston, fat- tens every year, between Michaelmas and Christmas, the prodigious number of seven thousand geese, and that another dealer at Spalding prepares for the poultry butcher nearly as many : these they purchase in lots from the farmers’ wives. Perhaps a few details of the Lincolnshire practice may be acceptable to some of the readers of this Journal : — The farmers in the Fens keep breeding stocks proportioned to the extent of suitable land which they can command ; and in order to insure the fertility of the eggs, they allow one gander to three geese, which is a higher proportion of males than is deemed necessary elsewhere. The number of goslings in each brood averages about ten, which, allowing for all casual- ties, is a considerable produce. There have been extraordinary instances of individual fe- cundity, on which, however, it would be as absurd for any goose-breeder to calculate, as it is proverbially unwise to reckon chickens before they are hatched ; and this fruitfulness is only attainable by constant feeding with stimulating food through the preceding winter. A goose has been known to lay seventy eggs within twelve months, twenty-six in the spring, before ftie time of incuba- tion, and (after bringing out seventeen goslings) the remainder by the end of the year. The white variety is preferred to the grey or party-coloured, as the birds of this colour feed more kindly, and their feathers are worth three shillings a stone more than the others : the quality of the land, however, on which the breeding stock is to be maintained, decides this matter, generally strong land being necessary for the support of the white or larger kind. Under all circumstances a white gander is preferred, in order to have a large progeny. It has been remarked, but I know' not if with reason, that ganders are more frequently white than the females. To state all the particulars of hatching and rearing would be superfluous, and mere repetition of what is contained in the various works on poultry. I shall merely state some of the peculiarities of the practice in the county of Lincoln. When the young geese are brought up at different periods by the great dealers, they are put into pens together, accord- ing to their age, size, and condition, and fed on steamed po- tatoes and ground oats, in the ratio of one measure of oats to three of potatoes. By unremitting care as to cleanliness, pure water, and constant feeding, these geese are fattened in about three weeks, at an average cost of one penny per day each. The cramming system, either by the fingers or the forcing pump, described by French writers, with the accompanying barbarities of blinding, nailing the feet to the floor, or con- finement in perforated casks or earthen pots (as is said to 224 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. be the case sometimes in Poland), are happily unknown in Lincolnshire, and I may add throughout England, with one exception — the nailing of the feet to boards. The unequivo- cal proofs of this may occasionally, but very rarely, be seen in the geese brought into the London markets : these, however, may possibly be imported ones, though I fear they are not so. The Lincolnshire dealers do not give any of those rich greasy pellets of barley meal and hot liquor, which always spoil the flavour, to their geese, as they w'ell know that oats is the best feeding for them ; barley, besides being more ex- pensive, renders the flesh loose and insipid, and rather chickeny in flavour. Every point of economy on this subject is matter of great moment, on the vast scale pursued by Mr Clarke, who pays seven hundred pounds a-year for the mere conveyance of his birds to the London market ; a fact which gives a tolerable notion of the great extent of capital employed in this business, the extent of which is scarcely conceivable by my agricultural countrymen. Little cost, however, is incurred by those who breed the geese, as the stock are left to provide for themselves, except in the laying season, and in feeding the goslings until they are old enough to eat grass or feed on the stubbles. I have no doubt, however, that the cramp would be less frequently experienced, if solid food were added to the grass, when the geese are turned out to graze, although Mr Clarke attri- butes the cramp, as well as gout and fever, to too close con- finement alone. This opinion does not correspond with my far more limited observation, which leads me to believe that the cramp attacks goslings most frequently when they are at large, and left to shift for themselves on green food alone, and that of the poorest kind. I should think it good economy to give them, and the old stagers too, all spare garden vege- tables, for loss of condition is prejudicial to them as well as to other animals. Mr Cobbett used to fatten his young geese, from June to October, on Swedish turnips, carrots, white cabbages, or lettuces, with some corn. Swedish turnips no doubt will answer very well, but not so well as farinaceous potatoes, when immediate profit is the object. The experience of such an extensive dealer as Mr Clarke is worth volumes of theory and conjecture as to the mode of feeding, and he decides in favour of potatoes and oats. The treatment for cramp and fever in Lincolnshire is bleed- ing — I know' not if it be hazarded in gout — but as it is not successful in the cases of cramp in one instance out of twenty, it may be pronounced inefficacious. I have had occasion lately to remark in this Journal on the general disinclination in England to the barbarous custom of plucking geese alive. In Lincolnshire, however, they do so with the breeding stock three times in the year, beginning at midsummer, and repeating the operation twice afterwards, at intervals of six weeks between the operations. The practice is defended on the plea, that if the feathers be matured, the geese are better for it, while it is of course ad- mitted that the birds must be injured more or less — accord- ing to the handling by the pluckers — if the feathers be not ripe. But as birds do not moult three times in the year, I do not understand how it should be correctly said that the fea- thers can be ripe on these three occasions. How does nature suggest the propriety of stripping the feathers so often ? Where great numbers are kept, the loss by allowing the fea- thers to drop on the ground would be serious, and on this account alone can even one stripping be justified. In proof of the general opinion that the goose is extremely long-lived, we have many recorded facts ; among them the following : — “ In 1824 there was a goose living in the posses- sion of Mr Hewson of Glenham, near Market Rasen, Lincoln- shire, which was then upwards of a century old. It had been throughout that term in the constant possession of Mr Hew- son’s forefathers and himself, and on quitting his farm he would not suffer it to be sold with his other stock, but made a present of it to the in-coming tenant, that the venerable fowl might terminate its career on the spot where its useful life had been spent such a length of days.” The taste which has long prevailed among gourmands for the liver of a goose, and has led to the enormous cruelties ex- ercised in order to cause its enlargement by rendering the bird diseased in that organ through high and forced feeding in a warm temperature and close confinement, is Avell known ; but I doubt if many are aware of the influence of charcoal in producing an unnatural state of the liver. I had read of charcoal being put into a trough of water to sweeten it for geese when cooped up ; but from a passage in a recent work by Liebig it would appear that the charcoal acts not as a sweetener of the water, but in another way on the constitution of the goose. I am tempted to give the extract from its novelty : — “ The production of flesh and fat may be artificially increased : all domestic animals, for example, contain much fat. We give food to animals which increases the activity of certain organs, and is itself capable of being transformed into fat. We add to the quantity of food, or we lessen the progress of respira- tion and perspiration by preventing motion. The conditions necessary to effect this purpose in birds are different from those in quadrupeds ; and it is well known that charcoal pow- der produces such an excessive growth in the liver of a goose as at length causes the death of the animal.” We are much inferior to the English in the art of prepar- ing poultry for the market ; and this is the more to be re- gretted in the instance of geese, especially as we can supply potatoes — which I have shown to be the chief material of their fattening food — at half their cost in many parts of Eng- land. This advantage alone ought to render the friends of our agricultural poor earnest in promoting the rearing and fattening of geese in localities favourable for the purpose. IRISH MANUFACTURES. The encouragement of our native manufactures is now a ge- neral topic of conversation and interest, and Ave hope the pre- sent excitement of the public mind on this subject will be pro- ductive of permanent good. We also hope that the encou- ragement proposed to be given to articles of Irish manufac- ture will be extended to the productions of the head as well as to those of the hands ; that the manufacturer of Irish wit and humour will be deemed Avorthy of support as Avell as those of silks, woollens, or felts ; and, that Irishmen shall venture to estimate the value of Irish produce for themselves, Avithout waiting as heretofore till they get “ the London stamp” upon them, as our play-going people of old times used to do in the case of the eminent Irish actors. We are indeed greatly inclined to believe that our Irish manufactures are rising in estimation in England, from the fact which has come to our knoAvledge that many thousands of our Belfast hams are sold annually at the other side of the Avater as genuine Yorkshire, and also that many of those Bel- fast hams with the Yorkshire stamp find their way back into “ Child Ireland,” and are bought as English by those who Avould despise them as Irish. Noav, we should like our countrymen not to be gulled in this way , but depend upon their own judgment in the matter of hams, and in like manner in the matter of arti- cles of Irish literary manufacture, Avithout waiting for the Lon- don stamp to be put on them. The necessity for such discrimi- nation and confidence in their oaati judgment exists equally in hams and literature. Thus certain English editors approve so highly of our articles in the Irish Penny Journal, that they copy them by Avholesale, not only Avithout acknowledgment, but actually do us the favour to father them as their OAvn ! As an example of this patronage, Ave may refer to a recent number of the Court Gazette, in which its editor has been entertaining his aristocratic readers with a little piece of badinage from our Journal, expressly Avritten for us, and en- titled “ A short chapter on Bustles,” but which he gives as written for the said Court Gazette ! Noav, this is really very considerate and complimentary, and Ave of course feel grate- ful. But, better again, Ave find our able and kind friend the editor of the Monitor and Irishman, presenting, no doubt inadvertently, this very article to his Irish readers a feAV Aveeks ago — not even as an Irish article that had got the Lon- don stamp upon it, but as actually one of true British manu- facture — the produce of the Court Gazette. Noav, in perfect good humour, we ask our friend, as such Ave have reason to consider him, could he not as well have copied this article from our oavii Journal, and given us the credit of it— and vvould it not be Avorthv of the consistency and patriot- ism of the Irishman, Avho Avrites so ably in the cause of Irish manufactures, to extend his support, as far as might be com- patible Avith truth and honesty, to the native literature of Ireland ? gv ." 1 . . .! ■ . i r rrj* t z - : r r ~ 1 Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin.-* Sold by all Booksellers. . ’ • JOURNAL. Number 29. SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1841. Volume I. KILBARRON CASTLE, We 'think our readers generally will concur with us in con- sidering the subject of our prefixed illustration as a very striking and characteristic one — presenting features which, except among the castles of the Scottish highland chiefs, will only be found on the wild shores of our own romantic island. It is indeed a truly Irish scene — poetical and picturesque in the extreme, and its history is equally peculiar, being wholly un- like any thing that could be found relating to any castle out of Ireland. From the singularity of its situation, seated on a lofty, precipitous, and nearly insulated cliff, exposed to the storms and billows of the western ocean, our readers will naturally conclude that this now sadly dilapidated and time-worn ruin must have owed its origin to some rude and daring chief of old, whose occupation was war and rapine, and whose thoughts were as wild and turbulent as the waves that washed his sea- girt eagle dwelling ; and such, in their ignorance of its un- published history, has been the conclusion drawn by modern topographers, who tell us that it is supposed to have been the habitation of freebooters. But it was not so ; and our readers will be surprised when we acquaint them that this lonely, isolated fortress was erected as an abode for peaceful men — a safe and quiet retreat in troubled times for the laborious in- vestigators and preservers of the history, poetry, and anti- quities of their country ! Yes, reader, this castle was the residence of the ollaves, bards, and antiquaries of the people of Tirconneli — the illustrious family of the O’Clerys, to COUNTY OF DONEGAL. Avhose zealous labours in the preservation of the history and antiquities of Ireland we are chiefly indebted for the infor- mation on those subjects with which we so often endeavour to instruct and amuse you. You will pardon us, then, if with a grateful feeling to those benefactors of our country to whose labours we owe so much, we endeavour to do honour to their memory by devoting a few pages of our little national work to their history, as an humble but not unfitting monument to their fame. We trust, however, that such a sketch as we propose will not be wholly wanting either in interest or instruc- tion. It will throw additional light upon the ancient customs and state of society in Ireland, and exhibit in a striking way a remarkable feature in the character of our coun- trymen of past ages, whichno adverse circumstances were ever able utterly to destroy, and which, we trust, will again dis- tinguish them as of old — their love for literature and learn- ing, and their respect for good and learned men. It will also exhibit another trait in their national character no less peculiar or remarkable, namely, their great anxiety to pre- serve their family histories — a result of which is, that even to the present day the humblest Irish peasant, as well as the estated gentleman, can not unfrequently trace his descent not only to a more remote period, but also with a greater abun- dance of historical evidence than most of the princely families of Europe. This is, indeed, a trait in the national character which philosophers, and men dike ourselves, usually affect 226 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. to hold in contempt. But no species of knowledge should be despised ; and the desire to penetrate the dim obscurities of time in search of our origin, as well as to speculate upon our future prospects, is one of the characteristics which distin- guish the human from the lower animals of creation, and without which we should have little to boast of over them. The family of O’Clery, or, as the name is now usually writ- ten, Cleary, and sometimes anglicized Clarke, is not of Tir- connellian origin, nor of very ancient standing in the country of the Kinel-Connell race, the present county of Donegal. Their original locality was in Hy-Fiachrach-Aidhne, a dis- trict comprising the entire of the present diocese of Kilmac- duagh, in the present county of Galway, and of which their ancestors were, for a long period previous to the Anglo-Nor- man conquest, the hereditary lords or kings. As usual in ancient Irish topographical names, this territory derived its appellation from that of the tribe by whom it was formed into a principality, the name Hy-Fiachrach-Aidhne being the tribe name of the descendants of Fiachra, who was the son of Eochy-Moyvaine, King of Ireland in the fourth century. On the adoption of surnames, however, at the close of the tenth century, this tribe having split into several distinct families, assumed different surnames from their immediate progenitors, and of these families the most eminent were the O’Clerys, the O’Heynes, the O’Shaughnessys, the Mac Giolla Kellys, and the O’Moghans. The occasion of the first settlement of the O’Clerys at Kilbarron, in the country of Tirconnell, will be best told in the simple statement of his descendants, as given in their genea- logical work. “ The English power, that is to say, the power of the Burkes descended from William (Fitz Adelm) the Conque- ror, having become in the ascendant over the descendants of Eochy Breac, the son of Dathi, the son of Fiachra, &c. several of the latter were separated, and dispersed into various districts, viz, Mac Giolla Kelly went into Western Ends, and a branch of the O’Clerys into Hy-awley Mac Fiachrach. Another branch of them passed into [East] Munster, and settled in the vicinity of Kilkenny, and another again passed into Breifney O’Reilly, and are there known as the Clan Clery. After a lapse of time, a wise and intelligent man of the O’Clerys went from Tir-awley into Tirconnell. Cormac O’Clery was his name, ami he was a proficient in both the laws, that is, the civil and the canon law. The monks and learned men of the monastery of St Bernard, called Assaroe (near Bally shannon), conceived a great respect and affection for him, on account of his councils, his good morals, his wis- dom, and his intellect, and they detained him among them for a time. He was at this period young and comely. For a long time previously, O’Sgingin had been the ollave [chief historian] to the lord of the Kinel-Connell, that is, the O’Donnell ; and it was from Ard-Carne in Moy-Lurg of the Dagda that he came into Tirconnell. When the Cormac O’Clery of whom we have spoken came into Tirconnell, Niall Garbh, the son of Hugh, the son of Donnell Oge, was lord of the country ; and O’Sgingin, that is, Matthew, was ollave to him at the time; and there did not then live of children with O’Sgingin, nor yet of his tribe, but an only and beautiful daughter. And this daughter O’Sgingin gave as wife to this Cormac, and all he demanded for her as a dower* w'as, that if ever a son should be born to them, he should be trained up in the knowledge of literature and nistory, as his own family were all extinct in that country ex- cept this only daughter. Cormac promised to fulfil this re- quest, and he did so. A son was born of C^ormac and O’Sgingin’s daughter, and he was named Giolla Brighde, in honour and remembrance of Giolla Brighde O’Sgingin, his maternal uncle, who -was the intended ollave of Tirconnell, but had died some time before, in the year 1382. Son to that Giolla Brighde O’Clery was Giolla Riab- hach ; and son to Giolla Riabhach was Dermot of the three schools, so called because he kept a school for literature, a school for history, and a school for poetry. It was to that Dermot that O’Donnell, that is, Niall, the son of Turlogh an * Tinnscra, in the original— a reward, portion, or dowery— it being the custom among the Irish as among the Eastern nations, that the husband should make a present to his wife’s father, or to herself, upon his marriage. As Byron says — “ Though this seems odd ’Tis true ; the reason is, that the bashaw Must make a present to his sire-in-law.” fhiona, gave the territory called Creevagh, which was his prin- cipal residence for a time, and which was given him in addi- tion to other lands which O’Donnell’s ancestors had previously given to O’Sgingin, in reward for his skill in the science which was hereditary to him, namely, history. Son to Dermot of the three schools was Teige Cam, who had the three celebrated sons, Tuathal, Gillareagh, and Der- mot. It was by them that the stone houses were built in Kilbarron ; for they and their ancestors were the occupants of Kilbarron since the time of Cormac already mentioned, w’ho came first to Tirconnell ; and they were also the occupants of Carrow-na-Caheragh, and Carrownty-clogh of the lands of the monastery of Assaroe. To them also belonged (as a gift) from O’Donnell, the quarter of Kildoney, the quarter of Cool- remur, and the quarter of Drumincrin in Moy-Enne. The children of Tuathal, the son of Teige Cam, the son of Dermot of the three schools, w'ere Teige Cam, Giolla Riabhach, Mahon, and William. Teige Cam (the son of Tuathal) left no issue but one daughter, Sheela.” The preceding extract furnishes us with a very striking evidence of the regard anciently entertained for learning in Ireland, and of the liberal endowments made for the support of its professors. The lands named as belonging to the ollaves of Tirconnell are still knowm by the appellations above given, and would at the present day produce a rental little short of two thousand a-year. Ah ! it will be long till learning in the history and literature of our country be again thus nobly recompensed ! But it may be asked, were these professors of old worthy of the liberal patronage thus afforded them — were they mindful of the duties imposed upon them in return for it ? We answer, that we think they wmre, and in support of our opinion we adduce the following brief but expressive tributes to their memories as recorded by our Annalists : — “ 1492. O’Clery, that is, Teige Cam (or the crooked), ollave to O’Donnell in science, poetry, and history, a man who had maintained a house of universal hospitality for the mighty and the needy, died, after having subdued the world and the devil.” “ 1512. Tuathal O’Clery, the son of Teige Cam, a man learned in history and poetry — a man who kept a house of hospitality generally for rich and poor, died.” “ 1522. This year was killed, besides two of the poets of O’Donnell, Dermot, the son of Teige Cam O’Clery, a man learned in history and poetry — a man who kept a house of hospitality universally for the rich and the poor. ’ “ 1527. O’Clery, that is, Giolla Riabhach, the son of Teige Cam, learned in the sciences, in historical knowledge, in poetry, and in theological reading, a man respected and rich, died.” 1583. In this year Turlogh Luineach O’Neal, having at- tacked O’Donnell at Drumleen, in revenge of the burning of Strabane by the latter some time previously, he was defeated by O’Donnell with great loss, and amongst the slain was “ Maelmurry (the son of Dermott, who was son of Mahon, who was son of Tuathal) O’Clery, the only hostage of O’Neill and the Kenel-Owen, for his father and O’Neill himself had been born of the same mother. Maelmurry, on account of his relationship with O’Neill, had been in possession of all O’Neill’s wealth, and O’Neill would have given three times the usual quantity of every kind of property for his ransom, if ransomed he could have been ; but he was first mortally wounded and afterwards drowned by O’Donnell’s people, who were in high spirits, and rejoiced greatly at seeing him thus cut off.” “ 1585. Cosnamliach, the son of Cucogry (or Peregrine), who was the son of Dermot, who was the son of Teige Cam O’Clery — a rich and flourishing man, who had maintained a house of hospitality at one time in Thomond and another in Tirconnell, died at Fuar-Chosach in Tirconnell, in the lent of this year, and was interred under the asylum of God and St Bernard, in the monastery of Assaroe.” This devotion to literature was not, however, a charac- teristic of the O’Clerys in their days of wealth and pros- perity only, but distinguished them with even greater lustre when reduced to poverty in after times, as will clearly appear from the facts we have yet to adduce. But as we are sketch- ing their genealogical history, as well as their character, we must previously continue their pedigree from the period of their settlement at Kilbarron, to their extinction as profes- sional ollaves, on the ruin of their patrons the O’Donnells, and, for the sake of clearness, we shall give it in a tabular form, 1. Cormac O’Clery, the first who settled ia Donegal, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 227 2. Giolla Brighde O’Clery. 3. Giolla Riabhach O’Clery. 4. Dermot of the three schools. 5. Teige Cam (or the stooped) O’Clery. 6. Dermot O’Clery. 7. Cucogry (or Peregrine) O’Clery. 8. Mac Con O’Clery ; his brother, Cosnamach, died in 1584. 9. Lughaidh (or Lewis) Giolla Brighde, Mac Con Meir- geach, Cucogry, and Duigen O’Clery. Of these sons, the eldest, Lughaidh, was the most distin- guished of the Irish literati of the northern half of Ireland in his time, and the principal poetical combatant on the part of the northern bards in the contest with those of the southern division, which took place about the commencement of the seventeenth century, respecting the claims of the rival dynasties of the northern and southern divisions of Ireland to supremacy and renown. The poems written on this occasion are usually collected into a volume, entitled “ Iomarbadh,” or, Contention of the Bards, and were long popular among the Irish people. He was also the compiler of Annals of his Own Times, which the Four Masters used in their great compilations. As chief of his sept, this Lughaidh, or Lewis O’Clery, held the entire of the lands bestowed on his ancestors, as well as the herenach lands of the parish of Kilbarron, as hereditary herenach, till the flight of the north- ern earls in 1607, when they were lost to him and his family in the general confiscation -which followed, and became the property of the Lord Folliott and the Bishop of Raphoe. He held those lands, however, till the close of the year 1609, and was selected as one of the “good and lawful men” of the county, appointed in obedience to a commission to inquire into the king’s title to the several escheated and forfeited lands in Ulster, and which held an inquisition for this purpose at Lif- ford, on the 12th of September 1609. In this inquisition, which furnishes the most valuable information upon the nature of ancient Irish tenures, it is stated that “ the parish of Kilbarron contains five quarters in all, whereof one quar- ter is herenach land possessed by the sept of the Cleries as herenaches, paying thereout yearlie to the lord busshopp of Raphoe thirteen shillings four pence Irish per annum, six meathers of butter, and thirty-four meathers of meale ; and that there is one quarter named Kildoned, in the tenure of the said sept of the Cleries, free from any tithes to the busshopp,” &c. And again, “ That there are in the said parishe three quarters of Collximbkillies land, everie quarter conteyninge sixe balliboes in the tenure of Lewe O’Cleerie, to whom the said lands were sithence mortgaged for fortie pounds, by the said late Earle of Tirconnell unto the said Lewe, who hath paid there- out yearly unto his Majestie, since the late earl’s departure, four poundes, two muttons, and a pair of gloves, but nothing to the said busshopp.” Cucogry, or Peregrine O’Clery, the son of Lughaidh or Lewy, and chief of the name, held the half quarter of the lands of Coobeg and Dowghill, in the proportion of Monargane, in the barony of Boylagh and Bannagh, from hollandtide 1631 until May 1632, for which he paid eight pounds sterling per annum to William Farrell, Esq., assignee to the Earl of Annandale, as appears from an inquisition taken at Lifford on the 25th of May 1632, but “ being a mere Irishman, and not of English or British descent or surname,” he was dispossessed, and the lands became forfeited to the king. The O’Clerys were thus wholly reduced to poverty, but not to idleness, in the service of their country’s literature. It was in this year 1632 that they commenced that series of works devoted to the preservation of Irish history, which has made their names so illustrious, and of which the celebrated annals, called the Annals of the Four Masters, are now the most popu- larly known. A full account of this great work, written by the author of this article, will be found in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, and reprinted in the first volume of the Dublin Penny Journal. The persons concerned in its compilation were, first, Teige of the Mountain O’Clery, -who, after becoming a Franciscan friar, adopted the name of Michael, 2 Maurice O’Mulconary ; 3 Fergus O’Mulconary ; 4 Cucogry, the son of Lewy O’Clery ; 5 Cucogry O’Duigen ; 6 Con- ary O’Clery, the brother of Michael. The work was com- menced in the monastery of Donegal, of which Father Ber- nardin O’Clery was guardian, on the 22d of January 1632, and finished in the same convent on the 10th of August 1636, the brotherhood supplying the transcribers with the necessary support. The motives which actuated the O’Clerys to enter on a work of such labour as this, are very feelingly and prophetically ex- pressed in the dedication to it by Michael, the superintendant of the work. “ Judging that should such a compilation be neglected at present, or consigned to a future time, a risk might be run that the materials for it should never again be brought together,” — and such indeed would have been their fate. In the same spirit the O’Clerys compiled their Leabhar Gabhala, or book of the conquests of Ireland, containing the most valuable ancient historical poems preserved in the lan- guage ; their book of Genealogies ; their Heim riograidhe, or catalogue of kings ; and their calendar and genealogies of the Saints or distinguished ecclesiastics of Ireland. In addition to these, Cucogry, the son of Lewy, wrote the Life of Red Hugh O’Donnell, a work of the greatest value and interest. Copies of all these works are now preserved in the library of the Royal Irish Academy, and with the exception of two of them, are in the autograph of Cucogry O’Clery, the best scribe of the family, or of the Four Masters conjointly. The preservation of these remains, so essential to our his- tory, is very interestingly connected with the subsequent fortunes of the O’Clery family. Towards the close of the fatal troubles of the seventeenth century, the O’Clerys, with many other families of Tircon- nell, were forced to seek shelter in the wilds of Erris, in Mayo, under the guidance of their natural leader Roger O’Donnell, the son of Colonel Manus O’Donnell, who was killed at Dun- gannon in 1646, and ancestor to the present Sir Richard O’Donnell of Newport. Of these O’Clerys, was Cucogry, one of the Four Masters, and senior representative of the name, who, carrying with him his books as his chief treasure, be- queathed them to his two sons Dermot and John. How strong this feeling of pride in his books, and his love of learn- ing, continued in the midst of adversities, and even in death, will appear from the following extract from his auto- graph will, which was made at Curr-na-heilte, near Newport, and which is preserved in one of his works now in the library of the Academy. It is the first or principal item among his bequests: — “ I bequeath the property most dear to me that ever I possessed in this -world, namely, my books, to my two sons Dermot and Shane (or John.) Let them extract from them, without injuring them, whatever may be necessary to their purpose, and let them be equally seen and used by the children of my brother Cairbre as by themselves ; and let them instruct them according to the (obliterated.) And I request the children of Cairbre to teach and instruct their children. And I command my sons to be loving, friendly, and kind to the chil- dren of Cairbre, and to their own children, if they wish that God should befriend them in the other world, or prosper them in this, and give them the inheritance of heaven.” The injunctions thus solemnly laid on his posterity were faithfully fulfilled. His books were carefully preserved and studied by his descendants from generation to generation, till, being brought to Dublin about thirty years since, by John O’Clery, the eldest representative of his line, they got into the possession of the late Edward O’Reilly, at the sale of whose books and Irish MSS. they were purchased for the Royal Irish Academy. This John O’Clery, who still lives, is the fifth in descent from Cucogry, the annalist, who died in 1664; and, like his ancestors, he is a good Irish scribe ajnd scholar. We may also remark, that, though in very humble life, he can boast of a pedigree unbroken through fifty-two generations, from Eochy-Moyvaine, monarch of Ireland in the fourth century, and this on historical evidence that the learned could hardly venture to question. To these notices we have only to add, in reference to the subject of our illustration, that though, from the account which we have already given from the O’Clery MS. it might be supposed that Kilbarron Castle was erected by them in the sixteenth century, the castle itself bears evidences in many parts that it is of much earlier antiquity. The tradi- tion of the country, as stated by the author of the Donegal Statistical Survey, is, that it was originally erected by O’Sgin- neen or Sgingin ; and this tradition is fully verified by an entry in the Annals of the Four Masters, which states that Kilbar- ron Castle was rased to the ground by Donnell, the son of Murtogh O’Connor, in 1390. The probability, therefore, is, that it was re-edified immediately afterwards by Cormac O’Clery, though houses of stone were not erected within its enclosures till a later period. P. 228 HE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. THE TALKING AND TACITURN AGES. Among all the enjoyments of life, there was none which our great lexicographer esteemed superior to a “good talk.” It was to him as the supper of the Gods. He would walk a long way for it ; and if he attained his end, he would express his highest feelings of satisfaction by saying, “ Sir, we had a good talk.” What share he took in it 'himself on such oc- casions, it might have been interesting to inquire. That it was a large one, we may rest assured ; but few probably complained of the circumstance — so capital a talker was our “.British Socrates.” Yet to a good talk on equal terms, it will be allowed there should be some reciprocity. To “ ha- rangue” in company is not to talk fairly. It is a practice, indeed, common enough in the world ; but if the just rules which ought to prevail in the conversational commonwealth be considered, it must be allowed to be a violation of them. The formality of the speech is utterly destructive to the freedom of the republic. Reciprocity is its very life and soul ; but the speech-maker lays it up at once in a state of suspended animation. Next to the speech-maker, we may rank as the greatest infringer of these laws the determined “ argufier,” or disputatious person, who loves an argument so much that you can advance no proposition that he is not ready immediately to controvert. In the presence of such a person, conversation shares the fate of true love, and never can “run smooth.” There is an appearance of equitableness about this character, that may render him less manifestly engrossing than the former ; but his egotism is only a little better concealed, and he invariably achieves the same dis- agreeable result, namely, to silence every body else, and keep the field entirely to himself. Of such a person we shall say with Jacques, “ I have been all day to avoid him. He is too ‘ disputable’ for my company. I think of as many matters as he : but I give heaven thanks, and make no boast.” There are two words in the English language which really comprise all the rules, laws, and regulations necessary for the good government of conversation, and these are “bre- vity,” “reciprocity.” If each individual would remember when he takes part in conversation that there are others to do so as well as himself, he would necessarily be brief in his own performances. And this brevity has many advantages. Our time is short ; our meetings together for conversation are commonly, like angels’ visits, “ few and far between,” and in general short ; tediousness is the sure destroyer, as brevity is “the soul,” of wit, and therefore he that would en- liven his hearers, and dispose them to hear him again, should be above all things “ short.” It is acting upon the second golden line, also, and shows a proper consideration for the rights of others. It is doing as a man would be done by. In addition to which, we may observe, that each should listen, if he desire to be listened to — should hear, if he desire to be heard in return. Thus these two words “brevity” and “reciprocity” form a concise but plain and simple code upon the subject. Much might be said, indeed, in the way of commentary ; but com- mentary sometimes tends rather to obscure than to elucidate, and in this case is manifestly uncalled for. It must be remembered, however, that these laws can only conduce to the improvement and regulation of conversational intercourse, but are wholly inadequate to originate or insure that “ good talking” of which the report has come down to us. This is an object not to be accomplished by rule. The roverb of the wise man says that “out of the fullness of the eart the mouth speaketh and we may safely affirm that where there is plenty of matter weighing upon the mind, and where it is of a kind that interests the feelings, there will be at least no lack of utterance. Under an opposite state of things, a contrary result may be expected, and cannot, by any rule of art that we have ever heard of, be contravened. But we must proclaim a truce with this train of observation. We feel that we have been twaddling after the manner of some of our elder essayists, oblivious of the age in which we actually exist. Who has time to think now of good talking, or of talking at all ? The age of Johnsonism is departed ; and in these days, in- stead of running after a “ good talk,” there is nothing which the people would run more resolutely from. This is the age of hurry and bustle, and of doing, not talking. It is the age of machinery and iron. We do every thing bv mechani- cal contrivance : we print by it, travel by it, count by it, and very soon, we expect, we shall talk by it. All our great dis- ' coveries and inventions are unfavourable to speech. What need to speak, indeed, when almost every thing we may wish to say or hear of is printed? No occasion to ask our neigh- bour questions, or to moot points of any kind with us : the press answers and discusses them all most satisfactorily. Printing is driving conversation out of the world. It is ren- dering it not only superfluous, but impracticable ; for how is it possible to find time to read all that is given us to read in these days, and to go on talking after the old fashion ? The thing is manifestly impossible ; and our own conclusion is, that we are hurrying on rapidly to the age of pure taciturnity. When the sun of this solemn age shall have reached its meridian, talking will have passed into the mouths of old women and sucklings, or of merely professional people. We say professional people, because, though' conversation in general will have become monosyllabic, or be carried on perhaps by signals, without the use of speech at all, we yet think it highly probable that there will be persons who will occupy themselves with it as a profession. This will be only a carry- ing out of the grand principle of the division of labour ; and their occupation, being followed professionally, will be executed in the very best style, and on the most scientific principles. Professional talkers will then be engaged for large parties just as singers are now, and will amuse the company with studiously prepared anecdotes, beautifully executed disqui- sitions, flashes of merriment, repartees, rejoinders, grave re- marks, useful hints, and whatever else can conduce to enter- tain or instruct — whilst hosts and guests will on their part sit at ease in all the luxury of silence. As to the rules of “good talking” which we began by lay- ing down, we are sensible that in a short time they must become quite obsolete. Conversation is even now as the “ last rose of summer,” and going out very fast indeed. If what we have said can be of any use to cheer or improve its declin- ing years, we shall be amply rewarded ; but if we are already too late, then let it be kept, and in some twenty years more it may be looked upon as a decided curiosity. “ See here what I have found,” may somebody “ use the machine to in- timate, for as to speaking so many words together, nobody will do it. “ See what I have found in an early number of the Irish Penny Journal — ‘ Rules for good talking !’ — well, now, what could that have been ? Dear me, what strange habits they must have had in those days !” X. D. THE JACOBITE RELICS OF IRELAND.— No. I. The Jacobite relics of England, and to a still greater extent those of Scotland, have been given to the world, and are well deserving of such preservation ; for they reflect no small light on the character and temperament of the English and Scottish people during the last century. But until the ap- pearance of Mr Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy it was hardly known that in their political enthusiasm for the fate of a de- caying family the Irish people participated with so large a portion of those of the sister islands, and that it gave birth to an equal number of poetical effusions in our own country but with this difference, that their sentiments are usually veiled under an allegorical form, and always in the Irish lan- guage. T o Mr Hardiman we are indebted for the preser- vation of the originals of many of those productions, and also for translations of them. These translations are however too free to enable the English reader to form any very accurate idea of the Irish originals, and we are therefore tempted to present a series of these l’elics to our readers, with translations of a more literal and faithful description ; not limiting our- selves to those which have already appeared in Mr Hardiman’s work — as in the specimen which we have selected to com- mence with, which is still popularly sung in Ireland to the old melody called “ Kathaleen Ny-IIoulahan.” We may observe, that the name of the author of this song, if ever known, is no longer remembered ; but there seems to be no doubt that the song itself is of Munster origin. KATHALEEN NY-HOULAHAN. Long they pine in weary woe, the nobles of our land, Long they wander to and fro, proscribed, alas ! and banned ; Feastless, houseless, altarless, they bear the exile’s brand, But their hope is in the coming-to of Kathaleen Ny-I-Ioulahan 1 Think her not a ghastly hag, too hideous to be seen, Call her not unseemly names, our matchless Kathaleen ; Young she is, and fair she is, and would be crowned a queen. Were the king's son at home here with Kathaleen Ny-IIouhhan ! 229 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Sweet and mild would look her face, O none so sweet and mild, Could she crush the foes by whom her beauty is reviled ; Woollen plaids would grace herself and robes of silk her child, ' If the king's son were living here with Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan ! Sore disgrace it is to see the Arbitress of thrones, Vassal to a Snxoneen of cold and sapless bones ! Bitter anguish wrings our souls — with heavy sighs and groans We wait the Young Deliverer of Kathaleen Ny-IIoulahan ! Let us pray to Him who holds Life’s issues in His hands — Him who formed the mighty globe, with all its thousand lands ; Girdling them with seas and mountains, rivers deep, and strands, To cast a look of pity upon Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan ! He, who over sands and waves led Israel along — He, who fed, with heavenly bread, that chosen tribe and throng — He, who stood by Moses, when his foes were fierce and strong — • May He show forth His might in saving Kathaleen Ny-Houlahan ! M. CAUSE AND EFFECT, OB. THE MISFORTUNES OF CHARLEY MALONE. “ Well,” said Hubert Dillon to me one clay, “did you ever hear or read of such an unlucky being as that Charley Malone ?” “ Indeed I did,” was my reply ; “ on the contrary, I look upon him as one of the most fortunate men in existence.” “ Tut, tut ! how can you say that, unless it be for the pure love of contradiction? — how long is it ago, I ask you, since he almost broke his neck riding the steeple-chase in Mullagh- moran?” “ Why, my dear fellow,” I rejoined, “ I consider him most miraculously fortunate in not having broken his neck altogether on the occasion ; he was warned before hand that the horse couldn’t possibly carry him over such a leap ; and how he escaped so safely, will always remain a puzzle to me.” “ Well, I’ll give you another instance— -the very morning he was to have fought Cornet Bagley, didn’t the police catch him, and get him bound over ?” “And devilish well for him they did, let me tell you, other- wise poor Charley would have been a case for the coroner before dinner time. The cornet’s a dead shot, and you know yourself that Chai'ley couldn’t hit a turf clamp.” “ Did’nt he lose fifty pounds at hazard to George Byrne last winter in one night ?” “ Sign’s on it, he booked himself against the bones for ever and a day as soon as he got up next morning, and by conse- quence may be expected to have something to leave to the heirs of his body, when he has them.” “ Well, talking of heirs : what have you to say to his ma- trimonial speculations, this last affair particularly — to lose such a girl and such a fortune by his own confounded blun- dering. You’ll not call that good fortune surely.” But our reminiscences of “ Charley’s last,” thus recalled, were too much for mortal gravity to bear, and laughter, long, loud, and uproarious, cut short the argument, leaving me still however impressed with the belief, that, only for himself, Charley would be a second Fortunatus ; at all events, that he could not justly announce himself a martyr to the frowns of the goddess. In the first place, two uncles, five cousins, and an elder brother of his own, had all stood between him and the family property, worth three hundred a-year, or thereabouts, but with an alacrity and good nature quite exemplary to all uncles and cousins under similar circumstances, they all within a couple of years quitted the scene. Before the last of them was sodded, however, Charley took it into his head to borrow some money, on the chance of his inheritance, at twenty per cent. As the aforesaid chance was rather a good one, he was soon accommodated ; but the wax on the bond was scarce cold when he was called to the joy of mourning at the funeral of his last impediment. Oh, if he had had but the luck to wait one week ! — he was the most unfortunate dog in the world ! Still, matrimony might enable him to retrieve all, and ac- cordingly to work he Avent, and Avild work, sure enough, he made of it. His last affair in that line, however, being that which fairly convinced him of the unprofitable nature of his pursuit, and likewise being rather a good thing in its way, is the only one which I shall offer in illustration of Charley’s luck and Charley’s mode of managing it. A letter, directed in female fashion, was handed to him one morning by the postmaster of B , the toivn contiguous to Avhich lav his mansion ; thus ran its contents, with the commentary of the reader : — “Dear Charles — [has she the tin, I wonder?] a severe attack of rheumatism [pooh ! it’s from my aunt Bindon— hum ay— Marsh’s prescriptions— Mr Gregg’s neiv chapel— have to sacrifice all and quit Dublin — hallo ! Avhat’s this ?] lour cousin Lucy [they say she has three thousand] has suffered so much from the bad air of the city, that I must endeavour to procure her the benefit of a country residence. I would pre- fer the toAvn of B , if there be a good house to let in it. Pray let me knoAv as soon as you can, and the rent, and every thing about it, &c. &c Your attached aunt, Lucy Bindon.” Who shall say noAv that Charley Avasn’t a lucky dog, Avith a handsome heiress almost thrown into his arms by a dowager- guardian, with whom he stood as dear Charles ? What num- berless opportunities Avould he not enjoy ! Sole protector of tAvo lone women ; the one laid up by rheumatism, and fully occupied by devotion and card-playing ; the other dying for the want of country air and exercise, and in all probability not at all averse to the idea of sharing her delights with a companion. They Avould be absolutely his OAvn fee-simple property. Such good fortune was not an every-day affair, and deserved more than every-day exertion to second and secure it. So Charley set about his aunt’s commission in earnest, and before nightfall succeeded in ferreting a half-pay lieute- nant and his family out of the best house in the town, to make room for the doAvager and her daughter ; wrote in reply an account of his doings, with such a list of the amenities of the locality as AA r ould have added fifty per cent, at least, to its value if it Avere to be sold by auction ; and inclosed at the same time a well-authenticated statement of a most extra- ordinary cure of rheumatism Avhich had been effected by the Avaters of a blessed Avell in the neighbourhood. In due course of time the ladies Avere domiciled in their neAv dAvelling, with Charley, of course, for their factotum and natural protector. The blessed well began to Avork a miracle on the aunt, and the country air Avould have done as much for Lucy if she required it ; but deuce a bit of it she wanted ; her cheeks were as red and her step as firm as if she had been born and bred within the precincts of the parish ; and what- ever Avas the cause of her rustication, Charley could swear it Avas not bodily Aveakness. Ill-natured people said she had been a thought too sweet to an attorney’s apprentice in the city, and that therein lay the secret of her mother’s forsaking the delights of Marsh’s prescriptions and Gregg’s new chapel — that prudent personage not approving of the comiection. If that be the case, a tough heart had Lucy Bindon, and never may it be my lot to make such a faint impression on Avoman- kind as Avas made by that luckless apprentice ; for a merrier laugh never rang in the precincts of B , and a brighter pair of eyes never glittered in its dull, quiet street. But, oh ! that laugh and those eyes, they played the devil entirely with the heart of her cousin Charley. And he Avas a happy man, as why the deuce should’nt he ? philandering, morning-, noon, and night, with his merry cousin in the fields and in the Avoods, and at the fireside and by the piano, not to talk of all the dangerous little reunions on the stairs or in the lobby, until at last the doAvager began to smell a rat, and hint her scruples about the propriety of cousin- Avork. In vain did Lucy disclaim all matrimonial intents, and assure her that it Avas all innocence, mere flirting, a bit of fun and no more, upon her word and honour. Still the poor Avoman would not be comforted ; she kneAV, she said, several cases of cousins getting married, and somehow or other something or other happened to point out the impropriety in each case. In one, both parties died before they Avere twenty years married — indeed, they Avere a little oldish "and sickly; in another, the gentleman got into debt and ruined himself ; in another, the lady took to drinking ; and in another, sundry and several small infants exchanged their cradles for coffins ; all Avhich terrible examples, however, and their strange and unusual phenomena, had no effect at all on Charley, for he Avas determined to Avin his point in spite of all the dowagers that ever took snuff, or all the enumerated horrors of their experience. After all, though, there Avere not so many obstacles to en- counter in that quarter as at first appeared, there being one great recommendation in his favour, inasmuch as he Avas neither counsellor nor attorney, in embryo or in esse; from the members of both Avhich learned and respectable professions the defunct Mr Bindon had received in his day so many un- neighbourly offices, that his relict conceived it a sacred duty to the dead to hate the aforesaid with all the hatred of which a stiff-necked Irish dowager Avas capable ; and, then, he Avas her OAvn flesh and blood, and Avho had such a good right to Lucy and her three thousand ? or Avho Avould be so much 230 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. benefited by it ? and when Lucy liked him, why should she, the dowager, gainsay it, and so on until all her objections evaporated, and at last she became as anxious for the match as if she had come down on purpose to promote it. But, Lucy — oh woman ! woman ! she did not wish to get married at all — couldn’t think of quitting her own dear mamma ; of course, if mamma insisted, she would obey, but, ’deed and word, she’d much rather not. In short, she exhibited to the wondering eyes of her bothered lover as pretty a piece of co- quetry as ever baulked a gentleman on the highroad to his desires. Things, however, went on promising enough, for Charley found it impossible to despair with so much odds in his favour, particularly while the lady was as frank and merry as ever. And thus, between laughing and quarrelling, the month of February arrived, in which Mrs B. and her future son-in-law intended the marriage should take place, if Lucy’s consent could be won in any form. Charley, for the purpose of raising the wind for the occasion, had arranged to send a horse to Dublin to be sold, and some whim seized him to ride the animal himself, and be present at the sale. The day be- fore he was to depart, ho intimated his intention to his beloved, inquiring if she had any commands. “ Going to ride to Dublin !” exclaimed the astonished Lucy. “ Seventy miles at the least. Why, man, you have such a happy knack of blundering that you’ll most certainly lose your way. Good bye, Charley ; I’ll never see your face again.” “Tut!” rejoined Charley indignantly, “how could I miss my way when there’s a milestone on every inch of the road from this to Dublin ?” “ Not on every inch, Charley,” continued the provoking girl, “ only on every mile ; but I always give you leave to speak twice, you know. Well, and when do you expect to reach Dublin, please the milestones?” “ I shall set off to-morrow morning,” answered he, a little sulkily, “ and I’ll be in Dublin the evening after.” “ Humph ! this is the eleventh, that will be the thirteenth. Yes ; it will just do. Well, Charley, I believe I will entrust you with a letter ; but you must promise and vow that you will put it into the penny-post the very evening you arrive, or I’ll not give it to you ; for it must be delivered the morning after, or the Lord knows what would happen.” “ You needn’t be afraid, Lucy,” answered her beau; “you know very well” ■ “ Oh ! to be sure I do,” exclaimed she, interrupting him. “ I declare I was very near forgetting all that. This evening, then, I’ll send the letter over to you ; and now good-bye, and go get ready.” With the help of the milestones, as Lucy said, he arrived in Dublin on the evening he proposed, and having left his steed at Dycer’s, and seen him carefully made-up, proceeded to the Hibernian, discussed his dinner and a couple of tum- blers, and then, for the poor fellow was terribly tired, sank into a slumber, and finally rose into a snore, from which he was aroused by the waiter recommending him to adjourn to his room ; a piece of advice which Charley very gratefully followed. Next morning Lucy’s letter rose in judgment against him ; there was only one way to atone for his neglect, and that was, to deliver it personally, no matter at what trouble or inconvenience. So, hastily dressing himself, he took the letter out of his valise, and examined the direction. He had his misgivings ; it bore for its superscription the name Edward Fitzgerald, Esq, whose place of abode it indicated was number something in Dominick Street. He could not help asking himself what business had Lucy — his Lucy — corres- ponding with any male member of the human family whatever. Still, as any assertion of his rights in that particular would be rather premature at present, he determined to execute the commission faithfully, since he had undertaken it ; but as soon as she became Mrs Malone, if he’d let such a thing occur again, then might he, Charley, be eternally doomed to a place that shall be nameless. On reaching the domicile of Mr Fitzgerald, and inquiring if he was at home, our friend was ushered into the presence of a most alarmingly spruce young gentleman, six feet high in his stockings, handsome enough to be a handsome man, and with a head of hair that awfully contrasted with the rather carroty wisp which lay between Charley and high heaven. To him, on questioning him fully as to his identity, he delivered the letter, and likewise the speech which he had been com- posing on the subject all the morning. “ This letter, sir,” quoth Charley, “ was entrusted to my care by a very pretty girl, to whom I pledged myself that I would put it in the penny-post last night, but I was so cursedly tired, that, hang me if I ever thought of it ; and so, to redeem my pledge, 1 have come to place it in your hands, Miss Bindon having some reason best known to herself for wishing it should reach you to-day.” “Miss Bindon, did you say?” exclaimed the young man, looking very much like a personage who had been wakened out of a dream. “ Yes, sir, Miss Lucy Bindon,” answered Charley, and to prevent mistakes ho added with rather a significant tone, “ and a young lady, by the bye, in whom I take a very es- pecial interest. You understand me?” “ Oh ! perfectly,” stammered the young man in answer. “ Somebody told me she was going to be married.” “ I don’t know how that may be, sir,” said Charley, with a sort of simpering consciousness ; “ but this at least 1 can say, that he’ll be a devilish lucky man who gets her.” “ Yes,” responded Mr Edward Fitzgerald, with a bitter sigh; “she is in truth a beautiful girl. Such animation!” “And such a fine fortune !” continued Charley, rubbing his hands with triumph, “ Amiable, excellent, fascinating !” said the doleftil Mr Fitzgerald ; and a pause ensued of most lugubrious silence, during which his eyes were fastened on the letter, seemingly unconscious of the presence of its bearer. “ Excuse me,” said Charley at last ; “ you arc impatient to read it, so I’ll be off. Good morning.” The young man rose with all the amiability he could sum- mon, and quitted the apartment with him to show him the way. “ Thunder and turf, sir !” ejaculated Charley ; “ is it out on the skylight you want to send me?” And, certainly, the direction in which the gentleman pointed would have led to some such exit. “ Oh ! pardon me,” exclaimed the other, covered with con- fusion; “ I really forgot — your way is down stairs, not up.” “ All right — all right,” chuckled Charley to himself as he sprang down, taking a flight at each bound ; “ this is some fellow that she used to care for before she saw me ; and now, to have every thing fair and straight, the gipsy has sent him his dismissal in form. Poor devil ! he seems disposed to take it to heart very much. Bight — right ! Best to be off with the old love before you be on with the new, as the song says. I declare I like her the better for it ; and to save the poor fellow’s feelings, she never even hinted to me what the letter was about.” And laying this flattering unction to his soul, he went about his biisiness in the best of good humour with himself and all the world besides. “ Well, Charley,” said Lucy to him on his return to the country, “ I know beforehand you forgot all about my letter ; so give it back to me, if you have not lost it. I should not like my billet-doux to remain with the rest of your good in- tentions ; give it back to me now, like a good fellow, and I’ll forgive you. It’s not your fault, but your misfortune.” “ I am happy to tell you,” answered he, “ that all your fore- bodings have proved groundless ; and I’m sure, Lucy, that, giddy and careless as you may pretend to be, it will give you satisfaction to know that I perfectly approve of your con- duct.” Lucy, a little puzzled by this gratifying intimation, received it in silence, making a low curtsey in reply, as in duty bound. “ Yes, Lucy,” continued he, “it has made you dearer than ever to me.” “ Will you allow me to ask you one question, Mr Charles Malone?” demanded the puzzled lady, “ and pray be intelligible if possible in your reply. Did you 'put my letter in the penny- post?” “No.” “ I thought as much — and it?” pray what have you done with “ You will understand all my allusions,” replied Charley tenderly, “ when I tell you I delivered it myself into the hands of this Mr Fitzgerald.” “What! but he didn’t know who you were, did he?” ex- claimed she, in utter dismay. “I rather think he guessed,” was the sly reply ; “and from the manner in which he spoke of you, I was able to guess something too ; but you needn’t blush now ; we’ll s'av no more about it. Such things will occur in the best regulated fami- lies.” “ Spoke of me!” said Lucy, in a low and frightened tone; “ and had you the assurance to mention my name?” THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 231 “ Why, why not ? I hope there was nothing particular in the letter. I thought”. “ Oh, you odious blundering wretch !” she exclaimed, inter- rupting him, and bursting into tears ; “it was nothing but an innocent, harmless.valentine ; and now look at all the mischief you have put into it.” It was with a sorrowing heart that Charley wended his way homeward that evening, after enduring such a mortifying dis- covery, and the disagreeable consequences entailed thereon, and putting in extreme jeopardy his chance of the incensed Lucy, and her very desirable three thousand appurtenances ; but as he passed the little inn where temporary sojourners in lh were made as comfortable as the nature of the circum- stances -would permit, he caught a glimpse of the figure of a man standing in the hall, closely muffled and enveloped in that most successful of all disguises which a gentleman can assume, a rough pee-jacket. Could it be? it was decidedly like him ; but what could bring him there? Nav, by Jove ! it was the identical Mr Edward Fitzgerald himself, arrived, most unaccountably, at the very nick of time, to explain to Lucy how inadvertently her name had been alluded to, and thus get him out of the scrape. Led by this gleam of hope, he hurried up to the stranger, and eagerly claimed his recognition by seizing his hand without ceremony, and welcoming him to B “Down about business, I presume?” quoth Charley. “ No — yes — exactly,” stammered the surprised new-comer. “ Egad, you can do my business at all events,” continued Charley. “ I suppose you know by this time what a cursed mistake I made the other day about Miss Bindon’s letter. Oh, you may laugh ; but faith it has been no laughing matter to me. However, you can set all to rights, if you choose, by writing a few lines, saying how it occurred, and that it was quite an accident, and all that. Do now, like a good fellow, and I’ll just run back with it, and make my peace.” “ You mean,” observed Fitzgerald, “ that I should write to Miss Bindon. My dear fellow, I shall be delighted ; but of course you’ll deliver it under the rose. It would’nt be the thing, you know, to let the old lady into the secret and laughing heartily, and displaying the most laudable alacrity to extricate Charley from his dilemma, he led the way into the parlour, and having procured writing materials, sat down, wrote a few hurried lines, which he said would fully explain the whole occurrence and set it in a proper light, sealed his note, and delivered it to the anxious swain for whose behoof he had penned it, and who hastened away with his prize so quickly, that before the ink was dry, he placed it in the re- luctant hands of the still pouting Lucy. “ There !” exclaimed he, triumphantly ; “ since you won’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe that. Now, pray don’t throw it into the fire,” con- tinued he, as a very unambiguous motion of the young lady seemed to imply was her intention ; “ only read it, and if that don’t satisfy you, I’ll say you’re hard to be pleased, and that’s all.” Moved by this powerful appeal, Lucy cast her eye on the billet ; a strange sort of emotion passed across her face, and she abruptly broke the seal, and proceeded to peruse the con- tents, while Charley applied himself, with equal zeal, to the perusal of her countenance. In it he could read, first, sur- prise, extreme and undisguised ; secondly, confusion ; and lastly, something undefinable, which at all events was not displeasure, for she concluded by looking fixedly at him for a moment or two, and then yielding to a most unladylike fit of laughter. “• Well, Lucy, is all right ?” asked Charley, delighted at this demonstration. “ All, all,” she responded. “ Why, Charley, you must be canonized for your punctuality in the delivery of letters. But remember, not a word to mamma — mum, Charley. And now be off, lest she should come down, and ask what brought you back.” “ But, Lucy,” interrupted the ardent lover, “now that’s all settled, I think you might”. • “ Well, here — take it — anything to get rid of you.” “ Oh, Lucy ! Lucy !” Next morning terrible -was the hubbub in the household of Mrs Bindon. Miss Lucy w r as nowhere to be had ; in fact, had eloped with a gentleman who had arrived at the inn the evening before, though by u'hat means she could have com- municated with him, or he with her, must, as the story-books say, for ever remain a mystery, unless we are to suppose the gentleman had the audacity to make Charley the bearer of his proposals in his exculpatory letter ; at least, one to the fol- lowing purport was found in her room next morning : — “ Dearest Lucy — So you have not forgotten me ! It is need- less to say I know' you to be the writer of the sw'eet valentine I received last week. It has aw'akened new hopes in me— hopes that I have ventured here to put to the test. In a word, will you be mine ? — if so, we have nothing to hope from your mother. We must elope this night, and I shall accordingly have a carriage in readiness near your door until morning. Pray excuse the bearer all his mistakes, and this last parti- cularly Ever your own E. F.” The dowager recognised the initials, but all the rest w'as heathen Greek to her. “ Oh, Lucy ! Lucy!” she exclaimed, in the bitterness of her grief, “ did I ever think I was rearing you up to see you make a man of the house, at last, out of an attorney's skip !” A. M‘C. WHY DO ROOTS GROW DOWNWARDS, AND STEMS TOWARDS THE HEAVENS? FIRST ARTICLE. It cannot have escaped the observation of the most inat- tentive, the tendencies which roots have generally to descend into the ground, and which stems have as commonly to grow upwards towards the sky ; yet the very commonness of these things may have prevented their obtaining the attention that they merit ; for it must be acknowledged, that to a mind directed to them they appear, however frequent their oc- currence, not the less difficult to explain. It is sufficiently hard to comprehend why roots and stems should grow in different directions, the one downwards, and the other up- wards ; but when we add to these the constant manner in which the darker surface of a leaf is turned upwards, and the part of a flower painted with the most gorgeous colours is directed always towards the light, the subject becomes more interesting, and the more vexatious ought to be our ignorance : and, then, there are phenomena, produced by un- usual circumstances, calculated to puzzle us still further, and increase our bewilderment. Such are the manner in which a geranium, growing at a window, bends its stems and leaves towards the glass ; the manner in which a potato plant, growing in a cellar into which the light is admitted by a single chink, will acquire a most unusual height, and follow a most devious and uncommon track to reach that ray of which it appears enamoured ; and the mode in which a root will descend, along the face of a bare rock, an extraordinary distance, in order to arrive at some spring or stream. These are objects well worthy of contemplation. A remarkable example of one of the facts just alluded to occurred many years ago in the tower of an old cathedral in England : a potato plant grew to the height of between thirty and forty feet, to get at the glimmering light of a partially closed window. The final causes of many of these facts are easy to com- prehend : the reason why a root grows down into the earth, is for the purpose of obtaining that sustenance which is ne- cessary for the growth of the plant of which it is a part ; and stems grow upwards, and towards the light, because the influence of this element is necessary for the elaboration of the sap ; as a result of -which process, stems grow in thick- ness, roots in length, flowers are developed, and the proper juices of vegetables become formed. We are likewise not without the means of explaining the proximate cause of one of these phenomena, for we have shown in our articles on Vegetable Sap that it is by the ascending sap that stems grow in length, and that, when light is excluded, no other sap can be formed ; this causes the ascending sap to accu- mulate under such circumstances, and, consequently, in the dark, stems may be expected to acquire an enormous and very disproportionate length : thus we are enabled to under- stand why the potato, in the instance mentioned, should grow to so great a height. But admitting this explanation, how much seems incomprehensible in these common and too frequently neglected phenomena ! We shall endeavour, in this and the following articles, to explain the manner in which these curious things occur. One might imagine that the reason why roots grow into the earth, and stems grow out of it, is on account of the former being attracted, and the latter repelled, by the ma- terials of which that earth is composed ; or, on the other hand, by the steins being attracted, and roots repelled, by 232 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. atmospheric air. But such cannot be the case ; for if seeds be made to germinate in the lower stratum of earth placed in a box furnished with holes in the bottom, the roots will descend into the air through those holes, while the stems will ascend into the earth. In a similar manner, it might and has been thought that roots are attracted, and stems repelled, by the moisture of the earth ; but a seed made to germinate between two moist sponges will protrude its root downwards, and its stem upwards, without reference to the liquid in its vicinity. This explanation is therefore equally inadmissible. There are some who explain these, as well as all other things occurring in living beings, by the mysterious principle of life ; but we only admit the existence of this principle, because there are some phenomena incapable of being accounted for by the or- dinary laws that rule the universe, and that are common to all matter ; and it is therefore unphilosophical to ascribe any effects to its operation, until they are found to be inexplicable bv those ordinary laws. But we shall find that the facts in question do not in a great measure belong to these exceptions. The particular directions of stems and roots are produced by a combination of causes : if an onion plant, exposed to day- light, be laid horizontally on the ground, the extremities of the stem and roots will in the course of a few hours turn themselves in their natural directions, the one upwards, and the other downwards ; if a similar plant be placed in a dark cellar, to which no light has access, the same things will take place ; but that which happens in a few hours, in the one in- stance, will require as many days in the other ; and thus we learn that in the production of these effects two causes ope- rate : first, the light ; and, secondly, some other principle dis- tinct from light. It will occur to the reader that the ab- sorption of water from the earth, by the most depending part of the plant, and its evaporation above, might, by swelling the lower portion and contracting the upper, produce the up- ward curving of the stem ; to obviate this objection, the plant was placed in water, where no evaporation could occur, and absorption must take place equally over the whole surface ; and still it was found that the same things happened. Light, therefore, is most powerfully influential in producing the particular directions of the parts of plants ; but there is another principle, distinct from light, which acts in effecting the same phenomena in a minor degree, but not the less ab- solutely and even more generally. Let our readers bear in mind the existence of this principle, which will form the sub- ject of a future article. For the present, we will examine the manner in which light operates in promoting the directions of stems and roots. We have before hinted that the tendency of the organs of vegetables towards the light, bears a direct relation to the depth and brilliancy of their colours ; roots which are usually destitute of colouring matter grow away from the light : the upper surfaces of leaves are always the most deeply coloured ; and in those erect leaves which are equally exposed to light, both surfaces are similarly coloured ; if the outer surface of a flower be richly tinted, it is pendent ; in erect flowers, on the contrary, the internal surface is always the most brilliantly painted ; and in some cases the direction of the flower and fruit is different, connected with similar conditions. But in all these instances we have reason to believe that the organ is not directed towards the light, because it is highly colour- ed ; but that it is highly coloured, because it is presented to the light. In plants growing in the dark, all the organs are colourless ; it is only when exposed to the light that they acquire their various hues. Even the extremities of the roots have been found in a singular experiment of Dutrochet’s to acquire a green colour by exposure to the influence of light. Is this tendency of the coloured parts of plants to turn towards the light, due to an attraction exerted by this agent, or is it produced by a peculiarity of growth determined through its influence ? A curious experiment has settled this question : A leaf, attached by its footstalk to a pivot, was so arranged that it could freely turn in every direction : under these circumstances, its under surface was exposed to light. If an attraction existed between the most deeply coloured portion and the light, the leaf might be expected to revolve on its pivot, in obedience to this attraction: but instead, the footstalk took on a spiral or corkscrew growth, by means of which the upper portion became in time presented to the light. Now, this experiment sufficiently showed that the manner in which light acts, is by its influence over vegetable growth. But what is the influence of light over vegetable growth? We have already answered this question in our articles on the Sap : we have found that when light is present, the sap becomes elaborated in the green parts of plants ; and the use of this elaborated sap is, by developing vegetable fibre, to increase the thickness of stems, and the length of roots. While the ascending sap, by forming vegetable flesh, length- ens the stems, and makes the root thick, the directions of the different parts of plants, by the agency of light, must be in obedience to these functions. We are now in a condition to comprehend the cause of some phenomena. A geranium (Pelargonium) stem, placed at a window, curves towards the light: this takes place, because the portion of stem nearest the window elaborates most sap: consequently, in this portion most vegetable fibre is formed. The portion away from the light, on the contrary, has most ascending sap, which forms fleshy tissue, and lengthens the stem ; the half of the stem remote from the light is therefore longer, that next the window is shorter ; the former is fleshy and elastic, the latter is rigid and fibrous. Need we be sur- prised, then, that the short, rigid, and fibrous portion should draw down the long, fleshy, and elastic part, and curve it towards the light ? — it is but the bending of a bow, by the agency of its string. But why do roots curve away from the light ? Neither is this difficult to understand. Roots do not elaborate the sap, nor form vegetable fibre of their own : what vegetable fibre they contain is pushed down through them from the stem : more of this vegetable fibre will force its way downwards, from the part of the stem nearest the light, than from that which is moSt remote : two forces of unequal intensity will push downwards, through opposite portions of the root ; the greater pressure may be expected to overcome the lesser, and in obedience to this, the root will curve away from the light. We have now endeavoured to demonstrate the manner in which light operates in causing the directions of stems and roots : but it will be recollected that there is another princi- ple, less powerful but more universal, which shares in the production of these effects. The consideration of this will form the subject of our next article. J. A. Carolan the Harper. — Respecting the origin of Caro- lan’s fine air of “ Bumper Squire Jones,” we have heard a different account from that given on O’Neill’s authority. It was told us by our lamented friend, the late Dean of St Pa- trick’s, as the tradition preserved in his family, and was to the following effect : Carolan and Baron Dawson, the grand or great grand-uncle of the dean, happened to be enjoying to- gether, with others, the hospitalities of Squire Jones at Mo- neyglass, and slept in rooms adjacent to each other. The bard, being called upon by the company to compose a song or tune in honour of their host, undertook to comply with their request, and on retiring to his apartment, took his harp •with him, and under the inspiration of copious libations of his fa- vourite liquor, not only produced the melody now known as “ Bumper Squire Jones,” but also very indifferent English words to it. While the bard was thus employed, however, the judge was not idle. Being possessed of a fine musical ear as well as of considerable poetical talents, he not only fixed the melody on his memory, but actually wrote the noble song now incorporated with it before he retired to rest. The result may be anticipated. At breakfast on the following morning, when Carolan sang and played his composition, Baron Dawson, to the astonishment of all present, and of the bard in particular, stoutly denied themlaim of Carolan to the melody, charged him with audacious piracy, both musical and poetical, and, to prove the fact, sang the melody to his own words amidst the joyous shouts of approbation of all his hearers, — the enraged bard excepted, who vented his execra- tions on the judge in curses both loud and deep . — Dublin University Magazine. The two most precious things on this side the grave are our reputation and our life. But it is to be lamented, that the most contemptible whisper may deprive us of the one, and the weakest weapon of the other. A wise man, there- fore, will be more anxious to deserve a fair name than to possess it, and this will teach him so to live as not to be afraid to die Colton. Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. C, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin.— Sold by all Booksellers, PENNY JOURNAL. Number 30. SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, 1841. Volume I. THE CASTLE OF MONEA, The Castle of Monea, or Castletown- Monea — properly Magh anfhiaidh, i.e. the plain of the deer— is situated in the parish of Devinish, county of Fermanagh, and about five miles north- west of Enniskillen. Like the Castle of Tully, in the same county, of which we gave a view in a recent number, this castle affords a good example of the class of castellated resi- dences erected on the great plantation of Ulster by the British and Scottish undertakers, in obedience to the fourth article concerning the English and Scottish undertakers, who “ are to plant their portions with English and inland- Scottish tenants,” which was imposed upon them by “ the orders and conditions to be observed by the undertakers upon the distribution and plan- tation of the escheated lands in Ulster,” in 1608. By this arti- cle it was provided that “ every undertaker of the greatest proportion of two thousand acres shall, within two years after the date of his letters patent, build thereupon a castle, with a strong court or bawn about it ; and every undertaker of the second or middle proportion of fifteen hundred acres shall within the same time build a stone or brick house thereupon, with a strong court or bawn about it. And every undertaker of the least proportion of one thousand acres shall within the same time make thereupon a strong court or bawn at least ; and all the said undertakers shall cause their tenants to build houses for themselves and their families, near the principal castle, house, or bawn, for their mutual defence or strength,” &c. — Such was the origin of most of the castles and villages now existing in the six escheated counties of Ulster — historical memonals of a vast political movement— and among the rest this of Monea, which was the castle of the middle proportion of Dirrinefogher, of which Sir Robert Hamilton was the 'first patentee. COUNTY OF FERMANAGH. From Pvnnar’s Survey of Ulster, made in 1618-19, it ap- pears that this proportion had at that time passed into the possession of Malcolm Hamilton (who was afterwards arch- bishop of Cashel), by whom the castle w r as erected, though the bawn, as prescribed by the conditions, was not added till some years later. He says, L pon this proportion there is a strong castle of lime and stone, being fifty-four feet long and twenty feet broad, but hath no bawn unto it, nor any other defence for the succour- ing or relieving of his tenants.” From an inquisition taken at Monea in 1630, we find, how- ever, that this want was soon after supplied, and that the castle, which was fifty feet in height, was surrounded by a wall nine feet in height and three hundred in circuit. 1 he Malcolm Hamilton noticed by Pynnar as possessor of “the middle proportion of Dirrinefogher,” subsequently held the rectory of Devenish, which he retained in cornmendam with his archbishopric till his death in 1629. The proportion of Dir- rinefogher, however, with its castle, was escheated to the crown in 1630 ; and shortly after, the old chapel of Monea was con- verted into a parish church, the original church being incon- veniently situated on an island of Lough Erne. Monea Castle served as a chief place of refuge to the English and Scottish settlers of the vicinity during the re- bellion of 1641, and, like the Castle of Tully, it has its tales of horror recorded in story ; but we shall not uselessly drag them to light. The village of Monea is an inconsiderable one, but there are several gentlemen’s seats in its neighbour- hood, and theyscenery around it is of great richness and beauty. P. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 234 ON THE SUBJUGATION OF ANIMALS BY MEANS OF CHARMS, INCANTATIONS, OR DRUGS. First Article. ON SERPENT-CHARMING, AS PRACTISED BY THE JUGGLERS OF ASIA. Many of my readers will doubtless recollect that in a paper on “ Animal Taming,” which appeared some weeks back in the pages of this Journal, I alluded slightly to the charming of animals, or taming them by spells or drugs. It is now my purpose to enter more fully upon this subject, and present my readers with a brief notice of what I have been able to glean respecting it, as well from the published accounts of remark- able travellers, as from oral descriptions received from per- sonal friends of my own, who had opportunities of being eye witnesses to many of the practices to which I refer. The most remarkable, and also the most ancient descrip- tion of animal-charming with which we are acquainted, is that which consists in calling the venomous serpents from their holes, quelling their fury, and allaying their irritation, by means of certain charms, amongst which music stands forth in the most prominent position, though, whether it really is worthy of the first place as an actual agent, or is only thus put for- ward to cover that on which the true secret depends, is by no means perfectly clear. Even in scripture we find the practice of serpent-charming noticed, and by no means as a novelty ; in the 58th Psalm we are told that the wicked are like the “ deaf adder that stop- peth her ear, which hearkeneth not unto the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely !” And in the book of Jeremiah, chap, viii, the disobedient people are thus threat- ened — “ Behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed.” These are two very remarkable passages, and I think we may, without going too far, set down as snake-charmers the Egyptian magi who contended against Moses and Aaron before the court of the proud and vacillating Pharaoh, striving to imitate by their juggling tricks the wondrous miracles which Moses wrought by the immediate aid of God himself. The feat of changing their sticks into serpents, for instance, is one of every-day perform- ance in India, which a friend of mine has assured me he many times saw himself, and which has not been satisfactorily ex- plained by any one. The serpent has long been an object of extreme veneration to the natives of Hindostan, and has indeed, from the very earliest ages, been selected by many nations as an object of worship ; why, I cannot explain, unless it originated in a superstitious perversion of the elevation of the brazen serpent in the wilderness by Moses. In India the serpent is not, however, altogether regarded as a deity — merely as a demon or genius : and the office usually supposed to be peculiar to these creatures is that of guardians. This is perhaps one of the most widely spread notions respecting the serpent that we are acquainted with. Herodotus mentions the sacred ser- pents which guarded the citadel of Athens, and which he states to have been fed monthly with cakes of honey ; and adds, that these serpents being sacred, were harmless, and would not hurt men. A dragon was said to have guarded the golden fleece (or, as some think, a scaly serpent ), and protected the gardens of the Hesperides — a singular coinci- dence, as it is of gardens principally that the Indians conceive the serpent to be the guardian. Medea charmed the dragon by the melody of her voice. Herodotus mentions snakes being soothed by harmony ; and Virgil, in the JEneid, says (translated by Dryden), “ His wand and holy words the viper's rage And venom’d wound of serpents could assuage.’’ Even our own island, although serpents do not exist in it — a blessing for which, if we are to put faith in legendary lore, we have to thank St Patrick — has numberless legends and tales of crocks of treasure at the bottom of deep, deep lakes, or in dark and gloomy caves, in inaccessible and rocky moun- tains, guarded by a fierce and wakeful snake, a sleepless ser- pent, whose eyes are never closed, and who never for a second abated of his watchful care of the treasure-crock, of which he had originally been appointed guardian ;* and, further, we are told how the daring and inventive genius of the son of Erin has often found out a mode of putting a “ comether” on the “big sarpint, the villain,” and haply closing his eyes in * See numerous legends of the "feiste.'' slumber, while he succeeded in possessing himself of the hoard which by his cunning and bravery he had so fairly won ; in other words, charming the snake and possessing himself of the spoil. Having thus glanced at the antiquity and wide spread of serpent-charming, I shall proceed to lay before you a short description of the mode in which the spell is cast over the animals by the modern jugglers of Arabia and India. Of all the Indian serpents, next to the Cobra Minelle, the Cobra Capella, or hooded snake (Coluber Naja), called in India the “ Naig,” and also “ spectacle snake,” is the most ve- nomous. It derives its names of hooded and spectacle snake from a fold of skin resembling a hood near the head, which it possesses a power of enlarging or contracting at pleasure ; and in the centre of this hood are seen, when it is distended, black and white markings, bearing no distant or fanciful like- ness to a pair of spectacles. The mode of charming, or, at all events, all that is to be seen or understood by the spectators, consists in the juggler playing upon a flute or fife near the hole which a snake has been seen to enter, or which his em- ployers have otherwise reason to suppose the reptile inhabits. The serpent will presently put forth his head, a portion of his body will shortly follow, and in a few minutes he will creep forth from his retreat, and, approaching the musician, rear himself on his tail, and by moving his head and neck up and down or from side to side, keep tolerably accurate time to the tune with which his ears are ravished. After having played for a short period, and apparently soothed the reptile into a state of dreamy unconsciousness of all that is passing, save only the harmony which delights him, the juggler will gradually bring himself within grasp of the snake, and by a sudden snatch seize him by the tail, and hold him out at arms’ length. On the cessation of the music, and on finding himself thus roughly assailed, the reptile be- comes fearfully enraged, and exerts all his energies to turn upwards, and bite the arm of his aggressor. His efforts are however fruitless ; while held in that position, he is utterly incapable of doing any injury ; and is, after having been held thus for a few minutes before the gaze of the admiring crowd, dropped into a basket ready to receive him, and laid aside until the juggler has leisure and privacy to complete the sub- jugation which his wonder-working melody had begun. When charmed serpents are exhibited dancing to the sound of music, the spectators should not crowd too closely around the seat of the juggler, for, no matter how well trained they may be, there is great danger attending the cessation of the sweet sounds ; and if from any cause the flute or fife sud- denly stops or is checked, it not unfrequently happens that the snake will spring upon some one of the company, and bite him. I think that it will not be amiss if I quote the description of Indian snake-charming, furnished by a gentleman in the Ho- nourable Company’s civil service at Madras, to the writer, who vouches for its veracity : — “ One morning,” says he, “ as I sat at breakfast, I heard a loud noise and shouting among my palankeen bearers. On inquiry I learned that they had seen a large hooded snake (or Cobra Capella), and were trying to kill it. I immediately went out, and saw the snake climbing up a very high green mound, whence it escaped into a hole in an old wall of an ancient fortification. The men were armed with their sticks, which they always carry in their hands, and had attempted in vain to kill the reptile, which had eluded their pursuit, and in his hole he had coiled himself up secure, while we could see his bright eyes shining. I had often desired to ascertain the truth of the report as to the effect of music upon snakes : I therefore inquired for a snake catcher. I was told there was no person of the kind in the village, but, after a little inquiry I heard there was one in a village distant three miles. I accordingly sent for him, keeping a strict watch over the snake, which never attempted to escape whilst we his ene- mies were in sight. About an hour elapsed, when my messen- ger returned, bringing the snake catcher. This man wore no covering on his head, nor any on his person, excepting a small piece of cloth round his loins : he had in his hands two baskets, one containing tame snakes, one empty : these and his musical pipe were the only things he had with him. I made the snake catcher leave his two baskets on the ground at some distance, while he ascended the mound with his pipe alone. He began to play : at the sound of the music the snake came gradually and slowly out of his hole. When he was entirely within reach, the snake catcher seized him dex- terously by, the tail, and held him thus at arms’ length, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 235 whilst the enraged snake darted his head in all directions, but in vain : thus suspended, he has not the power to round himself so as to seize hold of his tormentor. He exhausted himself in vain exertions, when the snake catcher descended the bank, dropped him into the empty basket, and closed the lid : he then began to play, and after a short time raised the lid of the basket, when the snake darted about wildly, and attempted to escape ; the lid was shut down again quickly, the music always playing. This was repeated two or three times ; and in a very short interval, the lid being raised, the snake sat on his tail, opened his hood, and danced quite as quietly as the tame snakes in the other basket, nor did he again attempt to escape. This, having witnessed it with my own eyes, I can assert as a fact.” I particularly request the attention of my readers to the foregoing account, as, from the circumstance of its having been furnished by an eye-witness, and a man whose public station and known character -were sufficient to command belief in his veracity, it will prove serviceable to me by and bye, when I shall endeavour to disprove the ridiculous assertions of Abbe Dubois* and others, who hold that serpent-charming is a mere imposition, and assert, certainly without a shade of warranty for so doing, that the serpents are in these cases always previously tamed, and deprived of their poison bags and fangs, when they are let loose in certain situations for the purpose of being artfully caught again, and represented as wild snakes, subdued by the charms of their pipe. I shall, however, say no more at present of Dubois, Denon, or others who are sceptical on this subject, but shall leave the refuta- tion of their fanciful opinions to another opportunity— my present purpose being the establishment of facts, ere I venture to advance a theory. I shall therefore conclude my present paper, and in my next, besides adducing many other important facts relative to serpent-charming, shall endeavour to throw some light upon the real mode by which it is etfected. II. D. R. * Description of the People of India, p. 469. GRUMBLING. If it be no part of the English constitution, it is certainly part of the constitution of Englishmen to grumble. They cannot help it, even if they tried ; not that they ever do try, quite the reverse, but they could not help grumbling if they tried ever so much. A true-born Englishman is born grumbling. He grumbles at the light, because it dazzles his eyes, and he grumbles at the darkness, because it takes away the light. He grumbles when he is hungry, because he wants to eat ; he grumbles when he is full, because he can eat no more. He grumbles at the winter, because it is cold ; he grumbles at the summer, because it is hot ; and he grumbles at spring and autumn, because they are neither hot nor cold. He grumbles at the past, because it is gone ; he grumbles at the future, because it is not come ; and he grumbles at the present, be- cause it is neither the past nor the future. He grumbles at law, because it restrains him ; and he grumbles at liberty, because it does not restrain others. He grumbles at all the elements — fire, water, earth, and air. He grumbles at fire, because it is so dear ; at water, because it is so foul ; at the earth, in all its combinations of mud. dust, bricks, and sand ; and at the air, in all its conditions of hot or cold, wet or dry. All the world seems as if it were made for nothing else than to plague Englishmen, and set them a-grumbling. The Eng- lishman must grumble at nature for its rudeness, and at art for its innovation ; at what is old, because he is tired of it ; and at what is new, because he is not used to it. He grumbles at everything that is to be grumbled at ; and when there is nothing to grumble at, he grumbles at that. Grumbling cleaves to him in all the departments of life ; when he is well, he grumbles at the cook ; and when he is ill, he grumbles at the doctor and nurse. He grumbles in his amusements, and he grumbles in his devotion ; at the theatres he grumbles at the ^players, and at church he grumbles at the parson. He cannot for the life of him enjoy a day’s pleasure without grumbling. He grumbles at his enemies, and he grumbles at his friends. He grumbles at all the animal creation, at horses when he rides on them, at dogs when he shoots with them, at birds when he misses them, at pigs when they squeak, at asses when they bray, at geese when they cackle, and at peacocks when they scream. He is always on the look-out tor something to grumble at; he reads the newspapers, that he may grumble at public affairs ; his eyes are always open to look for abominations ; he is always pricking up his ears to detect discords, and snuffing up the air to find stinks. Can you insult an Englishman more than by telling him he has nothing to grumble at? Can you by any possibility inflict a greater injury upon him than by convincing him he has no occasion to grumble ? Break his head, and he will forget it ; pick his pocket, and he will forgive it, but deprive him of his privilege of grumbling, you more than kill him — you expa- triate him. But the beauty of it is, you cannot inflict this injury on him ; you cannot by all the logic ever invented, or by all the arguments that ever were uttered, convince an Englishman that he has nothing to grumble at; for if you were to do so, he would grumble at you so long as he lived for disturbing his old associations. Grumbling is a pleasure which we all enjoy more or less, but none, or but few, enjoy it in all the perfection and completeness of which it is capable. If we were to take a little more pains, we should find, that having no occasion to grumble, we should have cause to grumble at everything. But we grow insensible to a great many annoyances, and accustomed to a great many evils, and think nothing of them. What a tremendous noise there is in the city, of carts, coaches, drays, waggons, barrel-organs, fish-women, and all manner of abominations, of which they in the city take scarcely any notice at all ! How badly are all matters in government and administration conducted ! What very bad bread do the bakers make ! What very bad meat do the butchers kill ! In a word, what is there in the whole compass of existence that is good ? What is there in human character that is as it should be? Are we not justified in grumbling at everything that is in heaven above, or ir. the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth ? In fact, gentle reader, is the world formed or governed half so well as you or I could form or govern it ? — From a newspaper. VULGARITY. The very essence of vulgarity, after all, consists merely in one error — in taking manners, actions, words, opinions, on trust from others, without examining one’s own feel- ings, or weighing the merits of the case. It is coarseness or shallowness of taste, arising from Avant of individual refine- ment, together with the confidence and presumption inspired by example and numbers. It may be defined to be a prosti- tution of the mind or body to ape the more or less obvious de- fects of others, because by so doing we shall secure the suf- frages of those we associate with. To affect a gesture, an opinion, a phrase, because it is the rage with a large number of persons, or to hold it in abhorrence because another set of persons very little, if at all, better informed, cry it down to distinguish themselves from the former, is in either case equal vulgarity and absurdity. A thing is not vulgar merely be- cause it is common. It is common to breathe, to see, to feel, to live. Nothing is vulgar that is natural, spontaneous, un- avoidable. Grossness is not vulgarity, ignorance is not vul- garity, awkwardness is not vulgarity ; but all these become vulgar when they are affected and shown off on the authority of others, or to fall in with the fashion or the company we keep. Caliban is coarse enough, but surely he is not vulgar. We might as well spurn the clod under our feet, and call it vulgar. Cobbett is coarse enough, but he is not vulgar. He does not belong to the herd. Nothing real, nothing original, can be vulgar ; but I should think an imitator of Cobbett a vulgar man. Simplicity is not vulgarity ; but the looking to imitation or affectation of any sort for distinction is. A Cock- ney is a vulgar character, whose imagination cannot wander beyond the suburbs of the metropolis. An aristocrat, also, who is always thinking of the High Street, Edinburgh, is vul- gar. We want a name for this last character. An opinion is often vulgar that is stewed in the rank breath of the rab- ble ; but it is not a bit purer or more refined for having passed through the well-cleansed teeth of a whole court. The inhe- rent vulgarity lies in the having no other feeling on any sub- ject than the crude, blind, headlong, gregarious notion acquired by sympathy with the mixed multitude, or with a fastidious minority, who are just as insensible to the real truth, and as indifferent to every thing but their own fri- volous pretensions. The upper are not wiser than the lower orders, because they resolve to differ from them. The fashionable have the advantage of the unfashionable in no- thing but the fashion. The true vulgar are the persons who have a horrible dread of daring to differ from their 236 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL clique— the herd of pretenders to what they do not feel, and to do what is not natural to them, whether in high or low life. To belong to any class, to move in any rank or sphere of life, is not a very exclusive distinction or test of refinement. Refinement will in all classes be the exception, not the rule ; and the exception may occur in one class as well as another. A king is but a man with a hereditary title. A nobleman is only one of the House of Peers. To be a knight or al- derman— above all, to desire being either, is confessedly a vulgar thing. The king made Walter Scott a baronet, but not all the power of the Three Estates could make another “ Author of Waverley.” Princes, heroes, are often common- place people, and sometimes the reverse ; Hamlet was not a vulgar character, neither was Don Quixote. To be an author, to be a painter, one of the many, is nothing. It is a trick, it is a trade. Nav, to be a member of the Royal Academy, or a Fellow of the Royal Society, is but a vulgar distinction. But to be a Virgil, a Milton, a Raphael, a Claude, is what falls to the lot of humanity but once. I do not think these were vulgar people, though, for any thing I know to the con- trary, the First Lord of the Bedchamber may be a very vulgar man. Such are pretty much my notions with regard to vul- garity — Iiazlitt’s Table- Talk. WINTER COMES. Winter comes with screech and wail, Piercing blast and thundering gale ; Far from frozen climes he brings Sleet and snow, and blanching things. He has trod the North Pole round, Long in icy fetters bound ; Swept by Greenland’s frigid shore, Where the western billows roar — . Roamed o'er Lapland's ice-bound plains, Where chaotic darkness reigns ; Rested on that land of woe Where the Russian captives go ; Land where men of royal race, Exiled by some tyrant base, Pined in suffering, died in grief, No fond hand to bring relief — No bright eyes to shed one tear O er their cold and lonely bier ; Dying far from wife and child In Siberia’s stormy wild. Winter comes — his footsteps tread O’er the ocean's rugged bed ; As a ruthless conqueror he Sends his storms from sea to sea ; Pity ne'er hath seized his breast. Sighs do ne'er disturb his rest — Shrieks that boom along the wave, And mark the seaman’s wat’ry grave. Fail to touch his icy soul, Fail to stop the billow's roll. When enthroned as ocean's king, Spirits of his triumphs sing. Drinking to his sovereign power In the fearful midnight hour, From those remnants of the dead That round ocean's depths are spread. Winter comes, with giant stride O'er the hills and forests wide ; From his aged brow he sheds Hoary locks around their heads — Mantles in his polar garb Tree and flower and tender herb. Not a leaf appears to show Where the summer cowslips grow ; Not a bud or blossom fair Scents with sweets the chilly air ; Not a bluebell decks the heath, All are hid beneath the wreath Spread by his unfriendly hand O’er the dark dismantled land. Gardens once so bright and gay, ’Neath the summer’s solar ray. Once so rich in lovely gems, Hanging on their pendent stems. Seem as some lone desert wild Where fair beauty never smiled — Where the light of summer's sun Never touched or lit upon ; Nature lies all lone and dead, ’Neath old Winter's frosty tread. Winter comes, and some rejoice, Glad to hear his sullen voice Booming o'er the crested waves, Sounding through old grots and caves — Sighing ’mid the forest trees, Not in songs of summer's breeze, But like mournings for the dead, That as fairy flowers have fled ; Mounting o'er the mountain's brow, Where the oak-tree's trembling bough. Rushing through the wooded glen, Sweeping o'er the frightsome fen. This is joy to hearts that know Nothing of the drifting snow, But beside the glowing hearth Spend the hours in joy and mirth. Laughing at the well-told tale. While without the rising gale Sweeps in furious mood along. Heedless of their boisterous song. Winter comes — and sorrow brings On his dark foreboding wings, To the poor lone helpless child On whom fortune never smiled, To the wretched cots and cells Where want's abject sufferer dwells. Round them he does cast his reins, O 'er them brings his woes and pains. O ! ye lordlings of the earth, Freed from pinching want by birth, Let your bosoms heave one sigh For the poor whose piercing cry Calls for sympathy from all, Loud as human woes can call. Plead with you on every mind To be moved with mercy kind ; Supplicates for help to save Suffering equals from the grave. Hear, O hear their melting cries Rising upward to the skies ; Hear, and let the good which heaven Kindly to your hands hath given, Aid in promptly helping those Steept in poverty and woes ; Then when earthly days are fled, And the joys (now dark and dead) Cease for ever from your eyes, May you live beyond the skies ; May you hear your Saviour say. Come, my servants, come away ; Enter in and seize your crown, Be partakers of my throne ; For on earth you loved your lord ; Hearken'd to his every word — Heard his suffering children cry. Wiped the tear-drops from their eye — Inasmuch as thus your love, Round their troubled souls did move. So to me that love was given Enter m with me to heaven. Coleraine, December 1840. S. A. TALES OF MY CHILDHOOD, BY JOHN KEEGAN. No. I.— THE ;BO C C OUGH EUADH. A TRADITION OF POOR-MANS BRIDGE. “ When ghosts, as cottage maids believe, Their pebbled beds permitted leave. And goblins haunt, from fire or fen, Or mine or flood, the walks of men.” Coli.ins. One evening last winter— a holiday evening too — when the western wind was sweeping on wild pinions from the grey hills of Tipperary, athwart the rich and level plains of the Queen’s County, when the blast roared down in the chimney, and the huge rain-drops pattered saucily against the four tiny panes which constituted the little ldtchen window, I was sitting in the cottage of a neighbouring peasant, amid a small but happy group of village rustics, and enjoying with them that enlivening mirth and sinless delight which I have never found any where but at the fireside of an Irish peasant. The earthen floor was well scrubbed over ; the “ brullaws ov furnithure” were arranged with more than usual tidiness, and even the crockery on the well-scoured dresser reflected the ruddy glare of the red fire with redoubled brilliancy, and glit- tered and glistened as merrily as if they felt conscious of the calm and tranquillity of that happy scene. And happy indeed was that scene, and happy was that time, and happier still the hearts of the* laughing rustics by whom I was on that occa- sion surrounded, and amongst whom I have spent the lightest and happiest hours of my existence. It was, as I said, a wiid night, but even the violence of the weather abroad gave an additional relish to the enjoyments within. The blast whistled fiercely in the bawn and in the haggard, but the huge fire blazed brightly on the hearth-stone. The rain fell in torrents ; but, as one of the company chuck- lingly remarked, “ the wrong side ov the house was out,” and 1 myself mentally exclaimed with Tam o’ Shanter, “ The storm without may roar and rustle, R edo not mind the storm a whustle.” Whilst, to wind up the climax of our happiness, a gossoon THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. who had been dispatched for a grey-beard full of“ the native,” now returned, and in a few minutes a huge jug of half and half smoked on the table, and was circulated around the smil- ing and expectant ring, with an impetus of which the peasantry of Ireland will in a short time, from certain existing causes, have not even the remotest idea. Well ! such an evening as we had, I shall never forget ; it would be vain to attempt a description. Those who have witnessed similar scenes require none, and to those who have not, any attempt at one would be useless. All therefore I shall say, is, that such a scene of fun and frolic and harmless waggery could not be found any where outside that ring which encircles the Emerald Isle, and even within that bright zone, nowdiere but in the cabin of an Irish “ scullogue.” The songs of our sires, chanted with all that melancholy softness and pathetic sweetness for which the voices of our wild Irish girls are remarkable, the wild legend recited with that rich brogue and waggish humour peculiar alone to the Irish peasant, and the romantic and absurd fairy tale, told with all the reverential awe and caution which the solemnity of the subject required, long amused and excited the captivated auditors ; but at length, more’s the pity, the vocalist could sing no more, having “ a mighty great could intirelv.” The story-teller w r as “ as dry as a chip wid all he talked,” and even the sides of most of the company “war ready to split wid the rale dint of laughin’ whilst, as if to afford us another illustration of the truth of the old proverb, “ one trouble never comes alone,” even the old crone who had astonished us with the richness and extent of her fairy lore, was also knocked up, or rather knocked down , for the quantity of earthly spirits she had put in, entirely put out all memory of wra-earthly spirits, and sent her disordered fancy, all confused as it was, wool-gathering to the classic regions of Their-na-noge.* Well, what was to be done ? It was still young in the night, and, better than that, a good “ slug” still remained in the grey-beard, and as we all had contributed to procure the stock, so all declared that none should depart until the very last drop was drained. But how was the interval to be em- ployed? The singer was hushed, the story-teller was exhausted, and vollies of wit and waggery had exploded until every one was tired ; yet to remain silent was considered by all as^ the highest degree of discomfort. In this dilemma the man of the house scratched his pericranium, and, as acting by some sud- den impulse, started up and handed me an old sooty book, “hoping that I would read awollume for theedication of the company, until it would be time to retire. I agreed without hesitation, and on opening the dusty and smoke-begrimed volume found that it was “ Sir Charles Coote’s Statistical Survey of the Queen’s County,” printed in Dublin by Graisberry and Campbell, and published by direction of ‘the Dublin Society in the year 1801. Although well aw r are that the dry details of a work professedly and al- most exclusively statistical, were little calculated to amuse or interest such an audience, yet, as the library of an Irish peasant is always unfortunately scanty, and in this instance, with the exception of a few trifling works on religious sub- jects, limited to the book in question, I determined to make the best I could of it, and for that purpose opened it at Sir Charles’s description of the immediate district in which we were situated, namely, the barony of Maryborough West, and town-land of Killeany. I read on thus : — “ On Sir Allen Johnson’s estate stand the ruins of Killeany Castle; the walls are injudiciously built of very bad stones, though excellent quarry is contiguous. * * * Poor-man’s Bridge over the Nore was lately widened, and is very safe, but I cannot learn the tradition why it was so called.” “ Read that again, sir,” said a fine grey-headed,, patriar- chal old man who was present ; “ read that again, said he emphatically. I did so. ( “He cannot learn the tradition of Poor-man s Bridge, inagh /” said the old man with a sneer ; “ faith, I believe not ; I’d take his word for more nor that. But had he come to me when he was travelling the country making up his statisticks, I could open his eyes on that subject, and many others too.” Some of those present laughed outright at the old man’s gravity of manner as he made this confident boast. “ You need not laugh — you may shut your potato-traps,” said the old man indignantly. “ Grand as he was, with his o-old and silver, his coach and horses, and servants with gold to 7 * That imaginary region under ground, supposed by the peasantry to be the residence of spirits and fairies. 23 r and scarlet livery, I could enlighten him more on the ancient history and traditions of our country than all the boddaghs of squireens whom he visited on his tour through the Queen’s County.” These assertions served only to increase the storm of ridi- cule which was gathering around the old man’s head ; and to put a stop to any bad blood which the occasion might call forth, I requested of him to tell us the tradition of “ the Boccough Ruadh.” After some wheedling and flattery he complied, and told a curious story, of which the following is the substance. The river Nore flows through a district of the Queen’s County celebrated for fertility and romantic beauty. From its source amongst the blue hills of Slievebloom to its termination at New Ross, where its bright ripples commingle with the briny billow's of the Irish sea, many excellent and even some beautiful bridges span its stream. Until the commencement of the last century, however, except in the vicinity of towns, there were but few permanent bridges across this river, and in the country districts access was gained over it chiefly by means of causeways, or, as they are termed, “ foords,” con- structed of stones and huge blocks of timber fixed firmly in the bed of the river, and extending in irregular succession from bank to bank. Over this pathway foot passengers crossed easily enough, but cattle and wheeled carriages were obliged to struggle through the water as well as they could ; but in time of floods, and in the winter season when the waters were swollen, all communication was cut off except to pedestrians alone. One of those “ foords,” in former times, crossed the Nore at Shanahoe, a very pretty neighbourhood, about three miles northwards of the beautiful and rising town of Abbeyleix, in the Queen’s County. The river here winds its course through a silent glen, and now several snug cottages and farm-houses arise above its banks at either side. The country in this neighboui-hood is remarkably beautiful. Several gentlemen’s seats are scattered along the banks of the river in this vicinity, all elegant and of modern erection, whilst swelling hills, sloping dales, gloomy groves, and ruins of church and tower and “castle grey,” ornament and diversify the scene. On a gentle eminence on the eastern bank of the river, stood, about a hundred years ago, the cabin of a man named Neale O’Shea. At that period there was not another dwell- ing within a long distance of the “ foord,” and many a time was Neale summoned from his midnight repose to guide the traveller in his passage over the lonely and dangerous river pathway. One wild stormy December night, w r hen the huge limestone rocks that formed the stepping-stones of the ford were lashed and chafed by the angry foam of the agitated river, Neale O’Shea’s wife fancied she heard, amid the fitful pausings of the wind, the cry of some mortal in distress. She immediately aroused her husband, who was stretched asleep on a large oak stool in the chimney corner, and told him to look out. Neale, ever willing to relieve a fellow-creature, arose, and, flinging his grey “ trusty” over his expansive shoulders, and seizing a long iron-shod pole or wattle, the constant companion of his nightly excursions, hastened down to the river’s brink. He stood a moment at the verge of the ford, and tried to penetrate through the intense gloom, to see if he could dis- cover a human form, but he could see nothing. “ Is there any one there?” he shouted in a stentorian voice, which rose high above the whistling of the blast, and the brawling of the angry and swift-rushing river. A voice sounded at the other extremity of the ford, and the stout-hearted peasant, with steady step, crossed over the slippery stepping-stones. “ Who the devil are you ?” roughly exclaimed Neale to a man who lay extended on the brink of the river, convenient to the entrance of the ford. “Whoever I am,” faintly replied the stranger, “you are my good angel, and it was surely Providence who sent you this night to rescue me from a watery grave.” “ Whoever you are,” again said Neale, “come along with me, and Kathleen and the childre will make you welcome in my cabin until morning.” So saying, he seized the bending form of the wayworn stranger, and flinging him on his back with herculean strength, trudged over the stepping-stones, chuckling with delight, and gaily whistling as he went. The dangerous pass was soon crossed, and arriving at the door, Neale pushed it before him, and with a smile deposited 1 his trembling burthen on the warm hearth. A fine fire blazed 238 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. merrily, and its flickering beams fell brightly on the face of the stranger. He was a tall, portly figure, stooped as if from extreme suffering more than age, and had a wooden leg. His features, which had evidently been handsome in his youth, were worn, pale, and attenuated, and he might be about fifty years of age. His clothes were faded and ragged ; he was entirely without shoes or stockings ; and his head was covered by a broad-brimmed leathern hat, under which he wore an enormous red nightcap of coarse woollen cloth. The good Kathleen now set about preparing supper, and while thus employed, the stranger gave them a brief account of his bygone life. He told them that he was a native of the north of Ireland, and that he had spent several years of his youth at sea ; that being wounded in a fray with smugglers on the coast of France, and losing his leg, he was discharged from his employment, and sent adrift on the world, without having one friend on earth, or a penny in his pocket. In this exigence he had no alternative but to apply to the commisera- tion of his fellow-creatures, and had thus for the last twenty years wandered up and down, entirely dependent on the bounty and charity of the public. Supper was now ready, and having partaken of a comfort- able meal, the wanderer went to rest in a comfortable “ shake- down,” which the good woman had prepared for him in the chimney corner. The storm died away during the night, and next morning the watery beams of the winter’s sun shone faintly yet gaily on the smooth surface of the silvery Nore. The stranger was up at sunrise, and was preparing to de- part, but his kind host and hostess would not permit him to go. They told him to stop a few days to rest himself, and in the interim, that he could not do better than take his stand at the ford, and ask alms of those who passed the way, as a great many frequented that pass ; and as nothing was ever craved from them there, they would cheerfully extend their charity to an object worthy of relief. Acting on their suggestions, the old sailor was soon sitting wn a stone at the western extremity of the ford. With his old caubeen in his hand, and his head enveloped in the gigantic red nightcap, he craved alms, in the name of God and the Virgin, from all who passed the way ; and before the sickly beams of the December sun had sunk behind the conical “ Gizebo,” he could show more money than ever he did before, since his limb was swept off by the shot of the smuggling Frenchman. The next morning, and every morning after, found the sailor at his post at the ford : he soon became well known to all the villagers, and from the circumstance of his always appearing with no other head-gear than the red nightcap, they nicknamed him the “ Boccough Ruadh,”* a name by which he went ever after till his death. Time passed on as usual, and the one-legged sailor still plied his lucrative vocation at the river pass. Neale O’Shea’s cabin still continued to afford him shelter every night, and all his days, from the crow of the cock to the vesper song of the wood-thrush, were passed at the ford, seated on that remark- able block of limestone called to this day the “ Cleugh-na- Boccough.”f His hand was stretched to every stranger for alms, “ for the good of their souls,” and very few passed with- out giving more or less to the Boccough Ruadh. Thus he acquired considerable sums of money, but constantly denied having a “keenogue;” but when bantered by any of the neighbouring urchins on the length of his purse, he would get into a great rage, and swear, by the cross of his crutch, that between buying the shough of tobacco and paying for other things he wanted, he hadn’t as much as would jingle on a tomb-stone, or what would buy a farthing candle to show light to his poor corpse at the last day His food was of the very worst description, and unless supplied by the kind-hearted Kathleen O’Shea, he would sooner go to bed supperless than lay out one penny to buy bread. He suffered his clothes to go to rags, unless when any person in the neighbourhood would give him old clothes for charity, and he would not pay for soap to wash his shirt once in the twelvemonth. Yet no one could find out what he did with his money ; he did not * The red beggarman. t Anglice, the Stone of the Cripple, or the stone of the beggarman. This stone lay for many years in the position it occupied in the days of the “ Boccough,” but is now incorporated in the stonework of the parapet of the bridge. It was believed to be enchanted, and the peasantry of the neighbourhood used to affirm that it descended to the river to drink, every night at the hour of twelve o’clock. This belief is now almost exploded, but however it is affirmed to be the identical stone on which the Boccough collected his wealth. spend two-and-sixpence in the year, and it was people’s opinion that he was hoarding it up to give for the benefit of his soul at his dying day. Years rolled away, and Neale O’Shea having now waxed old, died, and was gathered to his fathers in the adjacent green churchyard of Shannikill,* on the banks of the winding Nore. The Boccough followed the remains of his kind bene- factor to his last earthly resting-place, and poured his sor- rows over his grave in loud and long-continued lamentations. But though Neale was gone, Kathleen remained, and she promised that while she lived, neither son nor daughter should ever turn out the Boccough Ruadh. It was now forty years since the Boccough first crossed the waters of the Nore, and still he was constantly to be found from morning till night on his favourite stone at the river side. In the mean time, all O’Shea’s children were married, and separated through various parts of the country, with the ex- ception of Terry, the youngest, a fine stout fellow, now about thirty-five years of age, who still remained in a state of single blessedness, and said he would continue so, “ until he would be after laying the last sod on his poor ould mother.” With gigantic strength, he inherited all his father’s kindness of heart and undaunted bravery, and he was particularly atten- tive to the Boccough, whom lie regarded with the same affec- tion as a child would a parent. One morning in summer, the Boccough was observed to remain in bed longer than was his custom, and thinking that he might be unwell, Terry went to his bedside, and demanded why he was not up as usual. “Ah, Terry, alanna,” said the old man sorrowfully, “ I will never get up again until I do upon the bearer. f My days are spent, and I know it, for there is something over me that I cannot describe, and I won’t be alive in twenty-four hours ;” and as he said these words, he heaved a deep groan, whilst Terry, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his coat, wept bitterly. “ Will I go for the priest?” demanded Terry, sobbing as if his heart would break. “ No,” replied the old man sorrowfully, “ I do not want him. It is long since I complied with my religious duties, and now I feel it is useless.” “There is mercy still,” replied Terry; “you know the ould sayin’, ‘ Mercy craved and mercy found Between the saddle and the ground.’ ” The old man replied not, but shook his head, indicating his determination to die without the consolations of religion, whilst Terry trembled for his hopeless situation. “ Well, since you won’t have the priest, will you give me some money till I bring you the doctor ?” said Terry. The old man’s eyes literally flashed fire, his form heaved with rage, and his countenance displayed demoniac indig- nation. “ What’s that you say ?’’ he demanded in a ferocious tone. Terry repeated the question. “ Send for a doctor ! — give you money !” echoed the old man. “ Where the devil would I get money to pay a doctor ?” “ You have it, and ten times as much,” said Terry, “ and you cannot deny it.” “ If I have as much money as would buy me a coffin,” said the Boccough, “ may my soul never rest quiet in the grave.” Terry crossed his brow with terror. He knew the unhappy wretch was dying with a lie on his tongue, but he resolved not to press the matter further. “You are dying as fast as you can,” remarked Terry; “ have you any thing to say before you go ?” “ Nothing,” replied he faintly. “ But let me be buried with my red nightcap on me.” “ Your wish must be granted,” said Terry, and lie went to awake his old mother, who still lay asleep. When he returned, he found the old man breathing his last. He uttered a con- vulsive groan, and expired. He was washed and stretched, and waked, with all the honours, rites, and ceremonies belonging to a genuine Irish * This is a very ancient churchyard, situated on a gentle eminence over- hanging the western bank of the river Nore, and about half a mile from Poor-man’s Bridge. The ruins of a church or monastic establishment still remain in the centre of the grave-yard. It is said to have been erected by St Comgall, from whom it took the name of Cell-Comgall, though now called Shankill, or Shannakill. St Comgall was born in Ulster in 516, and was educated under St Fintan, in the monastery of Clonenagh, near Mount- rath, in the Queen’s County. He died on the 10th of May 601. f The bier or hand-carriage on which the dead are borne to the grave. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 239 wake ; and on the third day following, being the Sabbath, he was followed to the grave by crowds of the village peasantry, who remained in the churchyard until they saw his remains deposited, as they thought for ever, in the rank soil of the “ City of the Dead.” Many rumours were now current respecting the Boccough’s money. Every one but Terry believed that the “lob” fell with Terry himself. But Terry, who knew better, believed and affirmed that “what was got under the devil’s belly, al- ways goes over his back,” and that the “ old boy” had taken the spoil, and that it lay concealed in some crevice in the bank of the river. The night following the burial of the old sailor was passed in a very disturbed and agitated manner by Terry O’Shea: he could not sleep a wink ; and when he fell into a slumber, he started and moaned, and appeared frightened and an- noyed. “ What ails you?” affectionately demanded his old mother, who slept in the same room, and who was kept awake by her son’s restless and disturbed manner. “ I don’t know, mother,” said Terry; “I am so frightened and tormented with dreaming of the Boccough Ruadh, that I am almost out of my natural senses. Even at this moment I think I see him walking the room before me.” “ Holy Mary, protect us !” ejaculated the old woman. “ And it is no wonder that his misforthunate soul would be star-gazing about — and to die without the priest, and a curse and a lie in his mouth 1” Terry groaned agitatedly. “ And how does he appear in your dreams ?” asked the old woman. “ As he always was,” replied Terry. “ But I think I see him pointing to his red nightcap, and endeavouring to pull it off with his old withered hand.” “ Umph !” said the old woman, in a knowing tone. “ Ha ! ha ! I have it now. Are you sure that the strings of his nightcap were unloosed before he was nailed up in the coffin?” “ I dont know,” was the reply. “ I’ll go bail they were’nt,” said the old woman ; “ and you know, or at any rate you ought to know, that a corpse can never rest in the grave when there is a knot or a tie upon any thing belonging to its grave-dress.” Terry emitted another deep groan. “ Well, acushla,” said the old mother, “ go to-morrow, and take a neighbour with you, and open the grave, and see if any thing be asthray. If you find the nightcap or any thing else not as it should be, set it to rights, and close the grave again decently, and he will trouble you no more.” “God send,” was Terry’s brief but emphatic response. Early next morning Terry was at the Boccough’s grave, accompanied by a man of the neighbourhood. The coffin was opened, the corpse examined, and, according to the mother’s prediction, the red nightcap was found knotted tightly under the dead man’s chin. Terry proceeded to unloosen it, and in the act of doing so, a corner of the nightcap gave way, and out peeped a shining golden guinea. “ Ah ha!” mentally exclaimed Terry, “that’s no blind nut any how ; there’s more where that was, but I had better keep a hard cheek !” So, without seeming to appear any way af- fected, he opened the knot, closed the coffin, shut up the grave, and departed homewards, without acquainting his comrade with what he had seen. The moment Terry entered his own door, he told his mother about the guinea, and expressed his determination to go that very night, and fetch the red nightcap home with him, “body and bones and all,” “ for,” added he, “ that guinea has its comrade ; and I’ll hold you a halfpenny there’s where the old dog has the ‘ lob’ concealed, and that’s what made him order me to have the red cap buried with him.” “ Asthore machree," said the mother doubtingly, “ won’t you be afraid ?” “ Afraid !” echoed Terry, “ devil a bit — afraid indeed ! and my fortune perhaps in the red nightcap.” The mother consented, but enjoined him to tell nobody about the matter for fear of disappointment. Terry vowed implicit obedience, and retired to his usual avocations in the garden. Well, at last the night came, and Terry set about prepar- ing for his strange undertaking. All the arts and prayers and charms of old Kathleen were put in requisition to preserve him from danger ; and about the witching hour of twelve, -with his spade on his shoulder, and his dhudeen in his mouth, the bold-hearted Terry set forward all alone to the grave- yard, shaping his course by the winding banks of the glassy river, and whistling as he went — not “for want of thought, ’ however, for never was man’s mind more busily occupied than was Terry’s, in predisposing of the money which he expected to find in the Boccough Ruadh s nightcap. After a short walk, Terry arrived at the precincts of the church-yard. It was a lovely summer’s night, the full moon shining gloriously, and myriads of pretty stars blinking and twinkling in the blue expanse, but all their native lustre was drowned in the borrowed splendour of the Queen of Heaven. Terry stood a moment to reconnoitre, and, resting on his spade, looked around with an anxious gaze. He could dis- cover nothing ; all was silent as the departed beneath his feet, except the murmuring of the river’s surges in the rear, or the barking of some village cur-dog in the hazy distance. He advanced to the grave of the Boccough, and in a few minutes the ghastly moonbeams shone full on the pale grim features of the dead. He snatched the nightcap quickly from the bald head of the corpse, put it in his pocket, and, notwithstanding the awe and superhuman terror under which he laboured, he chuckled with delight as he remarked the “ dead weight” of the Boccough’s head-gear. He then closed the coffin, and as he proceeded to cover it, the clay and stones fell on it with an appalling and unearthly sound. The grave now covered up, the intrepid fellow again shouldered his spade, and sought the river’s margin, and as he strode hurriedly along its banks in the direction of his home, the splash of the otter and the div- ing of the water-hen more than once broke the thread of his lonely musings. Terry was soon at his mother’s side, who since his depar- ture had been on her knees, praying for his safe return. The nightcap was ripped up, and, lo ! three hundred golden gui- neas were the reward of Terry’s churchyard adventure ! Stitched carefully in every part of the huge nightcap, the gold lay secure, so as not to attract the notice of any one, or cause the least suspicion of its proximity to the old man’s pericranium. Terry and his mother were in ecstacies. Farms were already purchased in ideality, cattle bought, houses built, and even Terry began in his mind to make preparations for his wedding with Onny Kinshellagh, a rich farmer’s daughter of the neighbourhood, for whom he had breathed many a hope- less sigh, and who, in addition to her beauty, was possessed of fifty pounds in hard gold, a couple of good yearlings, and a feather-bed as broad as the “ nine acres.” The mother and son retired to bed, as happy as the certain possession of wealth, and the almost as certain expectations of honour and distinction, could make them. After a long time spent in constructing and Condemning schemes for the future, Terry fell asleep. He had not slept long, however, when he started up with a loud scream, crying out, “ the Boc- cough ! the Boccough !” “ Och, weary’s on him for a Boc- cough !” exclaimed the mother ; “ is he coming for the night- cap and t he go old ?” “ Oh, no,” said Terry, calmly ; “ but I was again dreaming of him, and I was frightened.” “ What did you dream to-night ?” asked the old woman. “ I was dreaming that I was going over the foord by moon- light, and that I saw the Boccough walking on the water towards me ; that he stopped at a certain big stone, and began to examine under with his hands ; that I came up, and asked him what he was searching for, when he looked up with a frightful phiz, and cried out in a horrible voice, ‘ For my red nightcap!’ ” “ God Almighty never opened one door but he opened two,” exclaimed old Kathleen. “ Examine under that stone to- morrow, and by all the cottoners in Cork, you’ll find another ‘ lob’ of money in it.” “Faix, maybe so,” replied Terry; “it’s no harm to say 4 Godsend,’ and that God may make a thief of you before a liar." “ Amen, achiernah," replied Kathleen. Next morning at daybreak, Terry got up, and proceeded to the identical stone where he fancied that he had seen the spirit of the Boccough. He examined it closely, and after a strict search, discovered in the sand beneath the rock a leath- ern pouch full of money. He seized it joyfully, and on count- ing its contents, found it amounted to upwards of a hundred pounds, all in silver and copper coins. “ What a lucky born man you are, Terry O’Shea !” cried the overjoyed gold-finder, « and what a bright day it was for 240 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. your family that the Boccough Ruadh crossed over the waters of the Nore.” “ It was not a bright day at all, but a wild, gloomy, stormy night,” said the old -woman, who, unperceived, had followed her son to watch the success of his expedition. “ No matter for that,” said Terry ; “ there never was so bright a day in your seven generations as that dark night ; I am now the richest man of my name, and I would not, this mortal minute, call Lord De Vesci my uncle.” It is easier for the reader to imagine than for the writer to describe the manner in which this joyful day was passed by the happy mother and son. Now counting and examining the gold, and again proposing plans, and considering the best purposes to which it could be applied, they passed the hours until the summer sun had long sunk behind the crimson west. Terry was again in bed, when he started with a wild shriek. “ Mother of mercy !” he frantically vociferated, “ here is the Boccough Ruadh ; I hear the tramp of his wooden leg on the floor.” “ Lord save us !” said the old woman in a trembling voice, “what can ail him now? Maybe it’s more money he has hid somewhere else.” “ Oh, do you hear how he rattles about ! Devil a kippeen in the cabin but he will destroy,” exclaimed poor Terry. “ It’s the black day to us that ever we seen himself or his dirty thrash of money ; and if God saves me till morn- ing, I’ll go back and lave every rap ov id where I got it.” “ That would be a murdher to lave so much tine money moulding in the clay, and so many in want of it ; you shall do no such thing,” said the mother. “ I don’t care a straw for that,” said Terry. “ I would not have the ould sinner, God rest his sowl, stravagin’ every other night about my honest decent cabin for all the goold in the Queen’s County.” “ Well, then,” says the old woman, “ go to the priest in the morning, and leave him the money, and let him dispose of it as he likes for the good of the ould vagabond’s misforthimate soul.” This plan was agreed to, and the conversation dropt. The ghost of the Boccough still rattled and clanked about the house. He never ceased stumping about, from the kitchen to the room, and from the room to the kitchen. Pots and pans, plates and pitchers, were tossed here and there ; the dog was kicked, the cat was mauled, and even the raked-up lire was lashed out of the “ gree-sough.” In fact, Terry declared that if the devil or Captain Rock was about the place, there could’nt be more noise than there was that night with the Boccough’s ghost, and this continued without intermission until the bell of Abbeyleix castle clock was tolling the mid- night hour. Terry was up next morning at sunrise, and having packed up jthe money which was the cause of all his trouble in his mother’s check apron, proceeded with a heavy heart to the residence of the priest, about two miles from the present Poor-man’s Bridge. The priest was not up when Terry ar- rived, but being well known to the domestics, he was admitted to his bed-chamber. “ You have started early,” said the priest ; “ what troubles you now, Terry ?” Terry gave a full and true account of his troubles, and concluded by telling him that he brought him the money to dispose of it as he thought best. “I won’t have any thing to do with it,” said the Father. “ It is not mine, so you mav take it back again the same road.” “ Not a rap of it will ever go my road again,” said Terry. “ Can’t you give it for his unfortunate ould sowl.” “ I’ll have no hand in it,” said the priest. “ Nor I either,” said Terry. “ I would’nt have the ould miser polthogaeing about my quiet floor another night for the king’s ransom.” “ Well, take it to your landlord ; he is a magistrate, and he will have it put to some public works connected with the county,” said the priest. “ Bad luck to the lord or lady I’ll ever take it to,” said Terry, making a spring, and bounding down the stairs, leav- ing the money, apron and all, on the floor at the priest’s bed- side. “ Come back, come back!” shouted the Father in a towering- passion. “Good morning to your ravirince,” said Terry, as he flew with the swiftness of a mountain deer over the common before the priest’s door. “ Ay, go back, indeed ; catch ould birds with chaff. You have the money now, and you may make a bog or a dog of it, whichever you plaise.” In an hour after, the priest’s servant man was on the road to Maryborough, mounted on the priest’s own black gelding, with a sealed parcel containing the Boccough’s money strapped in a portmanteau behind him, and a letter to the treasurer of the Queen’s County grand jury, detailing the curious cir- cumstances by which it came into his possession, and recom- mending him to convert it to whatever purpose the gentlemen of the county should deem most expedient. • The summer assizes came on in a few days, and the matter was brought before the grand jury, who agreed to expend the money in constructing a stone bridge over the ford where it was collected. Before that day twelvemonth, the ford had disappeared, and a noble bridge of seven arches spanned the sparkling- waters of the Nore, which is here pretty broad and of con- siderable depth. From that day to this it is called the “ Poor- man’s Bridge,” and I never cross it without thinking of the strange circumstances which led to its erection. The spirit of the Boccough Ruadh never troubled Terry O’Shea after, but often, as people say, amid the gloom of a winter’s night, or the grey haze of a summer’s evening, may the figure of a wan and decrepid old man, with his head en- veloped in a red nightcap, be seen wandering about Poor- man’s Bridge, or walking quite “ natural” over the glassy waters of the transparent Nore. An Excuse. — Miravaux was one day accosted by a sturdy beggar, who asked alms of him. “ How is this,” inquired Miravaux, “that a lusty fellow like you is unemployed?” “ Ah !” replied the beggar, looking very piteously at him, “if you did but know how lazy I am !” The reply was so ludicrous and unexpected, that Miravaux gave the varlet a piece of silver. An Incident — At the time Commodore Elliot commanded the navy at Norfolk (I think it was), happening to be con- ducting a number of ladies and gentlemen who were visiting the yard, he chanced to see a little boy who had a basket full of chips, which he had gathered in the yard ; probably to show his importance he saluted him, and asked where he got the chips. “ In the yard,” replied the boy. “ Then drop them,” said the brave man. The little boy dropped the chips as he was ordered, and after gaining a safe distance, turning round with his thumb to his nose, said, “ That is the first prize you ever took, any how !” Solon enacted, that children who did not maintain their parents in old age, when in want, should be branded with in- famy, and lose the privilege of citizens; he, however, excepted from the rule those children whom their parents had taught no trade, nor provided with other means of procuring a live- lihood. It was a proverb of the Jews, that he who did not bring up his son to a trade, brought him up as a thief. If there be a lot on earth worthy of envy, it is that of a man, good and tender-hearted, who beholds his own crea- tion in the happiness of all those who surround him. Let him who would be happy strive to encircle himself with happy beings. Let the happiness of his family be the in- cessant object of his thoughts. Let him divine the sorrows and anticipate the wishes of his friends. A cheerful heart paints the world as it finds it, like a sunny landscape ; the morbid mind depicts it like a sterile wilderness, palled with thick vapours, and dark as “ the shadow of death.” It is the mirror, in short, on which it is caught, which lends to the face of nature the aspect of its own turbulence or tranquillity. The lazy, the dissipated, and the fearful, should patiently see the active and the bold pass by them in the course. They must bring down their pretensions to the level of their talents. Those who have not energy to work must learn to be humble. — Sharp’s Essays. Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. G, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin. — Agents :—R. Guoombhidge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool ; J. Drake, Birmingham ; Si.ocombe & Simms, Leeds ; Fraser and Craw ford, George Street, Edinburgh ; and David Robertson, Trongate, Glasgow. JOURNAL. H T JV Number 31. SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 1841. Volume I. DUN-GARBRY CASTLE, The Castle of Dun-garbry, or properly Dun-cairbre, signi- fying the Dun or Fort of Cairbre, is situated on a hill, on the south side, and not far from the mouth, of the Drowis, or Drobhaois — a river very celebrated in Irish history — and the estuary of the beautiful Lough Melvin, in the lower part of the county of Leitrim, bordering on the county of Sligo. Though marked on the maps made in the reign of Elizabeth as an important fortress, its ruins are now but inconsiderable, and consist only of a side wall perforated by an arched door- way. But trivial as these vestiges are, they impart some historic interest to scenery of the most delightful character by w'hich it is surrounded, and are valuable as a memorial of an ancient Irish family, once of great rank in the county, though now reduced to utter decay, at least in their original locality. Dun-garbry Castle was erected by the chief of the Mac- Clanchys, or correctly Mac-Fhlannchadha, a sept or clan who possessed the ancient district called Dartree, the present ba- rony of Rossclogher, and of which the Castle of Rossclogher, situated on an island in Lough Melvin, was their chief resi- dence. The name of its founder and the date of its erection are not preserved ; but the latter may with probability be referred to a period anterior to the reign oi Henry \III., as the Annals of the Four Masters record at the year 1538, that. “ Qahir (the son of Feradaoh, the son of William), the son of COUNTY OF LEITRIM. 1 Mac Clanchy, heir-apparent to the chieftainship of Dartree, died in that year in Dun-cairbre.” It may be proper to state that there are in Ireland two per- fectly distinct families of the name Mac Clanchy, or, as it is now more usually witten, Clancey ; first, the family of Thomond or Clare, some of whom were hereditary Brehons or judges to the O’Briens, and who were a branch of the Macnamaras ; and, secondly, the family of Dartree, who were hereditary chiefs of that district from a very remote period. The notices of the chiefs of this family, as preserved in the Irish Annals from the twelfth till the seventeenth century, will serve to convey a very vivid impression of the insecurity of life resulting from the unsettled state of society, and its retrogression towards absolute barbarism during this un- happy period of our history, and will teach us also to appre- ciate the blessings we derive from the progress which civili- zation has made within the last century. 1241. Donnell Mac Clanchy, chief of Dartree, died. 1274. Cathal Mac Clanchv, chief of Dartree, died. 1278. Gillchreest Mac Clanchy, chief of Dartree, ivas slain. 1301. William (the son of Cathal) Mac Clanchy, chief of Dartree, was slain. 1303. Murtogh Mac Clanchv. chief of Dartree, was slain. 1337. Teige (the son of William) Mac Clanchy, chief of Dartree, was slain by O’Conor. 242 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 1349. Hugh Mac Clanchy, chief of Dartree, and Gillchreest Mac Clanchy, were slain. 1366. Cathal (the son of Teige) Mac Clanchy, chief of Dartree, was slain. 1418. Teige (the son of Cathal) Mac Clanchy, chief of Dartree, died in a monastery. 1420. Cathal (the . son of Teige) Mac Clanchy, chief of Dartree, and Hugh boy (or the yellow) Mac Clanchy, were slain in their own house, about the festival of St Bridget, by their own kinsmen Teige, Maurice, and Henry. 1421. Cathal O’Rourke and his sons made a nocturnal at- tack on Mac Clanchy on Iniskeen, an island of Lough Mel- vin, and the guards of the lake delivered up the boats of the lake to them. They took young Mac Clanchy prisoner, and possessed themselves of Lough Melvin and its castle. Five of the sons of Mac Clanchy, and a great number of the men of Dartree, were slain by them, and the remainder of the sons of Mac Clanchy went after that into Carbury. 1532. Turlogh, the son of Mac Clanchy, was slain by his own two brothers in the doorway of the mansion of Mac Clanchy. In revenge of this murder, Brien O’Rourke de- stroyed a great portion of Dartree. 1536. Mac Clanchy (Feradach, the son of William, the son of Teige), chief of Dartree, died. He was a charitable and humane man. 1578. Mac Clanchy (Cathal Duff, the son of Feradach), chief of Dartree, died, and his son Cathal Oge assumed his place. 1582. Mac Clanchy (Cathal Oge), chief of Dartree, was slain by his own kinsman Teige Oge. It appears from an inquisition taken at the Abbey of Cree- velea, on the 24th September 1603, that Cathal Oge Mac Clanchy died on the 3d of January 1582, seized of the castle and manor of Dun-carbry, and of the whole country called Mac Clanchy’s country, leaving a son and heir, Cathal Duff, then aged twenty-eight years. It appears, however, that in accordance with the Brehon law, the chieftainship of Dartree passed at his death not to his son, but to the eldest surviving representative of the name, as an inquisition taken at Rossclogher on the 3d of October in the same year, finds that the greater part of the country, including the Castle of Dun-carbry, and the castle and chief town of Rossclogher, &c, were in the possession of Malaghlin Mac Clanchy, who died so seized on the 13th of August 1603, leaving a son and heir, Cahir Mac Clanchy, three years and ten months old at the time of his father’s death ; and it is stated that all these castles, lands, &c, were held of the king by knights’ service in capite, but the quantity of the service was not ascertained by the inquisitors. By the will of this Ma- laghlin Mac Clanchy he bequeathed to his son and heir, Cahir, all his lands except such as were nominated wife’s jointure; and to his wife, Katherine Ny Rourke, who was found to have been his legitimate consort, he bequeathed his Castle of Dun-garbry, as also his chief town called Rossclogher, in pawn of her marriage goods, until his heir should redeem it. The property of the Mac Clanchys was confiscated after the rebellion of 1641, but their name is the prevailing one in the barony of Dartree, or Rossclogher, to the present day. P. THE GIG RACE, OR A PULI. FOR THE SILVER CUP. In the prettily situated village of Ring, within the beautiful harbour of Cove, lived an old man named Jeremiah Sullivan, who was by profession a boat-builder, and who, being unri- valled in that art, justly regarded himself as one of the most important personages in the said village, if not in the county of Cork itself. It was indeed the conviction of Jerry that the man who, if any such man there were, could surpass him in the plan, the construction, or the finish of a race-gig, must be a wonder, and far above the general standard of human ex- cellence. After his divine art, and the equally divine produc- tions of that art, his daughter Sally Sullivan was next best loved by the enthusiastic and honest old man. Sally had the reputation of a snug little fortune and of an infinite deal of beauty, the latter founded, no doubt, on the possession of a pair of roguish black eyes, a blooming cheek, and a rosy pair of lips, that half disclosed two rows of the prettiest and whitest teeth in the world. Jerry had one favourite apprentice, to whom he had already imparted some of the most important secrets in his profession, and to whom, at some distant period, he intended to confide the entire, as a legacy richer than the hoarded treasures of a miser; nay, more valuable than even the philosopher’s stone. William Collins (for such was his name) was a fine-looking young fellow, standing about five feet ten inches in height, and possessed of a light, active, muscular, and admirably propor- tioned figure ; indeed, Sally was known to have told her female friend in the strictest confidence that William had the brightest pair of eyes, and the handsomest brown curls, that young man could well be vain of. William, on the other hand, could find no language sufficiently comprehensive to express his ideas of Sally’s beauty ; and as for her good qualities, her temper, her cheerfulness, her sweet-toned merry laugh — to describe them was quite an impossibility. The fact was, they were both young, both amiable, both warm-hearted, and very naturally both lovers ! Yet poor old Jerry never dreamed what the real state of the case was. Wonderful as was his penetration, deep as was his knowledge, and great as was his skill in all matters appertaining to the building of a boat, in affairs of the heart he was blind and stupid as a mole. He, honest simple- ton, could never dream that Sally’s frequent intrusions into the work-yard could be attributed to aught else than that most natural spirit of curiosity common to young people who de- sired to witness the interesting process of a delightful and important art ! Besides, Jerry never wore his spectacles with- in doors ; and, therefore, it must be presumed he never saw the eloquent flushing of his daughter’s cheek, cr the additional brilliancy of her dark eye, when he spoke of the young man’s attention to his duty, and of his surprising advancement in the nicer labours of the profession. Early in the month of May, a gentleman ordered a race-gig from Sullivan, and from time to time sent his man Duggin to see after the progress of the work. This Duggin was held to be the crack oarsman of the harbour, and consequently prided himself not a little on his reputation. He was a powerfully made though not a tall man, and his features were rather good than otherwise, but rendered displeasing from a peculiar expres- sion of cunning about the eyes, and a perpetual sneer on his lip. Duggin had heard of Sally Sullivan’s fame as a beauty; and being quite of a gallant temperament, he conceived the very natural design of rendering himself agreeable to the old boat-builder’s daughter. The moulds were laid down, and soon the outline of the future race-gig began to be formed more distinctly, when Mr Curly Duggin one day entered the work-yard to pass his opinion on what had been already done, and to offer any suggestions as to the future, that his scientific judgment might deem necessary. On his entrance he found the peerless Sally seated on a chair, and apparently employed at some feminine labour — apparently so, for in reality her eyes were fixed on every movement of William Collins, who was busily engaged in the building of this future wonder of the race-gig class. Sally, observing the stranger enter, and not relishing the familiar stare of a pair of wicked-looking optics, nor the too evident admiration they expressed on their mas- ter’s part, immediately left the yard, and retired to the neatly painted cottage of her father. As for Collins, looking up from his work at that very instant, he saw, with the quickness of jealousy, the manner of Duggin and the retreat of Sally; and from that hour he felt an unconquerable aversion to the bold looking oarsman. “ Come, now, I’m blessed,” said Duggin, “ that’s a nate tidy craft, if I’m a judge in the laste ! I say, Mister what’s-your- name, is’nt that purty girl the ould fellow’s daughter ?” “ Yes, she is,” replied William, with a growl ; “ that young woman is Miss Sullivan.” “ Sartinly she is a beauty without paint ! Has she a heap of fine strapping fellows, that’s sweethearts, follow- ing of her — has she, my hearty ?” “ How the devil should I know ! What have I to do with any one’s business but my own? — and that gives me enough to mind.” “ Why, my fine fellow,” said Duggin, rather annoyed at the reply, “ I tell you what, that same aint over partiklar civil.” “ Is’nt it ? — then if you don’t like my civility, I can’t help your liking ; so that’s all I care about the matter.” Duggin made no reply, but marching round and round the half-built boat, he made several slighting observations signi- fying his utter contempt for the plan, as well as its execution. “ Why, blow it !” said he, “ look at that. I tell you there’s no living use for that infernally outlandish keel. You might as well turn a lighter, as such a tub as that, in the water !” Pooix William’s feelings were almost too great for words, so indignant was he at this coarse and vulgar attack on the object of his zealous labours. JHe, however, merely said, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 243 “ She’s very unlike a tub, for the matter of that ; and as for the keel, that will give her a sure grip of the water, and make her hold her way.” “ Who’s the out-and-out judge that said them -wise things, I’d like to know ?” asked Duggin, with a mocking sneer on his lip. “ Them that’s as fine judges as any in the harbour,” replied Collins ; “ there’s Dan Magrath, and Ned Desmond, and Mark Brien, down at the ferry ; and there are’nt better men to be found at handling an oar.” “ Bother !” said Duggin, “ little I’d give for a score of ’em ; and as for that fellow Magrath, he’s a regular lubber , that is’nt no more fit in a race than I’m fit to bite a piece out of this anchor at my feet !” “ I know nothing about biting the anchor,” said Collins ; ‘ ‘ but I tell you what : the four of us will try you at the regatta for the ten-pound cup !” “ Done ! done ! my hearty : mind ye don’t go back, and be forgetting yer promise !” said Duggin, with the air of one already certain of the prize. “ Don’t be afraid of me,” Collins replied; “ I never broke my word yet, and I don't intend to begin now.” Again did Duggin criticise the boat, and declare himself dissatisfied with nearly every point about her. The temper of the young builder was severely tried ; but rather than turn away a cus- tomer from his master’s yard, he with difficulty succeeded in curbing his rising passion. Scarcely had Duggin, however, left the yard, when a piercing shriek rang from the house, through which lay the general passage. William heard it, and flinging aside the plane he was then using, he rushed in to ascertain its cause. What was his amazement at beholding Sally struggling violently to release herself from the arms of the gallant Duggin, who was endeavouring in vain to snatch a kiss from the maiden’s rosy mouth ! “ Ha ! you villain ! — there, take that I” said Collins, as with one fierce spring he gripped him by the throat, and flung him headlong on the floor. Duggin was for a moment nearly stunned by the fall, but when in a measure recovered from its effects, he rose from the ground, and eyeing the pair with a fiendish expression of malice and revenge, he said, “ Collins, mark my word for it, if I was to go to hell for it, I’ll be into you for that fall ! Mind you keep a look-out, my tidy fellow ! Good morning to you, Sally — good morning, purty Sally ! Don’t forget the race, unless you’re afraid, Collins 1” So saying, Duggin left the house ; and no sooner had he gone, than Sally, frightened by his brutal insolence, burst into a flood of tears ; but she at length allowed herself to be consoled by William, who used the most persuasive and powerful arguments in order to soothe her ruffled spirits. As might be anticipated, the gig was disliked, and left on old Sullivan’s hands. Jerry was a little peevish on the sub- ject, and was continually regretting his unfortunate attack of the gout, which prevented himself from superintending the work, and of a consequence rendering it a model of perfec- tion. But poor William bore up manfully against all, and even had the audacity to prophesy, for the old man’s comfort, that in two days after the coming regatta, he would procure for the gig no less a sum than two-and-twenty guineas ! The boat was finished, launched, and christened “ the Darling Sally and her fair namesake worked with her own pretty fingers a white silken flag, that was intended to adorn the beautifully-moulded bow. It was summer, and the sun was in his meridian glory, pouring a flood of light and beauty over one of the loveliest combinations of landscape — the tree-clad hill, the many-co- loured rock, and the widely-extended water — that can by pos- sibility be found within the limits of the British empire. The month was gloriqus July, and the scene was the far-famed Cove of Cork. How beautiful did all appear on the last day of the regatta, as a fleet of fairy-like yachts, yielding to the light breeze that just broke the surface of the sea into tiny waves, dashed aside from their bows the silver spray, and skimmed like sea-birds over the bosom of the Cove. The sea actually blazed with light, and the islands seemed like emeralds set in gold. Green were the hills that encircled in their embrace the beauteous sheet of water, and cloudless was the heaven that overhung the loveliness of earth. A stately man-of-war rode at anchor nearly opposite the town of Cove, and gay were the flags and streamers that enlivened bv their hues the dark maze of rigging rising from the nobly proportioned hull. Several merchantmen were also there, and decked in like manner as the floating citadel — the sea- man’s pride. The marine picture was finished by myriads of boats of all sizes and shapes, from the one-oared punt and the light wherry, to the family whaler or the well-manned race- gig,_ that were ever gliding to and fro, imparting life and ani- mation to the beautiful scene. On the Regatta Quay might be observed hundreds of ele- gantly dressed females, with their attentive cavaliers ; some of the latter arrayed in divers fantastic styles of costume, in- tended to resemble the garb of the sailor, and resembling it about as much as their affectation and the swagger of their gait resembled his manner. Naval and military officers added by their brilliant uniforms to the liveliness of the picture. On an erected platform was stationed a brass band, that from time to tune played some fine pieces of music and exhilarating airs — -a fitting accompaniment to the soft murmur of the wave, the harmony of nature. Outside the gate of the privileged yard were ranged tents of every variety— some few in the form of an oblong square, with a slanting x’oof — others like an Indian wigwam some covered with bleached, and some with dirty canvass, while in each of them a piper or a fiddler might be heard dis- coursing most peculiar music, responded to by the clatter of some score of feet, whose movements would puzzle the ec- centric genius of Fanny Elsler herself. Outside these temples, erected equally to Bacchus and the lively Terpsichore, more intellectual food was offered to the youthful mind in the antics of Punch and Judy ; and there was, besides, a magnificent theatre, the approach to which was by a ladder, and on a platform before which the distinguished company Turkish warriors and Christian knights, princesses and Columbine, assassin and clown — were threading the intricacies of a fa- shionable dance, to the sound of three trumpets and a drum. Fun, frolic, and delight, reigned within as well as without. In fine, it was the last day of the regatta, and “now or never ” was the universal motto. In obedience to the warning gun, the twenty-ton yachts had drawn up in line near their starting buoys. For a mo- ment their mainsails flapped idly in the breeze as they wore gracefully round. Another gun, and up went jibs and gaff- top-sails, as they began to move in one cluster of snowy canvass. At first they seemed scarcely to stir through the water that lazily rippled around their bows ; but as the breeze began to be felt, they got under weigh, and the waves were broken into foam by the dividing stem. Sally was seated in the well-cushioned stern of her father’s four-oared family gig, which was steered by that worthy individual himself; she wore a Leghorn bonnet with smart pink ribbons ; and as she sat near her bluff, broad-shouldered, honest old parent, she looked as handsome a maiden as ever lent willing ear to a lover’s vows. She was now all anxiety, as the time for William’s race was near at hand. Doggin’s crew were on the course ; and if one might judge from the perfect appointment of the gig, the lively strokes pulled on her, and the rapidity with which she was turned, one should seem to run no risk in betting on her certain success. The Norah Creenah — for such was her name — was painted on the outside a delicate buff, and on the inside pink. One of the best and most fortunate cockswains in the harbour steered her ; and as he glanced on the power- ful limbs and the muscular chests of his men, and saw the exquisite regularity with which the blades were dipped into the wave, his heart swelled with anticipated triumph. “ Sally, my dear,” said old Jerry Sullivan to his daughter, “take the ropes for a minute, and mind what you’re about, child.” Jerry stood up in the boat to have a peep at the preparations for the race ; but hardly had he time to satisfy his curiosity, when the bow of the gig came slap against the side of a large yawl, and he was laid sprawling in the bottom from the con- cussion ; and to mend the matter, Sally began to scream most energetically at the mischief she herself had occasioned, -f he truth was, she had mechanically obeyed her father’s directions, by taking the tiller-ropes, but that was all, for her thoughts were far otherwise engaged. “ Back water, ye infarnal oukl lubber ! Do you want to stave the side of us in ? Where’s yer eyes, ye ould fool ?” Such were the pleasing queries which the parties in the assaulted boat levelled at the innocent Jerry. “ Why don’t you look out yourselves, and be hanged to ye !” said the choleric builder, as he replied in the true Irish fashion by putting another question. After plentifully heaping the choicest epi- thets on each other, the belligerent parties at last separated, the victory being equally divided. “ Come, boys,” said Jerry to his crew, “heave ahead, and let us see are they getting all ready for the start.” In a few moments the boat reached that part of the strand where William Collins and liis com- panions were busily employed in rubbing black lead on the 244 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. bottom of the new gig. “ Well, Bill, my hearty, how’re you coming on ? What do you think of her now ? don’t she look handsome ?” “She does, sir, look very beautiful,” an- swered William in reply to his master’s last remark, as he gazed with admiration on Sally. “Is the paint hard on her, Bill?” asked Jerry. “Paint! paint on her, sir!” exclaimed William, still looking at Sally. “ Why, what ails you, boy ? I said paint; is the paint dry ?” “ All right, sir ; "hard as a bone.” “ Very good — now see are the stretchers the regular length and well lashed down.” But though he received an affirmative answer, he was not satisfied till he had convinced himself by examination that all the arrangements had been attended to by William. “ I’m aisy in mind now, any how. I hope she’ll do ; eh, Bill ?” “ Never fear, sir ; we’ll do our best ; and if we don’t come in first, it won’t be our own fault. Did you hear the news, sir ? A gentleman — the same that was in the yard over on Friday — came up to me and said if the boat won the race, he’d give five-and-twenty guineas down on the nail.” “ Bless my soul !” exclaimed old Sullivan, charmed at the offer. “ But what good is a man offering of such a price when there isn’t any great chance of her winning? — oh, if I wasn’t laid up in my bed when she was building! Well, it can’t be helped now ; more’s the pity !” “Well, sir, we must do our best; won’t we, boys?” said William, turning to his crew. “ We’ll try, any how,” was the reply, as they raised the light gig carefully from off the stones on which she rested, and gently floated her on the water. “William, here’s the flag,” said Sally. “Ha! there’s the gun!” “ ’Tis the gun, sure enough. I’ll bring you the cup, Sally, I hope. Come, lads,” he continued, “ take your places. There — step gently ! Magrath, tread on the kelson, and don’t stand that way on the ribs !” “ Run down a bit,” said Jerry, “ and lave me see your trim. Give the long-steady stroke, for the breeze is freshening. Now start away ; and, Bill, my boy, mind you win !” Away they pulled from the strand ; and as they shot quickly out, Jerry could not help exclaiming with delight, as he noticed how evenly the gig went under the stroke, and how regular was the time kept with their oars ; but his former misgivings returned, as he re- marked the great difficulty with which she was brought round. Duggin, in the meantime, was dashing about, attracting all eyes by the beauty of the Norah. “ Clear the course ! — clear the course — pull out of the way !” So bawled the racing steward, as by entreaty or by threat he succeeded in clearing a space sufficient for the rival boats. “ Take your places !” again shouted he. Oh ! how Sally’s heart beat as she saw the gigs drawn up opposite the quay where the fashionables were assembled, and on which was placed a small signal- battery. She leaned against her father for support, as she observed the crews gently “ backing water” to keep on a line till the word was given. “ Which side will you take?” asked the cockswain of the Sally. “All the same, my hearty ; stay where you are,” answered Duggin with a voice as if confi- dent of success. “ Ready !” shouted the steward. All oars were thrown forward, as the men bent ready for the first dash. “Fire !” Scarce had the gun boomed over the water when the blades were dipped together. “Pull, boys, pull!” cried the cockswain of the Norah. “ Heave away, my lads, heave ! now for the start !” cried the other. After about five strokes the buff shot right ahead, clearing completely the bow of her sable rival. A sneer of bitter triumph might be seen on Duggin’s lip as he darted past his hated opponent. In a very few minutes more, however, the buff ceased to gain, as the black, under the powerful and steady stroke of her crew, began to move gallantly through the water. As they came alongside the ruined barracks below the town of Cove, the Sally had come up to the Norah, and for a short distance they went stem and stem together. From that point they had to shoot over towards a large buoy, round which they must turn. The cockswains now urged on their men, who answered by a cheer, as the wave foamed under their strokes. Duggin’s crew pulled with desperate vigour in order to gain the turn, but the black continued the same even re- gular pull that was evidently telling well. “ Look now, father ; is the white flag first ? is it ahead, father ?” asked Sally. “No, child; the Norah is No! she is not! Bravo, Bill ! there they go for the buoy ! That’s it. More power to you, Bill ! Don’t they walk out. of the saucv buff!” It was true for Jerry ; the black boat was now fairly six lengths ahead, and was gaining more at every stroke. They reached the buoy ; and now began the difficulty. “ Back water, larboard side ; pull — pull oil the starboard,” said the cock- swain. “ Magrath, heave ! Brien, that’s the go !” shouted William, as he backed with all his might. “ Hurra for the honour of Passage ! Pull, my lads, pull ! — rattle into ’em. Hurra !” bawled the Norah’s helmsman, with a voice hoarse from exertion. Before the Sally could be well got under weigh after the turn, the Norah had darted round the buoy, and was in a moment three lengths beyond her. “ Oh, heavens, they’re beat !” said Jerry, as he sank back on the cushion in utter despair. “ Don’t say that, father ! Look again!” entreated Sally. “ There!” cried the old man, as he ventured another glance, “she’s clane out of her again! Bravo, Bill ! Give it to her ! There she clips, the beauty ! I always said there wasn’t your equal except myself at build- ing a gig ! Now, boys,” continued he, addressing his own crew, “pull a rattling touch over, and we’ll give them such a cheer ! Heave, my lads — that’s it ; bend your lazy backs !” The course was about two or three miles in length from the buoy to the old convict-hulk, round whose dark mass the boats must pull before they made for the quay from which they had started, and which was also the winning-place. The struggle up along the bank was indeed a beautiful sight, as from time to time the chances seemed to vary in favour of each, and as the crews appeared to gain new vigour from the cheering that came from the numerous boats which met them on the course. Gallantly did the long stroke tell on the Sally, as she shot far out of the rakish buff. She was dashing on in noble style for the convict-ship, when, smash ! away went the bowman’s oar ! All was in confusion. On came the Norah ! At that very moment Jerry Sullivan arrived ; and seeing the terrible disaster, he caught at the oar next his hand, and flung it within reach of the bowman. “ You have it now, my boys. Now, Bill, pull, my darling fellow, hurrah !” shouted Jerry, as the crew gave back the cheer, and the Sally bounded after the lively Norah. Thirty strokes more, and the Sally was stem and stem with her well-manned rival. They passed the man-of- war, and the sailors who crowded the side of the noble vessel gave them a cheer. Before them rose the hull of the old con- vict-ship, and now the struggle was, who should round her first. Still was the same quick stroke pulled on the buff, and still did the other crew continue to keep the same powerful one on the black. The stern of the hulk was neared ; the Sally w-as five boats ahead, but the Norah dashed on gal- lantly in her wake. “ Pull, boys, pull !” -was the word! -in both boats. “ Back water hard ! Pull on the bow ! Hurra ! Back her well ! Hurra !” shouted both cockswains. The Sally- had not well rounded the bow of the convict-ship, w-hen the Norah had turned, as if on a pivot, and again was stem and stem with her opponent. Now, indeed, -was the true time for testing the capabilities both of the men and the boats, for a breeze was blowing from the west, and as the tide was making fast out of the harbour, there was a swell as both met in opposition. Shouts now greeted the gigs as they dashed on to the winning-place. Again did old Jerry meet them, and cheer aloud ! Duggin literally foamed at the mouth, as he plied his oar with the energy of desperation, while William shouted to his crew to pull ; and pull they did. In spite of all the exertions of Duggin, the Norah dropped back, as the Sally bounded on to the goal. Duggin cursed and raved, but all to no purpose ; for the high-pointed bow of his gig caught the wind, and she had not the same power of keeping her way as the other, owing to her want of keel. “ Stand by with "the match !” cried the steward. “ There they come ; the black boat is long ahead ! Fire ! No sooner had the loud report followed the quick flash, than the oars were tossed on high, and the Sally rode triumphant ! Loud were the shouts that rang from land and sea, as the victors dropped their blades into the wave, and shot into the landing-place to receive their well-earned prize. Who can describe the pride and joy of the old man, or the deep rapture of his daughter, as they saw the steward present the silver cup to William, flushed as he was from the exertion and triumph of the moment ! As it would be quite impossible to do justice to their feelings, the attempt must be modestly refrained from. The gig was immediately purchased for twenty-five guineas, and orders were given to Jerry for the building of two more on an exactly similar plan. As for Duggin, he was so subdued in spirit by the loss of his reputation as a crack oarsman, that he never after that day was known to try his fortune on the course, and neither visited Ring to woo Miss Sullivan, nor to make good his threat on tlf5 body of the victorious William. It has been since whispered among the gossips of the village that old Jerry Sullivan, theugh much surprised at hearing THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 245 of the mutual love of William and Sally, finally gave his bless- ing and consent to then* union. Need it be told that the well-won silver cup was ever looked on as an honoured vessel, and that Sally prized it nearly as much as William himself did? J. F. M. A RIDE WITH DEATH. We paused a while where a family stood, Partaking the sacred “ body and blood And we saw their mother unfaltering pray. When life’s mellow evening was fading away ; And as she sighed out her last tremulous breath. Was ended my first wild ride with Death, — From the Knickerbocker. 1 saw him pass by, while the east-wind blew, And the vernal blooms from the branches flew ; Lo ! there he speeds, that old skeleton-man, With his frame all bleached, all withered and wan ; His eye-balls are gone, and his cheek-bones bare, And he rides a pale horse through the cold humid air ! Now he resteth himself ’neath an old dry tree. Where the moss hath grown for a century ; He feeds his steed with grass that grew rank On the field where warriors in battle sank ; Bedabbled with blood, it thick grew, and strong. And to Death's pale horse doth of right belong ! Gone is the beauty from violet blue, For the look of Death hath pierced it through ; And the crocus that bloomed near the old dry tree. Hath faded away, such a sight to see ; And the grass where he sat, that was bright and green, Turned pale as the blades where a stone hath been. Ha ! ha ! old pilgrim ! may I go with thee. Thy doings fearful and strange to see ? He nodded his head ; not a word said Death, For he had little need to waste his breath : A man of short speech, he speaks in his brow ; He looks what he means, when he says “ Come thou !" We paused near a maiden with rosy cheek, A lovely maiden, with blue eye meek ; But her youthful bloom, how it faded away ! Her heart was in heaven, she might not stay : And we looked at an infant that lay on the breast, A mother's pride, and it sank to rest ! We stood by the cot of a widowed dame ; Life’s feeble embers gave out their last flame : At the hut of a slave we stepped gently in ; With pity Death looked on his frame so thin. And his face, as he watched at the old man’s bed, Said “ Peacefully let him be one with the dead !" At a palace we tarried, and there one lay On his last sad couch, at the close of day ; He struggled hard, but Death’s face said “ No ! Duty is mine, wheresoever I go : Peasant or king, it is all the same, Mine must thou be — I have here thy name !” We hovered around where a Christian sire Lay waiting to join the eternal choir ; Peaceful and calm was his holy repose ; He sank as the sun on a May-day’s close : He rose as the sun with beams tricked anew. When flowers bend with beauty, and leaves with dew. We crossed the path of a beautiful bark. How many the corses, all stiff and stark ! Down sank the vessel beneath the wild wave, No hand was near one poor soul to save ! We glanced at a ship by an iceberg crushed, We gazed but a moment — then all was hushed. We asked of a miser to yield up his gold, But he loosed not his clutch when his hands were cold. We entered a town, as it shook to and fro, An earthquake was raging in fury below ; Dwellings were rocking like trees when storm-tost, Crashing and sinking — till all were lost ! We stayed our flight o’er a funeral pile, Where the Ganges roll’d swift through a deep defile ; Where Brahmin priests rent with cries the air, While the victim lay burning and crackling there ; And the devotees of dark Jaggernath We saw mangled and torn in its bloody path. ANCIENT SEAL OF THE ISLAND OF SAINT COLMOC. The prefixed woodcut of an impression of an ancient monastic seal hitherto unpublished, will, we think, interest some of our readers both in Scotland and Ireland, as, though it is certainly not Irish, it is intimately connected with that bright period of our history when Ireland sent forth her crowds of learned ecclesiastics to preach the gospel and instruct the people, not only to Scotland and England, but also to Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium, Mecklenburg, and even distant Iceland, in all which their memories are still venerated as patron saints — that period to which Spenser alludes in the lines : “ Whylome, when Ireland flourished in fame Of wealth and goodness, far above the rest Of all that bear the British island’s name.” The matrix, which is of bronze or brass, was discovered among old brass at a foundry in London some three or four years ago, and is now in the possession of Mr Thomas, a merchant of that city, who has the largest collection of re- mains of this kind ever formed in the British empire. The legend, which is in the semi- Saxon character of the twelfth century, reads — SI . COMMUNE . DE . INSULA . SANCTI . COLMOCI : or, THE COMMON SEAL OF THE ISLAND OF SAINT COLMOC. The locality of this seal has been hitherto referred to the celebrated Irish monastery of Iona, or Hy-Columbkille, and such we ourselves deemed it when the impression was first sent to us. But on maturer reflection we are now disposed to consider this conclusion erroneous, and that the seal should ■with greater probability be referred to the monastery of Inch- Colm, a small island in the Frith of Forth, lying between Edinburgh and Inverkeithing, and which was anciently called Emonia, or Y-mona, i. e. the Island of Mona. On this island the Scottish King Alexander I., in gratitude for his escape from a violent storm, by which he was driven on the island in 1123, founded a monastery dedicated to its patron saint, and of which there are still considerable remains. It was plun- dered by the English in the reign of Edward III., who, as it is said, suffered shipwreck for their sacrilege; and if we might hazard a conjecture, it would be, that the seal may have been carried into England at that time. But be this as it may, the seal perfectly agrees in style with similar remains of the twelfth century, and we have little doubt that this is its true locality, as the name in the legend will not with correctness or propriety apply to any other known to exist. For, in the 246 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. first place, the monastery of Iona, the only other religious house to which it could be referred, is invariably called Insula Columbse, or I-Columbkille, in all ancient documents, and it would be against all probability that it should bear a different appellation on its seal. In the second place, the name of the patron saint of Iona is never written Colmoc, which is an Irish diminutive form of the name Colum, and which, as in the Latin, means a dove. But this name Colmoc was applied by the ancient Irish and Scotch indifferently to persons bear- ing the name of Colman, both being but synonymous and convertible diminutives of the name Colum — and hence it would follow that this seal must have belonged to some monastery which was dedicated not to St Columb, but to St Colman or Colmoc. It may however be objected that the island called Inch-Colm was dedicated to the celebrated apos- tle of Scotland, St Columbkille; and it is true that Colgan, on the authority of Fordun, does place it among the list of his foundations. But Fordun is a weak authority to rely on in such matters ; and from the greater contiguity of this island to Lindesfarn, of which the Irish St Colman was the third bishop, it would seem more rational to attribute the origin of its name to him than to the saint of Iona. In either case, however, the seal is one of great interest to Scottish topogra- phy and Irish history. P. STREET CIGAR-SMOKERS. Reader, are you given to cigar-smoking ? The reason we put the question is, that we should not like to offend you by any thing you might find in our pages indicating a contempt on our part for this silly, and, as we think, vulgar practice. If you be, then, pass over this short article, or as our old Irish schoolmaster used to tell us when we came to a passage which we could not construe, nor he neither, “ skip and go on.” But we feel tolerably certain you are not a smoker, or at least a cigar-smoker or exhibiting-street-performer, for we are satis- fied that among the lovers of this now fashionable amusement we can count but few as supporters of our little work, or of any other of a mental or literary character — that renowned periodical called Paddy Kelly’s Budget, if it be still in exist- ence, excepted. It is the practice of unidea’d men with un- idea’d faces, who puff, not whistle — as the latter is no longer a fashionable amusement — as they go, for want of thought, and as they think to make them look manly and genteel ! Well, heaven help their little wit ! You think, reader, perhaps, as we ourselves were till lately foolish enough to suppose, that there must be a pleasure in this practice on its own account, like that which madmen feel in being insane. But no such thing. We have discovered that it is anything but an agree- able pastime, and that it is indulged in solely from the love of distinction, which is one of the peculiar characteristics of the human race, and which is so strong in these cigar-smokers, that they actually, in the spirit of martyrs, surrender both their minds, such as they are, and their bodies also, to its influence. Such a desire is not only natural to us, but praiseworthy : it is only the choice of means of gratifying it that is unworthy and even contemptible. It will bear no comparison in point of intellectuality with that of the fashionable dandies of our youthful days, who used to promenade the streets and public places, playing quizzes, that is, flat circular pieces of boxwood suspended on a string by a kind of pulley, and which they kept in a sort of perpetual motion with one or both hands, and sometimes even (great performers) with their mouths ; their arms see-sawing up and down, and their heads shaking like those of the Chinese mandarins in the tea shops. This, though perhaps a little grotesque, was a comical mode of at- tracting notice and obtaining distinction. It was a healthy folly too, and required some human intellect to practise it adroitly. A monkey or a dog, both of whom we have seen expert smokers, could not, we are persuaded, be taught this ; it would be beyond their intelligence ; and it had a touch of the odd, the gay, and the ridiculous about it, that seemed to harmonize naturally with our national character — and we are not ashamed to confess it, we were ourselves great quizzers in our youth. But the cigar-smoking folly — it is a dull, lifeless, stupid, silent, moping mania, wholly unbecoming an Irishman, and inconsistent with the spirit, life, and animation that should be characteristic of youth. Old as we are, we think of taking to quizzing again, but we shall never fall into such a solemn absurdity as smoking for applause. It would not suit our temperament. But we have said that we had made the discovery that the practice of cigar-smoking is any thing but a pleasant one in itself, and that it is indulged in solely from ambitious mo- tives, and an amiable love of applause. Yes, reader, and we shall induct you into our knowledge of the matter, by a true and faithful narrative of the incident which enabled us to ascertain the fact. We were lately coming along that favourite lounge ©f the cigar-smokers, Sackville Street, when, arriving near Mitchell's, two young well-dressed, moustached, and imperialled dandies, stept out from that intellectual emporium, each with a Ha- vannah in his mouth, his hands in his “ Dorsay” pockets, and looking as grave as possible, evidently impressed with the pleas- ing idea that they were the admiration and envy of all passers. They proceeded before us in solemn slinge in the direction of the Rotunda, we following in their -\vake, observant yet not observed ; and before they reached Earl Street, they were met by a mutual friend, with whom they linked, putting him be- tween them, to allow them the greater facility to spit out, when the following colloquy ensued : — Friend. Well, Tom, how goes the world with you ? and, Dick, my boy, how is every bit of you ? Tom and Dick. Puff Puff Well. Friend. Are you long in town — eh ? Tom and Dick. Puff Puff No. Friend. How did you leave them all in the country ? — how is the old fellow ? Tom and Dick. Puff Puff Puff Well. Friend. Oh, damn ye ! there’s no getting a word out of you but a monosyllable. Tom and Dick. Puff Puff (And then each of them spat out. ) Friend. Why, Tom, you’ve become a great smoker. Tom. Puff Puff Yaws. Friend. And you too, Dick ? Dick. Puff Puff Ees. (The imperfect vo- cable being squeezed out through his teeth at the left corner of his mouth. ) Friend. And do you find it agree with you, Tom — is it pleasant ? Tom here, after a few puffs, slowly draws one hand out of his pocket, and taking the cigar out of his mouth, spits out, draws his breath, and after a minute replies : “ No, blast it ; it always makes me sick.” He then restores the cigar to his mouth and his hand to his pocket, while his friend puts a similar interrogatory to Dick. “ And does it always make you sick too ?” Here Dick, having in like manner indulged in a few puffs, takes the cigar out of his mouth, spits out at the other side, and drawing- breath and looking very pale, answers : “ Infernally !” Friend. In the name of heaven, then, what do you both smoke for ? This, as one would have supposed, not an unnatural query, produced a simultaneous stare of astonishment, mingled with contempt, from both the smokers, as much as to say, “ What an ass you must be!” and Dick, slowly removing his cigar once more, and spitting out, answers, “ Why, how the devil can you ask such a stupid question — what do you suppose?” Friend. Suppose ! why hang me if I can guess. Here Tom took hold of his Havannah, and after spitting out on a lady who was passing — but this was only an accident — • replied for himself and fellow puffer .But let us pause a mo- ment. Guess, reader, what it was. Do you give it up ? Well, then, here it is, “ Why, for the gag, to be sure !” This was enough for us. Our mind was enlightened by a new idea ; and leaving the gentlemen to follow their gaggery, we hurried home to dinner, a wiser if not a better man. An Old Quizzer. Not a Fable. — A boy three years of age was asked who made him ? With his little hand and foot upon the floor, he artlessly replied — “ God made me a little baby, so high, and I grew the rest.” — Mirror. Public — W e have a reading, a talking, and a writing public. When shall we have a thinking public"? The mind is a field, in which, so sure as man sows not wheat, so sure will the devil be to sow tares Bentham. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 247 THE HERRING. CLUPEA HARENGUS. First Article. Of all the branches of study into which natural history has been divided, the most interesting, from its extensiveness, its variety, and the almost insurmountable difficulties which it presents to the student, is Ichthyology. To acquire a tho- rough knowledge of zoology requires much labour, study, travel, and considerable risk; in like manner -with ornithology, in the prosecution of which the difficulties are greater, from the mixture of elements ; but still the inhabitants of the air have thus much in common with us, that they live in the same atmospheric medium, derive their sustenance from the same earth, and although the difficulties of following their motions, and observing (unseen by them) their habits and natures, are considerable, yet still, thanks to the extension of science, they have not proved unconquerable, and the telescope, in that form called the ornithoscope, has enabled man to acquire a lai'ge store of information on this interesting subject. But with ichthyology how widely different ! Here the preliminary obstacle which presents itself is an element fatal to the exist- ence of man within it, and out of which the creatures with whose nature he would fain be acquainted cannot exist. His very powers of observation are thus rendered useless, except in a very limited degree. They are bounded by a glass vase, or a small clear pond at the utmost, and confined to a few specimens of the smaller fishes, and even then it is doubtful whether circumstances may not have altered their really natural habits. Yet above these obstacles the mind of man has risen, and by the union of analogy with laborious and con- stant observation, he has succeeded in classing a large amount of the tenants of the mighty deep. But before he can ascertain what proportion, or write the history of any one of them fully, he must discover some substitute for gills which will enable him to extract the necessary air for his existence from the water, and thus enable him to search the depths of ocean, and seek its inhabitants in their haunts. That such may yet be discovered by the ingenuity of man, let no one deem impossible. Amongst the fishes hitherto discovered and classed, the herring ( Clupea harengus) is one of the most universally known, most generally useful, and one of the greatest boons of an all-bounteous Providence to the inhabitants of these counti'ies. Abundance, the universal producer of contempt, has caused this beautiful creature to be despised ; but to the naturalist’s eye few creatures are possessed of greater charms. When first taken out of the water, it is of a dark-bluish and green colour on the back, lightening down the sides to a silvery blue, which shades to white on the belly. The scales have a clear lustrous golden colour, which changes in various shades of light after the manner of mother-of-pearl ; they lie over one an- other in regular lines, with the convex edges pointing towards the tail. The termination of the body is remarkable for the beau- tiful dark-green colour which it exhibits when held before the light. The fins are seven in number — one dorsal, of eighteen or nineteen rays ; two ventral, of nine rays each ; one anal, of seventeen rays; two pectoral, of eighteen or nineteen rays each; and the caudal, or tail fin, of eighteen or nineteen rays. The eyes are placed in the middle of the sides of the head ; the iris is of a silvery white colour, and the pupil black. The spine consists of fifty-six vertebrae. The ribs are thirty-five or six in number on each side, and there are several minute bones below the ribs, which terminate in soft elastic muscles at the anal fin, and serve to give it strength and elasticity. Fifty- two bones compose the head. The bronchiae or gills are four on each side, each gill being supported by an arched cartilage ; and there are two imperfect gills without the arch, which join the gill lid, and appear to regulate its motions. The convex side of the gills is furnished with fringed fleshy fibres, of a strong red colour when the fish is healthy ; the concave side, which is next the mouth, is furnished with long serrated spines. Theheart is placed in a cavity near the gills, above the stomach ; it is three sided, and consists of a single auricle and ventricle. The oesophagus, or gullet, is remarkably short in proportion to the size of the fish; the stomach is thin, membranous, and capable of great distension. The gut is of uniform size throughout. The gall bladder is small, and of a dark-green colour ; the liquid is of a light claret hue, having a sweetish pungent taste. The air bag, or vesica natatoria, is of a silvery white colour, round, of nearly the length of the stomach, and pointed and narrow at both ‘ ends ; it is connected with the funnel-shaped posterior part of the stomach by a duct. The use of the vesica natatoria, or, as it is commonly called, the swim, is to enable the fish, by inflating or expelling the air from it, to rise or sink, for if the air-bag of a living fish be pierced, the creature sinks at once to the bottom. The under jaw of the herring projects beyond the upper. The form and consistency of its nose proves its use for the purpose of feeling, in the absence of the cirri or feelers possessed by other fishes. The skin not being provided with the corpus papillce, and being besides covered with scales, it is supposed that the sensation of touch is either very limited or wholly wanting. The her- ring is provided with two nostrils ; and from the perfection of the olfactory organ, it is presumed that its sense of smell is very acute. It has no external organs of hearing but a fringed orifice below the eye on the inner side of that part of the head which covers the gills. Fishermen affirm that their sense of hearing is very acute, and state instances of their immediately ceasing the peculiar pattering noise which they are accustomed to make on calm evenings, if a loud sound is made on any part of the interior of the boat. The Swedes attribute the departure of the herrings from the neighbourhood of Gothenburg to the frequent firing of the British ships of war which were stationed there for con- voys ; and so great is the influence which fishermen have been accustomed to attribute to sound, that we are told in Cham- bers’s Picture of Scotland that the bell of St Monauce in Fife, which was suspended from a tree in the churchyard, was removed every year during the herring season, lest the noise should scare the fish from the coast. The mouth of the herring is furnished with a few teeth in the upper and lower jaws, and four rows in the tongue. These pointing inwards, enable it the more readily to secure and swallow its slippery prey, which chiefly consists of extremely minute animals, such as small medusae, the Oniscus marinus, and small cancri and animalcula. The herrings on the coast of Norway sometimes feed upon a small red worm called the Roe-aal, which renders them unfit for curing ; but there is probably no fish so indiscriminate in its food. The herring is often caught with flies, at which it leaps readily, and frequently with naked unbaited hooks. Mr Mitchell, in his article on the herring in the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, men- tions that in the stomachs of several herrings which he ex- amined, he found numbers of young sand-eels, and he adds a very curious observation, namely, that in the stomachs of such herrings as had the milt or roe small and immature, the sand-eels were numerous ; whereas in those which had the milt or roe full grown, there were none whatsoever ; but he offers no suggestion to account for this remarkable circumstance. They also frequently feed on their own ova and young. The herring propels itself through the water by rapidly moving the tail from side to side, the other fins being em- ployed in stead}'ing and probably aiding its movement, and it is this rapid waving of the tail which causes the rippling or pattering sound which announces the presence of a shoal when swimming near the surface. On a calm night their course may be traced by a brilliant phosphorescent light, which illuminates the surface of the water, and is emitted partly from the fish themselves, and partly from the minute marine animals with which the ocean swarms. Sometimes herrings do not approach the surface, and fine healthy shoals are often apt to swim deep ; hence fishermen, through their ignorance in trusting too much to appearances, are frequently misled, they being apt to suppose that when they see no gulls or large fishes of prey exhibiting their glut- tonous gambols, there are no herrings present, whilst the finest and choicest may be at the moment in millions beneath them ; in fact, those which swim near the surface are usually the young, the gorged, and the sickly. Mr Mitchell informs us that several experienced masters of Dutch herring busses as- sured him that the only appearances they ever sought for were the colour of the sea, which should be a dark green, and its consistence apparently muddy. There is an additional fact worthy of observation, which is, that in clear dry weather the fish keep down at the bottom, and do not ascend until the moon rises. The migration of the herring has been long a disputed point, and from the difficulties to which we have alluded in the commencement of this article, of observing minutely or accurately the movements or nature of fishes, it is likely to remain unsettled much longer. The old and long received opinion has been, that the winter habitation of the herring is under the vast fields of ice which surround the North Polo 24S THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. within the Arctic Circle ; that they there deposit their spawn and advance southwards with the opening year, making their appearance off the Zetland islands about the month of April, and coming upon the coasts of Ireland and Scotland in June. Off Thurso they are sometimes taken as early as May, but June, July, and August, are the months in which the fishing is most actively commenced off the west Highlands of Scotland. Off the east coast of Ireland, near Arklow, the fishery used to commence in June, but latterly it has been postponed till October. The fluctuations in the time of commencing the herring fishery at various places, and the fact of a winter fishery being successfully carried on in some parts — as for in- stance at Killybegs, where they are taken from December till March, and along the whole coast of Ireland south of Gal- way Bay, where there are sufficient indications that the fishery might be successfully carried on the whole year — have at length caused the hitherto received opinion of their migration from the Arctic Circle to be questioned, and Mr Mitchell has given many sound arguments in refutation of it. He divides the theories upon the subject into three : — first, that the her- rings come from the North Pole in great shoals of many leagues in extent, dividing into lesser shoals on coming to- wards the north point of Scotland ; second, that they do not come from the Arctic regions, but from a less northerly di- rection, still, however, very far north of Shetland ; and, third, that they are spawned on the coasts near which they are caught, and are consequently natives ; that after spawn- ing, they retire out to sea, and continue so until their spawning season comes round again, when they return to their accus- tomed shore. The latter he considers to be the most reason- able theory, and adduces in support of it the well-known fact that the herrings at every fishing station are of a peculiar quality uniformly the same, and always different from those at other even very nearly adjoining stations ; and so well has this fact been established, that practical men can at once pro- nounce from the size, appearance, and quality of the fish, where it was taken. For example, the herrings taken off the coast of Stadtland in Norway are almost twice the size of those taken near Shetland, and these are twice the size of those caught near Thurso, whilst the Dublin Bay herrings have long been famous for their superior flavour, which is un- matched bv those of any other bay or harbour. Again, a size of herrings similar to those of Yarmouth visited till lately the coast of Lumfiord in Denmark, whilst on the Meck- lenburg coast higher up the Baltic, the herrings are one-third larger than those of Lumfiord ; and proceeding up the Baltic above Mecklenburg to the Pomeranian and part of the Prus- sian coasts, they are fully one-third smaller ; and again still farther up they are larger. In quality and condition they differ as much as in size, those off the coast of Holland being so inferior as not to be worth pickling, and the Dutch fisher- men consequently seek the coasts of Scotland and England. As to the time of appearance at the several fishing stations, their irregularity goes far to prove their constant propinquity, the take commencing at some of the more southern stations be- fore the northern ones : whereas, if they migrated regularly from the north, it is evident that the fishing should commence at the various stations in regular order, from the most northern where the shoals would first make their appearance, to the next, and so on to the most southward, which should be deserted by them at some certain season, in order that they might return. But there is no well-authenticated instance of those prodi- gious shoals of herrings having been met with approaching the south in any high northern latitude ; and so far from their abounding in the Arctic regions, none have been found in the Greenland seas, nor have any been discovered in the stomachs of the whales killed there. Egede, who resided in Green- land for fifteen years, and compiled the natural history of it, after enumerating the fishes, adds, “ No herrings are to be seen whilst on the contrary, the whales which feed prin- cipally on herrings, frequent our own coasts. These argu- ments appear to be fatal to the theory of the Arctic migration, and to support most powerfully that of the mere retirement of the herring to the deep. But Mr Mitchell goes farther, and asserts, upon the evidence of the celebrated naturalists Bloch and Lacepede, that “ fishes of a similar size even in fresh water cannot go above half a mile a-day, and that therefore herrings could not make, even from spring to autumn, the long voyage attributed to them.” Now, this appears to be going too far, and we would prefer that the argument should rest on the former grounds, excluding this, which seems to be a weak assertion, founded upon the observation that fishes do not proceed far from their haunts, whilst the fact is, that they merely move about in search of food ; but who that has seen the rapid movement of a trout, or of the very fish we are treats ing of, could for a moment entertain the idea of their progres- being confined to a rate that the crawling snail might equal ? Mr Mitchell himself mentions a fact that alone is sufficient to rebut such an assertion, namely, that shortly after the union between England and Scotland, an immense shoal of herrings ran ashore near Cromarty, and covered the beach to the depth of several feet ; and he adds, “ Strange to say, how- ever, the shoal left the Frith in a single night, and no shoals made their appearance again for more than half a century.” Now, if they could make but half a mile a-day, how could they have returned several miles in a single night ? But this argument was unnecessary, and it would be well for many persons to know that an ill-sustained argument is not merely a bad prop to a cause, but a wedge inserted for the advantage of an adversary, placed ready for his use in overturning it. But the most powerful argument against the theory of migration seems to have escaped Mr Mitchell’s observation ; it is — that the herrings do not retire to spawn, as w r as asserted, but actually spawn near the fishing stations, and retire after it. Their spawn is taken up in abundance, and the nets are always found to contain large quantities of it, whilst the asser- tion that no young herrings are found near our shores, is altogether absurd, the contrary being the fact. The fecun- dated roe has the power, after having been deposited, of attaching itself firmly to the stones, rocks, or sea-weed, and in about three weeks after deposition, the young fry come forth from the eggs, and are seen in millions near the shore ; in six or seven weeks they are about three inches in length, and arrive at maturity in about eighteen months. Lacepede tells that in North America the inhabitants carry the herring-spawn from the spawning ground to the mouths of rivers and other places not before frequented by the fish, and those places become forthwith regular resorts for them ; and the same authority mentions the fact of a similar custom in Sweden. Thus the theory of the herring being a native of the place which it is accustomed to frequent annually, seems to be satis- factorily established ; and having thus presented our readers with such information upon the subject of the natural history of the herring as our space permits, we shall close this article, reserving some account of the various modes of fishing and methods of curing, for another paper. N. Sentiment. — How much fine sentiment there is wasted in our strange world ! . I have seen a young lady in raptures of admiration over a flower which was to deck her hair in the ball-room, who would turn away with a look of loathing from the proffered kiss of her baby brother ; and I have heard lovely lips, all wreathed in smiles, and breathing tones of joy over a pretty shell, a shining insect, or even a gay ribbon, say cold and cruel words to the best friend, ay, the mother, who was wearing her life out to promote the happiness of her un- grateful daughter. Marriage When a man of sense comes to marry, it is a companion whom he wants, and not an artist. It is not merely a creature who can paint, play, dress, and dance — it is a being w r ho can comfort and console him. Blushing. — Blushing in the male sex is too frequently and constantly regarded as a proof of guiltiness : it is a proof of sensibility and fear of disrepute, by whatever incident called forth ; but except in so far as fear of being thought guilty is proof, it affords no proof of the existence of the object by the idea of which the apprehension is excited Bentham. Pride destroys all symmetry and grace, and affectation is a more terrible enemy to fine faces than the small pox Hughes. At twenty years of age the will reigns, at thirty the wit, at forty the judgment Grattan. Authors in France seldom speak ill of each other, unless they have a personal pique. Authors in England seldom speak well of each other, unless they have a personal friend- ship. — Pope. Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin.— Agents: — R. Groombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester ; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool ; J. Drake, Birmingham ; Slocombe and Simms, Leeds ; Fraser and Crawford, George Street, Edinburgh ; and David Robertson, Trongate, Glasgow. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 32. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1841 Volume I. HANDSOME KATE KAVANAGH. In that fertile district of the county Wexford, the barony of Forth, distinguished for its comfortable cottages and general good husbandry, lived Dennis Costigan, a rich farmer. His farm was large, well stocked, and in high condition ; his dwell- ing-house was furnished as a farmer’s house should be, and it was as cleanly and neat as it was commodious. His wife was tidy, notable, and good-tempered, and his three children were such as would please a father — well-formed in person and virtuous in mind. Then, should not our friend Dennis Costigan have been a happy man ? He would have been so perhaps — for there is ever to be a stumbling block in our road lo happiness — but that the first object that glared upon his eyes in each morning’s sun was the white low cottage of his next neighbour Miles Kavanagh. Yet that cottage was not an ugly feature in the landscape. It was small and low, but as white as the whitest lime could make it ; it was neatly thatched too, and its small casements were never broken or patched. A few honeysuckles and roses crept up its walls, and it was surrounded by a hedge of hazels and sallows, that lent it an air of comfort and seclusion. Its owner, at least, thought it a pretty spot, and that he was a happy man indeed to possess it and its two or three adjoining acres ; and as he trimmed his hedges, and looked pleasantly on all around— the fruits of his industry and labour — he little thought that any one could look upon his cot and farm with other eyes than those of ad- miration ; and least of all that he, or aught of his, was the source of care or annoyance to his wealthier neighbour. And why did wealthy Dennis Costigan glance lowringly on this humble tenement ? Was it that, like his betters, he thought a poor man’s dwelling always an unsightly object ? and that, like many a grasping spirit, all land convenient to his own was misappropriated if not in his possession ? It was not so. Dennis Costigan envied no man his possessions. He was a right specimen of a farmer, independent, upright, honest, and industrious, contented with what providence had given him, and willing to help a neighbour with purse and hand if requir- ed. And if he did grumble a little, and turn away his eyes , quickly as if in pain, from the cottage we have mentioned, 250 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. many another father with hopeful sons would do the same, for it contained a gem that would grace the proudest castle in Ireland — beautiful, charming, innocent Kate Kavanagh, but who had no fortune. One fine morning in August, farmer Costigan sallied forth at the head of a regiment of reapers armed for the destruc- tion of a large field of wheat, but scarcely had he got outside his yard when he missed two of his most efficient men — his two sons. “ Where can those gorsoons ov mine be, boys ?” inquired he of the reapers. “ In the arms ov Murphy, to be sure,” answered a little shrill-piped fellow, the crack orator of the country, which, and the circumstance of his name being alike, procured him the cognomen of “ Counsellor Shiel.” “ In the arms ov Murphy, to be sure, afther thrippin’ it all night on the light funtastic toe with that flower ov Forth an’ belle ov the barony, Kate Kavanagh.” “ Arrah, can’t ye speak in plain English, man?”thundered the farmer with kindling eyes — the name just mentioned always putting him in a passion. “ What the dickens does I know ov funtastic toes or heels ?” “ Very little indeed, litherally," quoth the counsellor, laugh- ing, and glancing sarcastically at the farmer’s large feet, cased in tremendous brogues shod with hob-nails ; “ very little litherally, but you might metaphorically, for all that. But you have no more poethry or bells letthers in ye than a bag ov beans !” “ Nor you more common sense than a goose.” “ Stop !” cried the orator suddenly, in a tone of command enough to arrest a retreating army, and motioning to the body of reapers. “ Stop, one an’ all ov ye, an’ listen ! It would be a sin to let this profane ignirince continue longer.” Then addressing our barony Forth farmer with a countenance in which pity and ineffable contempt were blended, “Is it in the nointeenth centhery that you call me a goose, by way ov contimpt ? Oh, ignorant of nathral histhry, jography, bells letthers, pelite litherature altogether! For, know, onforthen- ate man, that it was the cackle ov that same illustrious baist, a goose, that saved what ? — where do you think ?” “ Yer mother’s hen-roost from the fox, is it?” “ No, haithen, but imparial Rome ! ! !” The might, the majesty of the “counsellor’s” tones and gestures as he uttered the words, struck amazement into the hearts of his hearers ! They had considered him a clever fel- low, but by no means the great man he then appeared ! En- chanted with his eloquence, not a few of his auditors were certain that if he were in Parliament, he would do more for Ireland than Mr O’Connell and all his friends ; while the re- mainder, as much delighted with his energy, lamented that “ the craithur wasn’t two fut higher, for he had a great spirit intirely !” The happy “ counsellor” perceived the impression he had produced, and in his altitude was proceeding to tell them when and how “ imparial Rome” was saved, when his attention was arrested by an approaching object, and with an instantaneous change of attitude and tone he exclaimed, “ ‘ But, soft ! what light from yonder meadow breaks ? It is the aist, an’ Cath'rine is the sun !‘ ” as a tall and very handsome girl, with the finest eyes and brightest smile imaginable, met them at the entrance of the wheat field. “A blithe mornin’ to Misther Costigan,” said the maiden, “ an’ the same to all the raipers !” “ Oh ! a good morra,” returned Mister Costigan very coldly and with looks still colder, “ an’ I wondher above all things what is it that takes Miss Kavanagh out of her bed so early ?” “ Just what ought to rouse many more ov us, Misther Cos- tigan,” replied Kate spiritedly — “ to help a naibur, an’ I am come to offer ye all the ’sistance in my power to-day, aither as binder or raiper, whichever ye may want worst.” “ I want neither,” returned the farmer gruffly, and turning on his heel ; “ an’, besides, I could not possibly think of puttin’ sitch delicate white hands to sitch coorse work !” “ The belle o’ the barony” coloured high at the affront couched in this speech, and she hastily answered that “ her hands, sitch as they war, could earn her bread for her when she required it ; an’ if she did’nt find them too tendher for work, Misther Costigan need’nt find fault with them. But,” added she more kindly, “ you have a rough manner but a kind heart, Dennis Costigan, an’ I won’t mind what you say to me. Moreover, I’ll stay with ye to-day, whether you be willin’ or not, aither as binder or raiper.” Dennis Costigan, “kind as his heart” was, would haye given a sovereign of “ bright goold” that Kate Kavanagh and her bright eyes were a few miles off at the moment ; but as he saw that she carried all before her, he thought it better not to give her any further offence, and accordingly, but with a very bad grace, he accepted her services. “ Where be’s Jem and Ned Costigan this mornin’ ?” whis- pered Kate to the counsellor, who was flourishing away gal- lantly at her side. The man of eloquence flung himself into an attitude, laid his hand upon his heart, and looked languishingly, as he “assured her that her charms were railly too potently enfluential over the hearts ov her admirers, as she not only deprived thim ov the needful refreshment of nathur, oblivious slumber, but she also hendhered them from doin’ their daily manual imploymints. For instance,” said he, “you see Saul, the orb ov day, is high up in his meraydian hemisphare, an’ those inamoured swains are still pressin’ their beds, or rather cooches, in the arms ov Murphy, mainin’ sleep or Somnus ” “ An’ what have I to do with that?” said Kate, laughing heartily. “ Do ye think I gave thim a sleepy potion?” “Ah ! my beautiful flower ov Forth !” sighed out the senti- mental counsellor, “ any thing but a sleepy potion do you give yer lovers ! if ’tis anything, sure I am ’tis a draught to banish sleep for ever ! But consarnin’ those vagrant truints ye spaik ov, I ondherstand that you kep thim up beyant their ushial hours ov repose last night, admirin’ yer graceful move- mints in yer Turpfiscorian revels, mainin’ the dance at Judy Colfer’s ; an’ that man, their father, who is not to be moved with ‘ concord of sweet sounds,’ or any sounds at all but the chink ov money, almost snapt my head off a while ago bekase I tould him so. Ah ! my Catherine dear, I fear you 11 incoun- ther opposition in that quarther. But ‘ nel desperantum,’ say I, which mains in plain English, ‘ never dispair.’ ” Catherine said nothing, but instantly began to sing, at the top of her fine rich voice, a song the counsellor had com- posed in praise of her, and shortly afterwards she had the pleasure to see the two sleepy truants bounding across the yard towards the wheat-field, as if her well-known notes had awaked them. While this magical song was thrilling on all hearts, Kate Kavanagh, the witching Kate I stood apart from the others, singing and laughing alternately, her reaping-hook resting on one arm, and dressed in the every-day fashion of the place — the striped linsey short petticoat, and loose bedgown or wrap- per, a dress that would make an ordinary woman frightful, and straw hat, the leaf of which, turned up before and pinned to the crown, displayed her sable locks and fair high forehead to perfection. And many a side-glance the anxious father, Dennis Costigan, cast at this arrangement of Kate’s head- gear, as he broadly hinted that “ for sartin Miss Kavanagh’s complexion would be intirely spiled if she showed it too much to the sun.” “Tut!” was Kate’s good-humoured reply, “‘the life ov an ould hat is to cock it,’ as we say in the counthry. The leaf ov it was flappin’ in my eyes ; the lads coukl’nt see me, nor I them, so a pin settled the bisness and nothing could become her fine Spanish face better, though her toilet was made in perfect carelessness, for dashing Kate had other charms to depend on besides beauty. Imprimus, she was the first dancer in the country, outdoing her dancing-master him- self at “jigs, reels, thribbles, doubles, hornpipes, and petti - coatees .” She was a hilling dancer in both senses of the word, for no boy or girl could keep it up with the spirit of Kate Kavanagh, and she generally disabled six or eight prime beaus at every “hop” she appeared at, which was nearly every night. The worst of it was (as the sorely annoyed fathers and mothers of the neighbourhood said), “ though she fairly kilt all the boys that danced with her, yet sorra one but her- self would sarve them for a partner after all!” Then she was, as Orator Shiel said, “Apollyo in petticoats for singin’!” and songs of love, murder, hunting, war, and sea, would charm with double effect, borne on the musical notes of Kate Kavan- agh. In short, she was “ metal most,” but also too “ attrac- tive and loud complaints and grievances at last came thun- dering on her devoted head. “ Boys growin’ lazy and crazy — . work undone or done badly — time spent an’ mis-spent — messages forgotten and mistaken — girls neglected — matches broken — eternal dancin’, fightin’, black eyes an’ bloody noses” — all, all was laid in a bundle at the door of handsome, ani- mated, dashing, yet very innocent Kate Kavanagh. “What will be done with her at all at all?” iterated the THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 251 suffering fathers and mothers all round the country. “ What will we do with her at all?” “ I’ll tell ye, naiburs,” responded one of the elders, as a body of them returned from chapel on the Sunday after Mosey Fortune’s great “ flare up,” at which three topping bloods fought for the honour of first figuring on the floor with the “ belle o’ the barony.” “ Let a respectable dacent naibur, sitch as Dennis Costigan here for example, go to her father as a friend to advise him to get his daughther married out ov hand, for fear some harm will happen. An’, throth, harm will happen ; for if she’s not the destruction ov herself, she will be the ruination ov others. So, Misther Costigan, let you be the man to spake to Miles Kavanagh.” “ Agreed,” said Dennis Costigan, who was one of the party, and also a suffering father ; and on the ensuing Thursday he intended to proceed on the mission. In the meantime, Kate Kavanagh, never dreaming of the grand hubbub about her, assisted to cut down Mr Costigan’s wheat; and so full of songs, jokes, and attractions was she, that it was observed, even by the farmer himself, that the men, old and young, surpassed themselves at reaping that day. Indeed, Kate set them an excellent pattern ; for, notwithstand- ing that her tongue moved in double-quick time, she took care that her hands should be equally nimble ; and at nightfall, thanks to Kate and the influence of her black eyes, sharp and bright as her sickle, the very large field of wheat was cut down, bound, and stooked to the owner’s satisfaction. Yet, after all, the “flower of Forth” bloomed too near Dennis, or rather his sons, to allow him to be perfectly content. “ How yer father squints at me !” observed Kate to James Costigan, her ardent admirer, and to whom, by the way, she contrived to keep close during the day. “ He looks at me as if I was a crab apple, an’ he had just taken a bite. Wouldn’t it be the best ov a good joke, now, if I’d make him change his tune in spite ov himself?” Jem looked at her very tenderly as he replied, “ Ye do as you like with us, Kate darlin’, but I doubt yer power over my father. He is flent to purty girls, an’ above all to you.” “We shall see,” said Kate; and that very evening, be- tween coaxing and pulling, she actually brought the portly farmer, albeit in no dancing mood, to dance with her (when Peter Hamilton and his violin happened in after suppei’), to the amazement and amusement of a kitchen full of specta- tors, though, as honest Dennis confessed while wiping his broad brows, “he didn’t take sitch a spree for ten years afore !” Handsome Kate at the end of it looked knowingly at Jem Costigan, as much as to say, “ You see this, and you’ll see more.” The next morning an express arrived to Dennis Costigan with the news that his sister’s daughter, Miss Peggy Malone, w r as about to “ change her state,” and that her uncle’s com- pany was required at the wedding. “*Och, murther!” cried the farmer when he had sufficiently expressed his surprise at the news, “ this ould brown coat ov mine will never do for a weddin’ ! — turn it which way I will, it looks shabby enough — pieced at the elbows an’ torn at the cuffs ! So, Jem, asthore, take the black mare an’ set off this minnit to Waxford, an’ buy me the makin’s ov a coat an’ waistcoat ov good green cloth ; it always became my com- plexion. An’, Jem, for yer head don’t make any mistake this time. Those three months past you’re full ov mistakes, an’ nothin’ else.” “ Is it me makes mistakes !” quoth Jem indignantly ; “ that’s what I never did yet, except wanst or twice, an’ I’ll not begin now.” And he mounted the mare, and turned her head to- wards Wexford. But as he should pass Miles Kavanagh’s cottage, “ it would be only right an’ proper to ax if he or Kate had any commands for town.” And — and — when he got to Wexford, he quite forgot the colour his father had ordered, and, thinking of Kate Kavanagh’s hair and eyes, he bought black. Well, never was man in a greater fume than our friend Dennis Costigan when he saw his son’s purchase. “ Black ! black !” he repeated again and again, as he held up the cloth and indignantly scowled at it and its purchaser, “ black for a weddin’ ! Oh, ye born nathural ! what on earth put it into yer head to buy black for a weddin’ ? But I see the thruth in yer eyes this minnit! Ye seen that — that — plague upon earth, Kate Kavanagh, afore ye wint to Waxford, an’ she, as ushial, put every wise thought out ov yer head. Black coat at a weddin’ ! — who ever seen the like afore ?” It was in vain that poor Jem explained that “ the cloth was not all out black, but what was called Oxfert-grey — a mighty ginteel colour, an’ sitch as was worn by all fathers ov fa- milies.” “ That’s as much as to say that it is worn by all ould min?” said the father, nothing better pleased. “ What a judge ye are ! But as the cloth is bought, I must keep it I suppose, an’ I’ll take it to the tailor’s myself, for fear ye’d make some other confounded blundher. I wouldn’t wondher if ye’d tell him to make it a spincer-jacket without skirts, ye have sitch a janious for mistakes !” And putting the parcel of cloth under his arm, he set out for Jemmy Nowlan’s domicile. There he saw no one but the tailor’s old mother sitting very melancholy over the fire. “ Can I see yer son Jemmy, widda Nowlan ?” asked the farmer. “ Och, asthore machree, Misther Costigan,” said the widow, settingup a keen, and rocking herself about, “ ye may see him an’ welkim, but a quare sight ye’ll see whin ye sees him ; an’, linamachree ! the worst ov it is, he can’t see ye now.” “ Why, what’s the matther ?” demanded Mr Costigan alarmed. “ I hope he’s not dead ?” “He’s not dead, but he’s kilt intirely,” sobbed the distressed parent, “ wid- the lambastin’ he got ere-last night at the dance at Dinny Doran’s.” “ Well, an’ what takes him to dances ?” said the farmer in a heat. “ Sure the like shred ov him ought to stay at home an’ mind his bisness.” “ Pulliliew ! is that the feelin’ ye has for yer fella-crathurs, Misther Costigan. But indeed I often sed that same to him myself. ‘ Stay at home, honey,’ I says to him, ‘ an’ don’t be losin’ yer sleep an’ flittherin’ yer slippers at them dances.’ * Hould yer whisht, mother,’ he’ll say to me thin (for he is a mighty obaydient child), ‘ love sthrikes the little as well as the big, an’ I wouldn’t have a sowl above buttons if I wouldn’t take every opportunity ov meetin’ an’ coortin’ Kate Kava- nagh.’ So ye see the win’ sits in that quarther, Misther Cos- tigan.” Mr Costigan actually stamped on the floor with passion when he heard the name of Kate Kavanagh ; and as the tailor’s mother perceived unusual anger in his countenance, she flat- tered herself that it was all sympathy for her “darlint Jemmy, ” and she hastened to give him the particulars “ ov the murdher” foul and unnatural. “ So now, my darlint Misther Costigan,” she concluded, “ his poor eyes is black an’ blue, and closed up into the bargain, an’ he couldn’t handle a needle if it was for Misther Grogan Morgan him- self — God bless him for the fine lan’lord that he is.” If poor Mrs Nowlan knew but all, little sympathy had her wealthy visitor for her battered son, when he understood the cause of his woes, and her pathetic touches of tenderness went for nothing. Muttering something about “ hanging all fools and mothers of fools,” he took a gruff leave of the widow, and returned home with his cloth. There was no other tailor nearer than Wexford, and it was fated that he should wear his old brown coat at the wedding. But that was not his only annoyance. The evening before he set out on his journey, he found that the horse he intended to ride want- ed two shoes; and fearing to trust his sons (both of whom were smitten with the “ belle o’ the barony”) in their present plight, he brought the animal to the forge himself. No smith was to be found. “ Arrah, where the d 1 is he ?” cried the farmer, quite exasperated, and addressing a girl stand- ing knitting at the door of a house near the forge. “ Sorra bit ov us knows, Misther Costigan,” replied the damsel ; “ but we’re guessin’ that he is either at the public house, or at Miles Kavanagh’s, hankerin’ afther his daughther, for betwixt the two places he spinds the most ov his time.” Dennis Costigan said nothing, but he raised up his hands and eyes — eloquence more expressive than words. Kate Kava- nagh again ! As he returned with his unshod horse, he pondered while jogging along. “ What should be about that Kate Kava- nagh above all gilds to set a whole parish astray ?” And as he could find no solution of the enigma short of sorcery, he set it down that she was “ Ould Nick in petticoats !” “ My two hopeful sons is mad afther her,” said he, soliloquising ; “the unfortunate counsellor is fairly cracked about her; the ‘smith is grown wild, an’ the tailor knocked stupid ; heaven only knows what way the carpinther an’ mason is, for she has all the thrades, I’m thinkin’ ; an’ now all I pray is that she may charm some thrav’ling tinker, an’ that he may carry her off body an’ bones for the pace ov the counthry !” 252 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Ah ! little did honest Dennis know who was to be the next victim of merciless Kate Kavanagh ! Well, next morning he set out for Bargie, after taking an affectionate farewell of his good little wife, and after caution- ing her repeatedly to have a constant look-out after the “ boys and Kate Kavanagh.” Fain would he have persuaded his eldest son to accompany him to the wedding, but Jem pa- thetically pleaded “ pains in his bones an’ headache” (heart- ache he should have said), and his father very unwillingly set off without him. Our farmer had only ridden a few miles, when, coming to a village, like a true son of the soil he should stop at the “public” to taste the “mountain dew.” Early as it was in the morning, it appeared there were others as interestingly engaged, and vociferating loudly on some important topic. Whatever it might be, our friend Dennis thought it could be no concern of his, and without making any inquiry he called for his dandy of punch. Overhead the revellers kept up a most astounding debate ; presently were heard shouts, curses, hustling, and blows, and the next instant half a dozen com - batants came head foremost tumbling down the steep and narrow stairs together ! “ Fight it out fair, ye vilyens,” roared the hostess, as her face flamed and her eye fired, “ but fight it out ov my house. Into the street with every mother’s son ov ye, or know for what !” and seizing a pewter beer quart, she ieaped over the counter, and pummelled the backs and heads of all within her reach, till she actually cleared them out of her house. “ What an uproar they make in a quiet place !” said she, as she returned to Dennis Costigan, who was laughing heartily at the spree. Now, there is something extraordinary in the blood of an Irishman. A fight is his choicest amusement, and if he is not a principal actor in one, he must be a spectator. Even our sober barony Forth farmer was excited, and eagerly asked “ what it was all about ?” “All about nonsinse,” replied Mrs Boniface, “all about nonsinse when it is about a woman. All the uproar was about a naibur ov yours, Misther Costigan, who has turned the heads ov some ov our lads here, an’ many others besides — one Miss Kavanagh. Do you know her g ” “ Know her !” exclaimed Dennis, and suddenly set down his glass on the counter, just as he was about to put it to his lips. “ What’s the matther, Mr Costigan’?” asked the landlady alarmed ; “ don’t you like yer punch ?” “ Oh, I likes it well,” returned Mr Costigan, in a sickly tone, “but somehow there’s an all-overness over me that makes me very quare at times, but it will wear off. Here’s to yer health, Mrs Koche !” and gulped off the punch at a draught, as if he didn’t know well what he was about. He then proceeded on his journey, inwardly determined not to stop again, lest he might hear the dreaded name before he arrived at his sister’s, and there he trusted he was free from the infliction. Neverthe- less, the name was mentioned at the wedding, and our farmer, under the influence of good cheer and hilarity, laughed loud and long as his brain began to whirl while thinking of the strange combination of circumstances that brought Kate Kavanagh for ever before him. At this wedding was a certain buck of the name of Magrah. He was a rake and a spendthrift, but, nevertheless, was artful and designing. He had heard of the beauty of Kate Kavanagh, and knowing that Mr Costigan was a neighbour of hers, he tormented him with questions about her, particularly “ if she had a fortune ?” For the first time in his life Dennis Costigan told an un- truth with an evil intention. He protested that Kate Kavan- agh had a fortune, and a good one too; he praised her person and industrious habits ; and at last became so zealous in his friendship to his absent neighbours as to give a cordial invita- tion to Mr Magrah to his house, for the purpose of seeing and being introduced to the “ belle o’ the barony,” but never once asking what sort of person this Magrah "was, or what was his means of living. Mr Pat Magrah very eagerly accepted the invitation, re- turned with Mr Costigan, and was introduced to and charmed with handsome Kate Kavanagh, and he found his quarters so good, and his time pass so agreeably, that instead of a week lie remained a month in the neighbourhood of the “flower of Forth,” quite enamoured wdth her beauty and attractions. Dennis Costigan was delighted. Like a true friend to one or all of the parties, he encouraged the courtship by every means in his power — even lending money to the suitor to en- able him to cut a dash in the eyes of Miles Kavanagh and his daughter. At length the Bargie hero returned to his home for a short time, protesting that “ he was quite confused an’ ashamed ov inthrudin’ so long on Misther Costigan’s hospitality, but that he would sartinly come again to look afther his sweetheart, for none but he should thransplant the ‘flower ov Forth.’ ” On the third evening after his departure, as part of the family of the Costigans were seated round the fire, Ned, our friend Dennis’s younger son, ran in all in a hurry, ex- claiming, “News, friends, news ! there’s a runaway match on the road to-night, for Denny Doran met a couple on horse- back, sweepin’ like the win’ into Waxford, an’ he’ll take his oath Pat Magrah was the man, let who will be the woman !” “ An’ Kate Kavanagh was sartinly the woman !” exclaimed Dennis Costigan, in undisguised delight, while his son James turned as pale as death. But the joy of the one and despair of the other was of short duration ; for in the next instant Kate Kavanagh herself rushed in breathless, and apparently in much uneasiness. “ Where’s Mary Costigan ?” cried she anxiously, and examining the group round the fire. All seemed surprised and alarmed at her anxious appearance and inquiry, and Mrs Costigan repeatedly called her daughter, but got no answer. “ Oh ! ’tis too true !” said Kate ; “ an’, Misther Costigan, I’m sorry to have to say it. The scapegrace you brought to this neighbourhood has carried off your own daughter ! My father met them on the road to Waxford, an’ knew them.” It would be impossible to describe the confusion of the family at this announcement. For a time all were stupified with astonishment. Then the brothers, giving vent to their rage in curses, sprang to their feet, and rushed out of the house ; while the father, stung by many conflicting feelings, hung his head and remained powerless. “ My child ! my tendher dutiful child !” cried the distracted mother, wringing her hands in an agony of weeping. “ My child ! my child!” “ Whisht ! woman,” at last roared the farmer in a voice of thunder, unwilling to let his supposed enemy have the satisfaction to see their distress and confusion. “ Whisht, I say ! what has she done but got a good husband, what they are all strivin’ for, young an’ ould ? Whisht, I say ! or if ye must lament, lament that ye did’nt keep sitch notions out of her head till she was sixteen, any how.” “ She was full seventeen, Dennis,” interposed the mother, in all her grief, as a woman anxious to defend her sex. “ Don’t say the craithur was forward beyant her years, for she was full seventeen last October.” Up started the farmer. “ We’ll soon end that argamint,” said he, seizing a candle, and striding furiously towards the parlour ; “ I have her age down in black an’ white, in my pocket-book.” They could hear him unlock his desk and searching amongst papers ; then followed impatient mutterings, and at length a loud groan as if body and soul were parted. All now rushed to the parlour, where they found poor Costigan the image of heart-broken despair. He stood with his eyes fixed and his face as pale as marble : one hand grasped a pocket-book that seemed torn and empty, while the other hung listless by his side. “ Marcy ov Heaven !” exclaimed the trembling wife, cling- ing to him for support, “ what new misforthin’ has befallen us now ?” The farmer groaned heavily ere he replied ; and then it was in a broken, sunken voice — “We’re ruined, Alley! an robbed, an’ I desarve it ! The vilyen has not only taken our child from us, but robbed us of one hundhred pounds ! See, here is the desk, bruck open, and the pocket-book empty, an’ she did it at his instigation !” This was blow on blow ! Mrs Costigan was a w r eak and delicate woman. She fell senseless to the ground, and was borne to her bed, from which she never rose again. And thus was Dennis Costigan’s treachery rewarded. He had brought a wretch to his house for the purpose of intro- ducing him as an admirer to his honest neighbour’s daughter, without once inquiring into his character or circumstances ; and the young fellow had cleverly turned the visit to account ; for instead of portionless Kate Kavanagh, he carried off young and pretty Mary Costigan, and her hundred pounds ! It is certain our barony Forth farmer felt this triple blow- most severely, and the more so from his consciousness that he deserved it, and prepared the way for his misfortunes THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 253 himself. But he was doomed to feel his lapse from honour and fair dealing yet more acutely, when on the day of his wife’s death he was accosted by his neighbour Miles Kavanagh, as he was droopingly wandering about his fields, shunning the crowds collected at the wake. “ Misther Costigan,” began Miles abruptly — for the Irish peasant teels too warmly to take time to shape his gratula- tions or condolences with the go-about refinements of delicacy — “ I am sorry for yer thrubble this day, an’ the more so bekase Mrs Costigan was ever the kind and friendly naibur, that never changed from hot to could like others. [Dennis winced.] I also heerd ov yer loss in other respects, but that loss will be soon made up, plaise God. In the main time, Misther Costigan, ye might want a thrifle of ready cash for the expinses ov the wake an’ berrin’ ; an’ as I’ve scraped together a matther ov a few pounds for the rint, but which is not called for yet, I’d be very glad to lind it to a friend, an’ may be you’d take it, an’ ye may pay me whin you plaise. Faix, sitch poor men as me ought never to keep money long in the house for fear ov the vilyens ov rogues.” Dennis Costigan was unable to speak, and without accept- ing the money he motioned his honest neighbour away, and turned off abruptly. But Miles Kavanagh was not a man to be deterred from doing a kind action. “ Hut-tut ! Mr Costigan,” he continued, “ don’t turn away from an ould naibur an’ friend. You think now that I bear a grudge to ye on account ov that vilyen ye brought down to court my Kate. I know all, ye see ; an’ if I do, I freely for- give ye. Fathers, an’ ’specially rich fathers sitch as you, are a little partiklar, I suppose, about who their sons would marry, an’ it’s all right. But Dennis Costigan ought to have known ms betther ! He ought to have known that neither I nor my child would seek to enther any man’s family against his will, for he never seen any mean or disaivin’ ways in us. But all’s forgiven an’ forgotten now ; so don’t be the laist suspicious ov us, but take the money that I freely offer, if you want it, an’ you’ll make a poor man an’ naibur happy. Turn about, man, an’ let us live in paice an’ good will while we’re on the earth together.” Dennis Costigan stood, perpendicular as a poplar, with his back to Miles Kavanagh while he was speaking, and the latter thought, from the stiffness of the farmer’s air, that he had nerved himself up to break sooner than bend, and that he was determined to retain his sturdy pride to the last, and perhaps to cut with him altogether. To Miles’s surprise, however, when he ceased speaking, portly Dennis wheeled right about, still perpendicular, seized the hand of his honest friend, and, as if the mere touch of a sympathising friend communicated a softness he was unused to, he wept aloud ! yes, wept ! and they were the first bitter tears he had ever shed. “ But for the sake of human nathur, which I am glad to see so good,” said Dennis Costigan afterwards, “ I’d most rather ye’d have abused me ; I could have borne it betther !” Well, months passed over, and still the “ belle o’ the barony” was making sad havoc with the hearts of the beaus. She had already all the trades enlisted under her banner, and it was a nice question whether she would spare one bachelor in an entire parish, or not. Fathers and mothers still com- plained, and the girls prayed that Kate Kavanagh were mar- ried, and out of the way. Matters were daily growing worse and worse, “ confusion worse confounded,” in the country round. As a last resource, Dennis Costigan was reminded of his promised mission to Miles Kavanagh, to “ coax him to settle his daughter out of hand,” and for the repose of the neigh- bourhood he agreed to do so. He now felt a warm friendship for both father and daughter, and it would make him really happy if he could be the means of assisting pretty Kate to a husband every way worthy of her. Still he had not brought himself to wish his son married to her, for he had taken it into his head that Jem was entitled to a girl with a couple of hundreds at least, and since his late loss he was more anxious on that score than ever. At last, deeming himself bound in honour to delay no longer from fulfilling his promise, Mr Costigan gravely proceeded to Miles Kavanagh’s cottage. He found the “flower of Forth” busily engaged in her little kitchen, scouring her deal tables and chairs, and singing merrily as she scoured. The labour had thrown a lovely glow over her fine face, and her smile was really bewitching as she welcomed Mr Costigan, and handed him a chair. “ Is yer father within, Miss Kavanagh ?” inquired Dennis, as kindly as the recollection of his son’s untoward situation would permit. “ He is not, Mr Costigan,” Kate replied, “ but I think he will be here presently, so you have nothing for it but to sit with a wild girl like me till he comes in.” Down plumped Mr Costigan, and to look at him one would imagine he had come a-suitoring himself, so awkward and confused did he seem while obliged to continue alone with the beautiful “ plague upon earth.” He turned his head away from her, stuck an old pipe in his mouth for employment’s sake, and preserved a dead silence for ten minutes. Kate, perceiving his mood, troubled him with little chat. At length, tired of waiting for the father, the missionary condescended to address the daughter ; and she, judging from the contor- tions of his phiz, thought the effort cost him as much as a spasm of cholera morbus. “ Hem ! haw ! hum ! I wondher very much that you don’.t think ov changin’ yer state, Miss Kavanagh. The marriage life is the happiest life ov all, as I know (sighing deeply), an’ I would recommend ye to thry it and he launched into a long harangue in praise of the honourable state, its happiness, comfort, and safety, compared to a single life — so full of peril to a female ; to all of which our “belle o’ the barony” listened, and assented as demurely as could be wished. After lauding the state, and urging the necessity of it, he next proceeded to point out the most eligible match in his opinion, recom- mending of all things “ an independent man, unburthened by fathers, mothers, sisters, or brothers ; a single man in every sense, with whom she could have everything her own way, and no one to interfere and he named several whom he con- sidered would be unexceptionable, but to all of whom our Kate had a quick and characteristic objection, as prompt and ready as if she had anticipated the visit of the matrimonial delegate, and guessed his errand. This is a specimen of the colloquy. After mentioning several others, “ Well, what do you think ov long Jem Whalen?” “ Why, that one pair of tongs in one house is enough.” “ Oh, that won’t do ! What do ye think ov John Barry ? he’s a snug, warm fella.” “ Warm enough, for he’s the dickens for fightin’ !” “ Well, Redmond Connors, the carpinther ?” “ He’s a close shaver, but not to my taste.” “ Pullilliew ! you’ll never be plaised. Have ye anything to say agin Burn, the mason “ He’s too great a plastherer to be sincere.” “ An’ what chance has the smith?” “ He won’t forge my fetthers, that’s all.” “ An’ the tailor ?” “ Must stitch himself to another.”’ Here the dialogue broke off abruptly, for neither the mis- sionary nor the maiden could longer refrain from laughing ; the former, though a grave and reverend signior at all times, was perfectly overcome by Kate’s naivete and archness ; and though he was farther than ever from attaining his object, he was in perfect good humour. Miles Kavanagh soon after en- tered the cottage, and much was he surprised to find his daughter and Mr Costigan tete-a-tete, and on such excellent terms. Nor was the surprise lessened, when he saw the farmer sit it out for two hours longer, still laughing and still joking, as if he and Kate had ever been the best of friends and banterers. At length Mr Costigan heavily arose from his seat, and declaring that he would come again on the same business (he forgot however to speak to Miles Kavanagh about it), he took his leave. And he did go again and again ; and at the third visit Dennis Costigan and Miles Kavanagh retired to an inner apartment. Kate neither knew nor wished to know the subject of their confab ; but she observed, that as the farmer was retiring after the last visit, he and her father shook hands as if clenching a bargain. “ You’re mighty affectionate !” thought Kate ; “ I wondher yez did’nt kiss !” As well as I can remember, it was about a fortnight from the day of our friend Dennis Costigan’s visit to Miles Kavanagh’s cottage, that Watty Golfer (Watty always walks with his head down ; mind, his face is an ell longer than any other face, so grave and thoughtful is he !) had just got inside father Tobin’s gate, and closed it after him, when he saw his reverence himself thundering down the avenue on St Patrick, his nag. “ Yer sarvint, sur !” said Watty, very humbly, and hat in hand, and propping himself against the shut gate, “ could I make so bould as just to spake one word to yer rivirince ?” r * 254 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. “ Not one word !” replied the priest hastily, “ if you were the bishop ! I am in too great a hurry. Lave my way and open the gate.” “ Thin, God help me,” groaned Watty, but still keeping his position, “ that am neither priest nor bishop ; I have’nt the head-piece for sitch great min ; an’ all clargy must have great heads to keep in the larnin’. Now, is it a great weight intirely, sur ?” The priest laughed in spite of his hurry, but as he well knew the man he had to deal with, he checked himself immediately, and assuming as determined a look as possible under the cir- cumstances, he “ commanded the slieveento open the gate for him.” W atty too knew his man. He knew every variation of the priest’s temper, from its usual lake-like placidity, till it got up to boiling-water heat. He thought it was beginning to “ simmer” a little, but far away yet from “ bubbling and hissing and gratifying his own cool impudence, he continued the process of “ heating up.” “ Why, thin, indeed, what I have to say won’t keep ye long, SU1\” “ Open the gate this instant !” thundered the priest. “ Sartinly, sur,” quoth Watty, turning quickly round and pretending to be very busy with the gate ; “ see this boult now ! Och ! my curse upon the whole corporation ov smiths, includin’ my own dacent uncle who made this same gate, an’ so stiff an’ bad, that all I can do won’t shoot back the boult ! A clever workman is a fine thing ! An’ so you won’t listen to what I have to say, sur ?” “ I can’t, I tell ye. I’m going in all haste to marry a couple.” “ Och ! if I knew that, I’d be very sorry to detain your rivirince ! What I have to say may well keep for another opportunity. See this curst boult now ! Throth the skin is torn off my fingers strivin’ to pull it back, an’ yer rivirince in sitch a disperate hurry ! But ye have the patience of Job himself, beyant all doubt. God help the couple that’s expectin’ ye, sur ! And who are they, the craithurs ?” The impatient churchman looked at his watch and groaned : but as the inexorable gate would not open to let him pass through, he gratified the newsmonger with the information that “ the couple he was about to marry were Dennis Costigan and Catherine, Miles Kavanagh’s daughter.” “ Tunder an’ turf!” exclaimed Mr Golfer, opening his eyes as wide as he could, and raising his hands to express the ex- tremity of astonishment. “ Is it ould Dinnis Costigan, father to Jem, that’s goin’ to be married to handsome Kate Kavan- agh, the belle o’ the barony? — it’s quite onpossible !” “ It’s not impossible,” said the priest, angrily: “and I see nothing extraordinary in her father preferring to give her to a sensible steady old man, than to a wild young one. But don’t I see the gate open, and you pretending it was bolted ? Oh ! ye double-dyed slieveen, quit my way this moment, or by all that’s good I’ll let you feel the weight of this,” and he raised his horsewhip. “ Och ! wid all the pleasure in life!” quoth Watty, jump- ing quickly aside : and the gate flew open as if by magic, •Trough which Father Tobin dashed at full speed. Watty then, sound in wind and limb, shot off through the fields — a short cut to a certain cross-road, about a mile from the priest’s house, and less than a quarter from Miles Kavan- agh’s cottage, by which his reverence should pass. Puffing a little, he was just in time to gravely touch his hat as the priest cantered by. Then raising his voice he shouted after him, “ Ride aisy, ride aisy, yer rivirince ; take things aisy, can’t ye ? Young James Costigan an’ Kate Kavanagh ran off together this mornin’, an’ they’re now man an’ wife ! Arrah, take things aisy, can’t ye ?” “ Oh! yelimb of Satan!” ejaculated the disappointed cler- gyman, as he pulled up to hear these tidings, “ why didn’t you tell me this before, and not send me off on a fool’s errand ?” “ How could I, sur ?” responded the slieveen, meekly, “ when you war in sitch a disperate hurry ? — sure ye wouldn’t let me spake at all at all !” His reverence returned to his home, muttering denuncia- tions upon Watty’s devoted head ; and Watty went his way, laughing immoderately at the success of his joke. He had given his spiritual director a ride of a mile or so without his breakfast, which no clerical stomach, Catholic or Protestant, could put up with, unless with a wedding breakfast in pro- spective. And he told but the truth after all. Young Costi- gan and handsome Kate had that morning given the knowing old ones the slip, and got married in Wexford ; and Dennis, our portly friend Dennis, since he could’nt have the “belle o the barony” for his bride, put a good face on the matter, and received her as his daughter-in-law. Twelve rejected suitors were at the “ hauling home amongst them Counsellor Shiel of course, who favoured the company with a song made for the occasion, the concluding lines of which we give : “ Now industrious agriculthure transplants the “Flower of Forth," To a cosy situation all shelthered from the North 1" M. G. R. ON THE FOLLY OF SOWING BAD SEEDS BECAUSE THEY ARE CHEAP. BY MARTIN DOYLE. A few months ago I saw in the shop window of a petty seeds- man near Dublin, an advertisement announcing the sale o l grass seeds at two shillings and eightpence per barrel of four bushels. I had the curiosity to examine those seeds, which, as may be supposed from their price, were a compound of the germs of weeds, with a small proportion of grass seeds inter- mixed. I have no doubt that some poor and uncalculating petty farmers were silly enough to purchase this trash on the penny-wise and pound-foolish principle, and I well know that there is no point on which greater ignorance prevails than on that of a proper selection of grass seeds, although they should be sown with an accurate regard to the nature of the soil, the number of years during which the land is to be left in meadow or in pasturage, each of which conditions also re- quires a different description of seeds. The successful establishment of grass seeds depends ma- terially, besides the clean and pulverised state of the land, on their adaptation to the soil ; and if that be in a state per- fectly fit for their reception, a much smaller quantity of seed will be sufficient than under the opposite circumstances ; and if the land be in a foul state previously to laying it down, it is clear that the sowing of weed seeds, with a trifling and un- certain admixture of true grass seeds, cannot render it cleaner. In practical result, the farmer who leaves his field to the generosity of nature is more judicious, because in our humid climate the soil possesses a tendency to generate the indigen- ous grasses, of which some are really good, and which, from their overpowering qualities, soon dispossess those that may have been sown, and form a close and excellent turf. But to sow weeds is inexpressibly absurd, and this the man does who buys such a compound as that to which I have referred, or who sows them because he happens to have them by some means, and is unwilling to have them lost. Perhaps they have been collected from his own little rick of hay, which he knows to have been of the worst quality, or some stable boy has given him, or stolen for him, the dirty and perhaps fer- mented sweepings of a nasty hay loft, in which bad hay had been stored, and he is unwilling to throw away what he has so unluckily obtained : his par keen soon bears testimony to his imprudence : and he admits, though reluctantly, that the grass seeds which he had sown were not of the best quality, though they were procured from a hay loft, when he perceives that they have only introduced an artificial increase of bad herbage, which his little stock of animals would unanimously reject, if hunger did not forbid such fastidiousness. But the deluded purchaser very frequently forgets that though he has a great hulk for his money, he has a bad bar- gain; he does not consider that the respectable seedsman, though he charges much more for his seeds, gives a far better quality in general, and does not sell dirt and unprolific grass seeds in the compound which he supplies. Petty seedsmen, no doubt, do so frequently ; and how can it be othenvise, when their stock is a motley contribution from farmers’ wives, hostlers, and labourers, who collect every variety of good and bad seeds from every description of meadow and soil ? It is better to pay a great deal more for the best seed, of which a far lesser proportion will suffice. I can conceive but one case in which a rational farmer could deliberately use such defective seed as that which I saw in the little huckster’s shop, namely, when he is about to surrender his farm (being obligated to lay down his land with grass), and has all that unamiable and inexcusable feeling which so generally prompts men in such circumstances to act in defiance of their great Christian principle of doing unto others as we would have them do unto us. In this case, a selfish ill-natured tenant wishes to annoy his landlord, and his own innocent successor, to the utmost THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 2 55 of his power; and, therefore, while adhering to the letter of his agreement — to sow grass seeds — he breaks it in the spirit, and very effectually, in fact, too, by substituting weeds under the denomination of grasses. A prudent man who is not a perfect judge himself of the matter, will first consider the quality and nature of his land before he sows grass seeds, and then consult Lawson’s Tables, which furnish precise information on every particular as to the quality and quantity of seeds for all soils, and whether for one, two, three years, or for permanent pasture, and he will endeavour to obtain what he wants accordingly ; not that this is often an easy matter of accomplishment, for few seeds- men have the varieties sufficiently distinct, although they are generally polite enough to say that they have them so. But how can they be always sure of this ? We know the great difficulty, even in botanical gardens, of keeping the kinds separate, and the rapidity with which grass seeds become com- mingled. The only certain way is to raise the desired seeds ' in detached portions of land, perfectly clean, and carefully cleared of intruding plants. Can the seedsman, with the most honourable intentions and greatest caution, be himself secure from the effects of negligence or wilful imposition ? But to return to the case of the poor man who thinks he has a bargain when he buys four bushels of bad grass seeds for half-a-crown. Though he sees the bad effects in the in- feriority of his herbage, and at first lays the blame on the pro- per source, he actually persuades himself afterwards (when He, who in his bounty doth “ clothe the grass of the field ” throughout the whole earth, has covered the surface of his field with natural herbage) that to the seeds which he had sown two or three years previously, he is mainly to attribute what the prodigality of Nature, or, more properly, the munificence of God, has supplied. The man who sows bad or ill-suited grass seeds, merely because he has obtained them, and is unwilling to lose the acquisition, reminds me of an old lady who was for many years of her life in the habit of giving annually (in the spring of the year) to her grandchildren, a regular course of sulphur and treacle mixed up together, whether the recipients required it or not. On one occasion, a new servant maid, unacquainted with this system, was sent for the usual quantity of flour of sulphur, but by some mismanagement she brought home a pound of flour of mustard. Her mistress sent her back to the grocer from whom it had been bought, but from previous jealousies or quarrels unnecessary to detail, he refused to take it back again. The poor maid could not herself be expected to substitute the required sulphur, and the old lady was de- termined that the mustard should not be lost. She accord- ingly mixed it with the treacle instead of the other substance, and actually ladled every particle of the compound down the throats of her grandchildren and the servant maid, who con- sented to take her share as a punishment for her inattention, until the whole mixture was consumed. The old lady was less foolish than the farmer who sows the seeds of weeds, be- cause she had previously ascertained that the flour of mus- tard was harmless ; but the husbandman must know that those seeds which are not genuine grass seeds are noxious to his land, by rendering it foul, and it is therefore extravagance and not economy on his part to use bad seeds, merely to save waste. I am sorry to say that the same indifference prevails among the lower classes of our farmers as to seed in general. Ou this subject I shall again occupy a page of the Journal in an early number. A Lazy Dog — Dr Arnaud d’Antilli, one day talking with the Duke de Laincourt upon the new philosophy of M. Descartes, maintained that beasts were mere machines ; that they had no sort of reason to direct them ; and that when they cried or made a noise, it was only one of the wheels of the clock or machine that made it. The Duke, who was of a different opinion, replied, “ I have now in my kitchen two turnspits which take their turns regularly every other day to get into the wheel ; one of them not liking his employment, hid himself on the day he should have wrought, so that his companion was forced to mount the wheel in his stead ; when released, by crying and wagging his tail, he made a sign for those in attendance to follow him. He immediately conducted them to a garret, where he dislodged the idle dog and bit him severely ,”’ — Dublin Univei sity Magazine, CURIOUS COINCIDENCES. One of the most fruitful sources of superstition, and that which has been most productive of what are styled “well- founded and authenticated stories of supernatural occur- rences,” is that Protean monster known in all its forms by the general appellation of “ Remarkable or Curious Coinci- dences.” The frequent occurrence of events precisely similar in their details, though perfectly simple and ordinary individually, is apt to be considered, first, as remarkable, and, if again repeated, wonderful. In a recent number of the Penny Journal mention is made of the curious coincidence of three men having been found drowned at various times in the course of the same winter, in the same river, and the same place, or nearly, each with two shirts on, having given rise to the belief iA that parish that it was unlucky to wear two shirts. But if persons should allow themselves to be guided in their actions by such observances, their lives would become per- fectly burthensome from the constant state of watchfulness in which they would be obliged to live ; for instance, the follow- ing anecdote would show the absolute necessity they would be under of ascertaining the names of their fellow-travellers, lest any one rejoicing in the name of Hugh Williams should be amongst them. The more juvenile readers of the Penny Journal must be informed that the portion of the sea which flows between the island of Anglesea and the coast of Wales, called the Menai Straits, which is now spanned by the celebrated Menai sus- ension bridge, was passable, previously to the erection of the ridge, only by boats, a regular ferry-boat plying constantly at the place called Bangor ferry. On the 6th day of Decem- ber, in the year 1664, the ferry-boat, having eighty-one pas- sengers on board, was upset whilst crossing the Strait, and only one man was saved, whose name was Hugh Williams. On the 6th day of December 1782, the boat then plying, con- taining about sixty persons, was upset, and all were lost except- ing one passenger, whose name proved to be Hugh Williams 1 On the 5th of August 1820, a similar fate befell twenty-five unfortunate persons, one only of whom escaped, whose name was Hugh Williams ! We should hope that none could now be found so weak, but certainly there have been those who, having heard this story, would fear to trust their precious lives in a ferry-boat with any one of the name of Hugh Williams, but a little local know- ledge would go far in removing such an absurd apprehension, as indeed there are few of the most apparently extraordinary events, the origin of which cannot be traced to simple natural causes. The name of Williams prevails in the neighbourhood of Bangor, and Hugh is a favourite Christian name throughout all Wales. It is very probable that persons of the name of Williams, very possibly even Hugh Williams, were lost amongst the passengers on each of those occasions, but these were overlooked, whilst the coincidence of the individual saved being each time of the same name, was observed and recorded ; the circumstance being simply accounted for by the ordinary rules of calculating odds or chances, for where the name of Hugh Williams prevailed, there was certainly a greater chance of one of that name being saved than one of any other, and, as we have before remarked, no account was made of how many Hugh Williamses perished. N. Industry — Let me say a word in behalf of this home-spun virtue. It may seem superfluous, perhaps impertinent, to en- force industry upon the hardest-working people in the world, as I conceive our good countrymen to be ; but I speak of it as a part of education — as a principle to be inculcated upon childhood. Its proper limits I shall hereafter attempt to de- fine. In this country it is the duty of every individual to live an active life. No one, even though he be rich, has a right to be idle or useless. In the hive of bees there is a privileged class of drones ; but there the government is despotic, with a queen at its head. Ours is a republican government, which admits of no drones, and tolerates no aristocratic indolence. Nor is industry more a duty to society than a source of indi- vidual happiness. There are no pleasures so sweet as those earned by effort, no possessions so dear as those acquired by toil. The truth is, that the main happiness of life consists in the vigorous exercise of those faculties which God has given us. Thus it usually happens that more enjoyment is found ia 256 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. the acquisition of property than in its possession. How often does the rich man, surrounded with every luxury, look back from the pinnacle which he has attained, with fond regret, to those days of humble but happy toil when he was struggling up the steep ascent of fortune ! Make industry, then, a part of fireside education. Teach it to your children as a point of duty ; render it familiar to them by practice. Personal exer- tion and ready activity are natural to some children, and these hardly need any stimulus to the performance of duties requir- ing bodily exertion. There are others who have an indolence, a reluctance to move, either uniform or periodical, in their very constitution. If neglected, these children will grow up in the habit of omitting many duties, or of performing only those which are agreeable. It is indispensable that such should be trained to patient exertion, habituated to the performance of every duty in the right time and the right way, even though it may require self-denial and onerous toil. A person who cannot compel himself, from a mere sense of duty, to over- come a slothful reluctance to do what is disagreeable, is but half educated, and carries about him a weakness that is likely to prove fatal to his success in life. Such a person may act vigorously by fits and starts as he may be occasionally urged by impulse ; but the good begun will often remain unfinished, and, from subsequent negligence, will result in final disaster. The only safe way is to found industry upon principle, and establish it by habit. While, therefore, I would inculcate industry, I would remark that it may be carried to excess. Every virtue has its bordering vice. The extreme of courage touches upon the precincts of rashness, and a step beyond the proper limit of industry brings you into the dreary regions of avarice Fireside Education , by S. G. Goodrich, an Ameri- can Author. The Sabbath. — Nature always seemed to me to “ keep Sabbath” in the wilderness. I used to fancy that the wild birds were more quiet on that day, sitting on the branches with their heads under their wings, smoothing their plumage, or looking quietly about them, and sometimes venturing a faint warble, scarcely above a whisper. And I have seen a large wolfish animal stand for hours upon a dry log, on the bank of the river, contemplating the stream, or gazing into the air ; once or twice, perhaps, starting suddenly a few paces, but then halting as if he had given up the idea ; and his tail all the while hanging listlessly down, as if indicating that no enterprise could be undertaken on that day. Just like the merchant who may be seen in the city, on a bright Sunday morning, in clean shirt collar, and with hands thrust into his pockets, loitering slowly down the street, or standing in rumi- nating attitude at the corner, pondering carefully every step of the morrow’s tangled path, or perhaps calculating the amount of time lost in Sundays, by the whole world, taken individually and collectively from Moses’s day to the present time ; but on the whole, enduring the Sabbath with Christian resignation. Critics It is a little singular that the mass should attach much importance to the small opinions of every-day critics. Because a man happens to have the facilities of publishing his views and opinions to the world, though he be the veriest blockhead on earth, his verdict is often of more than ordinary weight among men. Indeed, a Johnson could not influence some men by his verbal opinion, to the extent that an ignora- mus can influence them through “ press and types.” The “ dignity of print” has a strange effect. Although it is but one man who speaks, and he may have one hundred opponents who may argue successfully against him, yet they will all fail with the public. But let either of them publish the same opinion, and the ore, which was rich and weighty, becomes refined. Common critics, moreover, are always ready to find imperfections, for thus will the public be made acquainted with their penetration. In fact, many of them seem to think that to criticize is to find fault ; “ else (they reason) where is the necessity of criticism ?” It is said that any fool can fire a house. So can any man criticize a book ; but very few can build the one or write the other. Many of the vinegar-critics of the day who haunt the shores of literature, would utterly fail in penning even the preface to a respectable book. It is a recorded and well-known fact that many of our standard works were rejected for the want of a publisher, owing to the unfavourable opinion of stolid rule-and-figure critics ; but when they came before the people, who, judging from the impulses of the heart, are never wrong, how soon was their verdict reversed! The people are the only true tribunal. They separate, with the hand of a refiner, the dross from the gold. By them genius is preserved, and pretension discarded Knickerbocker. The boxes of the opera, splendid as they are, and splendid as the appearance of those in them is, do not breathe a spirit of enjoyment. They are rather like the sick wards of luxury and idleness, where people of a certain class are condemned to perform the quarantine of fashion for the evening Hazlitt. Deceivers — We are born to deceive or to be deceived. In one of these classes we must be numbered ; but our self- respect is dependent upon our selection. The practice of de- ception generally secures its own punishment ; for callous indeed must be that mind which is insensible of its ignominy I But he who has been duped is conscious, even in the very moment that he detects the imposition, of his proud superiority to one who can stoop to the adoption of so foul and sorry a course. The really good and high-minded, therefore, are seldom provoked by the discovery of deception ; though the cunning and artful resent it, as a humiliating triumph ob- tained over them in their own vocations. Wit. — Wit is the lightning of the mind, reason the sun- shine, and reflection the moonlight ; for as the bright orb of night owes its lustre to the sun, so does reflection owe its ex- istence to reason. Premature Wisdom The premature wdsdom of youth resembles the forced fruit of our hot-houses ; it looks like the natural production, but has not its flavour or raciness. Poor. — A term of reproach in England, and of pity in most other countries. Poets and Astronomers Poets view nature as a book in which they read a language unknown to common minds, as astronomers regard the heavens, and therein discover objects that escape the vulgar ken. Peace of Mind — Though peace of mind does not con- stitute happiness, happiness cannot exist without it ; our serenity being the result of our own exertions, while our hap- piness is dependent on others : hence the reason why it is so rare ; for, on how few can we count ? Our wdsdom, there- fore, is best showm in cultivating all that leads to the preser- vation of this negative blessing, which, while we possess it will prevent us from ever becoming wholly wretched. ANSWER TO THE ENIGMA IN No. 17. Mr Teague, the enigma you sent me, my honey. Must mean, I conjecture, a round bit o' money ; But what it can be, is a regular stopper, Unless it's a coinage from some kind of copper ; Though your Dean of St Patrick s did not like the stuff, For this very fair reason — twas not big enough. So here goes a guess — and, in truth, to be plain, It's a good honest Penny your honour will mane. Ah, Geordy, full oft have they tried to disgrace, With buffets and blows, thy right royal old face : Let them hammer away till they're all in a pet. For real solid worth thou’rt the best of the set. E'en O'Connell must own, though he don't like the mint. That thou art the cream of his flourishing rint ! As for gold, it flies off like the chaff or the stubble, Leaving little behind but vexation and trouble. And that mealy-fac’d silver, experience of old Says is only too apt to take wings after gold — In fact, I ne'er found, from the mohur to piastre, That one kind or other went slower or faster ; Do just as you like, it seems a thing plann'd, That one of those vagrants shall ne er be on hand. We well know what wonders a Penny can do. What instruction and comfort a mite will bestow. The stores of the world, its rust and its lumber. Come brighten'd and polish'd in each penny number. The well-spring of knowledge is open to all — The Penny has spread it through cottage and hall. So now, my friend Teague, let the great have the guinea. You and 1 11 be contint if we ve always a Pinny. Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin. — Agents : — R. Groombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London ; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester ; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool ; J. Drake, Birmingham ; Slocombe & Simms, Leeds , Fraser and Crawford, George Street, Edinburgh ; and David Robertson, Trongate, Glasgow. _ - " THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 33. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 1841. Volume I. CAHIR CASTLE, COUNTY OF TIPPERARY To a large portion of our readers it will be scarcely neces- sary to state, that the little town of Cahir is in many re- spects the most interesting of its size to be found in the province of Munster, we had almost said in all Ireland ; and that, though this interest is to a considerable extent derived from the extreme beauty of its situation and surrounding scenery, it is in an equal degree attributable to a rarer qua- lity in our small towns — the beauty of its public edifices, and the appearance of neatness, cleanliness, and comfort, which pervades it generally, and indicates the fostering protection of the noble family to whom it belongs, and to whom it an- ciently gave title. Most of our small towns require brilliant sunshine to give them even a semi-cheerful aspect : Cahir looks pleasant even on one of our characteristic gloomy days. As it is not, however, our present purpose to enter on any detailed account of the town itself, but to confine our notice to one of its most attractive features — its ancient castle — we shall only state that Cahir is a market and post town, in the barony of Iffa and Offa West, county of Tipperary, and is situated on the river Suir, at the junction of the mail-coach roads leading respectively from Waterford to Limerick, and from Cork by way of Cashel to Dublin. It is about eight miles W.N.W. from Clonmel, and the same distance S.W. from Cashel, and contains about 3500 inhabitants. The ancient and proper name of this town is Cahir-duna- iascaigh, or, the circular stone fortress of the fish-abounding Dun, or fort ; a name which appears to be tautological, and which can only be accounted for by the supposition that an earthen Dun, or fort, had originally occupied the site on which a Cahir, or stone fort, was erected subsequently. Examples of names formed in this way, of words having nearly synonymous meanings, are very numerous in Ireland, as Caislean-dun-more, the castle of the great fort, and as the Irish name of Cahir Castle itself, which, after the erec- tion of the present building, was called Caislean-na-caherach- duna-iascaigh, an appellation in which three distinct Irish names for military works of different classes and ages are combined. Be this, however, as it may, it is certain that a Cahir or stone fort occupied the site of the present castle in the most remote historic times, as it is mentioned in the oldest books of the Brehon laws; aqd the Book pf Lecan records its de-* •258 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. struction by Cuirreach, the brother-in-law of Felemy Recht- mar, or the Lawgiver, as early as the third century, at which time it is stated to have been the residence of a female named Badamar. Whether this Cahir was subsequently rebuilt or not, does not appear in our histories as far as we have found ; nor have we been able to discover in any ancient document a record of the erection of the present castle. It is stated in- deed by Archdall, and from him again by all subsequent Irish topographers, that Cahir Castle was erected prior to the year 1142 by Conor-na-Catharach O’Brien, king of Thomond. But this is altogether an error. No castle properly so called of this class was erected in Ireland till a later period, and the assertion of Conor’s having built a castle at Cahir is a mere assumption drawn from the cognomen na-Catharach, or of the Cahir or Fort by which he was known, and which we know from historical evidences was derived not from this Cahir on the Suir, but from a Cahir which he built on an island in Lough Derg, near Killaloe, and which still retains his name. The true name of the founder of Cahir Castle, and date of its erec- tion, must therefore remain undecided till some record is found which will determine them ; and in the meantime we can only indulge in conjecture as to one or the other. That it owes its origin, indeed, to some one of the original Anglo-Norman settlers in Ireland, there can be little doubt, and its high anti- quity seems unquestionable. As early as the fourteenth cen- tury, it appears to have been the residence of James Galdie (or the Anglified) Butler, son of James, the third Earl of Or- mond, by Catherine, daughter of Gerald, Earl of Desmond — whose descendant Thomas Butler, ancestor to the present Earl of Glengal, was advanced to the peerage by letters patent, dated at Dublin the 10th November 1543 (3-i Henry VIII.) by the title of Baron of Cahir. In the subsequent reigns of Elizabeth and the unfortunate Charles I, Cahir Castle appears as a frequent and important scene in the melancholy dramas of which Ireland was the stage, and its history becomes a portion not only of that of our country generally, but even in some degree of that of England. It will be remembered, that, when by the battle of the Blackwater in 1598 the English power in Irelaud was reduced to the lowest state, and the queen felt it necessary to send Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, with an army of more than 20,000 men — the largest body, as the Four Masters state, that had ever before come into Ireland since the time of Strongbow — to subdue the rebels, that unfortunate favourite, neglectful of the instructions imperatively given to him that he should pro- secute the Ulster rebels, and plant their strongholds with garrisons, marched into Munster, where the only deed of importance he achieved was the taking of Cahir Castle, and the forcing of the Lord Cahir and some other disaffected no- blemen of Munster to submit, and accept the queen’s protec- tion. The only favourable result of this misguided enter- prise, as Morrison acquaints us, “ was the making a great prey of the rebels’ cattle in those parts ; he cast the terror of his forces on the weakest enemies, whom he scattered and con- strained to fly into woods and mountains to hide themselves.” But these weak rebels did not remain long inactive, or exhibit weakness in attack ; and the earl’s journey back to Dublin towards the end of July was marked by a series of disasters that sealed his doom; or, as the Four Masters remark, “ The Irish afterwards were wont to say that it were better for the Earl of Essex that he had not undertaken this expedition from Dublin to Hy-Conell Gaura, as he had to return back from his enterprise without receiving submission or respect from the Geraldines, and without having achieved any ex- ploit except the taking of Cahir-duna-iasgach.” The taking of Cahir Castle was not effected without con- siderable trouble, though it is stated that Essex’s army amounted to 7000 foot and 1300 horse. O’Sullivan states that the siege was prolonged for ten days, in consequence of the Earl of Desmond and Redmond Burke having come to its relief; and the Four Masters state in their Annals that “ the efforts of the earl and his army in taking it were fruit- less, until they sent for heavy ordnance to Waterford, by which they broke down the nearest side of the fortress, after which the castle had to be surrendered to the Earl of Essex and the queen.” This event occurred on the 30th of May 1599. As Morrison, however, remarks, the submission of the Lord Cahir, Lord Roche, and others, which followed on this exploit, were only feigned, as subsequent events proved. After the earl’s departure, they either openly joined the rebel party again, or secretly combined with them; and on the 23d of May in the year following, the Castle of Cahir was surprised and taken by the Lord Cahir’s brother, and, as it was said, with his connivance. Of this fact the following ac- count is given by Sir George Carew in his Pacata Hibernia : — “ The president being at Youghall in his journey to Cork, sent Sir John Dowdall (an ancient captain in Ireland) to Cahir Castle, as well to see the same provided of a sufficient ward out of Captain George Blunt’s company, as to take order for the furnishing of them with victuall, munition, and other warlike provision ; there he left the eighth or ninth of May, a serjeant, with nine-and-twenty soldiers, and all neces- sary provision for two months, who notwithstanding, upon the three-and-twentietk of the same, were surprised by James Galdie, alias Butler, brother to the lord of Cahir, and, as it was suspected by many pregnant presumptions, not without the consent and working of the lord himself, which in after- times proved to be true. The careless security of the war- ders, together with the treachery of an Irishman who was placed sentinel upon the top of the castle, were the causes of this surprise. “ James Galdie had no more in his company than sixty men, and coming to the wall of the bawne of the castle undisco- vered, by the help of ladders, and some masons that brake holes in some part of the wall where it was weak, got in and entered the hall before they were perceived. The serjeant, named Thomas Quayle, which had the charge of the castle, made some little resistance, and was wounded. Three of the warde were slaine ; the rest upon promise of their lives rendered their armes and were sent to Clonmell. Of this surprise the lord president had notice when he was at Kilmallock, whereupon he sent directions for their imprisonment in Clonmell until he might have leisure to try the delinquents by a marshals’ court. Upon the fourth day following, James Butler, who took the castle, wrote a large letter to the president, to excuse himself of his traitorly act, wherein there were not so many lines as lies, and written by the underhand working of the lord of Cahir his brother, they conceiving it to be the next way to have the castle restored to the baron.” Cahir Castle was, however, restored to the government in a few months after, as detailed in the following characteristic manner by Sir George Carew : — “ Towards the latter end of this month of August, the lord deputy writing to the president about some other occasions, it pleased him to remember Cahir Castle (which was lost as before you have heard), signifying that lie much desired to have that castle recovered from the rebels, the rather because the great ordnance, or cannon, and a culverin being left there by the Earl of Essex, were now possessed by the rebels. Tnis item from the lord deputy spurred on the president without further delay to take order therein, and therefore presently by his letters sent for the lord of Cahir to repair unto him, who (as before you have heard) was vehemently suspected to have some hand both in the taking and keeping thereof. The Baron of Cahir being come, the council persuaded him to deal with James Butler (nicknamed James Galdie) his brother, about the redelivering thereof to her Majesty’s use ; but his answer was, that so little interest had he in his brother, as the meanest follower in all his country might prevail more with him than himself (for he was unwilling to have the castle regained by the state, except it might again be left wholly to him, as it was before the first winning thereof) ; which the pre- sident surmising, told him, that if it might speedily be yielded up unto him, he would become an humble suitor to the lord deputy (in his behalf) for the repossessing thereof ; otherwise he would presently march with his whole army into those parts, and taking the same by force, he would ruin and rase it to the very foundation, and this he bound with no small pro- testations. Hereupon Justice Comerford being dispatched away with the lord of Cahir, they prevailed so far with young Butler, that the castle, upon the twenty-ninth following, was delivered to the state, as also all the munitions, and the great ordnance conveyed to Clonmell, and from thence to Waterford.” Notwithstanding these imputed crimes of the Lord Cahir, and the open treason of his brother, he received the queen’s pardon by patent, dated the 27th day of May 1601, and died in possession of his castle and estates in January 1628. His brother James Galdie, however, lived to take his share in the troubles that followed in 1641, and suffered accordingly. From these stories of violence and treachery we turn with pleasure to record a fact of a peaceful character, in which 259 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Cahir Castle appears as a scene of hospitality and splendid re- velry. This occurred in 1626, when the Lord Deputy Falkland, in making a tour of Ireland, after residing a considerable time at the Earl of Ormond’s castle at Carrick-on-Suir, in some time after came to the lord of Cahir, and was entertained by him in his castle with the greatest splendour. But if these old walls had tongues, they could probably tell us of many scenes of a different character from that we have just narrated, and of which one has been dimly preserved in history. Immediately after the death of Thomas, the fourth Lord Cahir, in 1628, as already stated, his property having passed to his only daughter and heir Margaret, who was married to her kinsman Edmund Butler, the fourth Lord Dunboyne, the latter, while residing in this castle with his wife, slew in it, or murdered, perhaps, would be the more cor- rect word, Mr James Prendergast, the owner of Newcastle, for which he was confined a prisoner in the Castle of Dublin ; and his Majesty having granted a commission on the 4th of June in that year, constituting the Lord Aungier high steward of Ireland for the trial of his lordship, he was tried by his peers accordingly, but acquitted, fifteen peers voting him in- nocent, and one, the celebrated Lord Dockwra, voting him guilty.. During the troubles which followed on the rebellion of 1641, Cahir Castle w r as taken for the Parliament, by surrender, in the beginning of August 1647 by Lord Inchiquin ; and it was again taken in February 1650 "by Cromwell himself, the gar- rison receiving honourable conditions. The reputation which the castle had at this period as a place of strength will ap- pear from the account of its surrender as given in the manu- scripts of Mr Cliffe, secretary to General Ireton, published by Borlase. After observing that Cromwell did not deem it prudent to attempt the taking of Clonmel till towards summer, he adds, that he “ drew his army before a very considerable castle, called Cahir Castle, not very far from Clonmel, a place then possessed by one Captain Mathews, who -was but a little before married to the Lady Cahir, and had in it a considerable num- ber of men to defend it ; the general drew his men before it, and for the better terror in the business, brought some cannon with him likewise, there being a great report of the strength of the place, and a story told the general, that the Earl of Essex, in Queen Elizabeth’s time, lay seven or eight weeks before it, and could not take it. He was notwithstanding then resolved to attempt the taking of it, and in order thereunto sent them this thundering summons : — ‘ Sir — Having brought the army and my cannon near this place, according to my usual manner in summoning places, I thought fit to offer you terms honourable for soldiers, that you may march away with your baggage, arms, and colours, free from injuries or violence ; but if I be, notwithstanding, necessitated to bend my cannon upon you, you must expect what is usual in such cases. To avoid blood, this is offered to you by Your servant, O. Cromwell. For the Governor at Cahir Castle, 24th February 1649’ (1650.) “ Notwithstanding the strength of the place, and the unsea- sonableness of the time of the year, this summons struck such a terror in the garrison, that the same day the governor, Cap- tain Mathews, immediately came to the general and agreed for the surrender,” — &c. It was well for Captain George Mathews, or Mathew, as the name is now generally written, and his garrison too, that he had not the hot-headedness of an Irishman, or he would pro- bably have set this “ thundering summons” at defiance, and Cahir Castle would not only have shared the fate of most Irish fortresses at that period, but, what would have been a far greater loss, the Apostle of Temperance, who has done as much to regenerate the people of Ireland as Cromwell did to destroy them, would in all human probability never have existed. But we are exceeding the limits assigned to us, and can only add a few words of general description. Cahir Castle is built upon a low rugged island of limestone, which divides the water of the Suir, and which is connected by a bridge with the two banks of the river. It is of considerable extent, but irregular outline, consequent upon its adaptation to the form and broken surface of its insular site, and consists of a great square keep, surrounded by extensive outworks, forming an outer and an inner ballium, with a small court-yard between the two ; these outworks being flanked by seven towers, four of which are circular, and three of larger size, square. From a very interesting and accurate bird’s-eye view of the castle, as besieged by the Earl of Essex, given in the Pacata Hibernia, we find, that notwithstanding its great age, and all the vicissitudes and storms it has suffered, it still presents, very nearly, the same appearance as it did at that period ; and from the praiseworthy care in its preservation of its present lord, it is likely to endure as a beautiful historical monument for ages longer. P. IRISH MUSICIANS OF THE LAST CENTURY, STORY OF DOCTOR COGAN. In this grave cigar-smoking age of ours, in which Irishmen exhibit so little of the love of fun and merriment — the drol- leries and escapades which distinguished them in preceding ages — it is a pleasant thing to us septagenarians to look back occasionally to our youthful days, and call up from the store- house of our memories the merry men whom and whose merry freaks we were either familiar with, or at least had heard of or seen. One of these choice spirits is just now present with us in our mind’s eye, and we are certain that we have only to mention his name, to bring him equally before a great number of our Dublin readers. We mean the late musical doctor, John Cogan. There, now, Dublin readers, some thousands of you at least have the man before you, though many of you are unfortunately too young to have heard his exquisitely delicate and expressive hands on the piano, extemporising with matchless felicity upon Garryowen or some other melody of Old Ireland ; or participated in his playful and always inoffensive merriment and good humour. Even the youngest of you, however, must surely remember the little man — little indeed in size, but every inch of him a gen- tleman, who but a few years since might be occasionally seen taking an airing, when the sun shone on him, in Sackville Street, sometimes leaning on his servant’s arm, and at others driven in his pony-phaeton, which his prudence in youth had enabled him to secure for his days of feebleness and old age. That pleasant intellectual countenance, bright and playful as his own music even to the last, has disappeared from amongst us ; but the memory of such a man should not be allowed to die, and we will therefore, while in the vein, devote a column of our Journal to a sketch of one of the many incidents re- membered of his long life, as illustrative in some degree not only of his character, but also of that of society in Dublin during the last century. From what we have already stated, it will have appeared that Doctor Cogan was not only great as a musical performer, but also as a performer in innocent waggery. It would indeed have been difficult to determine in which performance he most excelled, or whether he most loved his music or his joke. He was not only a good theorist, but loved a bit of harmony intensely, and a laughing chorus was his prime delight. These he would often accompany or direct as occasion required, to heighten the pleasures of a musical treat, when he rarely ne- glected a happy opportunity of introducing some vivace move- ment of his own composing, provided he could previously pre- pare a score of good fellow’s capable of performing effectively the several parts assigned them in it, which among his apt compeers was rarely a difficult task. A lover of good cheer and hospitality, which he both gave as well as partook of with a true Irish spirit, it was a settled point with the Doctor that brother professors should at all times live in harmony with each other, and receive brotherly encouragement ; nor were such feelings of an exclusively national character, but ex- tended equally to foreigners coming to Ireland, who, if at all known to fame, were sure of receiving a friendly and cead mile failte reception at his hands. If, it is true, he could on such occasions indulge a little innocent joke, by playing off a specimen of Irish counterpoint at the expense of such visitors, it was so much the more agreeable to him, as in the following instance of the concerted movement which he got up to do honour to the celebrated violinist Pinto, w r ho visited our city about sixty years since. But before we detail the circumstances attendant on this reception, it is necessary that we should tell our worthy readers something of the person wdio was selected by the Doctor to play a leading part — the principal fiddle — on the occasion ; and the more particularly as his name is unknown to the great majority of the present generation, and almost forgotten by the few who may still survive him. The person we allude to was Robert Meekins, or, as he was familiarly called, “ Bob,” a violinist of great tavern-playing 260 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. notoriety in his day. Like his brother professors, the harpers of the last century, of whom Mr Bunting has given us such cha- racteristic anecdotes, Bob was a thoroughly Irish musician in every sense of the word ; and though, as we believe, he had never travelled out of Dublin, his native city, few were found to equal him on his instrument either in tone, execution, or expression of feeling. From the earliest period of his musical studies, how- ever, he had indulged in a wild and extemporaneous mode of practice, which proved most injurious to his professional career in after life, and unfortunately for him, being moreover an inveterate hater of dry study, Bob more frequently wetted his whistle than he rosined his bow. Under the in- fluence of such bad practice he became at last incurably vicious, and rarely kept within reasonable bounds, either in the way of drinking or fiddle-playing. Indeed, whatever command poor Bob retained over his instrument, he had none over him- self. Leader after leader sought to curb him in his wild ex- travagances of style, in the vain hope of diverting his great natural musical powers into legitimate courses ; but Bob would never be led, and as to driving him, that was found to be equally impracticable. He would go his own way, and no other. He would read concerted music, not as it was intended, but as he thought it should be. His passion for obligatoes was unconquerable, and he rarely arrived at an ad libitum that he did not avail himself of it with a vengeance; and thus, while his brother musicians were attending to the pauses, perfectly content with the single note before them, an impromptu cadence would be heard meandering through a chord, telling of Bob’s wanderings, and he the while so absorbed as to be equally heedless of the elbow-punchings of his neighbours, the authority of his leader, or the intentions of the composer. No composer indeed came up to his fancy— entirely ; some- thing was always wanting, and his fingers were ever upon the alert to supply that something which was not set down for him : and should a remonstrance come from the leader, it but too frequently produced a presto movement on the part of Bob, leaving a vacancy in the orchestra to be filled up as it might, at the shortest possible notice. Vain of his powers, and scorning restraint, his kicks against orchestral rule became beyond all bearing, and so he was himself at last kicked out from all decent musical society. Thus finding himself alone, he naturally turned solo player, and became one of the lions of Dublin, drawing nightly crowds to the taverns he frequented, where he could indulge his love for flights of fancy to his heart’s content. But, unfortunately for him, in this new sphere he was enabled by the liberal contributions of his ad- mirers to indulge also without restraint that more fatal passion for drink which had proved his bane through life, leading him step by step, as usual with such reckless characters, to an untimely and degraded grave. It is generally believed that poor Bob Meekins died from the effects of intemperance in some wretched doorway in an alley of our city. Such, then, was the person selected by Doctor Cogan to perform a principal part in the little musical drama which he had prepared for the reception of the great foreign violinist of the day, and the place chosen for its performance was the once celebrated hotel or tavern called the Pigeon-house, which at that period was the common resort for the meetings or departures of friends to or from England by the Holyhead packets. Thither accordingly the Doctor and his musical companions repaired, to await the expected arrival of the Signor, and ordered dinner with the determination that he should be their guest. It is not necessary to dilate upon the reception given to the brother professor, or to particularise all the good things that were said, sung, and eaten upon the occa- sion. It is sufficient to say that every thing passed off in true Hibernian style, to the astonishment as well as gratification of Pinto, who was delighted to find himself surrounded by so many new and warm-hearted friends, each keeping up the tide of merriment by a rapid circulation of the bottle amid the joyous flow of song, jest, and laugh. But where was Bob all this time ? He was placed in an adjoining passage await- ing a silent signal, and being primed for action, was impatient for the moment of attack upon the excitable nerves of the de- lighted Italian. This signal was at length given, and so effec- tually arranged were the parts given to each of the Doctor’s apt pupils, that as the soul-thrilling tones of Bob’s violin vi- brated through the room, it seemed to produce no other effect upon their ears than a sotto voce expression of displeasure, or forzando of horror. All this seemed quite spontaneous, and was at the same time so judiciously managed as to allow the instrument to predominate over the voices, and thus enable the practised ear of Pinto to discover in the invisible minstrel a master spirit — nor did the well-timed crescendo of “ Turn the scraping villain out,” “ Curse the noisy blackguard,” &c. &c. arrive at its climax, until Bob’s varied and expressive exe- cution had completely bewildered the poor Signor with amaze- ment. T o him, indeed, the scene was one as unusual as it was unexpected ; and when silence was somewhat restored, he eagerly asked in his broken English whence the tones had come ; and truly ludicrous were the varied expressions of the Italian’s intellectual countenance on being assured by the Doctor and his assistants that the performer who had so en- raptured him was a rascally itinerant fiddler, who gained a precarious livelihood by scraping at taverns. The effect may easily be imagined. The Signor insisted upon seeing him ; and when Bob’s whisky face and tattered habiliments became visible, Pinto sat fixed in mute bewilderment, conjuring up in his excited imagination the apparition of a Meekins at the corner of every street ; and the success of the Doctor’s joke was complete, when the poor Italian, with a forlorn and chopfallen visage, was heard to mutter, “ Lit-el fid-el— lit-el fid-el — you call — if dis lit-el fidel, me go back, me no i »> use ! A simultaneous burst of laughter was the response to these hurried and broken accents of surprise and chagrin. But enough was effected, and in quick compassion for poor Pinto’s feelings, he was at once made to understand the whole con- trivance, on which he laughed as loudly as any of the merry Irish group around him. The scene of joyousness was kept up till an early hour, during which Meekins occasionally revelled in the music of his own dear land, to the increased delight not only of the Signor, but of all present on the occasion. W. THE INQUIRY. Tell me, ye winged winds, That round my pathway roar, Do ye not know some spot Where mortals weep no more ? Some lone and pleasant dell, Some valley in the west, Where, free from toil and pain. The weary soul may rest ? The loud wind dwindled to a whisper low, And sigh’d for pity as it answered “ No !" Tell me, thou mighty deep. Whose billows round me play, Knowest thou some favour’d spot, Some island far away, Where weary man may find The bliss for which he sighs ? Where sorrow never lives, And friendship never dies ? The loud waves, rolling in perpetual flow. Stopp’d for a while, and sigh’d, to answer “ No 1’ And thou, serenest moon, That, with such holy face, Dost look upon the earth Asleep in night’s embrace, Tell me, in all thy round Hast thou not seen some spot. Where miserable man Might find a happier lot ? Behind a cloud, the moon withdrew in woe, And a voice, sweet, but sad, responded “ No !'* Tell me, my secret soul, O ! tell me, Hope and Faith, Is there no resting-place From sorrow, sin, and death ? Is there no happy spot Where mortals may be bless’d — Where grief may find a balm, And weariness a rest ? Faith, Hope, and Love, best boons to mortals given, Waved their bright wings, and whisper'd, “ Yes ! in Heaven !” — Mackay's Poems THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 261 ON THE SUBJUGATION OF ANIMALS BY MEANS OF CHARMS, INCANTATIONS, AND DRUGS. Second Article. SERPENT-CHARMING AS PRACTISED BY THE JUGGLERS OF ASIA. In my last paper I endeavoured to furnish my readers with a description of serpent-charming, as at present practised by the jugglers of Egypt, Arabia, and India. I now come to a review of the opinions maintained respecting this mysterious art, and the secret on which it depends, by some of the most eminent philosophers who have turned their attention to the subject. These opinions are as various as they are numerous, no two individuals who have written upon the practice agreeing in any one particular, save only their determination to regard the whole affair as an imposture— the snake-charmers as clever and designing cheats, and all who believed in the reality of their performances, as silly dupes. I shall merely advert to some of the most striking of these suppositions, and then proceed to an investigation of their merits, ere advancing my own theory on the subject. Many travellers who have written on the practice of ser- pent-charming have declared it as their conviction that the process is based in deception, that is, that the serpents charmed forth from holes are by no means wild creatures, who really and naturally inhabit those recesses, but animals which have been previously tamed, their poisonous fangs extracted, and placed there by the juggler or an accomplice, in order to the performance of his pretended miracle. Amongst the most prominent of these objectors are to be found the Abbe Dubois and the traveller Denon ; and the latter author even goes so far as to affirm that the secret of the Psylli was a piece of nonsense that he might easily have discovered had he been so disposed. A precious traveller truly ! to have had it in his power to discover a secret that a hundred naturalists would have given their very eyes to become acquainted with, and yet to neglect taking the necessary trouble. Ah, Monsieur Denon, how you do remind me of the witty fable of the fox and the sour grapes ! The Abbe Dubois, though equally sceptical, does not venture to handle this mysterious subject quite so cavalierly as Denon. He says that the Psylli per- form various tricks with serpents, which, though apparently terrible, are not very dangerous, as they always take the pre- caution to have the fangs previously removed, and to have with them the venomous vesicle extracted. He likewise in- forms us that they are supposed to have the power of charming those dangerous reptiles, and of commanding them to ap- proach and surrender themselves at the sound of music ; and he quotes the passages of scripture to which I referred in my preceding article, as confirmatory of the authenticity of the practice ; yet he will not admit that even this mass of evi- dence will convince that the charmer’s art is aught but an im- posture, “ Without dwelling,” says he, “ on the literal accuracy of this striking passage of Holy Scripture, I may confidently affirm that the skill which the Indian pretenders to enchant- ment claim in this particular, is rank imposture. The trick consists in'placing a snake, peviously tamed and accustomed to music, in some remote place, and they manage it so that in appearing accidentally to approach that place, and beginning to play, the snake comes forward at the wonted sounds. When they enter into an agreement with any simpleton who fancies that his house is infested with serpents — a notion which they sometimes contrive to infuse into his brain — they cunningly in- troduce some tame snakes into some crevice of his house, which come to their master as soon as he sounds his musical call. The chuckling enchanter then instantly whips up the serpent, claps it into his basket, pockets his fee, and, all the while doubtless laughing in his sleeve, goes to some other house, to renew his offers of assistance to similar dupes.” As to the idea that the snakes are previously deprived of their fangs, and that the jugglers secure themselves against all danger of being injured by the regular dancing snakes that they carry about with them in baskets, a single anecdote related by Forbes, in his Oriental Memoirs, will I think suf- fice to combat and refute it. Not having the book by me while I write, I hope my readers will excuse any slight dis- crepancies which they may detect on a reference to my autho- rity. Forbes states that on the cessation of the music the reptiles lapse into a sort of lethargy, and appear motionless. It is, however, he adds, necessary that they should be imme- diately covered up in the baskets, as otherwise they may spring upon and -wound the spectators ; and he informs us that fatal accidents frequently occur from inattention to this precaution. Amongst his drawings is that of a Cobra de Capella, which, under the magic influence of a professed ser- pent-charmer’s music, danced before him for an hour upon his table while he painted it, and during that period he repeat- edly handled it and carefully examined the structure of its head, hood, and jaws, and inspected minutely the variety and extreme beauty of its spots. The following day an upper servant of his rushed into his apartment, and cried out that he was a fortunate, a most fortunate man, doubtless under the immediate protection of the Prophet — that his devotions had proved acceptable, and sundry other expressions, totally in- comprehensible to Forbes, who inquired his meaning. The man then related that he had just been in the bazaar, where he had seen the same juggler who had entertained him the day preceding, performing before a crowd of people, who, as was usual on such occasions, formed a circle around the ope- rator, seated on the ground. At the close of the performance, the reptile, whether infuriated from the music ceasing too suddenly, or from some other cause not to be explained, darted amongst the spectators, and seizing a young woman by the throat, inflicted a wound of which she died in about an hour. Here was proof positive that the extraction of the serpent’s fangs was thought by no means essential to training him to his performance. So much for the idea that the dancing snakes are always deprived of their fangs — now as to the reality of the cir- cumstance of the wild serpents being drawn forth from their holes by the charmer’s pipe, and not being tamed animals placed in those holes for the express purpose of deception. Perhaps the best refutation of this idea that I can adduce, will be found in a highly interesting account I received lately from a friend resident for many years in India, and who di- rected a more than ordinary degree of attention to snake- charmers and their feats ; nay, not merely to them, but to every other description of magical rites, of which no land now furnishes so many wonder-working adepts as India, not even Egypt. He told me of men who would sow a seed of corn in a flower-pot, and by sundry mysterious incantations cause it to sprout, grow up, throw off leaves, bud, produce grain, and ripen, all within the space of an hour. He told me of men who would turn an empty hamper upside down, and produce from thence shawls, jewels, strings of beads, muslin turbans, and, in short, any article the spectators chose to demand. He told me many other singular and wondrous stories ; but, what at present is of more immediate importance, he gave me a singular account of serpent-charming. I need not reca- pitulate its details, as they precisely resemble those quoted in a former article : I need only observe, that he assured me he had examined the subject too closely, and had taken too many pre- cautions to prevent the possibility of fraud, to admit of its being, in any one instance, practised upon him. He had sent a distance of fifty miles up the country for a snake- catcher, and had set him to work in a spot entirely unknown to all as the place he had selected, until he conducted them and the juggler thither ; and he had dozens of times seen the reptiles drawn from their retreats by the sounds of the flute or fife, which they evidently derived extreme pleasure from hearing. It was my friend’s opinion that the chief agent in the operation of serpent-charming was music ; the ani- mals positively delighted in the sound of the soft instruments employed by the performers, and were by its influence lulled into a sort of pleasurable trance whenever the exciting cause was put in operation. My friend once sat beneath the shade of a spreading tree, and was amusing himself with his flageolet, an instrument on which he performed with much skill ; he had not been thus employed above an hour, when a native, happening to come up the approach to his residence, suddenly started, and be- gan muttering prayers as fast as he was able. My friend could scarcely refrain from laughing at this singular exhibi- tion, being entirely ignorant of its cause, and was about to rise up, when the stranger called out to him to remain where he was, and keep playing upon his instrument if he valued his life, for that imminent danger threatened him. This an- nouncement, instead of producing the desired effect, only confirmed my friend in the supposition that the strange Hindoo was some mad fakir, who, half knave and half crazy, was endeavouring to play upon his feelings, as he so frequently and successfully did upon those of his silly countrymen. He 262 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. accordingly sprang to his feet ; but what his consternation was, you, reader, may judge. As he rose, a prodigious Cobra de Capella presented itself to his astonished and affrighted gaze, hanging by its tail from the tree, its gleaming eyes and hooded head not more than two feet from his own ! For a moment he felt as it were fascinated, rooted to the spot ; but in a second afterwards, terror acted in her more legiti- mate manner: he sprang several paces backward, and running to the house, procured assistance, on which he again sallied forth, accompanied by several natives, who by their cries and hooting succeeded in inducing the snake to beat a retreat. He was watched, however, in his departure, and traced to a hole ; a guard was placed over it, and that too of Europeans, so that no confederacy could exist. A snake-catcher was procured from a distance of ten miles ; he approached the hole, played upon his instrument, and at length the reptile crawled forth, and was captured and secured in the usual manner. I think that even this brief and hurried account must have compelled my readers to cast from their minds all notion of the snakes being laid in the proper places by the jugglers be- forehand, as preparatory to a performance, as I have shown in the instances above mentioned that no such thing could have been done. And the idea of the creature’s having been previously rendered harmless, is also overturned by the cir- cumstance of the Cobra de Capella, handled one day with impunity by Forbes, having on the following morning bitten a young woman, who died of the effects of the poison within an hour. I trust, then, that I have brought you to admit that the art of snake-charming is a genuine art, whether simple or not remains to be proved when the true secret shall have been found out ; and that the professors of this secret are not impostors, at least not in this particular, but at the very least as respectable characters as the rat-catchers of our native country, who, my readers are of course aware, pretend likewise to possess the secret of charming and en- ticing rats from any place. In my next paper I shall conclude this subject of charming, and endeavour to explain some of the modes by which various animals are thus seduced. H. D. R. KNOWLEDGE AND IGNORANCE No. I. BOULDERS. In using the above terms, let it not be supposed that I mean to imply by the one a perfect knowledge, or a knowledge of everything, and by the other a perfect ignorance, or a total want of any knowledge. Either of such conditions of the mind is incompatible with human organization ; the one, a perfect knowledge, belongs alone to an order of intelligence infinitely excelling that of man ; and the other, a perfect ig- norance, must be sought for in creatures so far below him as to possess no intelligence. The idiot is not without percep- tion and knowledge, though of an imperfect and irregular kind. The dog knows its master, recognizes and obeys his voice. The horse knows and traces, after years of absence, the road he had once been accustomed to travel ; and even reptiles and fishes acquire a knowledge of persons, of times, and of things ; all this being independent of that range of in- telligences which has been given to every creature for the preservation of its own existence, and for ensuring the conti- nuance of its species. The terms Knowledge and Ignorance are used, then, in a comparative sense, being, according to circumstances, convertible one into the other. What, for in- stance, is knowledge at one time, becomes ignorance at an- other ; and the man who seems wise to those who know less than he does, seems equally foolish to those who know more — a strong reason surely why no one, however gifted he may to himself appear, should despise his less gifted brethren. Mounted he may indeed be on a hill so high that he can discern objects in the distance which are hidden from the more humble plodders of the plain below, and yet his own horizon be proportionately limited when compared to that of others who have climbed the still higher mountain above him. Can we not all bring home to our minds this va- rying value of our acquirements at successive periods of our lives ? and are we not sometimes surprised to reflect that some problem was once difficult, or some fact obscure, which is now as familiar to our understandings as the daylight to our eyes ? We have, in short, as regards these particular objects, passed from the night of ignorance into the day of knowledge. And as with the same individual, and even with whole classes of individuals, at different epochs, so is it with different individuals at the same time : one person holding in his hand the dim taper of ignorance, sees by its flickering and ill-directed light the object of his examination, distorted by partial and shifting shadows- — -just as some timid traveller on a dusky night sees in each waving bush, as to his alarmed imagination it grows to a portentous size, or assumes a fearful form, some aerial phantom, or some terrestrial mon- ster. The other, raising the bright lamp of knowledge, dis- pels at once by its clear and steady light, uncertainty, and sees the object as it is. So many indeed are the practical illustrations of the different manner in which the same object is viewed by knowledge and by ignorance, that it is difficult to make a first choice. All around us there are objects, the nature and qualities of which are known to the few, unknown to the many, and hence either overlooked or misunderstood by the latter, studied and under- stood by the former. Each portion, however minute, of our own body, and of that of every other organic being, has in it wherewithal to exercise the ingenuity and reflection of the wisest ; and yet how many thousands live and die without having even desired much less sought after such knowledge! Nor is the inorganic world less fruitful in subjects of inquiry, nor less neglected. The ploughman “ whistles as he goes for want of thought,” not because nature has failed to spread around him inexhaustible food for thought, but because his mind has not been trained to think. By each movement of his ploughshare, page after page, as it were, is opened to his view of new and interesting matter— and yet he sees before him nothing but silent and unmeaning clods. By each move- ment of his foot he disturbs those pebbles which, speechless to him because he questions not, return to the interrogations of knowledge wonder-stirring answers, when asked, 1. Of what they are composed? 2. Whence they came ? 3. And how they came ? For the present we shall pass over these more humble whis- perers of things curious and strange, and turn to those mas- sive fragments of rocks which, far removed from their origi- nal site, are now scattered either singly or in groups over a large portion of the earth’s surface, resting sometimes on the slopes of hills composed of materials totally different from their own, seen sometimes on the sand and gravel of extensive plains, and distant from the mountains of which they were onceapart, sometimes from one to threehundred miles: they are Boulders. Can we not picture to ourselves, in that remote period of our island’s history when forest and morass occu- pied the place of its bogs, and when the winds sighed over comparative desolation, an ancient inhabitant, imbued with nature’s living poetry, pausing before one of those grey lichen-covered masses which had withstood the warrings of the elements for perhaps thousands of years, and, as the awe of the surrounding solitude came like a charm over his soul, gazing with growing veneration at the venerable rock? — to him it would appear as if cast down from heaven, or planted where it now stands by some supernatural or giant hand. What spot, then, more fitted for the simple worship of nature’s child ? — what temple, what altar more suited to his simple rites ? A rock such as we have here described may have been found supported in part by lesser fragments, or such sup- ports may have been introduced by partial excavations under favourable projections of its surface ; and in either case, the superfluous earth, sand, or stones under and about it, being removed, this ancient monument of the operations of Nature would henceforth become an instrument in the wor- ship of Nature’s God — a Cromlech ! Whether, however, this be, or not, a correct view of the ori- ginal impulse which led to the selection of these giant stones, or of the purpose to which they were applied, it is for our antiquarian friends to decide. Suffice it here to add, that the transportation of such huge masses from their native beds, by the power of man or of giants, was at such a remote epoch, and under the circumstances of the country, impossi- ble ; nor will I stop to inquire whether a work so mighty was performed by spirits light as air. Let us turn to the consideration of the phenomenon of Boul- ders, as it has appeared to the eye of science. And perhaps there are no two facts which place it in so strong a light, and embrace so fully the reasonings founded upon it, as the dis- persion of blocks of the granite and other rocks of Sweden over THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 263 a large portion of Northern Europe, the boulders, either singly or in clusters, being disposed in long parallel lines or trainees, for upwards of two hundred miles from the mountains of Scandinavia, to which, by identity of mineral composition, they have been traced, although separated from them by the Baltic Sea ; and the occurrence of boulders of alpine granite resting on the secondary rocks of the Jura chain, between which and the Alps are situated the deep valley of the Rhone, the Lakes of Geneva and Neufchatel, the distance travelled by the boulders being sixty miles. Saussure, struck by the spectacle of clusters of these fragments so far removed from any rock resembling them, declared that they looked as if rained down from heaven ; a sentence strikingly expressive of the difficuliies which attend on an explanation of their occurrence. De Luc rightly speaks of such travelled masses of stone as being “one of the most important of geological monuments, since they offer a rigorous criterion of the different systems concerning the revolutions which have happened on our globe;” and in describing the vicinity of Cuxhaven, situated at the extremity of the Bremen country, which lying between the Gulfs of the Elbe and Weser, is as it were a peninsula, he cites the very forcible example it affords of a vast abundance of boulders at a distance of more than two hun- dred miles from the Scandinavian chain, the outlet, itself sixty miles wide, of the Baltic, forming part of the intervening space. At the time of De Luc’s visit to Cuxhaven (1797), a dike was constructing to secure the port from the violence of the sea, and the plan of employing blocks for this purpose was suggested by the quantity which were scattered over all the neighbouring country. From the vicinity alone of Hornburg, an inland town between the ports of Stade and Harborg, 600 lasts of blocks, amounting to 240,000 quintals, or 23,679 tons, had at that time been brought and consumed in the dike, which, with the thickness necessary to resist the utmost impetuosity of the waves, and a height of about eight feet, already extended three leagues to the westward of the town. The country in which these accumulations of erratic boulders had taken place, is an expanse of sand covered with heath, except where broken by cultivated patches around the scat- tered villages, the surface being undulated by hills com- posed either of sand or of heaps of boulders. De Luc adds, “ that he travelled ten miles without perceiving in the whole horizon any house, or even a hovel, or a single tree” — deso- late and dreary indeed to the eye of painter or poet, yet rich in all the elements of sublimity to the eye of the geologist. It is quite unnecessary to adduce other and less impo- sing examples from Great Britain and Ireland of similar facts, the difficulties of explanation being fully embraced by those selected. How have they been brought to their present places ? is then the question mentally asked, as well by the learned as the unlearned. Saussure, celebrated for his examination of the Alps, ima- gined a great debacle and retreat of the sea from the strata that had been formed, as he supposed, by chemical precipitations ; and to the violent rush of the vast current he ascribed the ex- cavation of the valleys, and the transport of immense masses of stones from the central chain of the Alps, beyond the pre- cincts of those mountains, to the Jura. Here, then, the exca- vation of the valleys of the Alps, and the transport of the boulders, are considered results of one great catastrophe, by which the bottom of the sea became hard dry land, its waters descending into huge abysses which had burst open around, the Alps. The phenomenon of Boulders is general in a large portion of the northern hemisphere; the explanation however is local and hence insufficient ; whilst the philosopher’s machinery, of huge abysses, like the peasant’s giant, is born of necessity, not deduced from experience. Others, and even yet they are many, attribute the trans- port of both gravel and boulders to the Noachian deluge, which is their great geological catastrophe. The application, however, of that great historical event to such physical agen- cies, is beset with great difficulties. The words of scripture do not support, but rather oppose, the notion of a huge wave rising in the north to a great height, then rushing southwards over the dry land, and rooting up or sweeping before it, by hydrostatic pressure, fragments of the earth’s crust. Nor are facts more in accordance AAuth that notion — the boulders of Scandinavia wmre moved from north to south — the boulders of the Alps from south to north, passing over the Jura mountains into Franchcomte— the stratification of many of the heaps of sand and gravel— the position of the boulders generally on the surface, whether of rocks, of sand, or of gravel — and the valleys, lakes, and seas now lying in the line of movement, which, if existing before the catastrophe, must have been filled up before the boulders could have travelled farther, if formed after, must have required the action of a second catastrophe of equal violence for their formation. And if, which is more in accordance with scripture, we consider the waters rising from the surrounding seas over the dry land, and then sup- pose them urged on with immense velocity, the effect would be a heaving up and moving forward of fragments from the lower land, by which the surface of the higher would be partly covered and protected ; and at the return of the waters to their ancient beds, these fragments would be swept off, and carried back the same way they came. Neither, then, the words of scripture, nor the facts themselves, require us to seek in the Noachian deluge for an explanation of these phenomena. Another theory, still adhered to by many modern geologists, is, the action of submarine currents, at a time when the pre- sent dry land had only in part emerged from the sea. This theory has the advantage of dealing with bodies of diminished gravity, in consequence of their immersion in a fluid, and conse- quently of having to provide for the movement of weights less by one-half or one-third than they would have been in air. In conjunction with the theory of raised beaches, it explains many of the phenomena of accumulations of sand and gravel, but not all. And as regards the transport of boulders, it fails ; the great size and angular form of some — their occur- rence at various levels, resting on various strata — sometimes connected with, and sometimes unconnected with sand or gravel — their position frequently on the top of heaps and ridges of gravel, being facts in seeming opposition to such an explanation, even were it conceded that all the depres- sions now existing on the line of travel, as lakes and seas and valleys, were scooped out subsequently to their transport. The geological system of the illustrious Hutton assumed as an essential principle, that as the present continents and dry land were once the bottom of the ocean, and have been formed, either in greater part or entirely, of fragments of pre-existing continents now submerged, so is the work of de- struction and renewal still continuing, the substance of our pre- sent dry land being loosened, abraded, or worn down by meteoric agencies, and carried by torrents and rivers to the ocean, to be there by currents distributed over the bottom of the sea, and by internal heat consolidated into new strata, which in time will be elevated into new continents and islands. To apply this theory in the case of the Jura boulders, Playfair assigned their transport to an epoch anterior to the forma- tion or excavation of the deep valleys and lakes which would now form an insurmountable obstacle to such transport, and thus obtained a greatly inclined plane, extending from the summit of the Alps to the Jura, on which to trundle the frag- ments gradually downwards, by aid of the numerous streams and torrents descending from the higher to the low r er ground. But as this theory would, as thus applied, premise that the land had been raised above the sea-level prior to the trans- port of the boulders, no means of effecting the great excava- tions, including the Lakes of Geneva and Neufchatel, which are supposed to have been formed subsequently, are left, except the slow erosive action of rains, frost, torrents, and such-like agents — means which few wall consider adequate to the desired object ; and hence the explanation of Playfair, resting solely on a bold hypothesis, must be rejected. As most of the preceding theories referred to the usually rounded condition of the gra- nite boulders (many boulders of other rocks are angular), as an evidence of movement through the agency of water, De Luc, preparatory to the promulgation of his own theory, thought it expedient to show that blocks of granite, even as they stand tranquilly braving the storms, are gradually w'eathered into a rounded form. He thus cites the granite of Darmstadt as an example : — “ Here I found a striking example of the manner in which blocks and even rocks of granite are rounded by the decomposition of the angles of their masses. I perceived it first in some angular pieces that had been de- tached and lay at the foot of the rock, surrounded with rub- bish ; for, on giving them a strong blow with an iron at the end of my stick, the angles fell off, detaching themselves with a concave surface on their inner side ; and I thus produced rounded blocks, exactly resembling those which I had seen scattered on the plains.” This spherical concretionary struc- ture has been noticed in the granite of Dublin and Down, and is common in trap rocks. Having smoothed away this diffi- culty, De Luc tacks on the boulders as a corollary to his the- 2C4 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL ory of subsidences. Immense masses of strata, subsiding into huge caverns or hollows beneath them, fragments of the lower strata were broken off and blown upwards by the force of the pent-up air and gases rushing through the cracks of the sinking strata, the weight of which continued more and more to compress them, so that the boulders of M. De Luc came from below, and not from above. This is also a gratuitous hypothesis ; and as the localities of many boulders exhibit no signs of such subsidences and explosions, it has obtained few if any adherents. So far, then, it would appear that philo- sophers, though armed with all the powers of mind invigora- ted by study and sharpened by research, have fought in vain against the difficulties which like a rampart fence in this rug- ged problem. For a moment they have appeared illumined by the light of knowledge, and have then sunk into the dark- ness of ignorance. But though philosophy may yield, she never will despair. And now, having marshalled new forces for the combat, we shall see her, with brighter hopes and pro- spects, again renew the assault. To the consideration, there- fore, of a widely different class of explanations, I shall proceed to direct attention in a second paper. J. E. P. Intellectuality of Animals. — Father Bougeant, a Jesuit, was placed in confinement by his superior in the College of La Fleche, near Paris, for what he had written on the subject of the intellectuality of animals. His views, if not orthodox, were certainly curious and amusing, and there is a sprightliness in his mode of treating the subject, grace- ful at least in the Frenchman, if not conformable to the divine. The following observations, extracted from that section of his work which treats of the language of beasts, may amuse the reader : — “ Our first observation upon the language of beasts is, that it does not extend beyond the necessaries of life. However, let us not impose upon ourselves with regard to this point. To take things right, the language of beasts appears so limited to us only with relation to our own ; how- ever, it is sufficient to beasts, and more would be of no service to them. Were it not to be wished that ours, at least in some respects, were limited too ? If beasts should hear us converse, prate, lie, slander, and rave, would they have cause to envy us the use we make of speech ? They have not our privileges, but in recompense they have not our failings. Birds sing, they say ; but this is a mistake. Birds do not sing, but speak. What we take for singing is no more than their natural language. Do the magpie, the jay, the raven, the owl, and the duck, sing ? What makes us believe that they sing is their beautiful voice. Thus, the Hottentots in Africa seem to cluck like turkey-cocks, though it be the natural accent of their language ; and thus several nations seem to us to sing, when they indeed speak. Birds, if you will, sing in the same sense, but they sing not for singing’s sake, as we fancy they do. Their singing is always an in- tended speech ; and it is comical enough that there should be thus in the world so numerous a nation which never speak otherwise but tunably and musically. But, in short, what do these birds say ? The question should be proposed to Apollonius Tyaneus, who boasted of understanding their language. As for me, who am no diviner, I can give you no more than probable conjectures. Let us take for our example the magpie, which is so great a chatterer. It is easy to per- ceive that her discourses or songs are varied. She lowers or raises her voice, hastens or protracts the measure, lengthens or shortens her chit-chat ; and these evidently are so many different sentences. Now, following the rule I have laid down, that the knowledge, desires, wants, and of course the expres- sions of beasts, are confined to what is useful or necessary for their preservation, methinks nothing is more easy than at first, and in general, to understand the meaning of these dif- ferent phrases .” — Dublin University Magazine. Atmospheric Resistance on Railways— In Dr Lard- ner’s third lecture on railways at Manchester, he detailed a variety of experiments made in order to ascertain the source of resistance. “ He found that an enlarged temporary frontage constructed with boards, of probably double the magnitude of the ordinary front of the train, caused an in- crease of resistance so trifling and insignificant as to be en- tirely unworthy of account in practice. Seeing that the source of resistance, so far as the air was concerned, was not to be ascribed to the form or magnitude of the front, it next oc- curred to him to inquire whether it might not arise from the general magnitude of the train front ends, top and all. An experiment was made to test this. A train of waggons was prepared with temporary sides and ends, so as to represent, for all practical purposes, a train of carriages, which was moved from the summit of a series of inclined planes, by gravity, till it was brought to rest ; it was next moved down with the high sides and ends laid flat on the platform of the waggons, and the result was very remarkable. The whole frontage of the latter, including the wheels and every thing, a complete transverse section of the waggons, measured 24 feet square, and with the sides and ends up, so as to present a cross section, it amounted to nearly 48 square feet. The uniform velocity attained on a plane of 1 in 177, without the sides up, was nearly 23 miles an hour ; whereas, with the sides up, it was only 17 miles an hour ; so that, as the re- sistance would be in proportion to the square of the velocity, other things being the same, there would be a very consider- able difference, due to that difference of velocity. Then, at the foot of the second plane, while the sides were down, an undiminished velocity remained of 194 miles an hour, whereas, with the sides up, it was reduced to 84 miles an hour ; so that a very extensive difference was procfuced. They would see at once that this was a very decisive experiment to prove that the great source of resistance was to be found in the bulk, and not the mere section or the form, whether of the front or the back of a train ; but simply in the general bulk of the body carried through the air. It was very likely to arise from the successive displacements of a quantity of the atmosphere equal to the bulk of the body ; or still more pro- bably, from the fact of the extensive sides of the train ; and indeed there was little doubt that the magnitude of the sides had a very material influence ; for if they consider what is going on in the body of air extending from either side of a train of coaches, they would soon see what a mechanical power must be exercised upon it. Thus, when a train is moving rapidly, the moving power had not only to pull the train on, but it had to drag a succession of columns of air, at different velocities, one outside the other, to a considerable extent outside the train ; and it did more, for it overcame their friction one upon the other ; for as these columns of air were at different velocities, the one would be rubbing against the other ; and all this the moving power had to encounter. This would go far to explain the great magnitude of resistance found, and its entire discordance with any thing previously suspected.” Gilding of Metals by Electro-Chemical Action.— M. dela Rive has succeeded in gilding metals by means of this pow- erful action. His method is as follows : he pours a solution of chloride of gold (obtained by dissolving gold in a mixture of nitric and muriatic acid) as neutral as possible and very dilute, into a cylindrical bag made of bladder ; he then plunges the bag into a glass vessel containing very slightly acidulated water ; the metal to be gilded is immersed in the solution of gold, and communicates by means of metallic wire with a plate of zinc, which is placed in the acidulated water. The process may be varied, if the operator pleases, by placing the acidulated w r ater and zinc in the bag, and the solution of gold with the metal to be gilded in the glass vessel. In the course of about a minute, the metal may be withdrawn, and wiped with a piece of linen ; when rubbed briskly with the cloth, it w'ill be found to be slightly gilded. After two or three similar immersions the gilding will be sufficiently thick to enable the operator to terminate the process Athenceum. [By refer- ring to the article on the Electrotype which appeared in No. 20 of the Irish Penny Journal, the reader will be enabled clearly to understand the mode in which the gold is separated from the acid, which holds it in solution, and forced, or at- tracted, to deposit its particles upon the metallic surface ; the solution of gold bearing in this case a precisely similar rela- tion to the metal plate, as the solution of copper in the other.] Definition of Cherub — A lady (married of course) was once troubled with a squalling brat, whom she always addressed as “my cherub.” Upon being asked why she gave it that appellation, she replied— “ Because that it is derived from cherubim, and the Bible says, ‘ the cherubims continually do cry.’ ” Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. ti, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin. — Agents : — R. Guoombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London ; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool; Slocomue and Simms, Leeds; Erase* and Crawford, George Street, Edinburgh ; and David Robertson, Tron- gate, Glasgow. Number 34. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 20, 1841. Volume I. BARRACK BRIDGE AND THE MILITARY GATE, DUBLIN. Though our own good metropolis is confessedly one of the most ancient cities in the empire, yet there are few towns of any importance either in England, Scotland, or Ireland, that have so little appearance of old age ; we have indeed a couple of venerable cathedrals, which is more, we believe, than any other city in her Majesty’s dominions, except London, can boast of; and we have a few insignificant remains of monas- tic edifices, but hid in obscure situations, where they are only known to zealous antiquaries : — with the exception of these, however, we have nothing that has not a modern look, though too often a tattered one ; nor is there, we believe, a single house within our Circular Road that has seen two hundred years. Our bridges and other public edifices in like manner are all modern specimens of mushroom architectural aristocracy — very dignified and imposing, no doubt, in their aspect, but with- out any hallowing associations connected with remote times to make us respect them. It is owing, perhaps, to these circunrstances that we have always had a pleasure in seeing the old-looking bridge and gateway which form the subject of our prefixed illustration— we say old-looking, for in reality neither is very old ; but they have an antique appearance about them which prevents us from thinking our city a mere creation of yesterday. They are very picturesque also, and contrast well with the other bridge scenes along our quays, which, though more splendid and architectural, are as yet too new-looking and commonplace. Though Barrack Bridge, or, as it is more popularly called. Bloody Bridge, is now the oldest of the eight bridges which span the Liffey within our city, its antiquity is no earlier than the close of the seventeenth century ; and yet this very bridge is the second structure of the kind erected in Dublin, as pre- viously to its construction there was but one bridge — the Bridge, as it was called, connecting Bridge-street with Church- street — across the Liffey. And this fact is alone sufficient to prove the advance in prosperity and the arts of civilised life which Dublin has made within a period of little more than a century. Barrack Bridge was originally constructed of wood, and was erected in 1670 ; and its popular name of Bloody Bridge 266 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. •was derived, as Harris the historian states, from the following circumstance, which occurred in the year after. The appren- tices of Dublin having assembled themselves riotously together with an intention to break down the bridge, it became neces- sary to call out the military to defeat their object, when twenty of the rioters were seized, and committed to the Castle. It happened, however, afterwards, that as a guard of soldiers were conveying these young men to the Bridewell, they were rescued by their fellows, and in the fray four of them were slain ; “ from which accident it took the name of Bloody Bridge.” In a short time afterwards, this wooden structure gave place to the stone bridge we now see, which is of unadorned character, and consists of four semicircular arches. Its rude and antique appearance, however, harmo- nizes well with the military gateway placed at its south- western extremity, on the road leading to the Royal Hospital at Kilmainham. This gateway, which was designed by the late eminent architect, Francis Johnston, Esq. P.R.H.A., and erected for government, under his superintendence, in 1811, consists of a square tower, having smaller' square towers pro- jecting from three of its angles, and a circular one of greater diameter and altitude at its fourth or north-eastern angle. The object for which this gateway tower was erected, as well as the period of its erection, is indicated by escutcheons on its east and west sides, bearing the arms of the Duke of Richmond and the Earl of Harrington, the lord-lieutenant and the commander of the forces of the time. A similar shield on its north side facing the river, sculptured with the ar- morial bearings of the family of Johnston, indicates the name of its architect ; and it is worthy of mention as a charac- teristic of the love for posthumous fame of Mr Johnston, that this tablet was not known to exist till within a few years back, and after he had himself paid the debt of nature ; having been concealed from view by a box of wood fastened against it, and which was suffered to remain — a strange mystery to the curious observer — till it fell off from decay. P. ON THE IMPORTANCE OF ATTENDING TO THE QUALITIES OF SEED, AND THE CONDITION OF THE SOIL IN THE SOWING SEASON. BY MARTIN DOYLE. Among the common Irish farmers, indifference to the quality of all seeds is still remarkable. Even in respect to wheat, that most valuable grain, stupidity and carelessness are ob- servable, though the loss sustained in consequence, both in the quantity and quality of the produce, is very great. It is no doubt principally owing to the superiority of climate that wheat and other corn crops grown in the midland counties of England are so far superior to our grain productions ; but much of the excellence which we perceive is attributable to the care taken in changing seed, and using that only which is really good. An English farmer will send his waggon a con- siderable distance for the seed which will best answer for his land, and he is willing to pay an advanced price for it, as he knows that his advantage will be proportional. We do not import from the principal wheat counties of England a sufficient quantity of seed : degeneracy rapidly takes place in the quality of that which we do sow of imported grain, and on that account a regular and frequent change is necessary, and by the more economical distribution of this, the difference between the prices of home-grown and im- ported seed would be scarcely felt. Not that I would recom- mend, except in some of our most calcareous inland counties, those white varieties which flourish in Kent, or Suffolk, or Buckinghamshire, but the hardier red Lammas kinds which succeed with us in general, but -which require frequent re- newal, else they become thick skinned and dark coloured, and consequently of inferior value to the miller. By substitut- ing the drill system for the broad-cast in fit seasons, and on land perfectly suited to it, one part in four, certainly one in five, is saved, even by those who sow in the narrowest pos- sible drills, and thickly. I shall detail the mode by which the land is prepared for sowing, and the process of sowing, in Buckinghamshire, on clover ley, the most troublesome for the purpose : — Farm-yard manure being spread upon the surface, wheel ploughs drawn by three powerful horses are set to work to plough the land in the usual British way. In wide lands or stitches, after the sod has been turned and laid at an angl e of forty-five degrees, the seed is sometimes then sown and harrowed down. But the neatest farmers, instead of sowing at this stage of the work, employ a compressing implement formed of two parallel metal wheels at one end of an axle, and very close to each other, and a guide wheel of the same diameter at the other end. The interior rims of the com- pressing wheels (or rollers) are four inches wide, and nearly touch each other ; the exterior surfaces are narrowed to two inches ; these wheels sink into the earth at the junctions of the furrow slices, and by pressing down the grassy edges, and forming perfect grooves at the intervals of seven or nine inches, the seed may be sown with extreme exactness, and without the loss of a single grain, and at a uniform depth. But though the seed is frequently sown with the preparation just stated, the practice of the neatest and most judicious farmers is to harrow down these drills after the rollers have formed and completed them, and then to sow with the Suffolk drill- machine in the free and pulverized surface. This implement forms and sows several shallow drills at each bouting, and with perfect precision ; the experienced eye of the man who follows in the rear, enabling him in an instant to perceive any possible irregularity in the movement of the hoppers and dis- tribution of the seed. The great advantage derived from the action of these com- pressing wheels is, that the grassy edges of the furrow slices are prevented altogether from vegetating by the depth to which they are removed from the surface, and that the pres- sure of the portions into which the rollers sink, is far more effective and consolidating than if an ordinary broad roller were to pass over the entire area. In preparing any loose fallow land for vetches, these compressing rollers are very serviceable. By following two ploughs, and in the same tracks, the ploughing and the perfect formation of the drills by pressure are accomplished in the same space of time, the two wheels obviously describing double the number of fur- rows described by each plough in the same period. In heavy clay soils this compression is at least unnecessary, and in stony land drilling is difficult and unadvisable, but in light open soils the advantages of this system are considerable. The proper season for sowing is also a point of great con- sideration, both as regards the economy of seed of any kind, and the productiveness of the crop. Some people labour to effect their seed-sowing on a parti- cular day or week without other calculations, and are quite satisfied that all is jvell if the seed is in the ground at the precise time which they have appointed for the purpose. Now, any rule as to time alone is especially absurd in our variable climate ; even in the midland counties of England, where ex- treme vicissitudes of weather are less frequent, it is injudi- cious to fix any certain rule as to the exact time for commit- ting the various sorts of corn to the ground. Experience has taught those who have considered the subject, that if is un- wise to force a season. For example, the middle of October is considered in Buckinghamshire to be the best time for sow- ing wheat ; but the earth at that time may be so dry (and actually was so in the past year) as to be more fit for barley than wheat ; or it may then be so wet as to be equally unfit for the reception of the seed. In either case the judicious farmer waits for the correct season, which experience has taught will have a corresponding harvest. After a wet cold summer the light dry soils of that county being firm and consolidated, it is perhaps desirable to sow wheat at a very early period of the autumn ; and after a hot dry summer, when the land is in a contrary condition, it would be better to wait for the autumnal rains to obtain a firm seed bed. Again, with barley on the same soil, the first of April is considered a good time; but the farmer who should persist in sowing just then in spite of the weather or the unprepared state of the land, would be a fool indeed, and would discover the effect of his blunder in the shortness of his crop. It is true that the superstitions of the ancients which so ridiculously influenced the affairs of husbandry, have long since ceased to be regarded. No one in these days would think it expedient to steep his seed in the juice of wild cucumbers ; nor to bring it into contact with the horns of an ox, for luck ; nor to cover the seed basket with the skin of a hymna, to keep off by its odour the attacks of vermin; nor to sprinkle corn before sowing with water in which stags’ horns or crabs had been immersed ; nor to mix powdered cypress leaves through the seed — though pickles and solutions for destroying insects are not to be despised. Neither are the planetary influences now much respected ; yet there are 267 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. many foolish old farmers who attach no little importance to the state of the moon, the dark nights in November being a favourite season, without the really important considerations that the earth and the weather are in an appropriate and congenial state. I have stated that the drills formed by the Suffolk drill- machine are very shallow ; they are merely sufficient to af- ford about an inch of covering to the grain ; but I have been assured by the best judges that the natural tendency of the cereal grains to strike their fibres is such that a heavy cover- ing is unnecessary. Our national opinion is in favour of a heavy covering, and our wheat especially is actually imbedded deeply in the ground with a plough. The practice in Great Britain universally is to harrow in the grain. The same practice is universally prevalent in France, where the land is left roughly harrowed (in the case of winter wheat), in order that the mouldering of the clods in spring may afford a kind of earthing to the plants, and pre- vent the running together of the earth in the wet winter ; months, as is too frequent on tenacious soils too finely har- rowed. It is not very long since the advantage of compressing the soil, for wheat in particular, was discovered in Buckingham- shire, by the accidental circumstance of a roller (which had been used for some different purpose) having been drawn in a zig-zag direction across a wheat field. The plants tillered better, looked far more vigorous during their advance to ma- turity, and yielded a far better return on the part of the field so distinguished by the course of the rollers, which soon after became a favourite implement in the culture of grain crops. There is no doubt that all seeds are frequently sown with wasteful prodigality, because they are cheap or indifferent in quality. How much better then is it to have those of superior quality, though at a higher price, and to encourage the distri- bution of them in the soil by a careful mode of sowing ! Grains of corn of superior excellence are frequently select- ed with great care, as by Colonel le Couteur, in Jersey, and then sown with a dibble in seedling beds. The plants thus carefully treated tiller surprisingly, and produce accordingly ; after two or three seasons, a fine variety, or a renovation of some previously established one, is obtained, and the seed is anxiously sought for. Do any of our farmers ever dream of going through their corn fields in harvest, and thus obtain choice seeds ? And yet what is there to prevent success in this respect? A poor farmer who cannot afford to purchase celebrated varieties at a high cost, may become his own seedsman, by care and assi- duity, in an incredibly short time. Let some of our readers make the desired experiments for their own sakes. SUSPENSION BRIDGES. On the Theory of Suspension Bridges, with some account of their early history. By Mr G. F. Fordham. Read at the Scientific Society, March 12 , 1840 . Suspension! Bridges appear to be of very ancient origin : travellers have discovered their existence in South America, in China, in Thibet, and in the Indian peninsula. They are most frequently met with in mountainous regions, and being suspended across a deep ravine, or an impetuous torrent, per- mit the passage of the traveller where the construction of any other kind of bridge would be entirely impracticable. Hum- boldt informs us that in South America there are numerous bridges of this kind formed of ropes made from the fibrous parts of the roots of the American agavey ( Agave America- na'). These ropes, which are three or four inches in diame- ter, are attached on each bank to a clumsy framework com- posed of the trunk of the Schinus molle ; where, however, the banks are flat and low, this framework raises the bridge so much above the ground as to prevent it from being accessible. To remedy this inconvenience, steps or ladders are in these cases placed at each extremity of the bridge, by ascending which all who w T ish to pass over readily reach the roadway. The roadway is formed by covering the ropes transversely with small cylindrical pieces of bamboo. The bridge of Pe- nipe erected over the Chamboo is described as being 120 feet long and 8 feet broad, but there are others which have much larger dimensions. A bridge of this kind will generally re- main in good condition 20 or 25 years, though some of the ropes require renewing every 8 or 10 years. It is worthy of remark, as evincing the high antiquity of these structures, that they are known to have existed in South America long- prior to the arrival of Europeans. The utility of these bridges in mountainous countries is placed in a striking point of view by the fact mentioned by Humboldt, of a permanent commu- nication having been established between Quito and Lima, by means of a rope bridge of extraordinary length, after 40,000/. had been expended in a fruitless attempt to build a stone bridge over a torrent which rushes from the Cordilleras or the Andes. Over this bridge of ropes, which is erected near Santa, travellers with loaded mules can pass in safety. But suspension bridges composed of stronger and more du- rable materials than the twisted fibres and tendrils of plants, are found to exist in these remote and semi-barbarous regions ; in Thibet, as well as in China, many iron suspension bridges have been discovered, and it is no improbable conjecture that in countries so little known and visited by Europeans, others may exist, of which we have as yet received no accounts. The most remarkable bridge of this kind of which we have any knowledge in Thibet, is the bridge of Chuka-cha-zum, stretched over the Tehintchieu river, and situated about 18 miles from Murichom. Turner, in his Embassy to the Court of Thibet, says, “ Only one horse is admitted to go over it at a time : it swings as you tread upon it, re-acting at the same time with a force that impels you every step you take to quicken your pace. It may be necessary to say, in explana- tion of its construction, that on the five chains which support the platform, are placed several layers of strong coarse mats of bamboo, loosely put down, so as to play with the swing of the bridge ; and that a fence on each side contributes to the security of the passenger.” The date of the erection of this bridge is unknown to the inhabitants of the country, and they even ascribe to it a fabulous origin. The length of this bridge appears to be about 150 feet. Turner describes in the following terms a bridge for foot passengers of an extraordinary construction. “ It was com- posed of two chains stretched parallel to each other across the river, distant four feet from each other, and on either side resting upon a pile of stones, raised upon each bank about eight feet high ; they were carried down with an easy slope and buried in the rock, where, being fastened round a large stone, they were confined by a quantity of broken rock heaped upon them. A plank about eight inches broad hung longitudinally suspended across the river by means of roots and creepers wound over the chains with a slackness sufficient to allow the centre to sink to the depth of four feet below the chains. This bridge, called Selo-cha-zum, measured, from one side of the water to the other, 70 feet. The creepers are changed annually, and the planks are all loose ; so that if the creepers give way in any part, they can be removed, and the particular part repaired without disturbing the whole.” Numerous suspension bridges formed of iron chains exist also in China ; and though the accounts which travellers have transmitted respecting them are less detailed and explicit than would have been desirable, descriptions of two of them have been furnished, which are sufficiently minute and intel- ligible to excite considerable interest. The first to which I refer is contained in Ivircher’s China Illustrata. The follow- ing is a translation of the author’s words : “ In the province of Junnan, over a valley of great depth, and through which a torrent of water runs with great force and rapidity, a bridge is to be seen, said to have been built by the Emperor Mingus, of the family of the Hamm, in the year of Christ 65, not con- structed of brickwork, or of blocks of stone cemented to- gether, but of chains of beaten iron and hooks, so secured to rings from both sides of the chasm, that it forms a bridge by planks placed upon them. There are 20 chains, each of which is 20 perches or 300 palms in length. When many persons pass over together, the bridge vibrates to and fro, affecting them with horror and giddiness, lest whilst passing it should be struck with ruin. It is impossible to admire suf- ficiently the dexterity of the architect Sinensius, who had the hardihood to attempt a work so arduous, and so conducive to the convenience of travelling.” Another suspension bridge in this country is described in the 6th vol. of the “ Histoire Generale des Voyages.” The following is a translation: “ The famous Iron Bridge (such is the name given to it) at Quay-Cheu, on the road to Yun-Nan (Junnan ?) is the work of an ancient Chinese general. On the banks of the Pan- Ho, a torrent of inconsiderable breadth, but of great depth, a large gateway has been formed between two massive pillars, 6 or 7 feet broad, and from 17 to 18 feet in height. From the two pillars of the east depend four chains attached to large rings, which extend to the two pillars of the west, and 268 ' THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. which being connected together by smaller chains, assume in some measure the appearance of a net. On this bridge of chains a number of very thick planks have been placed, some means of connecting which, have been adopted in order to ob- tain a continuous platform ; but as a vacant space still re- mains between this platform and the gateways and pillars, on account of the curve assumed by the chains, especially when loaded, this defect has been remedied by the aid of planking supported on trusses or consoles. On each side of this plank- ing small pilasters of wood have been erected, which support a roof of the same material, the two extremities of which rest on the pillars that stand on the banks of the river.” The writer proceeds to remark, that “ the Chinese have made se- veral other bridges in imitation of this. One, on the river Kin-cha-Hyang, in the ancient canton of Lo-Lo, which be- longs to the province of Yun-Nan, is particularly known. In the province of Se-Chuen there are one or two others, which are sustained only by ropes ; but though of an incon- siderable size, they are so unsteady and so little to be trusted that they cannot be crossed without sensations of fear.” While our attention is directed to early accounts and to the origin of suspension bridges, it may be proper to remark, that although, as we have seen, the inhabitants of the moun- tainous districts of South America, or the wild and barbarous regions of Thibet, appear to have been well acquainted with the purposes for which these structures are best adapted, and to have practised their construction from the most remote ages, neither the Greeks, the Romans, nor the Egyptians, according to all we know of those nations, had any knowledge of their uses or properties, or ever employed them as a means for crossing a river, or other natural impediment. It is not, therefore, from these celebrated nations of antiquity that the engineer has derived his first hints for the construction of suspension bridges, but from those rude and unpolished people, the results of whose ingenuity have just been de- scribed. But it will now be interesting to inquire how far we can trace back the antiquity of suspension bridges in more civi- lized countries — on the Continent, in the British Isles, and in the United States of America. Scamozzi speaks of suspen- sion bridges existing in Europe in the beginning of the seven- teenth century, but it is very questionable if he employed that term to designate the same structure to which it is now ap- plied ; and this is rendered the more improbable, as no such bridges are now in existence, and other writers are totally silent upon the subject. It does not appear, then, that sus- pension bridges of other than recent erection have existed on the Continent, and in England the oldest of which we have any account has not been constructed more than a century. The first suspension bridge in the United States was erected in the year 1796. In England the oldest bridge of the kind is believed to have been the Winch Chain Bridge, suspended over the Tees, and thus forming a communication between the counties of Durham and York. Mr Stevenson (Edin- burgh Philosophical Journal) expresses his regret at not hav- ing been able to learn the precise date of the erection of this bridge ; from good authority, however, he concludes it to be about the year 1741. It may also be mentioned here, that at Carric-a-rede, near Ballintoy, in Ireland, there is a rope bridge, which in 1800 was reported to have been in use longer than the present generation could remember. Iri the years 1816 and 1817, some wire suspension bridges were executed in Scotland, and, though not of great extent, are the first example of this species of bridge architecture in Great Britain. As, however, full descriptions of these bridges are to be met with elsewhere, it will not be necessary to notice them further. In 1818, Mr Telford was consulted by government as to the practicability of erecting a suspension bridge over the Menai Strait, and was commissioned to prepare a design, if upon an examination of the localities he found the project feasible. Having accordingly surveyed the spot, he was led to propose the construction of a suspension bridge near Ban- gor Ferry, and in 1819 an act was obtained, authorising the erection of the bridge, a sum of money having been previously voted by Parliament for that purpose. This structure, which will always be regarded as a monument of the engineering- abilities of Telford, was commenced in August 1819, and opened to the public on the 30th January 1826, having occu- pied six and a half years in its erection. The Union Bridge across the Tweed was designed and executed by Captain Brown, and was the first bar chain bridge of considerable size that was completed in this country. It was commenced in August 1819, and finished in the month of July 1820. After the completion of the Menai Bridge, bridges on the suspension principle began to be universally adopted throughout Europe ; but it was not till iron wires had been proved to be more firm than bars of a greater thickness that these bridges received their most extensive applications. Since 1821, Messrs Sequin have constructed more than fifty wire bridges in France with the most complete success. The wire suspension bridge at Freyburg, in Switzerland, the largest in the world, was erec- ted by Mons. Challey, and depends across the valley of the Sarine. It was commenced in 1831, and thrown open to the public in 1834. A suspension bridge has also been erected at Montrose, the size of which is scarcely inferior to that of the Menai Bridge. At Clifton a very large suspension bridge is now in progress of erection by Mr Brunei, and a suspension bridge of 1600 feet in length is about to be erected over the Danube, between Pest and Offen, the design for which is the production of Mr W. Tierney Clark, and under whose able superintendence its construction will be effected Civil En- gineer and Architect' s Journal. REMONSTRANCE WITH THE SNAILS. Ye little Snails, With slippery tails, Who noiselessly travel Along this gravel. By a silvery path of slime unsightly, 1 learn that you visit my pea-rows nightly. Felonious your visit, I guess ! And I give you this warning, That, every morning, I’ll strictly examine the pods ; And if one I hit on, With slaver or spit on, Your next meal will be with the gods. I own you're a very ancient race, And Greece and Babylon were amid ; You have tenanted many a royal dome. And dwelt in the oldest pyramid ; The source of the Nile ! — Oh ! you have been there ! In the ark was your floodless bed ; On the moonless night of Marathon You crawl’d o’er the mighty dead ; But still, though I reverence your ancestries, I don’t see why you should nibble my peas. Tha meadows are yours — the hedge-row and brook, You may bathe in their dews at morn ; By the aged sea you may sound your shells. On the mountain erect your horn ; The fruits and the flowers are your rightful dowers, Then why — in the name of wonder — Should my six pea-rows be the only cause To excite your midnight plunder ? I have never disturbed your slender shells, You have hung round my aged walk ; And each might have sat, till he died in his fat, Beneath his own cabbage-stalk : But now you must fly from the soil of your sires, Then put on your liveliest crawl : And think of your poor little snails at home, Now orphans or emigrants all. Utensils domestic, and civil, and social, I give you an evening to pack up : But if the moon of this night does not rise on your flight, To-morrow I’ll hang each man Jack up. You'll think of my peas and your thievish tricks, With tears of slime when crossing the Styx. Postscript. If darkness should not let thee read this, Furtive Snail, Go ask thy friend, the Glow-worm, For his tail. — From a Newspaper. That man should be happy, is so evidently the intention of his Creator, the contrivances to that end are so multitudinous and so striking, that the perception of the aim may be called universal. Whatever tends to make men happy, becomes a fulfilment of the will of God. Whatever tends to make them miserable, becomes opposition to his will — Harriet Martineau. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 269 IRISH SUPERSTITIONS No. III. GHOSTS AND FAIRIES. BY W. CARLE TON. When a superstition is once impressed strongly upon the popular credulity, the fiction always assumes the shape and form which the peculiar imagination of the country is consti- tuted to body forth. This faculty depends so much on climate, temperament, religion, and occupation, that the notions en- tertained of supernatural beings, though generally based upon one broad feature peculiar to all countries, differ so essentially respecting the form, character, habits, and powers of these beings, that they appear to have been drawn from sources widely removed. To an inquiring mind there can be no greater proof than this of their being nothing but the crea- tions of our own brain, and of assuming that shape only which has uniformly been impressed upon our imagination at the pre- cise period of life when such impressions are strongest and most permanent, and the reason which ought to combat and investigate them least capable of doing so. If these inane bugbears possessed the consistence of truth and reality, their appearance to mankind would be always uniform, unchange- able, and congruous ; but they are beheld, so to speak, through different prejudices and impressions, and consequently change with the media through which they are seen. Hence their different shape, character, and attributes in different countries, and the frequent absence of rational analogy with respect to them even in the same. Where now are the multitudinous creations of the old Greek and Roman mythologies ? Where are their Lares, their Penates, their Fauns, Satyrs, Nymphs, Dryads, Hama- dryads, Gods, and Goddesses ? And yet the peasantry of the two most enlightened nations of antiquity were so firmly fixed in a belief of their distinct and individual existence, that the worship of them formed an essential part of their religion. Where are they now ? And who believes in the existence of a Faun, a Dryad, or a Hamadryad ? They melted into what they were — nothing — before the lustre of Revelation, which, by bringing the truth of immortality to light, banished the whole host of such incongruous monsters from the earth, and impressed the imagination of mankind with truer notions and simpler imagery. The pure but severe morality of the Christian religion, by making man sensible of his responsibility in another life, opened up to the good and rational the bright hopes of future happiness. But we have our fears as well as our hopes, and as these preponderate in proportion to our fitness for death, so will we view the world that is to come either with joy or terror. Every truth is abused and perverted by man’s moral delinquencies : and the consequence is, that an idle fear of ghosts and apparitions is an abuse of the doctrine of our immortality. Judgment and eternal life were brought near us by Revelation, but we fear them more than we love them, and hence the terrors of our imagination on thinking of any thing that is beyond the grave. As the old monsters of the mythologies disappeared before reason and religion, so also will ghosts, fairies, and all such nonsense, vanish when men shall be taught to reason upon them as they ought, and to entertain higher notions of God than to believe that his purposes could be thwarted by the power or malignity of a fairy. Why, what, for instance, is every ghost story that we have heard, granting them to be true, but a direct revelation, and so far antiscriptural and impious ? What new truth has the information of a spectre ever conveyed to us ? What knowledge of futurity beyond that which we already know have these dialogues with the dead ever brought to light ? What view of our moral, religious, or social duties, with which we were not acquainted before, have apparitions ever taught us ? None. Away, then, with these empty and pusillanimous chimeras, which are but the mere hallucinations of a weak judgment, acted upon and misled by a strong fancy or a guilty conscience. The force of imagination alone is capable of conjuring up and shaping out that which never had existence, and that too with as much apparent distinctness and truth as if it was real. We all know that in the case of a female who is pregnant, a strong impression made upon the imagination of the mother will be visible on the body of the child. And why ? Because she firmly believes that it will be so. If she did not, no such impression would be communicated to the infant. But when such effects are produced in physical matters, what will not the consequence be in those that are purely mental and imaginative ? Go to the lunatic asylum or the madhouse, and there it may be seen in all its unreal delusion and posi- tive terror. Before I close this portion of my little disquisition, I shall relate an anecdote connected with it, of which I myself was the subject. Some years ago I was seized with typhus fever of so terrific a character, that for a long time I lay in a state hovering between life and death, unconscious as a log, without either hope or fear. At length a crisis came, and, aided by the strong stamina of an unbroken constitution, I began to recover, and every day to regain my consciousness more and more. As yet, however, I was very far from being out of danger, for I felt the malady to be still so fiery and oppressive, that I was not surprised when told that the slightest mistake either in my medicine or regimen would have brought on a relapse. At all events, thank God, my recovery ad- vanced ; but, at the same time, the society that surrounded me was wild and picturesque in the highest degree. Never in- deed was such a combination of the beautiful and hideous seen, unless in the dreams of a feverish brain like mine, or the distorted reason of a madman. At one side of my bed, looking in upon me with a most hellish and satanic leer, was a face, compared with which the vulgar representations of the devil are comeliness itself, whilst on the other was a female countenance beaming in beauty that was ethereal — angelic. Thus, in fact, was my whole bed surrounded; for they stood as thickly as they could, sometimes flitting about and crush- ing and jostling one another, but never leaving my bed for a moment. Here were the deformed features of a dwarf, there an angel apparently fresh from heaven ; here wasjL gigantic demon with his huge mouth placed longitudinally ITS his face, and his nose across it, whilst the Gorgon-like coxcomb grinned as if he were vain, and had cause to be vain, of his beauty. This fellow annoyed me much, and would, I ap- prehend, have done me an injury, only for the angel on the other side. He made perpetual attempts to come at me, but was as often repulsed by that seraphic creature. Indeed, I feared none of them so much as I did the Gorgon, who evidently had a design on me, and would have rendered my situation truly pitiable, were it not for the protection of the seraph, who always succeeded in keeping him aloof. At length he made one furious rush as if he meant to pounce upon me, and in self-preservation I threw my right arm to the opposite side, and, grasping the seraph by the nose, I found I had caught my poor old nurse by that useful organ, while she was in the act of offering me a drink. For several days I was in this state, the victim of images produced by disease, and the inflammatory excitement of brain consequent upon it. Gradually, however, they begau to disappear, and I felt manifest relief, for they were succeeded by impressions as amusing now as the former had been distressing. I imagined that there was a serious dispute between my right foot and my left, as to which of them was entitled to prece- dency ; and, what was singular, my right leg, thigh, hand, arm and shoulder, most unflinchingly supported the right foot, as did the other limbs the left. The head alone, with an im- partiality that did it honour, maintained a strict neutrality. The truth was, I imagined that all my limbs were endowed with a consciousness of individual existence, and I felt quite satisfied that each and all of them possessed the faculty of reason. I have frequently related this anecdote to my friends ; but, I know not how it happened, I never could get them to look upon it in any other light than as a specimen of that kind of fiction which is indulgently termed “ drawing the long bow.” It is, however, as true as that I now exist, and relate the fact ; and, what is more, the arguments which I am about to give are substantially the same that were used by the rival claimants and their respective supporters. The discussion, I must observe, was opened by the left foot, as being the dis- contented party, and, like all discontented parties, its language was so very violent, that, had its opinions prevailed, there is no doubt but they would have succeeded in completely overturning my constitution. Left foot. Brother (addressing the right with a great show of affection, but at the same time with a spasmodic twitch of strong discontentment in the big toe), Brother, I don’t know how it is that, you have during our whole lives always taken the liberty to consider yourself a better foot than I am ; and I would feel much obliged to you if you would tell me why it is that you claim this superiority over me. Are we not both equal in every thing ? 270 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Right foot. Be quiet, my dear brother. We are equal in every thing, and why, therefore, are you discontented ? Left foot. Because you presume to consider yourself the better and more useful foot. Right foot. Let us not dispute, my dear brother : each is equally necessary to the other. What could I do without you ? Nothing, or at least very little ; and what could you do without me ? Very little indeed. We were not made to quarrel. Left foot (very hot). I am not disposed to quarrel, but I trust you will admit that I am as good as you, every way your equal, and begad in many things your superior. Do you hear that ? L am not disposed to quarrel, you rascal, and how dare you say so ? Here there was a strong sensation among all the right members, who felt themselves insulted through this outrage offered to their chief supporter. Right foot. Since you choose to insult me without provo- cation, I must stand upon my right Left (shoving off to a distance). Right! — there, again, what right have you to be termed “ right” any more than I ? — (“Bravo! — go it, Left-, pitch into him ; we are equal to him and his,” from the friends of the Left. The matter was now likely to become serious, and to end in a row.) “ What’s the matter there below ?” said the Head ; “ don’t be fools, and make yourselves ridiculous. What would either of you be with a crutch or a cork-leg? which is only another name for a wooden shoe, any day.” Right foot. Since he provokes me, I tell him, that ever since the world began, the prejudice of mankind in all nations has been in favour of the right foot and the right hand. (Strong sensation among the left members). Surely he ought not to be ignorant of the proverb, which says, when a man is peculiarly successful in any thing he undertakes, “that man knew how to go about it — he put the right foot foremost /” (Cheers from the right party.) Left. That’s mere special pleading — the right foot there does not mean you, because you happen to be termed such ; but it means the foot which, from its position under the cir- cumstances, happens to be the proper one. (Loud applause from the left members.) Right foot. You know you are weak and feeble and awk- ward when compared to me, and can do little of yourself. (Hurra ! that’s a poser !) Left.. Why, certainly, I grant I am the gentleman, and that you are very useful to me, you plebeian. (“Bravo!” from the left hand; “ours is the aristocratic side — hear the operatives ! Come, hornloof, what have you to say to that ?”) Right hand (addressing his opponent.) You may be the aristocratic party if you will, but we are the useful. Who are the true defenders of the constitution, you poor sprig of nobility ? Left hand. The heart is with us, the seat and origin of life and power. Can you boast as much ? (Loud cheers.) Right foot. Why, have you never heard it said of an ex- cellent and worthy man— a fellow of the right sort, a trump — as a mark of his sterling qualities, “ his heart’s in the right place!” How then can it be in the left ? (Much applause.) Left. Which is an additional proof that mine is that place and not yours. Yes, you rascal, we have the heart, and you cannot deny it. Right. We admit he resides with you, but it is merely be- cause you are the weaker side, and require his protection. The best part of his energies are given to us, and we are satisfied. Left. You admit, then, that our party keeps yours in power, and why not at once give up your right to precedency ? — why not resign? Right. Let us put it to the vote. Left. With all my heart. It was accordingly put to the vote ; but on telling the house, it was found that the parties were equal. Both then appealed very strenuously to Mr Speaker, the Head, who, after having heard their respective arguments, shook himself very gravely, and informed them (much after the manner of Sir Roger De Coverley) that “ much might be said on both sides.” “ But one thing,” said he, “ I beg both parties to observe, and very seriously to consider. In the first place, there would be none of this nonsense about precedency, were it not for the feverish and excited state in which you all happen to be at present. If you have common sense enough to wait until you all get somewhat cooler, there is little doubt but you will feel that you cannot do without each other. As for myself, as I said before, I give no specific opinion upon disputes which would never have taken place were it not for the heat of feeling which is between you. I know that much might and has been said upon both sides ; but as forme, I nod significantly to both parties, and say nothing. One thing, however, I do say, and it is this — take care you, right foot, and you, left foot, that by pursuing this senseless quarrel too far it may not happen that you will both get stretched and tied up together in a wooden surtout, when precedency will be out of the question, and nothing but a most pacific stillness shall remain between you for ever. I shake, and have concluded.” Now, this case, which as an illustration of my argument possesses a good deal of physiological interest, is another key to the absurd doctrine of apparitions. Here was I at the moment strongly and seriously impressed with a belief that a quarrel was taking place between my two feet about the right of going foremost. Nor was this absurdity all. I actually believed for the time that all my limbs were endowed with separate life and reason. And why ? All simply because my whole system was in a state of unusually strong excitement, and the nerves and blood stimulated by disease into a state of derangement. Such, in fact, is the condition in which every one must necessarily be who thinks he sees a spirit ; and this, which is known to be an undeniable fact, being admit- ted, it follows of course that the same causes will, other things being alike, produce the same effects. For instance, does not the terror of an apparition occasion a violent and increased action of the heart and vascular system, similar to that of fever ? Does not the very hair stand on end, not merely when the imaginary ghost is seen, but when the very apprehension of it is strong ? Is not the action of the brain, too, accelerated in proportion to that of the heart, and the nervous system in proportion to that of both ? What, then, is this but a fever for the time being, which is attended by the very phantasms the fear of which created it ; for in this case it so happens that the cause and effect mutually reproduce each other. The conversation detailed above is but a very meagre out- line of what was said during the discussion. The arguments were far more subtle than the mere skeletons of them here put down, and very plentifully sprinkled over with classical quotations, both of Latin and Greek, which are not necessary now. Hibbert mentions a case of imagination, which in a man is probably the strongest and most unaccountable on record. It is that of a person — an invalid — who imagined that at a certain hour of the day a carter or drayman came into his bedroom, and, uncovering him, inflicted several heavy stripes upon his body with the thong of his whip ; and such was the power of fancy here, that the marks of the lash were visible in black and blue streaks upon his flesh. I am inclined to think, however, that this stands very much in need of confir- mation. I have already mentioned a case of spectral illusion which occurred in my native parish. I speak of Daly’s daughter, who saw what she imagined to be the ghost of M'Kenna, who had been lost among the mountains. I shall now relate another, connected with the fairies, of which I also was myself an eye-witness. The man’s name, I think, was Martin, and he followed the thoughtful and somewhat melancholy occupa- tion of a weaver. He was a bachelor, and wrought journey- work in every farmer’s house where he could get employ- ment ; and notwithstanding his supernatural vision of the fairies, he was considered to be both a quick and an excellent workman. The more sensible of the country-people said he was deranged, but the more superstitious of them maintained that he had a Lianhan Shee, and saw them against his will. The Lianhan Shee is a malignant fairy, which, by a subtle compact made with any one whom it can induce by the fairest promises to enter into, secures a mastery over them by inducing its unhappy victims to violate it ; otherwise, it is and must be like the oriental genie, their slave and drudge, to perform such tasks as they wish to impose upon it. It will promise endless wealth to those whom it is anxious to subjugate to its authority, but it is at once so malignant and ingenious, that the party entering into the contract with it is always certain by its manoeuvres to break through his en- gagement, and thus become slave in his turn. Such is the nature of this wild and fearful superstition, which I think is fast disappearing, and is but rarely known in the country. Martin was a thin pale man, when I saw him, of a sickly look, and a constitution naturally feeble. His hair was a light THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 271 auburn, his beard mostly unshaven, and his hands of a singu- lar delicacy and whiteness, owing, I dare say, as much to the soft and easy nature of his employment, as to his infirm health. In every thing else he was as sensible, sober, and rational as any other man ; but on the topic of fairies, the man’s mania w*as peculiarly strong and immoveable. Indeed, I remember that the expression of his eyes was singularly wild and hollow, and his long narrow temples sallow and emaciated. Now, this man did not lead an unhappy life, nor did the malady he laboured under seem to be productive of either pain or terror to him, although one might be apt to imagine otherwise. On the contrary, he and the fairies maintained the most friendly intimacy, and their dialogues— which I fear were wofully one-sided ones — must have been a source of great pleasure to him, for they were conducted with much mirth and laughter, on his part at least. “ Well, Frank, when did you see the fairies ?” “ Whist ! there’s two dozen of them in the shop (the weav- ing shop) this minute. There’s a little ould fellow sittin’ on the top of the sleys, an’ all to be rocked while I’m weavin’. The sorrow’s in them, but they’re the greatest little skamers alive, so they are. See, there’s another of them at my dress- in’ noggin.* Go out o’ that, you shingawn ; or, bad cess to me if you don’t, but I’ll lave you a mark. Ha ! cut, you thief you !” “ Frank, aren’t you afear’d o’ them ?” “ Is it me ? Arra, what ud I be afear’d o’ them for ? Sure they have no power over me.” “ And why haven’t they, Frank?” “ Becaise I was baptized against them.” “ What do you mean by that ?” “ Why, the priest that christened me was tould by my father to put in the prayer against the fairies — an’ a priest can’t refuse it when he’s axed — an’ he did so. Begorra, it’s well for me that he did — (let the tallow alone, you little glutton — see, there’s a weeny thief o’ them aitin’ my tallow) — becaise, you see, it was their intention to make me king o’ the fairies.’ “ Is it possible?” “ Devil a lie in it. Sure you may ax them, an’ they’ll tell you.” “ What size are they, Frank?” “ Oh, little wee fellows, with green coats an’ the purtiest little shoes ever you seen. There’s two o’ them — both ould acquaintances o’ mine — runnin’ along the yarn beam. That ould fellow with the bob wig is called Jim Jam, an’ the other chap with the three-cocked hat is called Nickey Nick. Nickey plays the pipes. Nickey, give us a tune, or I’ll malivogue you— come now, ‘ Lough Erne Shore.’ Whist, now — listen !” The poor fellow, though weaving as fast as he could all the time, yet bestowed every possible mark of attention to the music, and seemed to enjoy it as much as if it had been real. But who can tell whether that which we look upon as a priva- tion may not after all be a fountain of increased happiness, greater perhaps than any which we ourselves enjoy ? I forget who the poet is who says, Mysterious are thy laws ; The vision’s finer than the view ; Her landscape Nature never drew So fair as fancy draws. Many a time when a mere child not more than six or seven years of age, have I gone as far as Frank’s weaving-shop, in order, with a heart divided between curiosity and fear, to listen to his conversation with the good people. From morn- ing till night his tongue was going almost as incessantly as his shuttle ; and it was well known that at night, whenever he awoke out of his sleep, the first thing he did was to put out his hand and push them as it were off his bed. “ Go out o’ this, you thieves you— go out o’ this, now, an’ let me alone. Nickey, is this any time to be playin’ the pipes, and me wants to sleep ? Go off, now — troth if yez do, you’ll see what I’ll give yez to-morrow. Sure I’ll be makin’ new dressins ; and if yez behave dacently, maybe I’ll lave yez the scrapin’ o’ the pot. There now. Och ! poor things, they’re dacent crathurs. Sure they’re all gone barrin’ poor Red-cap, that doesn’t like to lave me.” And then the harmless mono- maniac would fall back into what we trust was an innocent slumber. About this time there was said to have occurred a very remavkable circumstance, which gave poor Frank a vast deal * The dressings are a species of sizy flummery, which is brushed into the yarn to keep the thread round and even, and to prevent it from being frayed by the faction of the reed, of importance among the neighbours. A man named Frank Thomas, the same in whose house Mickey M‘Grory held the first dance at which I ever saw him, as detailed in a former number of this Journal — this man, I say, had a child sick, but of what complaint I cannot now remember, nor is it of any importance. One of the gables of Thomas’s house was built against or rather into a Forth or Rath called Towny, or properly Tonagh Forth. It was said to be haunted by the fairies, and what gave it a character peculiarly wild in my eyes, was, that there were on the southern side of it two or three little green mounds, which were said to be the graves of unchristened children, over which it was considered dangerous and unlucky to pass. At all events, the season was mid- summer; and one evening about dusk, during the illness of the child, the noise of a handsaw was heard upon the Forth. This was considered rather strange, and after a little time, a few of those who were assembled at Frank Thomas’s went to see who it could be that was sawing in such a place, or what they could be sawing at so late an hour, for every one knew that there was none in the whole country about them who would dare to cut down the few whitethorns that grew upon the forth. On going to examine, however, judge of their sur- prise, when, after surrounding and searching the whole place, they could discover no trace of either saw or sawyer. In fact, with the exception of themselves, there was no one, either natural or supernatural, visible. They then returned to the house, and had scarcely sat down, when it was heard again within ten yards of them. Another examination of the pre- mises took place, but with equal success. Now, however, while standing on the forth, they heard the sawing in a little hol- low, about a hundred and fifty yards below them, which was completely exposed to their view, but they could see nothing. A party of them immediately went down to ascertain if possi- ble what this singular noise and invisible labour could mean ; but on arriving at the spot, they heard the sawing, to which were now added hammering and driving of nails, upon the forth above, whils-' those who stood on the forth continued to hear it in the hollow. On comparing notes, they resolved to send down to Billy Nelson’s for Frank Martin, a distance only of about eighty or ninety yards. He was soon on the spot, and without a moment’s hesitation solved the enigma. “ ’Tis the fairies,” said he. “ I see them, and busy cra- thurs they are.” “ But what are they sawing, Frank ?” “ They are makin’ a child’s coffin,” he replied ; “they have the body already made, an’ they’re now nailin’ the lid to- gether.” That night the child certainly died, and the story goes, that on the second evening afterwards, the carpenter who was called upon to make the coffin brought a table out from Thomas’s house to the forth, as a temporary bench ; and it is said that the sawing and hammering necessary for the com- pletion of his task were precisely the same which had been heard the evening but one before— neither more nor less. I remember the death of the child myself, and the making of its coffin, but I think that the story of the supernatural carpenter was not heard in the village for some months after its inter- ment. Frank had every appearance of a hypochondriac about him. At the time I saw him, he might be about thirty-four years of age, but Ido not think, from the debility of his frame and infirm health, that he has been alive for several years. He was an object of considerable interest and curiosity, and often have I been present when he was pointed out to strangers as “ the man that could see the good people.” With respect to his solu- tion of the supernatural noise, that is easily accounted for. This superstition of the coffin-making is a common one, and to a man like him, whose mind was familiar with it, the ill- ness of the child would naturally suggest the probability of its death, which he immediately associated with the imagery and agents to be found in his unhappy malady. Antiquity of Railways and Gas. — Railways were used in Northumberland in 1633, and Lord Keeper North mentions them in 1671 in his journey to this country. A Mr Spedding, coal-agent to Lord Lonsdale, at Whitehaven, in 1765, had the gas from his lordship’s coal-pits conveyed by pipes into his office, for the purpose of lighting it, and proposed to the ma- gistrates of Whitehaven to convey the gas by pipes through the streets to light the town, which they refused . — Carlisle Journal, 272 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL The Hungarian Nobility There is no country under heaven where nobility is at so low a par, or rather perhaps I should say, on so unequal a basis ; and I was so much amused by the classification lately bestowed on it by a humorous friend of mine, to whom I had frankly declared my inability to disentangle its mazes, that I will give it in his own words. “ The nobility of Hungary are of three orders — the mighty, the moderate, and the miserable— the Esterhazys, the Batthy- anyis, and such like, are the capital of the column — the shaft is built of the less wealthy and influential ; and the base (and a very substantial one it is) is a curious congeries of small landholders, herdsmen, vine-growers, waggoners, and pig-drivers. Nay, you may be unlucky enough to get a nemes as a servant ; and this is the most unhappy dilemma of all, for you cannot solace yourself by beating him when he offends you, as he is protected by his privileges, and he ap- peals to the Court of the Comitat for redress. The country is indebted to Maria Theresa for this pleasant confusion ; who, when she repaid the valour of the Hungarian soldiers with a portion of their own land, and a name to lend it grace, forgot that many of these individuals were probably better swordsmen than proprietors ; and instead of limiting their patent of nobility to a given term of years, laid the founda- tion of a state of things as inconvenient as it is absurd.” I was immediately reminded by his closing remark of a most ridiculous scene, which, although in itself a mere trifle, went far to prove the truth of his position. My readers are probably aware that none pay tolls in Hungary save the pea- sants ; and it chanced that on one occasion, when we were passing from Pesth to Buda over the bridge of boats, the carriage was detained by some accidental stoppage just beside the tollkeeper’s lodge, when our attention was arrested by a vehement altercation between the worthy functionary, its oc- cupant, and a little ragged urchin of 1 1 or 12 years of age, who had, as it appeared, attempted to pass without the preliminary ceremony of payment. The tollkeeper handled the supposed delinquent with some roughness as he demanded his fee ; but the boy stood his ground stoutly, and asserted his free right of passage as a nobleman ! The belligerent party pointed to the heel-less shoes and ragged jerkin of the culprit, and smiled in scorn. The lad for all reply bade him remove his hand from his collar, and let him pass at his peril ; and the tone was so assured in which he did so, that the tollkeeper became grave, and looked somewhat doubtful ; when just at the moment up walked a sturdy peasant, who, while he paid his kreutzer, salu- ted the young nobleman, and settled the point. It was really broad farce. The respectably clad and com- fortable looking functionary loosed his hold in a moment, and the offending hand, as it released the collar of the captive, lifted his hat, while he poured out his excuses for an over- zeal, arising from his ignorance of the personal identity of this young scion of an illustrious house, who was magnani- mously pleased to accept the apology, and to raise his own dilapidated cap in testimony of his greatness of soul, as he walked away in triumph. Cruikshank would have had food for a chef d' oeuvre Miss Par doe s Hungary. African Administration of Justice On coming out of my hut at Fandah one morning, I saw the king seated at the gate of his palace, surrounded by his great men, admi- nistering justice. At a little distance, on the grass, were two men and two women, who were charged with robbery. The evidence had already been gone through before my ar- rival. The king was the principal speaker, and when he paused, the whole court murmured approbation. The younger woman made a long defence, and quite astonished me by her volubility, variety of intonation, and graceful ac- tion. The appeal, however, seemed to be in vain ; for when she had finished, the king, who had listened with great pa- tience, passed sentence in a speech of considerable length, delivered with great fluency and emphasis. In many parts he was much applauded, except by the poor wretches, who heard their doom with shrieks of despair. The king then retired, the court broke up, and the people dispersed. None remained but the prisoners and a decrepit old man, who, with many threats and some ceremony, administered a small bowl of poison, prepared, I believe, from the leaves of a venerable tree in the neighbourhood, which was hooped and propped all round. The poor creatures received the potion on their knees, and before they could be induced to swallow it, cast many a lingering look and last farewell on the beautify! world. from which a small draught was about to separate them. They afterwards drank a prodigious quantity of water ; and when I next went out, the dose had done its deadly work. I cannot tell how far justice was truly administered, but there was a great appearance of it ; and I must say that I never in any court saw a greater display of decorum and dignity A llan’s Views on the Niger. The Planing-machine Room in Messrs Fawcett and Co.’s Engine Factory, Liverpool In this room are va- luable and elaborately contrived machines for the planing or levelling of large plates, or other pieces of iron or brass, so as to give them a smooth, true, and polished surface. The article or piece to be planed is securely fixed by screw-bolts, &c, to a horizontal iron table, perforated with holes for the insertion of the bolts from beneath it in any required point, to suit the size or form of the article. This table, when put in motion, travels backwards and forwards with its load on two iron rails, or parallel slides. Over the centre is perpen- dicularly fixed what is called the “ planing tool,” an instru- ment made of steel, somewhat in the form of a hook, with the point so inclined as to present itself towards the surface of the metal to be planed, as it approaches it on the table, so as, when all is adjusted, to plough or plane it in narrow- streaks or shavings as it passes under it. The extremity of the tool is about half an inch to three quarters in breadth, and being of a round form at the under side, and ground or bevelled on the upper, presents a sort of point. If a plate of iron is to be planed, the operation commences on the outer edge, and each movement backwards and forwards of the table places it in such a position under the tool, that another small parallel cut is made throughout its whole length. The tool, in ordinary machines of this kind, is fixed so that it cuts only in one direction, as the plate is drawn against its edge or point, which is raised to allow of the backward mo- tion of the plate. A new patent has however been obtained for a great improvement in this respect by Mr Whitworth, of Manchester, and several of his machines are on Messrs Faw- cett and Co.’s premises. In these, by a peculiarly beautiful contrivance, the cutting instrument, the moment the plate passes under it, “jumps” up a little in the box or case to which it is attached, and instantly “ turns about” in the op- posite direction, and commences cutting away, so that both backwards and forwards the operation goes on without loss of time The workmen very quaintly and appropriately call this new planing tool “Jim Crow.” A workman attends to each of the machines ; and when the piece to be cut is fixed with great exactness on the moving table by a spirit-level, he has nothing to do but to watch that it remain so, and that the machinery work evenly and correctly. Where a very smooth surface is required, the operation of planing is re- peated, and two plates thus finished will be so truly level, that they will adhere together. It should be added, that so perfect are these machines, that in addition to planing hori- zontally, they may be so adjusted as to plane perpendicularly, or at any given angle. The planet revolves for ever in its appointed orbit ; and the noblest triumph of mechanical philosophy is to have ascer- tained that the perturbations of its course are all compen- sated within determined periods, and its movement exempted from decay. But man, weak and erring though he be, is still progressive in his moral nature. He does not move round for ever in one unvarying path of moral action. The combina- tions of his history exhibit not only the unity of the material system, but also the continually advancing improvement be- longing to beings of a higher order Miller s “ Modern History philosophically considered.” To Prevent Horses’ Feet from Clogging up with Snow One pound of lard, half a pound of tar, and two ounces of resin, simmered up together. Stop the horses’ feet, just before starting, with this, which will prevent the feet from balling. — Suffolk Chronicle. Conscience is merely our own judgment of the moral recti- tude or turpitude of our own actions Locke. Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin.— Agents: — R. Groombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool; Slocombe & Simms, Leeds; Fraser and Crawford, George Street, Edinburgh ; and David Robertson, Trorn gate, Glasgow. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 35. SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1841. Volume I. BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF A UNION WORKHOUSE FOR THE ACCOMMODATION OF EIGHT HUNDRED PERSONS OR UPWARDS. The entrance front building, forming a distinct structure, is placed about 150 feet in advance of the main building, and consists of one floor (above the ground), on which the Board-room and clerk’s office are placed ; under- neath these are the waiting-hall, in which applicants for relief are received, and a room for a porter, who has charge of the paupers on their admission, for the purpose of seeing that they are washed, cleaned, and clothed in the workhouse dress ; he is therefore placed near the probationary wards. Dis- tinct wards are also provided for vagrants receiving temporary relief. This arrangement of the probationary and vagrant wards secures the vicinity of the body of the house from the risk of infection from persons previous to their being examined and declared free from disease The main building is separated from the entrance front by a courtyard and garden, which divide the two front yards for the boys and girls ; the centre of the main building contains the master’s house, which is placed im- mediately among all classes, and from which ready access is had to any of the rooms ; the kitchen offices are close under the master and matron’s in- spection, as well as the several stores. . The wash-house and kitchen offices are placed in a situation distinct from the paupers in the yards, and none but those immediately employed in them have access thereto ; on each side the master’s house are placed the rooms for children, who have separate staircases, used also by the master and matron ; the extreme wings contain on the ground floor rooms for the old and infirm people, and some accommodation also for the able-bodied, which class, however, being employed (the women in the wash-house, &c., and the men at a mill, in breaking stones, or other useful occupation,) the same extent of day room is not requisite. The chapel and dining hall an- swers three purposes, inasmuch as it also serves, by means of a double par- tition, for day rooms for able-bodied men and women, should occasion re- quire it. The situation of this building as a dining-hall is, from its central position, best suited for all classes, and is most convenient as regards the serving the food from the kitchen ; the two rooms for boys and girls will also serve the purpose of a chapel, if required. The Infirmary is placed at the back of the building, occupying a position distinct from the wards of the house, and sufficiently convenient for the supply of food from the kitchen offices without entailing the necessity of a separate establishment. Wards are placed on each end of the infirmary buildings for idiots, epi- leptics, and lunatics, in which cells are provided for those for whom occa- sional restraint is unavoidable, or whose habits render distinct accommodation necessary. The arrangement of the building is made with true regard to ventilation. At each end, in the centre of the building, a large hall, containing a super- ficial area of 426 feet, is carried up to the roof of the house, on which is constructed a large ventilator, containing windows hung on centres, and moveable with a line, to admit any circulation or change of air required. The several rooms throughout are arranged to open at once into the land- ing of the stone stairs, which are carried up in this space. The several doors have semicircular arches above them to be opened as occasion may require ; and which, without producing any strong current, would always effect an extensive ventilation during the occupation of the rooms. The usual man- ner of ventilating the common sleeping rooms, is by placing the windows on each side of the room, which are very useful, but chiefly so after the paupers have left the apartment. The windows throughout are constructed with the upper part hinged, and to fall inside, which allows them to be opened during rainy weather. Cast-iron air-gratings are to be inserted in small flues formed in the walls, and fixed a few inches above the floors, for obtaining, when required, an admission of external air. A A A A, yards. B, women’s yard. C, men’s yard. D, girls’ yard. E, garden. F, boys’ yard. G and H, small yards. THE DESTITUTE POOR OF IRELAND. When we call to mind the interminable discussions which only a few years ago were usual in every society, as to the necessity, or advantages, or practicability, of a pool -law sys- tem in Ireland, and then transfer our attention to the actual progress which has been made in carrying into effect a cer- tain, defined, and enacted arrangement, it is something like escaping from a dark, close wood, in which there was neither path nor direction, into an open country, with the bright ca- nopy of heaven above, and our desired destination, or the sure road conducting to it, plainly in view. To devise, and, much more, to bring into operation, a legal- ized system of poor relief suited to the wants ^nd circum*. 274 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. stances of Ireland, will, when duly considered, appear to have been a truly great and formidable undertaking. Innu- merable plans had been set forth from time to time for this purpose, anterior to the act passed among the first of her present Majesty’s reign ; but it may well be questioned if there was any one of them which would not on trial have proved to be a complete failure. Into that speculation, however, we have no occasion to enter at present, as there is now a law, having its machinery already so near to completion, that it must be in full effect at no distant day throughout the whole country, to the provisions and execution of which it will be at once more interesting and more profitable to direct our attention. We may confidently attribute whatever facilities have been found to attend the practical introduction of the law into Ireland, to the fact that its management was entrusted in the first instance to a Commission ; that the Commissioners were men already perfectly conversant with the subject, and that they were invested with sufficient powers to accomplish the object. No better machinery could have been devised, and we shall soon be enabled to perceive that it has not dis- appointed the expectations to which it might fairly have given rise. The first great object which presented itself for considera- tion, in connection Avith the act of Parliament, may be sup- posed to have been the division of the country into suitable districts for the administration of the system. It required a new series of boundaries for its own provisions and purposes, as the proposed relief was to be afforded territorially, accord- ing to none of the existing divisions, either parochial, ba- ronial, or by counties. The Commissioners were empowered to “ unite such and so many townlands as they mi ght think fit to be a Union for the relief of the destitute poor and the subject was one that evidently demanded the most serious examination. The principle of forming the Unions was that which the Commissioners had previously adopted in England, namely, that the Union should consist of a market-town as a centre, and the district of country surrounding and depending on it, and extending to about ten miles round it in all directions. The size of Unions was indeed a subject which caused a good deal of anxious consideration. People, generally speaking, were at first desirous of having smaller Unions — not taking into account, that by increasing the number of Unions, more expense Avould be incurred, as the larger the Union, the smaller is the establishment charge in proportion. However, the Commissioners, guided by local facilities, formed Unions of townlands already combined by social affinities as well as geographical position, and have thus exceeded the number at first estimated on a theoretical scale. The number declared up to the 25th of March last is 104, and 26 more, it is sup- posed, will comprise the whole of Ireland, and constitute the entire. The most important subject which demanded attention was the construction of a governing power for each Union, in conformity with the terms and intention of the act of Parlia- ment. It was to consist of a Board of Guardians, one- third being resident magistrates, and the remainder freely elected by the rate-payers. The Commissioners were autho- rised to fix the number for each Union, and they were of opinion that a number of elected Guardians, varying from 16 to 24, would be best calculated for carrying out the provisions of the act. These, with the addition of one- third, composed of the local magistrates, who are Guardians ex officio, Avould, it was calculated, give to each Union a Board of from 21 to 32 members, which would be sufficient for deliberation, and yet not so numerous as to impede effi- cient action. With regard to the actual elections, iioav nu- merous, which have taken place, the Commissioners in their last Report express their regret that much excitement and discordant feeling should have been exhibited in some instan- ces ; but at the same time they declare their belief, that, as a general result, efficient Boards of Guardians have been constituted. The third important object which demanded attention, was the procuring of suitable workhouses for the several Unions. The Commissioners were of opinion that one cen- tral Avorkhouse, of a size sufficient for the whole of the Union, would be best ; but for the sake of hastening the practical benefits of the act, and to save expense as much as possible'*- they were disposed to avail themselves of existing build- ings nearly central, capable of being converted into work' houses, if obtainable. Their expectations on this head, however, were very far from being realized. It seems cer- tain that the opinion originally formed as to the excess of barrack accommodation in Ireland was unfounded, there being in fact no more than the exigencies of the public service require ; and of barracks, eventually, they obtained but one, situate in the town of Permoy, which is now in process of conversion into a workhouse for that Union. In other Unions, old houses and other buildings were carefully surveyed ; but in no one instance, says Mr Wilkinson, the intelligent and skilful architect of the Commissioners, have premises of this kind been found eligible in point of economy or coiwenience of arrangement, the sums asked in nearly every instance having been far beyond the value for the purpose of conver- sion. As a general result, the only old buildings which have been actually converted, or are now in process of conversion, into workhouses, are, in Dublin, the House of Industry for the North Union, and the Foundling Hospital for the South ; in F ermoy the barrack already mentioned ; and the House of Industry in Clonmel. The number of new buildings contracted for, and in pro- gress, was in March last 64 ; the notices for contracts since published amount to 50 ; so that building arrangements re- main to be made for only 16 Unions. In the appendix to the last Annual Report of the Commis- sioners there is a tabular statement, shoAving at one view the number and names of the Unions which have been declared up to April last — the area in statute acres, and population of each — the number of Guardians respectively — with other par- ticulars, including indeed every thing necessary to afford sa- tisfactory information on the subject; and, but that it would occupy a great deal of space, we would gladly transfer it to our columns. Having thus briefly noticed the three leading points indis- pensably preliminary to the working of the poor-laAv, namely, 1st, the Unions, or districts within which each local adminis- tration is to be comprised ; 2dly, the Guardians, or local admi- nistrators of the law; and, 3dly, the Workhouses or buildings designed for the reception of the destitute poor, it only re- mains to add a few observations relative to certain topics on which there has been a good deal of discussion, and concern- ing which a clear opinion has not yet been arrived at by many. In the first place, there has been much misconception as to the true nature of the work which the act of Parliament de- volved upon the Commissioners of Poor-Laws. That such is the case, is evident from the many applications which have been made to them from time to time to afford relief in differ- ent districts under various circumstances of distress, as though the Commissioners possessed any general powers for this purpose. The applications were not indeed at all sur- prising. “ Hunger,” saith the proverb, “will break through stone walls ;” and it was not to be expected that those Avho witnessed and deeply sympathised with numerous and touch- ing instances of extreme destitution would be very nice in scanning the phraseology or exact intendments of an act of Parliament. However, in reality the Commissioners had no power to act in any manner different from that which the legislative chart, if we may use the phrase, had prescribed to them. Their mission was to fulfil the great Avork of founding and bringing into operation an extensive system of poor relief, not to distribute a bounty, or immediately to afford relief in any specific case of distress, however urgent. Their task Avas formidable and onerous ; and if the accomplishment of it has appeared to some to have been tedious in its course, it may well be asked, wherein has there been a failure of any means necessary to the end, or by Avhat better means could the Avork have been made to advance more speedily and more securely to completion, than by those which have been employed ? The laAv, it may be said, has as yet been brought to bear on the wants of the poor only in the Unions of Cork and Dublin. True ; but for this the law itself, or that process which it made imperative in order to effect the essential and solid pur- poses which it had in view, is alone answerable. Unions, Guardians, Workhouses, and Assessment, must, by the terms of the act, in every instance precede relief. By the 41st section it is enacted, “ That when the Commissioners shall have declared the workhouse of any Union to be fit for the reception of destitute poor, and not before, it shall be Iuav- ful for the Guardians, with the approbation of the Commis- sioners, to take order for relieving and setting to work therein destitute poor persons,” Thus it appears that until a work* 275 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. house be provided, the practical benefits of the act cannot be obtained. It may be premature at present to speak of the interior economy of the workhouse, but we may shortly refer to the leading views put forth by the Commissioners on the subject. They disapprove, then, we collect in the first place, of more land being occupied in connection with the house than may be sufficient for the purpose of a garden, or than can be con- veniently managed by the boys, or the aged and infirm men. Employment for the able-bodied is to be provided within the workhouse, to which they are to be strictly confined so long as they remain dependent on the Union for support. This, in the opinion of the Commissioners, given in their Fifth Annual Report, “ Should be of such a nature as to be irksome, and to awaken or increase a dislike to remain in the work- house, for which purpose corn-mills will probably be found, as in England, to be the most effective. With the aged and infirm the case is somewhat different : they should all be em- ployed, but their employment need not partake so much of the character of a test : and with the children the test is al- together inapplicable ; so long as they remain in the work- house, they should be taught and trained to become useful members of the community ; and for this purpose an acre or two of garden ground, in which the boys may work and ac- quire habits of industry, as well as skill and strength for manual labour, will be found extremely useful.” With regard to diet, they observe in their Sixth Report, that, as a general rule, it is unquestionably desirable that the workhouse diet should be, on the whole, inferior to that of the labouring classes of the surrounding district; yet that it is not on this circumstance alone, or even in any very great degree, that the efficiency of the workhouse depends. On the contrary, say they, “ We are satisfied that the diet, cloth- ing, bedding, and other merely physical comforts, may in the workhouse be better than in the neighbouring cottages, and yet that none but the really destitute poor will seek for admission into the workhouse, provided that order and dis- cipline be strictly maintained therein. It is in truth the re- gularity, order, strict enforcement of cleanliness, constant occupation, the preservation of decency and decorum, and exclusion of all the irregular habits and tempting excitements of life, on which reliance must mainly be placed for deterring individuals, not actually and unavoidably destitute, from seek- ing refuge within the workhouse, and not upon the absence of mere physical comforts. This is the view by which the legislature appears to have been governed in adopting the ge- neral principles of the Irish poor relief act ; and to this view we consider it to be essential that the dietaries and the other regulations of the workhouse should conform.” With these general views no reflecting person will, we should think, be disposed to quarrel. A good deal of discussion has taken place as to the regula- tion which prohibits strangers, and particularly reporters of the press, from attending the meetings of Guardians. How- ever, we in Ireland have nothing specially to complain of in this respect, as the same rule exists in England, and has not been attended there by any public inconvenience. The ques- tion properly is, why the rule should be different here ? The Guardians, it must be understood, are under no obligation of secrecy. They are quite at liberty to note, report, and pub- lish at their own discretion ; the rule merely excludes stran- gers, and of course reporters who are not Guardians, from the Board. The Commissioners in their Sixth Report very truly say that “the presence of strangers would be a re- straint upon the deliberations of the Guardians ; while the knowledge that their proceedings were to be published would certainly conduce to debate and display, and obstruct the dis- patch of business. A desire for popularity would be awakened, and individual Guardians would too probably be led to ad- dress themselves to the passions of their hearers, or to party or sectarian feelings prevalent without doors, rather than to the sober disposal of the business in hand. Prejudices would be excited, passions inflamed, personalities would arise, and the most respectable members of the Board, who, from their property, position, and habits of business, would be best en- titled and best fitted to take part in and guide its proceedings, would be borne down by clamour, or wearied by lengthened discussion, if not finally compelled to abandon their post.” It was no easy matter to have brought this great work of a statutable poor relief to its present advanced state, with- out exciting stronger feelings of opposing party than any which fortunately have yet been elicited ; but it may well be doubted if things would go on in the same quiet and business- like manner if Guardian meetings were to be open to the public ; and if there be any evil connected with the exclusion complained of, we may safely conjecture, at least, that it is the lesser of two — less than that which would arise from the jarrings and discord of party on a subject which, above any other, calls for unanimity, and should awaken only the feelings of a common benevolence and patriotism. We may now advert, in the last place, to the ameliorations in our social condition which may be expected to arise when the new system shall have been put fully in operation. In the first place, a reproach will be wiped away from our country, which certainly existed against it so long as it could be said that no law existed in it for the relief of the poor. Destitu- tion will then be provided for, and mendicancy will be without excuse. It is true that there is no direct provision in the act for the restraint of beggary, but a legalized provision for the destitute is indirectly a law against it, and must operate most powerfully as such. When people are taxed to maintain the poor, they naturally become unwilling to open their purse- strings, unless with great reluctance, at the solicitation of mendicants ; the trade of mendicancy declines ; and those who would still cling to it are forced, if of the class of the able- bodied, to apply themselves to some means of profitable in- dustry, or to resort to the workhouse for subsistence. The Poor-Relief Act is thus, indirectly, a law against mendicancy, and in this point of view is calculated to work most benefi- cially, and greatly to alter the face of things in Ireland. But it is also a law of positive economy to the country. The support of the destitute not being abandoned to casual charity, but conducted systematically by persons appointed to bestow their exclusive attention to it, and all rateable parties being under a legal obligation to contribute in due proportion to their circumstances, there cannot be a doubt that a less expenditure will suffice under such management for the maintenance of the really destitute than if the work were left to mere voluntary benevolence, and no means existed of compelling all classes fairly to share the burden among them. Many persons have felt a terror at the idea of the taxation they supposed they should have to suffer under a poor-law ; but the great probability, nay, almost the certainty of the matter, is, that it will be a considerable saving to them. The present rate in Dublin is Is. in the pound for the year, on a very moderate valuation, and much more than half the rate is borne by landlords.* This, however, appears to be beyond the intention of the law as to town property, for which inordinate rents are not usually obtained ; but the result is within the control of the Guardians, who may revise the valuation when- ever they propose to levy a new rate. The expense of the relief, even under higher rates, would be less, far less, on those who have hitherto supported the poor, than the outlay which they have annually made for that object ; and now they will have the satisfaction of knowing that what they give is given to the destitute poor ; that all is well applied, none misspent, and every part so economized in distribution, that the sum contributed relieves a greater num- ber of poor than the larger sum formerly given in alms. It must also be considered, that the poorer classes subsist- ing by labour will be relieved by the workhouses from the continual encroachments of beggars on their scanty meals, and the still more scanty means of lodging possessed by them. * As the principle on which the tenant is entitled to make deductions from rent, on account of the poor rate, is not clearly understood by many, the following explanation is given : — This tax being imposed on the annual value of each tenement, say a rate of 5d. on £50, £60, or whatever the valuation may amount to, the tenant is to deduct one-half of the rate, say 2%d., from every pound in the year’s rent. r ihe rate is imposed for a year ; it may happen that no further rate will be necessary in the year, or it may occur that three or four rates will be neces- sary ; still each rate is for the year, and is either the whole amount required or an instalment. In any event it is levied on a year’s value ; and landlords are to allow their tenants one half of each rate of 5d., 6d., or whatever it may be, out of every ; pound in the year’s rent, when receiving either a half year’s, quarter’s, month’s, or week’s gale. Suppose the annual value is £50, the rent being also £50, the rate of5d. will amount to £1, Os. 10d., and in paying a half year’s rent of £25, the tenant must deduct fifty times 2}4d., Qr 10s. 5d., being half the tax paid. If the year's rent be greater than the annual value, the tenant will deduct more than half the amount of the tax Thus, a rate of 5d. on an annual value of £50, being, as already stated, £1, 0s. 10d., if the annual rent be £80, the tenant will deduct from the first gale falling du softer the rate is declared by the Guardians, eighty times 2J4d. or 16s. 8d. On the other hand, if the annual rent be less than the value, say £40, the deduction will be only forty times 2J4d., or 8s. 4d. The tenant and landlord become liable to the rate at the same moment ; therefore a rate declared in April 1840 attaches to rent then accruing, but not to a gale previously due. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 27(1 Let the opponent of such a provision for the poor — if any re- flecting person in the country can on public grounds be op- posed to it — let him, we say, contemplate the hard lot of the labouring classes, compelled by the importunities of beggars not only to give up a considerable share of the food actually insufficient for themselves, but also to divide their beds or their children’s beds with persons of the lowest habits, and thus see their families deprived of food, of rest, health, and morality ; while a large number of the wealthy classes re- mained listless and inaccessible within their closed doors, or were exercising their better feelings in a distant land. We do not accuse the wealthy members of society, as a class, with indifference to the wants of the poor : we but re- fer to a contrast between their security against the intrusion of mendicants, and the defenceless state of the labouring classes — a contrast which doubtless must have been ever pre- sent to the mind of the poor working man : and we do this to show how much the wealthy will gain by a law which pro- vides safe means for its application in relieving poverty. The expense, then, which we are now incurring, is not a new charge, but a wise and equitable distribution of one here- tofore borne by portions of the community in very dispropor- tionate shares, without having any tendency to obviate the mendicancy by which it was created, but, on the contrary, having a direct tendency to foster and increase that most de- moralizing of all the conditions in life. Be the expense what it may, it cannot tend to induce a more extensive reliance on the public provision than mendi- cancy has encouraged : nay, we maintain, that when the law shall have been for a short time in full and general operation, the number of unemployed and dependent poor will gradually decline. But expectation must have a little patience : the machinery for sustaining in orderly and decent comfort up- wards of one hundred thousand human beings, cannot be cre- ated otherwise than by a very gradual process. This is not a clime in which men and families can be encamped : when they are to be lodged, durable structures must be provided, and for this work much time is necessary. We are sure that no time has been lost ; nay, we regard the progress made as among the most accelerated public labours of this or any other country. In the mean time, the law is not without working out much good for the labouring classes. Workmen of every grade have been busily employed in the construction of work- houses since the spring of 1839, for which object government has advanced upwards of a million of money, free of inte- rest, for ten years after the commencement of relief in each Union. We are, however, reasoning without having an argument opposed to us ; for any thing like argument against the law we have not heard. In Dublin it is merely complained, that although houses are open and rates levied, the mendicants still throng the streets. But it is not shown that any thing like the same number of apparently deserving objects of re- lief are to be seen ; they on the contrary are in the work- houses, maintained by the rates ; and were it not for the poor children whom the mendicants drag along with them, the im- posture would soon be stopped by its own want of success. The policy of the law contemplates the repression of beg- gary and vagrancy, and all those disorders and crimes which accompany or have their origin in those habits— the encou - ragement of a more productive industry — the more universal recognition of the identity of interest amongst all classes affected by the law — and with the cordial co-operation of all the intelligent classes of society which it has hitherto received, and will probably receive yet further hereafter — there can- not be a doubt but that the law, when in full operation, will realize all this, and more. To those who wish for an exemplification of the favourable working of the law, we recommend the perusal of a little work lately published under the title of “ Benevola,” in which the English and Irish systems of relief are well con- trasted, and the tendency of the Irish provision is ingeniously exemplified. To those who will not be satisfied without a practical exemplification, we can only recommend patience ; but we will say — Do not in the mean time forget the cost and other deplorable evils of Irish mendicancy. F. THE PILGRIM AT THE WELL. The fountain is gleaming in morning light, But there kneels beside it a child of night ; Tor to her the summers no sunshine bring ; Oh ! what doth she seek at that blessed spring ? The home of her youth she has left afar, And the promise of light was her spirit’s star ; But her perils and pilgrimage all are past, And that hallowed fount she hath found at last. For they said that a spell in its waters lay, To banish the blight of her life away ; And the prayer of her faith it grows fervent now. While signing the cross upon breast and brow. Oh ! stranger of darkness, kneel not there, Tho’ the fountain with freshness fills the air, And its waters are sweet as the summer rain. But they cannot give thee the day again. Yet, tell us, ye searching ones and wise, Oh ! whence did these ancient dreams arise Of the holy and hidden things, which still Were mighty to heal all human ill ? T hey were stars that blest in their hour of might, And gems that shone with a saving light; They were trees of life in the trackless wilds, And the sea had its own immortal isles ; And through all her changes, the world’s hope clings To the healing power of her sacred springs ; For around them the faith of nations hung, And sages have trusted, and poets sung, And pilgrims have sought them by night and day, Over mountain and desert far away ; But they sought in vain in the earth or seas, Oh, tell us whence are such dreams as these ! Say, are they of some far deathless clime, Thus casting its shadows of hope on time ; Or voices of promise, sent before The day when earth’s curse shall be no more ? We know not but life hath the cloud and pall. And woe for the heart’s hope, more than all, For its precious seed in the fruitless ground, And its bread on the waters never found. Oh ! is there not many a weary heart, That hath seen the greenness of life depart. Yet trusted in vain in a powerless spell. Like her who; knelt by the Holy Well ! F. B. NATURE’S WONDERS. THE GADFLY. The study of natural history is one which, independent of the charm it possesses to the inquisitive and contemplative mind, in affording food for the cultivation of the highest qua- lities of the intellect, is also beneficial in a moral point of view, as it insensibly brings the cultivator of it to contemplate the power and goodness of his Creator. It leads his thoughts from the petty affairs of life, and, making him look with ad- miration and a feeling of love on every manifestation of the Divine power which surrounds him, instils into his mind one of the strongest principles of action desired by the Almighty — . a feeling of universal benevolence. There cannot be a better illustration of this latter effect which I have mentioned the study of natural history pro- duces on the mind, than that afforded us by the history of the birth and after life of the insect I have headed this article with — “ the Gadfly.” Strange and wonderful though the transformations be to which the butterfly and many other in- dividuals of the insect world are subject, those of this little creature far surpass them all. Many of my readers are well acquainted with that fly which in the latter part of summer is seen to be so annoying to the horse, buzzing about him, and every now and then dashing itself with some degree of violence against his sides and legs. This motion, to all appearance, is without design ; but a closer study of the habits of the insect will show that, far from being the effect of chance, it is one of para- mount importance to the existence of the fly, as on it depends the continuation of its species. If attentively observed, it will be found that it is the female of this fly alone who resorts to this peculiar motion; this she does to deposit her eggs in the hair of the horse, to which they at once become attached by a gelatinous fluid surrounding them ; by this mucus they are enabled to retain I their hold for a few days, during which time they are fitted THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 277 to be hatched, and the slightest touch will liberate a little worm they contain. The horse, in resorting to the common practice of licking himself, breaks the egg, and the small worm contained in it adhering to the tongue of the animal, is conveyed with the food into the stomach ; there it clings by means of hooks placed at either side of its mouth, and its hold is so tenacious that it will be broken before it can be detached. Here, in this strange abode, changing as it were its nature in becoming a parasite, it remains for the whole of the winter, feeding on the mucus of the stomach. At the end of the ensuing spring, having reached its full perfection in this secondary state, led by that instinct which regulates all the animated creation, from man to a monad, it detaches itself from the cuticular coat, and is carried into the vilous portion of the stomach with the food, passes out of it with the chyme, and is at length evacuated with the feces. The larva or maggot, now a second time changing its nature, seeks shelter in the ground, and after some time becomes a chrysalis ; in that helpless state it lies for some weeks, when, bursting from its deathlike sleep, it wakes into life and ac- tivity in the form of a perfect fly. There is hardly a parallel to this v r onderful chain of causes and effects, and effects and causes, to be met with in all the varied and mysterious workings of nature ; scarcely one which exhibits so many acts apparently so unconnected with the ultimate results. V. IRISH ODDITIES— No. I. SNAP RIVERS. Jack Rivers should have been a gentleman. His family, his property, his early education, entitled him to that dignity. Jack was not a gentleman ; with perverted view's of ambi- tion he spurned the distinction, and gloried in the well- merited title of knave. Many loftier and nobler minds have been reduced to even a low r er point of moral degradation by early indulgence in gross licentious habits. Such was not the case with Jack. Immoderate sensual gratification ranked not in the catalogue of his crimes. He was no toper ; w r as a married man at twenty, and a faithful husband all his life. Yet, Jack was an acknowledged, nay, more, a professed knave, though neither a lover of money nor a spendthrift. Shakspeare, it is said, ransacked all nature, and left almost no character untouched ; yet neither in his historical por- traits, the etchings of his own times, nor his prophetic crea- tions, has he given us a picture that at all resembled Stiap Rivers, the faithfully expressive soubriquet assumed by our hero. Nature, whimsical nature, must have been in her drollest mood — must have been actually studying the pic- turesque w'hen she cast his nativity. He certainly was a model for an artist in that line, for he stood six feet six inches by military standard, was extremely slender, rejoiced in the possession of a hatchet face ornamented with the most splendid Roman nose imaginable, illumined by two small ferret eyes, squinting fiercely inwards, which gave to his countenance the most sinister expression possible. Quite aware of the value of these natural advantages, Jack’s genius and striking taste in dress added considerably to their effect. It was his invariable custom through life to wrap his outer man in a long blue cloak, a garment little used in his day. Summer and winter, a pair of blue rib-and-fur woollen stock- ings encased his spindle legs, gartered above the knee be- neath a pair of gun-mouthed unmentionables ; a red nightcap ever maintained its conspicuous place on his elevated poll, while an immense fire-shovel or clerical hat gave a finish to his unique and matchless appearance. He possessed one other accomplishment : he was afflicted — poh !_ blessed with a most inveterate stammer in his speech : a word in speaking he could not utter without the most frightful contortion of coun- tenance, and unintelligible splutter, splutter, splutter. Yet, no one of his attributes did he turn to such beneficial effect as this ; for when he either wished to gain time, or baffle an opponent, forth came a torrent of manting sounds in all their horrific grandeur, and he who could quell the feelings of pity could rarely resist the ready propensity to laugh at the ludicrous exhibition ; so Jack was generally successful. But, notwithstanding this great natural defect, whenever he leased he could make himself well understood, by falling ack upon a species of recitative, or musical method of speaking, peculiar to himself, and always commencing with a loud '‘ho! ho!” which gave timely warning to all his ac- quaintances that he was about to favour them with his own sentiments in his own style. One circumstance of his early life must be mentioned, as it may have given a bent to his mind in after years. At the early age of seventeen he had deserted his respectable and happy home, and found himself a private in a dragoon regiment. The act broke his father’s heart. So, having spent three years in that admirable school of morality, Jack purchased out, and returned to his young wife, as well as to the possession of a snug £400 a-year. which fell into his hands by hereditary descent. Constituted as his mind then w r as, his principles soon began to develope themselves, and to afford a strong contrast to those which had governed the actions of his father. That he shortly became dreaded by all his neighbours, may be admit- ted ; that he would and did overreach every man with whom he had business transactions, w'as an admitted fact, because it W'as his own proud boast ; and when checked by his friends for those admissions, he w'ould boldly reply, “ Ho ! ho ! w'oo-ood you have me tit-tit-too put my lildighted ca-handle under a bu-hushal ?” But that he was hated, or even disre- spected in consequence of his acts, has no foundation in real- ity. There w'as nothing mean or grovelling about his knavery— all was above-board, done in clear day-light. There w'as nothing selfish or avaricious about him ; the glory of the deed was all he aimed at, for every body knew he would prefer gaining a pound by open imposition, to the receipt of ten by honourable means. He never used a sooth- ing phrase to human being. He seemed to court the hostility of his species, yet that w r ould not come ; for notwithstanding his profane and coarse salutations, he had a humane heart, and a short time sufficed to unmask it. The poor never went hungry from his door, and a distressed acquaintance had a certain resource w'hile there was a penny in the purse of Snap Rivers. He w'as as welcome to his cash as to his bitterest malediction, and that was ever ready for either friend or foe. But the insolent great man, or the would-be important, who aped a dignity to which he had no fair claim, was the object of his deep immitigable hate ; with such he could hold no terms ; and did such ever cross his path, he would plot for months till he would circumvent him in some shape. Did ever Shakspeare light on such a character ? Yet, notwith- standing all these seeming contradictions, a single trait has not been here placed to his account that was not in a degree beyond description truly his. On one occasion Jack was invited to an evening party in the house of his brother-in-law, a plain honest man, an* ex- tensive farmer, wealthy and respectable, in every point the very antithesis of his eccentric relative. The district w r as re- markable for the peace and harmony which prevailed through- out its entire population. Party strife and sectarian animo- sity were here totally unknown, while intermarriages among all sects cemented a union and fostered a spirit of Christian charity and forbearance, which, while it ameliorated the heart and breathed peace around it, shed also a lustre on the hum- ble community beyond the dignity which vain pomp confers on the fleeting distinctions which gorgeous wealth creates. But Jack was an invited guest ; so was his own amiable minister, the virtuous and respected Protestant rector, Mr B ; so was Dr D , a pretty tolerable wag ; and so was the Rev. Mr K ., the parish priest, between whom and the rector there existed a sincere unfeigned friendship. The priest had studied in France; was a man of high attainments, polished manners, possessed a vast fund of sparkling wit, with as ready and as happy an expression as ever distinguished man ; but his brilliant qualities were ever under the control of strict decorum, and, further, restrained by a lofty sense of that dignity which should inhedge the minister of religion. He -was consequently an especial favourite with all classes, and an honoured guest at every social board. No man revered him more than Snap Rivers, and none was more anxious, or better knew how, to draw out his conversational powers. The party w r as all assembled with the exception of our hero, and as his presence and pungent remarks always contri- buted to the hilarity of his friends, the kind-hearted host was not half satisfied with his absence. “ What the devil’s keeping Jack ?” had just escaped from Mr Anderson’s tongue, as the door opened, and the head and shoulders of Snap Rivers made their welcome appearance. When he had fairly entered the room, he raised himself to his full height, stared deliberate] v around him, pulled off his hat with some attempt at grace, and exclaimed in his own fashion, “ Ho ! ho ! a goo-hoodly company, by Ju-hupiter ! Ho ! ho ! the bla-haek-coais !” 278 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Then casting up his eyes in the most fervent manner, he added — “ From daw-hoctors and praw-hoctors, lil-lawyers and cla- hargymen, good Lord deliver us !” “ Early in the attack, Mr Rivers,” said the priest. “ Ho ! ho ! Mr Lil-long-tongue, sure you nee-heedn’t care ; you’re always prepared. I wo-wo-wish your brother co-co- corbie there would bib-bib-bib-borrow some of your chin- whack.” “ Listen to him noo,” said the host ; “ he’s begun, an’ the diel would na stop his tongue ; we’ll a’ get a wipe in our turn.” “ Never mind,” said the rector. “Mr Rivers, I am happy to perceive, is charitably inclined to-night. He wishes to in- crease my usefulness for the benefit of his neighbours, as he never condescends to occupy his seat in church.” “ And never will, Mr Modesty, till you think fit to change your tune.” “ Pray inform me how I shall accommodate myself to your taste, Mr Rivers.” “There are tit-two mim-methods open to you. Either you shall pra-hactise what you pre-hcach, or pre-heach what you pra-hactise !” “ You are pleased to speak in riddles, Mr Rivers ; be kind enough to explain.” “ Ho ! ho ! tha-hat is mim-more than I intended. Fu-lioo men blame me for con-ce-ling my thoughts. But I shall try to be clear. You pre-heach cha-harity, and you pra-hactise rir- rir-robbery. Ho! ho! but you are a saint ! Now, I am a knave ; and how lies the difference ? In my fif-favour to be sure, for I give the world fif-fair play — every body knows my cha-haracter.” “ Your character is generally known,” interposed the priest ; “ and, as you admire candour, allow me to add, as generally execrated.” “ And what is that yoo-hoore affair, Mr Law-long-tongue. Why meddle in other men’s fif-fif-feuds ?” “ You mistake, Mr Rivers ; he who interrupts the harmony of society is accountable to every member. You have rudely burst the bounds of decorum to-night ; you have unfeelingly assailed a mild and amiable gentleman ; your charge is as unjust as your manner is coarse and vulgar, and both are as execrable as any thing, save the malice that prompted the attack.” “ Ho ! ho ! I might as well have rir-roused a hive of hor- nets. You black-coats fight among you-yourselves like cat and dog, but you will not allow others to interfere with the claw-hoth, I perceive.” “ The deevil stop your tongue, but it’s gleg the nicht, Jack Rivers,” said the host ; “ can you no gie us peace ? — sure nae ilhor man would insult the rector.” “ Ho ! ho ! but you’re in a wonderful pucker, Mr Numskull. Let. the rector defend himself.” “ Mr 13 is too gentle a character to manage you,” said the priest. “ Your greatest enemy wo-ont brand you with that crime,” replied Rivers, “for you ride rough-shod over all that come in your way.” “ Nothing gives mo greater pleasure, I admit, when I meet such characters as you ; for history furnishes no likeness of you, and among living men we would seek in vain for your fellow.” “ Ho ! ho ! your French politeness is less polished than stringent to-night, I think. I don’t admire it much. I wnuld rather see your native talent in its native Irish dress. Out with the sentiments of your heart, plainly, man, and at once say, ‘ Out of h , Rivers, you’re matchless.’ ” “ Oh no, I cannot profit by your advice. I felt my own want of ability, and therefore left the picture to be dashed off by an abler hand. The truthfulness of your sketch no per- son will venture to dispute.” The laugh w r as against Jack, and he bore the punish- ment with good temper, collecting himself, however, for a re- newal of hostilities. After tea, as was the custom on such occasions, the ladies and such of the young men as preferred female society withdrew to another apartment, while the ma- jority of the elderly gentlemen, including the clergymen, the doctor, and Snap Rivers, collected round the host to enjoy the comforts of the bottle ; and as the steam began to rise, the hilarity of the party got up in proportion. After various gay sallies, Rivers said, “ Well, Master Galen, how goes trade now ? You-oo and the se-hexton are se-heldom idle, I believe.” “ Always doing a little,” said the good-natured doctor, “but nothing worth notice. Any snaps with yourself of late, my conscientious friend ?” “Good, doctor, good; seldom at a loss for a sly hit. A-a-and to tell you the truth, I have mere trifles to boast of since 1 diddled the fellows in the pa-harish of Billy.” “ I am not aware of the circumstance; pray what was it ?” said the doctor. “ Lil-lil-let our brilliant host tell you; he w r as a witness to the transaction,” said Rivers ; “ besides, unfortunately, my tongue was not made by the same craftsman that manufac- tured my brains.” “ How happy for your neighbours !” said the priest ; “ could your tongue give ready expression to the subtle plot- tings of your skull, we would be deluged with a torrent of knavery. But, Mr Anderson, do favour us with the story.” “ By my conscience, then, it will do but little credit to Jack, in any honest man’s mind ; but if you will hae it, then you must hae it. About three months ago there was a pro- perty to be sold by public cant in B Is, and, to be sure, the devil drives it to Jack’s ears. Weel ! the lease w r as a perpetuity, very valuable, and fifty pun’ o’ a deposit was to be paid doon on the nail. Very weel, he comes owre and en- gages me to gang alang wi’ him to buy the place. But on the morning of the sale when I called on him, what was my surprise to see him dressed up in a rabbitman’s coat, tied roun’ wi’ a strae rope, a hat owre the red nightcap, no worth thrippence, wi’ breeks, shoes, and stockings that would dis- grace a beggarman. Weel, in spite o’ a’ I could say, aff he starts in that fashion, and you’ll grant a bonny figure he cut amang respectable men ; but diel hait ho cared; for while the folk was gathering, he sets liimsel up on a kind o’ a counter, and begins beating wi’ his heels, and- glancing roun’ him like a monkey, and jabbering the purest nonsense. I actually thought I would hae drapped through the earth wi’ perfect shame, though I was a little relieved when I saw he was set down for an idiot, and heard the gentlemen freely crack their jokes on him. Weel, the auction commenced, and wdien tw'a or three bids were gi’en, he looks up at the cant-master so innocently, and says, in his ain style, ‘ Ho, ho, may I gie a bid?’ ‘To be sure, my fine fellow,’ says the man, laugh- ing doon at him ; ‘ bid up, and nae doot ye’ll get the pro- perty.’ The bidding was up to £150. ‘ £200,’ cries Jack, amid the roars o’ the company, ‘ £250,’ says another. ‘ £300,’ says Jack, and he skellied up at the cant-master in such a fashion as nae living man could stand. You could hae tied the hail gathering wi’ a strae, while Jack kept glowering about and whistling, and beating time to the tune wi’ his heels.” “ And what tune did he whistle?” said the doctor. “ The diel a mair or less nor ‘ the Rogue’s March,’ ” said the narrator. “ But when the roars had subsided, the cant- master, to humour the joke, takes tip Jack’s bid, and he says, ‘ Three hundred pounds once — three hundred pounds twice — three hundred pounds, three — three — three — all done ? — three times !’ and down, in fine, he knocks a property worth three thousand, adding, ‘ The place is yours, my man.’ ‘ Yes, by my sowl,’ says Jack, springing off the counter, ‘ the place is mine ;’ and pulling a bag out of a side pocket, and placing it on the table, he added, ‘ And there’s your required deposit for you !’ But he may tell the rest liimsel.” “ And what followed, Mr Rivers?” said the doctor. “ Wha-hat followed ! Why, you-oo would have thought the fellow was stuck, or af-flicted with my own impediment ; but after some attempts he stammered out, ‘ Oh, every person knows I was only in jest.’ ‘Ho! ho! my boy,’ said I, ‘ but every person here shall know that I ne-ever was more in earnest. If I be a fool, my money’s no fool. Ho ho ! gentlemen, you enjoyed your jokes at my expense ; but it’s an old saying, he may laugh that wins ; the tables a-a-aro turned, and it’s xny time now, I presume.” “And, Mr Anderson,” said the doctor, “did all present quietly submit to the imposition?” “ Why, to tell the truth, every sowl in the place was dum- foundered, and stared at each other like as mony idiots. The cant-master made some new objection about ruining him, but Jack very glibly replied, ‘ The sale is good and lawful. After more than three bids, the property was knocked down to me. The terms have been duly complied with, the de- posit tendered before witnesses, and here is the remainder of the purchase money at your service when the deeds are per- fected. 1 grant you were more merry than wise on this oc- 279 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. casion ; and if you wish to know whom you have to deal with, it may be sufficient to inform you that I am Snap Rivers of the Doaghs ; you have likely heard the name before and out he marched as cool as a cucumber.” The rector knew less of his parishioner than did the rest of the party ; he therefore listened in amazement to the relation ; but when the host had concluded, as if to assure himself that he was not dreaming, he said, “ And, Mr An- derson, did all this really occur ?” “ Tfaitk I assure you it did.” “ And is it possible that you could lend yourself to so ne- farious and disreputable a transaction?” “ It’s no the first time Jack has made a tool o’ me,” said the simple-minded host : “ he inveigled me there just to make a witness o’ me. I was innocently led into the affair ; but be- sides what you have heard, I have neither more nor less to do with it.” “ And do you really intend to retain the property, Mr Rivers?” warmly inquired the indignant rector. “ Do I intend to retain it! Lord, how simple you would ap- pear ! Ho ! ho ! retain it ! to be sure I will, and a very good thing it is, let me tell you.” “ Well, sir, under these circumstances it is my duty to be plain : you and I can have no further acquaintance,” said the rector. Snap appeared surprised, and with a vacant stare, or at least a well-feigned look of simplicity, he modestly inquired, “ And why, may I ask, shoo-oo-ood you cut my acquain- tance ?” “ The reason is plain,” said the rector ; “ you are in pos- session of a property surreptitiously obtained. You have deeply injured the proprietor, ruined the auctioneer, and in- stead of feeling remorse, you glory in the nefarious deed.” “Ho! ho! is that the way the land lies ? Why, man, did not I purchase it at a public sale ? and was I not the highest bidder ? If the auction was ill managed on their parts, am I to blame?” “ These arguments,” replied the rector, “ might satisfy a Jew, but have no force on the Christian mind. You have no moral right. It is true, the law of the land may protect you, yet still you retain that to which in justice you have not even a shadow of claim.” “ Well, I am rejoiced to hear these noble sentiments from you, Mr Rector, although your high tone smacks a little of prudery. I trust you will cherish them ; and if you do, what the devil, I ask, will become of your tithes, to which you have less claim than I have to the property? I gave something for it, yoo-oo give nothing at all for them ; and yet you have the confounded impudence to rebuke me for one solitary act of knavery, while you practise the same trick on hundreds yearly.” The rector vouchsafed no reply, but retired to the ladies, disgusted with the hardened villany of his ribald pai’ish- ioner, who laughed in triumph at the clergyman’s discomfiture ; and turning to the priest, he said, “ Well, Master Glib-tongue, what do you think of the affair ? Did not I badger Mr Modesty in prime style ? I think he will not readily volunteer his infernal impudence again, after such a lesson.” “ I know, Snap,” said the priest, “ you are a consummate scoundrel. You have treated a most amiable man wdth un- feeling rudeness, and you deserve the reprobation of every right-thinking mind. Your legal swindling is bad, but your unblushing advocacy of the principle is worse ; and if any thing still more flagrant can be conceived, your base and savage retort upon your own pastor is the very climax of your heartless villany.” “ Ho ! ho ! Mr Bladderchops, you have taken up the cud- . gels, with a vengence. But you should remember the pro- verb, ‘ Come into court with clean hands.’ What are you better than Mr Modesty? You don’t take the tithes, simply because you can’t get them. You don’t rob by act of parlia- ment, but you wffieedle the money out of some, and frighten it out of others, with the magic of your priestcraft.” Mr Anderson was in agony, and interposing said, “ I think, Jack, if you had any decency or feeling for me, you would’nt insult a clergyman at my table. You might be satisfied with driving one out of the room.” “ Ho ! ho ! Mr Numskull, but you’re thin in the skin ! You have a wonderful leaning towards the corbies ; you might fairly volunteer to defend the rector, but I beg you to let the priest answer for himself.” “ And were I to answer according to your merits, a horse- whip would afford the fitting reply. Respect for my own character forbids that appeal, and protects your insolence. Yet you go not unchastised. The cupidity of your heart, like every other crime, engenders its own punishment ; and though you appear to glory in acts which shock the feelings of all other men, yet, despite your coarse ribaldry, there is an avenger within your own breast, which with scorpion venom stings you to madness, and will never cease its gnaw- ings till penitence, a very unlikely consummation, pour its healing balm on ulcers seared and encrusted by the fires of iniquity !” “ Ho ! ho ! how very familiar you black-coats are with hor- rors ! How very glibly you can 4 talk of hell where devils dwell, and thunder out damnation.’ Now, I think you priests should be more modest. It would serve your interests better to merely consign us to purgatory.” “ Your own acts, Rivers, determine such cases.” “ Ho ! ho ! I am aware of that ; but, notwithstanding, cannot a little bit of clerical hocus-pocus serve us on a pinch ?” “ The habitually profane have little to hope for either from God or man ; they sneer at blessings mercifully offered, and too frequently die in their sins.” “ Then, under all these circumstances I think it as wise to have nothing to do with your purgatory.” “ I wish it may not be your fate to go farther and fare worse.” “ Well, the devil couldn’t bandy compliments with you, Mr K ; so I think, brother Bill, you had better push about the jorum. The priest has too much tongue for me to-night, and there’s no moving his temper. But wait a bit : if I don’t gage him to his heart’s content, the first public place I meet him in, my name’s not Snap Rivers.” The party separated good friends, and the priest paid no attention to the threat. A month had elapsed, and Mr K— — having business in the nearest town, found himself on the market-day perusing a placard, announcing the exhibition of a large beautiful milk- white bullock, said to be a ton weight. In the midst of his reading the priest was surprised to hear himself called by name. “Ho! ho! Mr K , come hither!” His eye fol- lowed in the direction of the sounds, and at about a perch dis- tant he beheld Rivers, dressed as usual in his long blue cloak, gun-mouthed breeches, blue rib-and-fur stockings, his red nightcap and fire-shovel hat — as ludicrous a figure, “take him for all and all,” as ever stood in a market. “ Ho ! ho ! Mr Iv — - — , come hither,” and the priest, not un- willingly, obeyed the summons. The meeting occurred just in the market-place. The little square was thronged to ex- cess. The anxiety of business sat upon every countenance, and hundreds^ passing hither and thither in the ardent pursuit of their own affairs, might have passed their most intimate friend without recognition ; so true it is that the contempla- tive man is never more in solitude than in the midst of a crowd. But the first salutations over, Rivers entered eagerly into conversation with the priest, on topics of mutual interest ; with not unwarrantable familiarity he laid his hand on his shoulder, continued to talk earnestly, insinuated his finger into a button-hole, without apparent motive caught him by the collar, then grasped it firmly ; and that done, to his vic- tim’s consternation he pulled off his fire-shovel hat, left the red nightcap uncovered, and with much vigour brandishing the chapeau, began to call an auction. The market-people deemed him mad. The priest felt no desire to be disposed of by public sale, but Snap laboured most earnestly in his new vocation. “ Ho, ho ! oh yes ! oh yes ! hear ye ! hear ye !” And the people did hear, and did flock around the pair. The priest’s feelings may be fancied more readily than pour- trayed. He at once saw his tormentor’s aim ; he knew that violence would only serve to increase the awkwardness of his position, and with much presence of mind he resolved quietly to baffle, and if possible to turn the table upon Rivers. The crowd rushed rapidly to the centre of attraction. Mr K— . remained apparently unconcerned, and Snap was the object of every eye, as he continued vociferously to bawl, “ Hear ye ! hear ye ! oh yes ! oh yes !” The gaping spectators were lost in wonderment. No one could either divine the cause of the uproar or explain the strange conduct of the man in the cloak. At length the priest, seizing the favourable moment, pulled off his hat, and with a serene look and respectful tone thus addressed the assembly — I “ Ladies and gentlemen, I have the honour of informing 280 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. you that Mr John Rivers of the Doaghs, this long gentle- man at my shoulder with the blue cloak and red nightcap, purposes in his present remarkable dress to ride ‘ the white bullock’ three times round the market this day for your amusement ; the performance to begin precisely at 12 o’clock,” Three thundering cheers announced the delight of the crowed, while Rivers, baffled, disappointed, astonished, per- fectly dumfoundered, slackened his gripe, fell back a few steps, and stared most fixedly at the placid countenance of the priest ; he gaped and struggled for utterance ; the muscles of his face played in wild commotion. He solemnly raised his hands and eyes in the attitude of prayer, and at last was en- abled to bawl, or rather half sing, “ All that ever you did upon me w r as but a flea-bite to this. So, to make up mat- ters, you shall dine with Yellow Peg and me to-morrow ; you are the only man that ever could say he was more than a match for Snap Rivers.” H. H. INTERIOR OP THE GREAT EGYPTIAN PYRAMID. After dining with Caviglia, dear A , to continue my yarn, we started by moonlight for the Pyramid, in company with the Genius Loci, and duly provided with candles for exploration. I must premise that Caviglia, whose extraor- dinary discoveries you are doubtless well acquainted with, has just been set to work again by Colonel Vyse, Mr Sloane, and Colonel Campbell, our Consul-General at Cairo. He is at J (resent attempting to make further discoveries in the Great pyramid ; and as soon as he gets a firman from the Pasha, intends to attack the others. The shape of this Pyramid has been compared to “ four equilateral triangles on a square basis, mutually inclining towards each other till they meet in a point.” Lincoln’s- Inn Fields, the area of which corresponds to its base, wholly filled up with an edifice higher by a third than St Paul’s, may give some idea of its dimensions. The entrance is on the northern face of the Pyramid, on the sixteenth step, though you can ride up to it, such immense mounds of fallen stones have accumulated at the base. A long low passage, most beautifully cut and polished, runs downwards above 260 feet at an angle of twenty-seven degrees, to a large hall sixty feet long, directly under the centre of the Pyramid, cut out of rock, and never, it would appear, finished. This was discovered by Caviglia ; the pas- sage before this time was supposed to end about half way down, being blocked up with stones at the point where an- other passage meets it, running upwards at the same angle of 27, and by which you might mount in a direct line to the grand gallery, and from that to the Icing’s chamber, where stands the sarcophagus, nearly in the centre of the pile, were it not for three or four blocks of granite that have been slid down from above, in order to stop it up. By climbing through a passage, formed, as it is supposed, by the Caliph Mamoun, you wind round these blocks of gra- nite into the passage, so that, with the exception of ten or twelve feet, you do in fact follow the original line of ascent. We descended by it. Close to the opening of this passage on the grand gallery is the mouth of a well about 200 feet deep, by which we ascended from the neighbourhood of the great low r er hall. Two or three persons had descended it before Caviglia’ s time, but he cleared it out to the full depth that his predecessors had reached, and believing it went still deeper, hearing a hollow sound as he stamped on the bottom, he at- tempted to excavate there, but was obliged to desist on account of the excessive heat, which neither he nor the Arabs could stand. Think what his delight must have been, when in the course of clearing the passage which I mentioned to you leads di- rectly from the great lower hall, smelling a strong smell of sulphur ; and remembering he had burnt some in the well to purify the air, he dug in that direction, and found a passage leading right into the bottom of the well, where the ropes, pick-axes, &c., &c., were lying that he had left there in des- pair, on abandoning the idea of further excavation in that direction as hopeless. Up this well, as I said, we climbed, holding a rope, and fix- ing our feet in holes cut in the stone ; the upper part of the ascent was very difficult, and bats in numbers came tumbling down on us ; but at last we landed safely in the grand gallery, a noble nondescript of an apartment, very lofty, narrowing towards the roof, and most beautifully chiselled ; it ends towards the south in a staircase, if I may so term an inclined plane, with notches cut in the surface for the feet to hold by ; the ascent is perilous, the stone being as polished and slippery as glass ; before ascending, however, we proceeded by another beautifully worked passage, cut directly under the staircase to a handsome room called the queen’s chamber. Returning to the gallery, we mounted the inclined plane to the king’s chamber, directly over the queen’s. The passage leading to it was defended by a portcullis now destroyed, but you see the grooves it fell into. His majesty’s chamber is a noble apartment, cased with enormous slabs of granite, twenty feet high ; nine similar ones (seven large and two half-sized) form the ceiling. At the west end stands the sarcophagus, which rings, when struck, like a bell. From the north and south sides respec- tively of this room branch two small oblong-square passages, like air-holes, cut through the granite slabs, and slanting upwards — the first for eighty feet in a zigzag direction, the other for one hundred and twenty. It is Caviglia’s present object to discover whither these lead. Being unable to pierce the granite, he has begun cut- ting sideways into the limestone at the point where the granite casing of the chamber ends has reached the northern passage at the point where it is continued through the limestone, and is cutting a large one below it, so that the former runs like a groove in the roof of the latter, and he has only to follow it as a guide, and cut away till he reaches the denouement. “ Now,” says Caviglia, “ I will show you how I hope to find out where the southern passage leads to.” Returning to the landing-place at the top of the grand staircase, we mounted a ricketty ladder to the narrow pas- sage that leads to Davison’s chamber, so named after the Eng- lish consul at Algiers, who discovered it seventy years ago ; it is directly above the king’s chamber, the ceiling of the one forming, it -would appear, the floor of the other. The ceiling of Davison’s chamber consists of eight stones, beautifully worked ; and this ceiling, which is so low that you can only sit cross-legged under it, Caviglia believes to be the floor of an- other large room above it, which he is now trying to discover. To this room he concludes the little passage leads that branches from the south side of the king’s chamber. He has accordingly dug down the calcareous stone at the farther end of Davison’s chamber, in hopes of meeting it ; once found, it will probably lead him to the place he is in quest of . — Lord Lindsay's Letters from the East. John Philpot Curran. — Mr Curran happening to cross- examine one of those persons known in Ireland by the signi- ficant description of half-gentlemen, found it necessary to ask a question as to his knowledge of the Irish tongue, which, though perfectly familiar to him, the witness affected not to understand, -whilst he at the same time spoke extremely bad English. “I see, sir, how it is: you are more ashamed of knowing your own language than of not knowing any other.” A barrister entered the hall with his wig very much awry, and of which not at all apprised, he was obliged to endure from almost every observer some remark on its appearance, till at last, addressing himself to Mr Curran, he asked him, “ Do you see any thing ridiculous in this wig ?” The answer instantly was, “ Nothing but the head." Bills of indictment had been sent up to a grand jury, in the finding of which Mr Curran was interested. After delay and much hesitation, one of the grand jurors came into court to explain to the judge the grounds and reasons why it was ignored. Mr Curran, very much vexed by the stupidity of this person, said “ You, sir, can have no objection to write upon the back of the bill ignoramus, for self and fellow-jurors ; it will then be a true bill.” Mr Hoare’s countenance was grave and solemn, with an " expression like one of those statues of the Brutus head. He seldom smiled ; and if he smiled, he smiled in such a sort as seemed to have rebuked the spirit that could smile at all. Mr Curran once observing a beam of joy to enliven his face, re- marked, “ Whenever I see smiles on Hoare’s countenance, I think they are like tin clasps on an oaken coffin.” Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin. — Agents: — R. Guoombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool; Slocombe and Simms, Leeds; Fraser and Crawford, George Street, Edinburgh ; and David Robertson, Tron- gate, Glasgow. Number 36. SATURDAY, MARCH 6, 1841. Volume I. THE OLD BRIDGE OF MILTOWN, COUNTY OF DUBLIN. We have already taken occasion more than once to express our admiration of the beautiful and varied scenery which sur- rounds our city on all sides, and which presents such an end- less variety in its general character and individual features as no other city that we are acquainted with in the empire possesses in any thing like an equal degree. Other cities may have sce- nery in their immediate vicinity of some one or two classes of higher beauty or grandeur than we can boast of ; but it is the proud distinction of our metropolis that there is no class of scenery whatsoever of which its citizens have not the most characteristic examples within their reach of enjoyment by a walk or drive of an hour or two ; and yet, strange to say, they are not enjoyed or even appreciated. Some suburb of fashion- able resort is indeed visited by them, but not on account of any picturesque beauty it may possess, but simply because it is fa- shionable, and allows us to get into a crowd — as our delightful Musard concerts are attended by the multitude less for the mu- sic than to see and be seen, and where we too often show our want of good taste by being listless or silent when we ought to applaud, and express loudly our approbation at some capri- cious extravagance of the performer that we ought to condemn. The truth is, that in every thing appertaining to taste we are as yet like children, and have very much to learn before, we can emancipate ourselves from the trammels of vulgar fashion, and become qualified to enjoy those pure and refined pleasures consequent upon a just perception of the beautiful in art and nature. Till this power is acquired, our green pastoral rallies, our rocky cliffs, mountain glens, and shining rivers, as well as our exhibitions of the Fine Arts, and that pure portion of our literature which disdains to pander to the prejudices of sect or party, must remain less appreciated at home than abroad, and be less known to ourselves than to strangers who visit us, and who in this respect are often infinitely our superiors. It is no fault of ours, however, that we are thus defective in the cul- tivation of those higher qualities of mind which would so much conduce to our happiness ; the causes which have produced such a result are sufficiently obvious to every reflecting mind, and do not require that we should name or more distinctly allude to them. But we have reason to be inspired with cheerful hope that they will not very long continue in opera- tion. Temperance and education are making giant strides amongst us ; and when w r e look at our various institutions for the promotion of science, art, and mechanics, all in active operation, and aided by the growth of a national literature, we can scarcely hesitate to feel assured that the arts of civilized life are taking a firm root in our country, and wall be followed by their attendant blessings. But it may be asked, What have these remarks to do with Miltowu Bridge, the subject of our prefixed woodcut ? Our answer is, that in presenting our readers with one of the 282 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. innumerable picturesque scenes which are found along the courses of our three rivers, the Liffey, the Dodder, and the Tolka, all of which abound in features of the most beautiful pastoral landscapes, we have naturally been led into such a train of thought by the fact that we hold their charms in little esteem, and that few amongst us have the taste to appre- ciate their beauties, and the consequent desire to enjoy them. The Liffey may perhaps be known to a certain extent to many of our Dublin readers, but we greatly doubt that the Tolka or the Dodder are equally familiar to them ; and yet the great poet of nature, Mr Wordsworth, on his visit to our city, made himself most intimately acquainted with the scenery of the former, and thought it not inferior to that of his own Duddon, which his genius has immortalized. In like manner, the scenery of the Dodder, though so little known to the mass of our fellow citizens, has been often ex- plored by many British as well as native artists, who have filled their portfolios with its picturesque treasures, and have spoken of them with rapturous enthusiasm. Thus, for example, it was, as w r e well know, from this fount that much of the in- spiration of our great self-taught imaginative painter Danby was drawn ; and though we could not point to a higher name, we could, if it were necessary, give many other little less illus- trious examples of talent cultivated in the same school of nature. Amongst the many picturesque objects which this little mountain river presents, the Old Bridge of Miltown has always been with those children of genius an especial favour- ite, and many an elaborate study has been made of its stained and timeworn walls. It is indeed just such a scene as the lover of the picturesque would delight in quiet and sombre in its colour, harmonious in its accompanying features of old buildings, rocks, water, and mountain background ; and, as a whole, impressed with a poetical sentiment approach- ing to melancholy, derived from its pervading expression of neglect and ruin. It is for these reasons that we have given old Miltown bridge a place in our topographical collections ; and though many of our Dublin readers, for whom, on this oc- casion, we write especially, may not fully understand our language, or participate in our feelings, the fault is not ours : our object in writing is a kind one. We would desire that they should all acquire the power of enjoying the beautiful in nature, and, as a consequence, in art; knowing as we do that such power is productive of the sweetest as well as the purest of intellectual pleasures of which we are susceptible, and makes us not only happier, but better men. We are aware also that some of our Dublin readers, whose tastes are not uncultivated, but who have taken less trouble than ourselves to make themselves familiar with our suburban localities, may think that wm speak too enthusiastically of the scenery of the Dodder river and its accompanying features. But if such readers would meet us at Miltown some sunny morning in May or June next, and accompany us along the Dodder till w'e reach its source among the mountains — a moderate walk — we are satisfied that we should be able to remove their scep- ticism, and give them an enjoyment more delightful than they could anticipate, and for which they would thank us warmly. We could show them not only a varied succession of scenes of picturesque or romantic beauty on the way, but also many contiguous objects of historic interest, on which we would discourse them much legendary lore, and which we should lead them to examine, offering as an excuse for our temporary divergence the beautiful sonnet of Wordsworth to his favourite Duddon: — Who swerves from innocence, who makes divorce Of that serene companion — a good name, Recovers not his loss, but walks with shame, With doubt, with fear, and haply with remorse. And oft-times he, who, yielding to the force Of chance-temptation, ere his journey end, From chosen comrade turns, or faithful friend, In vain shall rue the broken intercourse. Not so with such as loosely wear the chain, That binds them, pleasant River ! to thy side : — Through the rough copse wheel thou with hasty stride, I choose to saunter o'er the grassy plain, Sure, when the separation has been tried. That we, who part in love, shall meet again. Thus, as we approached towards Rathfarnham, we should ask them to admire that noble classic gateway on the river’s side, which leads into the deserted park of the Loft us family, and which in its present state, clothed with ivy and hastening to decay, cheats the imagination with its appearance of age, and looks anarch of triumph of old Rome. We would then lead them into this noble abandoned park, still in its desola- tion rich in the magnificence of art and nature ; then w'e would take a meditative look at its general features and at those of the grim yet grand and characteristic castellated man- sion which with so much cost it was formed to adorn ; and we should ask our companions, wdiy has so much beauty and magnificence been thus abandoned ? Here in its silent hall w r e could still show them original marble busts of Pope and New- ton by Roubilliae ; and, in the drawing-room, pictures painted expressly for it on the spot by the fair and accomplished hand of Angelica Kaufmann. But the interest of those objects would after all be somewhat a saddening one, and we should return to our cheerful river with renewed pleasure, to relieve our spirits with a view of objects more enlivening. Such an ob- ject would be that old mill near Rathfarnham, where paper was first manufactured in Ireland about two centuries since. It was on the paper so made that Usher’s Primordia was printed, and the Annals of the Four Masters were written. The manufacturer -was a Dutchman— but what matter ? At the Bridge of Templeoge we should probably make another short divergence, to take a look at the old park and mansion of the Talbots and Domvilles ; and here, beneath a majestic grove of ancient forest trees, we should show our companions the largest bank of violets that ever came under our ob- servation. But the limits allotted to this article will not permit us to describe or even name a twentieth part of the objects or scenes of interest and beauty that would present themselves in quick succession ; and we shall only say a few words on one more — the glorious Glanasmole, or the Valley of the Thrush, in which the Dodder has its source. Reader, have you ever seen this noble valley ? Most probably you have not, for we know but few that ever even heard of it ; and yet this glen, situated within some six or seven miles of Dublin, presents mountain scenery as romantic, wild, and almost as magnificent, as any to be found in Ireland. In this majestic solitude, with the lovely Dodder sparkling at our feet, and the gloomy Kippure mountain with his head shrouded in the clouds two thousand four hundred feet above us, we have a realization of the scenery of the Ossianic poetry. It is in- deed the very locality in which the scenes of some of these legends are laid, as in the well-known Ossianic romance called the Hunt of Glanasmole ; and monuments commemorative of the celebrated Fin and his heroes, “tall grey stones,” are still to be seen in the glen and on its surrounding mountains. We could conduct our readers to the well of Ossian, and the tomb of Fin’s celebrated dog Bran, in which, perhaps, the natural- ist might find and determine his species by his remains. The monument of Fin himself is on a mountain in the neighbour- hood, and that of his wife Finane, according to the legends of the place, gives name to a mountain over the glen, called See- Finane. But there are objects of even greater interest to the antiquary and naturalist than those to be seen in Glanas- mole, namely, the three things for which, according to some of these old bardic poems, the glen was anciently remarkable, and which were peculiar to it : these were the large breed of thrushes from which the valley derived its name, the great size of the ivy leaves found on its rocks, and the large berries of the rowan or mountain ash, which formerly adorned its sides. The ash woods indeed no longer exist, having been destroyed to make charcoal above eighty years since, but shoots bearing the large berries are still be seen, while the thrush continues in his original haunt in the little dell at the source of the river on the side of Kippure, undisturbed and undiminished in size, and the giant ivy clings to the rocks as large as ever; we have seen leaves of it from seven to ten inches diameter. We should also state, that to the geologist Glanasmole is as interesting as to the painter, antiquary, or naturalist, as our friend Dr Schouler will show our readers in some future number of our Journal. But -we must bring our walk and our gossip to a conclusion, or our friends will tire of both, if they are not so already. Let us, then, rest at the little primitive Irish Christian church of Killmosantan, now' ignorantly called St Anne’s, seated on the bank of the river amongst the mountains ; and having refreshed ourselves with a drink from the pure fountain of the saint, we shall return in silence to the place from which we started, and bid our kind companions a warm farewell. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 283 NOTICE OF A SINGULAR BOOK ON FOSSIL REMAINS. Most of our readers must have heard of the wonderful dis- coveries of Cuvier respecting the extinct animals of a former world, and of the sagacity with which that profound anatomist disclosed the history of races, of whose existence the only evidence we possess depends upon the preservation of a few bones or fragments of skeletons. The same subject, which in the hands of genius has afforded such brilliant discoveries, has also afforded wide scope for credulity, and even imposture. The bones of the larger races of extinct animals were for- merly believed alike by the learned and the vulgar to be those of giants. Even as late as the seventeenth century, learned anatomists believed that the bones of the extinct elephant belonged to a gigantic race of men. In the year 1577, some bones of the elephant were disinterred near the town of Lucerne, in Switzerland ; the magistrates sent them to a professor of anatomy, who decided that they belonged to the skeleton of a giant, and the citizens were so delighted with the discovery that they adopted a giant as the supporter of the arms of their town, an honour which he still retains. In the same century, some bones of the elephant found in Dauphiny were exhibited in different parts of Europe as the remains of the general of the Cimbri who invaded Rome, and who was defeated by the consul Marius some time before the commencement of the Christian era. In this case, however, the mistake was not allowed to pass unnoticed, and the sur- geons and physicians of Paris entered into a lengthened discussion respecting the nature of the bones ; and the works written on this subject, if collected, would form a small library. The most extraordinary instance of mystification and cre- dulity upon record is to be found in the history of a book on Petrifactions, published by a German professor at the com- mencement of the last century. We quote the following notice of this very rare book from a French publication : — It is related in the life of Father Kireher, one of the most eccentric of men, that some youths, desirous of amusing themselves at his expense, practised the following mystifica- tion upon him. They engraved a number of fantastic figures upon a stone, which they afterwards buried in a place where a house was about to be built. The stone was found by the workmen while digging the foundation, and of course found its way to the learned Father, who was quite delighted with the treasure ; and after much labour and research, he gave such a translation of the inscription as might have been ex- pected from the whimsical disposition of the man. Kireher had been a professor at Wixrzburg where this anecdote became well known, and led to another mystification of a much more serious nature, as it was pushed so far as to occasion the publication of a folio volume. M. Berenger, physician to the Prince-Bishop of Warzburg, and a professor in the University, was an enthusiastic col- lector of natural curiosities. He collected without discrimi- nation, and above all things valued those objects which by their strange forms seemed to contradict the laws of nature. This pursuit drew much ridicule upon M. Berenger, and in- duced a young man of the name of Rodrich to amuse himself at his expense. Rodrich cut upon stones the figures of differ- ent kinds of animals, and caused them to be brought to Berenger, who purchased them and encouraged the search for more. The success of the trick encouraged its author ; he prepared new peti'ifactions, of the most absurd nature ima- ginable. They consisted of bats with the heads and wings of butterflies, winged crabs, frogs, Hebrew and other charac- ters, snails, spiders with their webs, &c. When a sufficient number of them was prepared, boys who had been taught their lesson brought them to the professor, informing him that they had found them near the village of Eibelstadt, and caused him to pay dearly for the time they had employed in collecting them. Delighted with the ease with which he ob- tained so many wonders, he expressed a desire to visit the place where they had been found, and the boys conducted him to a locality where they had previously buried a number of specimens. At last, when he had formed an ample collection, he could no longer resist the inclination of making them known to the learned world. He thought he would be guilty of self- ishness if he withheld from the public that knowledge which had afforded him so much delight. He exhibited his treasures to the admiration of the learned, in a work containing twenty- one plates, with a Latin text explanatory of the figures. As soon as M. Deckard, a brother professor, who was probably in the plot, was aware of this ridiculous publication, he expressed great regret that the mystification had been pushed so far, and informed M. Berenger of the hoax that had been played upon him. The unfortunate author was now as anxious to recall his work as he had formerly been to give it to the public. Some copies, however, found their way into the libraries of the curious. Nothing can be imagined more strange than this book, whether we consider the opinions contained in it, or the man- ner in which they are stated. It deserves to be better known as a monument of the most extravagant credulity, and as an evidence of the follies at which the mind may arrive when it attempts to bend the laws of nature to its chimeras. Nothing can be more absurd than the allegoric engraving placed on the title-page. On the summit of a Parnassus, composed of an enormous accumulation of petrifactions, we observe an obelisk supporting the arms of the Prince-Bishop, and sur- rounded by Cupids and garlands of flowers. Above the pyra- mid there is a sun surmounted by the name of the Deity, in Hebrew characters. Different emblematic persons holding petrifactions in their hands are placed on the sides of the mountain. At its base we observe on the right a tonsured Apollo, who doubtless represents the Prince-Bishop, and on the left we see the professor himself demonstrating all these wonders ; and also a genius, seated near the centre of the mountain, is writing down his words in Hebrew characters. In the dedication M. Berenger gives an explanation of these allegories. But what is still more remarkable, it appears that even the engraver has amused himself at the expense of the professor. What renders this probable is, that at the base of the engraving are figured pick-axes and spades necessary for extracting petrifactions, and along with them chisels, compass, and mallet, the emblems of sculpture ; and what is still more wicked, a bell, the emblem of noise. The work is dedicated to the Prince-Bishop of Wurzburg, on whom werebestowed the epithets of the New Apollo, Sacred Amulet of the country, the New Sun of Franconia, and others selected xvith equal taste. The most absurd flattery abounds in this dedication, of which the following may be taken as a sample. “ The opinions of philosophers are still unsettled. They hesitate whether to ascribe the wonderful productions of this mountain to the admirable operations of nature, or to the art of the ancients ; but, interpreted by the public gratitude, all unite with me in proclaiming that this useless and uncul- tivated hill has rendered illustrious by its wonders the begin- ning of your reign, and has honoured a learned Prince, the protector and support of learning, by a hecatomb of petrified plants, flowers, and animals. If it be permitted to attribute these marvels to the industry of antiquity, I can say that Franconia was once the rival of Egypt. By a usage unknown in Europe, Memphis covered her gigantic monuments with hieroglyphics, and I do not hazard an idle conjecture. I state without fear of contradiction, that the obelisk which crowns this mountain exhibits in its petrifactions the emblems of your virtues.” According to the author, the name of the Deity in Hebrew characters indicates the zeal of the Prince for reli- gion. The sun, the moon, and the stars, his beneficence, jus- tice, prudence, and indefatigable vigilance ; the comets, con- trary to the vulgar idea, which considers them signs of evil, foretell the happy events of his reign ; and the fossil shells re- present the hearts of his subjects. It appears from the preface that M. Berenger had soli- cited and obtained permission from the Prince-Bishop to pub- lish his work. He confesses that the greater number of philosophers and intelligent people he had consulted were of opinion that these petrifactions were the products of art ; in opposition to this erroneous opinion, he asserts that he has con- vinced the sceptics by taking them to the spot where he found his curiosities. Their astonishment, he adds, and their una- nimous and perfect conviction, had given him the utmost joy, and amply recompensed him for all "his labour and expense. This work was to have been followed by others. It is di- vided into fourteen chapters, each chapter being devoted to a single question. Most of these questions are so extraordinary and so singularly treated of, that one can scarcely believe that the author was in earnest. Thus, Chap. 4, The petrifactions of Wurzburg are not relics of Paganism, nor can they be at- tributed to the art and superstition of the Germans during heathen times. Chap. 5. The ingenious conjecture which attributes their formation to the plastic power of light. 284 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Chap. 6. The germs of shell-fish and marine animals, mixed with the vapours of the ocean, and scattered over the earth by the showers, are not the source of the fossils of Wurzburg. Chap. 12. Our petrifactions are not the products of modern art, as some persons have ventured to assert, throwing a cloud of doubts and fables over this subject. Chap. 13. Grave reasons for considering our petrifactions as the work of nature, and not of art. The absurdity of the arguments employed in the discussion of these different propositions, exceeds all belief. For example, the author, to refute the opinion of those who attribute these petrifactions to the superstition of the Pagans, demon- strates that none of these specimens in his possession are described in the decrees of the German synods, which pro- scribed images and sorcery. Neither can they be considered as victims offered to idols, for who ever sacrificed figured stones instead of living animals ? They are not amulets which Pagan parents hung around the necks of their children, to preserve them from the charms of witchcraft, for some of them are so heavy that they would strangle the poor infant, and there is no aperture in any of them through which a chain could be passed. Finally, what renders it impossible that these stones are the remains of Paganism, is, that many of them are inscribed with Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, and German charac- ters, expressing the name of the Deity. This work, as we have stated, was suppressed when he dis- covered the cruel hoax that had been played upon him. The work, in its original state, is very rare, and is only known to the curious ; but after the death of M. Berenger, the copies which he had retained were given to the public by a bookseller, but with a new title-page. S. SONGS OF OUR LAND. Songs of our land, ye are with us for ever. The power and the splendour of thrones pass away ; Rut yours is the might of some far flowing river, Through Summer’s bright roses or Autumn’s decay. Ye treasure each voice of the swift passing ages, And truth, which time writeth on leaves or on sand ; Ye bring us the bright thoughts of poets and sages. And keep them among us, old songs of our land. The bards may go down to tire place of their slumbers, The lyre of the charmer be hushed in the grave, Rut far in the future the power of their numbers Shall kindle the hearts of our faithful and brave. It will waken an echo in souls deep and lonely, Like voices of reeds by the summer breeze fanned ; It will call up a spirit for freedom, when only Her breathings are heard in the songs of our land. For they keep a record of those, the true hearted, Who fell with the cause they had vowed to maintain ; They show us bright shadows of glory departed. Of love that grew cold, and the hope that was vain. The page may be lost and the pen long forsaken, And weeds may grow wild o’er the brave heart and hand ; But ye are still left when all else hath been taken, Like streams in the desert, sweet songs of our land. Songs of our land, ye have followed the stranger, With power over ocean and desert afar, Ye have gone with our wanderers through distance and danger, And gladdened their path like a home-guiding star. With the breath of our mountains in summers long vanished, And visions that passed like a wave from the sand, With hope for their country and joy from her banished. Ye come to us ever, sweet songs of our land. The spring time may come with the song of her glory, To bid the green heart of tile forest rejoice, Rut the pine of the mountain, though blasted and hoary, And the rock in the desert, can send forth a voice. 1; is thus in their triumph for deep desolations, While ocean waves roll or the mountains shall stand, Still hearts that are bravest and best of the nation.,, Shall giory and live in the songs of their land, F. B. PERIODICAL LITERATURE. THE POOR AUTHOR.* How many a time do we take up the page of news, or the sheet of literary novelty, without reflecting upon the nameless sources whence their contents have been derived ; and yet what a fruitful field do they afford for our deepest contempla- tion, and our holiest and purest sympathies ! There may be there brought together, and to the general eye displayed in undistinguished union, contributions over which the jewelled brow of nobility hath been knitted into the frown of thought- fulness, and side by side with these, chapters wearily traced out by the tremulous hand of unbefriended genius. Upon the former we do not mean to dwell, but we would wish for a few moments to contemplate the heart-trying condition of the latter. It is hard to conceive a situation more replete with wretch- edness than that of the struggling man of letters — of him who has offered his all before the shrine of long-looked-for fame ; who has staked health, and peace, and happiness, that he may win her favour, and who nevertheless holds an uncer- tain tenure even of his “ daily bread.” He is poor and in misery, yet he lives in a world of boundless wealth ; but in this very thing is to be found the exquisite agony of his condition. What though haggard want wave around him her lean and famished hands, what avails that ? Write he must, if it be but to satisfy the cravings of a stinted nature ; write he must, though his only reward be the scanty pittance that was greedily covenanted for, and when his due, but grudgingly presented him. And then he must delineate plenty and hap- piness ; he must describe “ the short holiday of childhood,” the guileless period of maiden’s modesty, the sunshine of the moment when we first hear that we are loved, the placid calm of peaceful resignation ; or it may be, the charms that nature wears in England’s happy vales, the beauty of her scenery, the splendour and wealth of her institutions, the protecting law for the poor man, her admirable code of juris- j prudence. All, all these may be the theme of his song, or I the subject of his appointed task ; but the hours will pass . away, and the spirits he has called up will disappear, and his visions of happiness will leave him only, if it be possible, more fearfully alive to his own helplessness — they cannot wake their echo in his soul, and instead of their worthier office of heal- ing and blessedness, they render his wound deeper, deadlier, and more rankling. And who is there, think you, kind reader, that can feel more acutely the sting of neglect and poverty than the lonely man of genius ? Of him how truly may it be said, “he can- not dig, to beg he is ashamed !” His intellect is his world ; it is the glorious city in which he abides, the treasure-house wherein his very being is garnered ; it is to cultivate it that he has lived ; and when it fails him in his wintry hour, is not he indeed “ of all men most miserable ?” But let us suppose that his prescribed duty is done, that the' required article is written, and that this child of his sick and aching brain is at last dismissed ; and can his thoughts follow it ? Can his heart bear the reflection that it shall find admission where he durst not make his appearance ? He knows that it will be laid on the gorgeous table of the rich and honourable. He knows, too, that it will find its way to the happy fireside, the home where sorrow hath not yet en- tered — such as once was his own in the days of his childhood. He knows that the unnatural relation who spurned him from his door when he asked the bread of charity, may see it, and without at all knowing the writer, that even his scornful sneer may be thereby relaxed. He knows but why more ? Of himself he knows that want and woe have been his com- panions, that they are yet encamped around him, and that they will only end their ministry “ where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest !” This is by no means — oh, would that it were so !— an ideal picture. In London, amid her “ wilderness of building,” there are at this hour hundreds whose sufferings could cor- roborate it, and whose necessities could give the stamping conviction to its truth. We were ourselves cognizant of the history of one young man’s life, his early and buoyant hopes, his subsequent misfortunes and miseries, and his early and unripe death, to all of which, anything that is painted above bears but a faint and indistinct resemblance. He was an ■* The writer, as will be seen, has had in view solely the literature of London. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 285 Irishman, and gifted with the characteristics of his country — a romantic genius, united with feelings the most tremulous, and tender, and impassioned. Many years have since passed away, and over and over again have the wild flowers sprung up, and bloomed, and withered over his narrow resting place, no unmeet emblem of “ The poor inhabitant below !” but never has the memory of his sad story faded from us — never may it fade ! His lot was unhappy, and he “ perished in his pride.” His reason eventually bowed before his intense sufferings ; and excepting the few minutes just before his spirit passed away, his last hours were uncheered by the glimpse of that glorious intellect which had promised to crown him with a chaplet of undying fame. Even as it was, he had attracted notice ; his writings were beginning to make for him a name ; and the Prime Minister of England did not think it beneath him to visit his lonely lodging, and to endeavour to raise his sinking soul with the promise of almost unlimited patronage. But the restorative came too late : the poison had worked its portion, and in the guise of Fame, Death approached; “ And as around the brow' Of that ill-fated votary he wreath'd The crown of victory, silently he twined The cypress with the laurel : at his foot Perish’d the Martyr Student.” We have nothing to add to this. Had we not hoped to strike a chord of sympathy in our reader’s heart, tve should never have even advanced so far, or have uplifted the veil so as to exhibit the “latter end” of such. Reader, in con- clusion, you know not the toil, and trouble, and bodily la- bour, and mental inquietude, that furnish you each week with idle price of your penny ! S. H. PADDY CORBETT’S FIRST SMUGGLING TRIP. “ Then on the ’tither hand present her, A blackguard smuggler right behint her, And cheek-for-chow a chuffie vintner, Colleaguin' join. Burns. No order of men has experienced severer treatment from the various classes into which society is divided, than that of excisemen, or, as they are vulgarly denominated, guagers. If, unlike the son of the Hebrew patriarch, their hand is not raised against every man, yet they may be truly said to in- herit a portion of Ishmael’s destiny, for every man’s hand is against them. The cordial and unmitigated hostility of the lower classes follows the guager at every point of his dan- gerous career, whether his pursuit be smuggled goods, pot- teen, or unpermitted parliament. Literary men have catered to the gratification of the public at his expense, by exhibiting him in their stories of Irish life under such circumstances that the good-natured reader scarcely knows whether to laugh or weep most at his' ludicrous distress. The varied powers of rhyme have been pressed into the service by the man of genius and the lover of fun. The “ Diel’s awa’ wi’ the Exciseman” of Burns, and the Irishman’s “ Paddy was up to the Guager,” will ever remain to prove the truth of the foregoing assertion. But the humble historian of this unpretending narrative is happy to record one instance of retributory justice on the part of an individual of this devoted class, which would have procured him a statue in the temple of Nemesis, had his lot been cast among the ancients. Many instances of the gene- rosity, justice, and self-abandonment of the guager, have come to the writer’s knowledge, and these acts of virtue shall not be utterly forgotten. The readers of the Irish Penny Journal shall blush to find men, whose qualities might recon- cile the estranged misanthrope to the human family, rendered the butt of ridicule, and their many virtues lost and unknown. On a foggy evening in the November of a year of which Irish tradition, not being critically learned in chronology, has not furnished the date, two men pursued their way along a bridle road that led through a wild mountain tract in a re- mote and far westward district of Kerry. The scene was savage and lonely. Far before them extended the broad Atlantic, upon whose wild and heaving bosom the lowering clouds seemed to settle in fitful repose. Round and beyond, on the dark and barren heath, rose picturesque masses of rock the finger-stones which nature, it would seem, in some wayward frolic, had tossed into pinnacled heaps of strange and multiform construction. About their base, and in the deep interstices of their sides, grew the holly and the hardy moun- tain ash, and on their topmost peaks frisked the agile goat in all the pride of unfettered liberty. These men, each of whom led a Kerry pony that bore an empty sack along the difficult pathway, were as dissimilar in form and appearance as any two of Adam’s descendants pos- sibly could be. One was a low-sized, thickset man ; his broad shoulders and muscular limbs gave indication of considerable strength ; but the mild expression of his large blue eyes and broad, good-humoured countenance, told, as plain as the hu- man face divine could, that the fierce and stormy passions of our kind never exerted the strength of that muscular arm in deeds of violence. A jacket and trousers of brown frieze, and a broad-brimmed hat made of that particular grass named thraneen, completed his dress. It would be difficult to con- ceive a more strange or unseemly figure than the other : he exceeded in height the usual size of men ; but his limbs, which hung loosely together, and seemed to accompany his emaciato»:I body with evident reluctance, were literally nothing but skin and bone ; his long conical head was thinly strewed with rusty-coloured hair that waved in the evening breeze about a haggard face of greasy, sallow hue, where the rheumy sunken eye, the highly prominent nose, the thin and livid lip, half disclosing a few rotten straggling teeth, significantly seemed to tell how disease and misery can attenuate the human frame. He moved, a living skeleton : yet, strange to say, the smart nag which "he led w’as hardly able to keep pace with the swinging unequal stride of the gaunt pedestrian, though his limbs were so fleshless that his clothes flapped and fluttered around him as he stalked along the chilly moor. As the travellers proceeded, the road, which had lately been pent within the huge masses of granite, now expanded suffi- ciently to allow them a little side-by-side discourse ; and the first-mentioned person pushed forward to renew a conversa- tion which seemed to have been interrupted by the inequalities . of the narrow pathway. I “ An’ so ye war saying, Shane Glas,” he said, advancing in a straight line with his spectre-looking companion, “ ye war saying that face of yours would be the means of keeping the guager from our taste of tibaccy.” “ The devil resave the guager will ever squint at a lafe of it,” says Shane Glas, “ if I’m in ver road. There was never a cloud over Tim Casey for the twelve months I thravelled with him ; and if the foolish man had had me the day his taste o’ brandy was taken, he’d have the fat boiling over his pot to- day, ’tis’nt that I say it myself.” “ The sorrow from me, Shane Glas,” returned his friend with a hearty laugh, and a roguish glance of his funny eye at the angular and sallow countenance of the other, “the sorrow be from me if it’s much of Tim’s fat came in your way, at any rate, though I don’t say as much for the (/raise.” “ It’s laughing at the crucked side o’ yer mouth ye’d be, I’m thinking, Paddy Corbett,” said Shane Glas, “if the thief of a guager smelt your taste o’ tibaccy — -Crush Chriest duin ! and I not there to fricken him off, as I often done afore.” “ But couldn’t we take our lafe o’ tibaccy on our ponies’ backs in panniers, and throw a few hake or some oysters over ’em, and let on that we’re fish-joulting ?” “Now, mark my words, Paddy Corbett: there's a chap in Killarney as knowledgeable as a jailor ; Ould Nick would’nc bate him in roguery. So put your goods in the thruckle, shake a wisp over ’em, lay me down over that in the fould o’ the quilt, and say that I kem from Decie’s counthrv to pay a round at Tubber-na-Treenoda, and that I caught a faver. and that ye’re taking me home to die, for the love o’ God and yer mother’s sowl. Say, that Father Darby, who prepared me, said I had the worst spotted faver that kem to the counthry these seven years, if that doesn’t fricken him off, ye’re sowld” (betrayed.) Bv this time they had reached a deep ravine, through which a narrow stream pursued its murmuring course. Here they left the horses, and, furnished with the empty sacks, pursued their onward route till they reached a steep cliff. Far below in the dark and undefined space sounded the hollow roar of the heaving ocean, as its billowy volume broke upon its granite barrier, and formed along the dark outline a zone of foam, beneath whose snowy crest the ever-impelled and angry wave yielded its last strength in myriad flashes of phosphoric light, that sparkled and danced in arrowy splen- dour to the wild and sullen music of the dashing sea. “Paddy Corbett, avick,” said Shane Glas, “pull yer legs fair an’ aisy afther ye ; one inch iv a mistake, aehorra, might THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 2&6 sind ye a long step of two hundred feet to furnish a could supper for the sharks. The sorrow a many would vinture down here, avourneen, barring the red fox of the hill and the honest smuggler ; they are both poor persecuted crathurs, but G od has given thim gumpshun to find a place of shelter for the fruits of their honest industhry, glory be to his holy name !” Shane Glas was quite correct in his estimate of the height of this fearful cliff. It overhung the deep Atlantic, and the narrow pathway wound its sinuous way round and beneath so many frightful precipices, that had the unprac- tised feet of Paddy Corbett threaded the mazy declivity in the clear light of day, he would in all probability have per- formed the saltation, and furnished the banquet of which Shane Glas gave him a passing hint. But ignorance of his fearful situation saved his life. His companion, in addition to his knowledge of this secret route, had a limberness of muscle, and a pliancy of uncouth motion, that enabled him to pursue evei’y winding of the awful slope with all the ac- tivity of a weazel. In their descent, the wild sea-fowl, roused by the unusual approach of living things from their couch of repose, swept past on sounding wing into the void and dreary space abroad, uttering discordant cries, which roused the more distant slumberers of the rocks. As they farther de- scended round the foot of the cliff, where the projecting crags formed the sides of a little cove, a voice, harsh and threatening, demanded “who goes there?” The echo of the questioner’s interrogation, reverberating along the receding wail of rocks, would seem to a fanciful ear the challenge of the guardian spirit of the coast pursuing his nightly round. The wild words blended in horrid unison through the mid air with the sigh of waving wings and discordant screams, which the echoes of the cliffs multiplied a thousand fold, as though all the demons of the viewless world had chosen that hour and place of loneliness to give their baneful pinions and shrieks of terror to the wind. “ Who goes there ?” again demanded this strange warder of the savage scene ; and again the scream of the sea bird and the echo of human tones sounded wildly along the sea. “ A friend, avick machree,” replied Shane Glas. “ Paudh, achorra, what beautiful lungs you have ! But keep yer voice a thrifle lower, ma bouchal, or the wather-guards might be after staling a march on ye, sharp as ye are.” “Shane Glas, ye slinging thief,” rejoined the other, “is that yerself? Honest man,” addressing the new comer, “ take care of that talla-faced schamer. My hand for ye, Shane will see his own funeral yet, for the devil another crathur, barring a fox, could creep down the cliff till the moon rises, any how. But I know what saved yer bacon ; he that’s born to be hanged — you can repate the rest o’ the thrue ould saying yerself, ye poor atomy !” “ Ohorp an Doul,” said Shane Glas, rather chafed by the severe raillery of the other, “is it because ye shoulder an ould gun that an honest man can’t tell you what a Judy ye make o’ yer- self, swaggering like a raw Peeler, and frightening every shag on the cliff with yer foolish bull-scuttering ! Make way there, or I’ll stick that ould barrel in yez — make way there, ye spalpeen !” “ Away to yer masther with ye, ye miserable disciple,” returned the unsparing jiber. “ Arrah, by the hole o’ my coat, afther you have danced yer last jig upon nothing, with yer purty himp cravat on, I’ll coax yer miserable carcass from the hangman to frighten the crows with.” When the emaciated man and his companion had proceeded a few paces along the narrow ledge that lay between the steep cliff and the sea, they entered a huge excavation in the rock, which seemed to have been formed by volcanic agency, when the infant world heaved in some dire convulsion of its distempered bowels. The footway of the subterranean vault was strewn with the finest sand, which, hardened by frequent pressure, sent the tramp of the intruder’s feet reverberating along the gloomy vacancy. On before gleamed a strong light, which, piercing the surrounding darkness, partially re- vealed the sides of the cavern, while the far space beneath the lofty roof, impervious to the powerful ray, extended dark and undefined. Then came the sound of human voices mixed in uproarious confusion ; and anon, within a receding angle, a strange scene burst upon their view. Before a huge fire which lighted all the deep recess of the high over-arching rock that rose sublime as the lofty roof of a Gothic cathedral, sat five wild-looking men of strange semi- nautical raiment. Between them extended a large sea-chest, on which stood an earthen flaggon, from which one, who seemed the president of the revel, poured sparkling brandy into a single glass that circled in quick succession, while the jest and laugh and song swelled in mingled confusion, till the din- some cavern rang again to the roar of the subterranean bac- chanals. “ God save all here !” said Shane Glas, approaching the festive group. “ O, wisha! Misther Cronin, but you and the boys is up to fun. The devil a naither glass o’ brandy: no wonder ye should laugh and sing over it. How goes the Colleen Ayrigh, and her Bochal Fadda, that knows how to bark so purty at thim plundering thieves, the wather-guards ?” “ Ah! welcome, Shane,” replied theperson addressed ; “ the customer you’ve brought may be depinded on, I hope. Sit down, boys.” “’Tis ourselves that will, and welkim,” rejoined Shane. “ Depinded on ! why, ’scure to the dacenther father’s son from this to himself than Paddy Corbett, ’tisn’t that he’s to the fore.” “ Come, taste our brandy, lads, while I help you to some ham,” said the smuggler. “ Shane, you have the stomach of a shark, the digestion of an ostrich, and the gout of an epi- cure.” “ By gar ye may say that wid yer own purty mouth, Mis- ther Cronin,” responded the garrulous Shane. “ Here, gin- tlemin, here is free thrade to honest min, an’ high hangin’ to all informers ! O! murdher maura (smacking his lips), how it tastes ! O, avirra yealish (laying his bony hand across his shrunken paunch), how it hates the stummuck !” “You are welcome to our mansion, Paddy Corbett,” inter- rupted the hospitable master of the cavern ; “ the house is co- vered in, the rent paid, and the cruiskeen of brandy unadulter- ated; so eat, drink, and be merry. When the moon rises, we can proceed to business.” Paddy Corbett was about to return thanks when the inter- minable Shane Glas again broke in. “ I never saw a man, beggin’ yer pardon, Misther Cronin, lade a finer or rolickinger life than your own four bones — drinking an’ coorting on land, and spreading the canvass of the Cooleen Ayrigh over the salt say, for the good o’ thrade. Manim syr Shyre, if I had Trig Dowl the piper forninst me there, near the cruiskeen, but I’d drink an’ dance till morn- ing. But here’s God bless us, an’ success to our thrip, Paddy, avrahir and he drained his glass. Then when many a suc- cessive round went past, and the famished-looking wretch grew intoxicated, he called out at the top of his voice, “ Si- lence for a song,” and in a tone somewhat between the squeak of a pig and the drone of a bagpipe, poured forth a lyric, of which we shall present one or two stanzas to the reader. I thravelled France an’ Spain, an’ likewise in Asia, Fal de ral, &c &c. And spint many a long day at my aise in Arabia, Fal de ral, &c &c Pur-shoeing of their ways, their sates an’ their farims, But sich another place as the lakes o’ Killarney I never saw elsewhere, the air being most charming, Fal de ral, &c & c. There the Muses came to make it their quarthers, Fal de ral, &c &c. An’ for their ray-creation they came from Castalia, Fal de ral, &c &c. With congratulations playing for his lordship, A viewing of that place, I mean sweet Killarney, That the music been so sweet, the lake became enchanted, Fal de ral, &c &c. Early on a clear sunny morning after this, a man with a horse and truckle car was observed to enter the town of Killarney from the west. He trolled forth before the animal, which, checked by some instinctive dread, with much reluc- tance allowed himself to be dragged along at the full length of his hair halter. On the rude vehicle was laid what seemed a quantity of straw, upon which was extended a human being, whose greatly attenuated frame appeared fully developed be- neath an old flannel quilt. His face, that appeared above its tattered hem, looked the embodiment of disease and famine, which seemed to have gnawed, in horrid union, into his inmost vitals. His distorted features pourtrayed rending agony ; and as the rude vehicle jolted along the rugged pavement, he groaned hideously. This miserable man was our acquaintance Shane Glas, and he that led the strange procession no other than Paddy Corbett, who thus experimented to smuggle his “ taste o’ tibaccy,” which lay concealed in well-packed bales beneath the sick couch of the wretched simulator. As they proceeded along, Shane Glas uttered a groan, con- veying such a feeling of real agony that his startled com- panion, supposing that he had in verity received the sudden THE IRISH' PENNY JOURNAL. 287 judgment of his deception, rushed hack to ascertain whether he had not been suddenly stricken to death. “ Paddy, a chorra-na-nea,” he muttered in an undergrowl, “ here’s the vagabone thief of a guager down sthreet 1 Exert yerself, a-lea, to baffle the schamer, an’ don’t forget ’tis the spotted faver I have.” Sure enough, the guager did come ; and noticing, as he passed along, the confusion and averted features of Paddy Corbett, he immediately drew up. “ Where do you live, honest man, an’ how far might you be goin’ ?” said the keen exciseman. “ O, wisha ! may the heavens be yer honour’s bed ! — ye must be one o’ the good ould stock, to ax afther the consarns of a poor angishore like me : but, a yinusal-a-chree, ’tis’nt where I lives is worse to me, but where that donan in the thruckle will die with me.” “ But how far are you taking him ?” O, ’tis myself would offer a pather an’ ave on my two bin- ded knees for yer honour’s soul, if yer honour would tell me that. I forgot to ax the crathur where he should be berrid when we kim away, an’ now he’s speechless out an’ out.” “ Come, say where is your residence,” said the other, whose suspicion was increased by the countryman’s prevari- cation. l “ By jamine, yer honour’s lamin’ bothers me intirely ; but if yer honour manes where the woman that owns me and the chil- dre is, ’tis that way, west at Tubber-na-Treenoda ; yer honour has heard tell o’ Tubber-na-Treenoda, by coorse ?” “ Never, indeed.” “ O, wisha ! dont let yer honour be a day longer that way. If the sickness, God betune us an’ harum, kim an ye, ’twould be betther for yer honour give a testher to the durhogh there, to offer up a rosary for ye, than to shell out three pounds to Doctor Crump.” “ Perhaps you have some soft goods concealed under the sick man,” said the guager, approaching the car. “ I fre- quently catch smuggled wares in such situations.” “ The devil a taste good or soft under him, sir dear, but the could sop from the top o’ the stack. Ketch! why, the devil a haporth ye’ll ketch here but the spotted faver.” “ Fever !” repeated the startled, exciseman, retiring a step or two. “ Yes, faver, yer honour ; what else ? Didn’t Father Dar- by that prepared him say that he had spotted faver enough for a thousand min ! Do, yer honour, come look in his face, an’ thin throw the poor dying crathur, that kem all the way from Decie’s counthry, by raisin of a dhream, to pay a round for his wife’s sowl at Tubber-na-Treenoda : yes, throw him out an the belly o’ the road, an’ let his blood, the blood o’ the stranger, be on yer soul an’ his faver in yer body.” Paddy Corbett’s eloquence operating on the exciseman’s dread of contagion, saved the tobacco. Our adventurers considering it rather dangerous to seek a bujer in Killarney, directed their course eastward to Kanturk. The hour of evening was rather advanced as they entered the town ; and Shane, who could spell his way without much dif- ficulty through the letters of a sign-board, seeing “ enter- tainment for man and horse” over the door, said they would put up there for the night, and then directed Paddy to the shop of the only tobacconist in town, whither for some pri- vate motive he declined to attend him. Mr Pigtail was after dispatching a batch of customers when Paddy entered, who, seeing the coast clear, gave him the “ God save all here,” which is the usual phrase of greeting in the kingdom of Kerry. Mr Pigtail was startled at the rude salutation, which, though a beautiful benediction, and characteristic of a highly religious people, is yet too uncouth for modern “ears polite,” and has, excepting among the lowest class of peasants, en- tirely given way to that very sincere and expressive phrase of address, “ your servant.” Now, Mr Pigtail, who meted out the length of his replies in exact proportion to the several ranks and degrees of his querists, upon hearing the vulgar voice that uttered the more vulgar salute, hesitated to deign the slightest notice, but, measuring with a glance the outward man of the saluter, he gave a slight nod of acknowledgement, and the dissyllabic response “ servant but seeing Paddy Corbett with gaping mouth about to open his embassy, and that, like Burns’s Death, “ He seemed to make a kind o’ stan’, But naething spak,” he immediately added, “Honest man, you came from the west, l believe ?” “ Thrue enough for yer honour,” said Pat ; “ my next door neighbours at that side are the wild Jngins of Immeriky. A wet and could foot an’ a dhry heart I had coming to ye ; but welkim be the grace o’ God, sure poor people should make out an honest bit an’ sup for the weeny crathurs at home ; an’ I have thirteen o’ thim, all thackeens , praise be to the Maker.” “ And I dare say you have brought a trifle in my line of business in your road?” “ Faith, ’tis yerself may book it : I have the natest lafe o tibaccy that ever left Connor Cro-ab-a-bo. I was going to skin an the honest man — Lord betune us an’ harum, I’d be the first informer of my name, any how. But, talking o’ the ti- baccy, the man that giv it said a sweether taste never left the hould of his ship, an’ that’s a great word. I’ll give it dog chape, by raison o’ the long road it thravelled to yer honour.” “You don’t seem to be long in this business,” said Mr Pigtah. “ Thrue for ye there agin, a-yinusal ; ’tis yourself may say so. Since the priest christened Paddy an me, an’ that’s longer than I can remimber, I never wint an the sachrawn afore. God comfort poor Jillian Dawly, the crathur, an’ the grawls I left her. Amin, a-hierna !” Now, Mr Pigtail supposed from the man’s seeming simpli- city, and his inexperience in running smuggled goods, that he should drive a very profitable adventure with him. He ordered him to bring the goods privately to the back way that led to his premises ; and Paddy, who had the fear of the guager vividly before him, lost no time in obeying the mandate. But when Mi’ Pigtail examined the several packages, he turns round upon poor Paddy with a look of disapprobation, and exclaims, “ This article will not suit, good man — entirely damaged by sea water — never do.” “ See wather, anagh !” returns Paddy Corbett ; “ bad luck to the dhrop o’ wather, salt or fresh, did my taste o’ tibaccy ever see. The Colleen Ayrigh that brought it could dip an’ skim along the waves like a sea-gull. There are two things she never yet let in, Mr Pigtail, avourneen — wather nor wa- ther-guards : the one ships off her, all as one as a duck ; and the Boochal Fadda on her deck keeps ’tother a good mile off, more spunk to him.” This piece of nautical information Paddy had ventured from gleanings collected from the rich stores which the conversation of Shane Glas presented along the road, and in the smugglers’ cave. “ But, my good man, you cannot instruct me in the way of my business. Take it away — no man in the trade would venture an article like it. But I shall make a sacrifice, rather than let a poor ignorant man fall into the hands of the guager. I shall give you five pounds for the lot.” Paddy Corbett, who had been buoyed up by the hope of making two hundred per cent, of his lading, now seeing all his gainful views vanish into thin air, was loud and impassioned in the expression of his disappointment. “ O, Jillian Dawly !” he cried, swinging his body to and fro, “ Jillian, a roon ma- nima, what’ll ye say to yer man, afther throwing out of his hand the half year’s rint that he had to give the agint ? O ! what’ll ye say, aveen, but that I med a purty padder-na- peka of myself, listening to Shane Glas, the yellow schamer ; or what’ll Sheelabeg, the crathur, say, whin Tim Murphy wont take her without the cows that I wont have to give her ? O, Misther Pigtail, avourneen, be marciful to an honest father’s son ; don’t take me short, avourneen. an’ that God might take you short. Give me the tin pounds it cost me, an’ I’ll pray for yer sowl, both now an’ in the world to come. O ! Jillian, Jillian, I’ll never face ye, nor Sheelabeg, nor any o’ the crathurs agin, without the tin pound, any how. I’ll take the vestmint, an’ all the books in Father Darby’s house of it. “ Well, if you don’t give the tobacco to me for less than that, you can call on one Mr Prywell, at the other side of the bridge ; he deals in such articles too. You see I cannot do more for you, but you may go farther and fare worse,” said the perfidious tobacconist, as he directed the unfortunate man to the residence of Mr Paul Prywell, the officer of excise. With heavy heart, and anxious eye peering in every direc- tion beneath his broad-leafed hat, Paddy Corbett proceeded till he reached a private residence having a green door and a brass knocker. He hesitated, seeing no shop nor appearance of business there ; but on being assured that this was indeed the house of Mr Prywell, he approached, and gave the door three thundering knocks with the butt end of his holly-handled whip. The owner of the domicile, roused by this very uncere- monious mode of announcement, came forth to demand the 288 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. intruder’s business, and to wonder that he would not prefer giving a single rap with the brass knocker, as was the wont of persons in his grade of society, instead of sledging away at the door like a “ peep-o’-day boy.” “ Yer honour will excuse my bouldness,” said Paddy, tak- ing oft his hat, and scraping the mud before and behind him a lull yard ; “ excuse my bouldness, for I never seed such curifixes on a dure afore, an’ I would’nt throuble yer honour’s house at all at all, only in regard of a taste of goods that I was tould would shoot yer honour. Ye can have it, a yinusal, tor less than nothing, ’case I don’t find myself in heart to push on farther; for the baste is slow, thecrathur, an’ myself that’s saying it, making buttons for fear o’ the guager.” ‘‘ A ho, might i ask,” said the astonished officer of excise, “ directed you here to sell smuggled tobacco 3 ” “ A very honest gintleman, but a bad buyer, over the bridge, sir. He’d give but five pound for what cost myself tin — forcer dhota, that I had ever had a hand in it ! I put the half year’s rint in it, yer honour ; and my thirteen femul grawls an’ 1 heir mother, God help ’em, will be soon on the sachrawn. I’ll never go home without the tin pound, any how. High hanging to ye, Shane Glas, ye tallow-faced thief, that sint me smuggling. O ! Jillian, ’tis sogering I’ll soon be, with a gun an my shoulder.” “ Shane Glas !” said the exciseman ; “ do you know Shane Glas ; I’d give ten pounds to see the villain.” “ ’Tis myself does, yer honour, an’ could put yer finger an him, if I had ye at Tubber-na-Treenoda, saving yer presence ; but as I was setting away, he was lying uudher an ould quilt, an’ I heard him telling that the priest said he had spotted faver enough for a thousand min.” “ That villain will never die of spotted fever, in my hum- ble opinion,” said the exciseman. “ A good judgment in yer mouth, sir, achree. I heard the rogue himself say, ‘ Bad cess to the thief ! that a cup-tosser tould him he’d die of stoppage of breath.’ But wont yer hon- our allow me to turn in the lafe o’ tibaccy 3 ” The officer of excise was struck with deep indignation at the villany of him who would ruin a comparatively innocent man when he failed in circumventing him, and was resolved to punish his treachery. “ My good fellow” said he, “ you are now before the guager you dread so much, and I must do my duty, and seize upon the tobacco. However, it is but com- mon justice to punish the false-hearted traitor that sent you hither. Go back quickly, and say that he can have the lot at his own terms ; I shall follow close, and yield him the reward of his treachery. Act discreetly in this good work of biting the biter, and on the word of a gentleman I shall give you ten pounds more.” Paddy was on his knees in a twinkling, his hands uplifted in the attitude of prayer, and his mouth opened, but totally unable between terror and delight to utter a syllable of thanks. “ Up, I say,” exclaimed the exciseman, “ up and be doing ; go earn your ten pounds, and have your sweet revenge on the thief that betrayed you.” Paddy rapidly retraced his steps, ejaculating as he went along, “ O, the noble gintleman, may the Lord make a bed in Heaven for his sowl in glory ! O, that chating imposthor, 'twas sinding the fox to mind the hins sure enough. O, high hanging to him of a windy day ! — the informer o’ the world, I’ll make him sup sorrow.” “ Have you seen the gentleman I directed you to ?” said Mr Pigtail. “ Arrah, sir dear, whin I came to the bridge an looked about me, I thought that every roguish-looking fellow I met was the thief of a guager, an’ thin afther standing a while, quite amplushed, with the botheration and the dread upon me. I forgot yer friend’s name, an’ so kim back agin to ax it, if ye plase.” “ You had better take the five pounds than venture again ; there’s a guager in town, and your situation is somewhat dangerous.” “A guager in town!” cried Paddy Corbett, with well- affected surprise, “ Isas Mauri ! what’ll I do at all at all? now I’m a gone man all out. Take it for any thing ye like, sir dear, an’ if any throuble like this should ever come down an ye, it will be a comfort an’ a raycreation to yer heart to know that ye had a poor man’s blessing, avick dedish machree, an’ I give it to ye on the knees of my heart, as ye desarved it, an’ that it may go in yer road, an’ yer childre’s road, late an’ early, eating an’ dhrinking, lying an’ rising, buying an’ selling.” Our story has approached its close: the tobacco was safely stowed inside, in order to be consigned to Mr Pigtail’s private receptacle for such contraband articles. Paddy had just pocketed his five pounds, and at that moment in burst Mr Pry well. The execration which ever after pursued the to- bacconist for his treacherous conduct, and the heavy fine in which he was amerced, so wrought upon his health and circumstances, that in a short time he died in extreme poverty. His descendants became homeless wauderers, and it is upon record, among the brave and high-minded men of Duhallow, that Jeffrey Pigtail of Kanturlc was the only betrayer that ever disgraced the barony. E. W. Speed on Railways In the first of a course of lectures on railways, delivered in the early part of last year at Man- chester by Dr Lardner, he gave the folloAving account of the speed attained by locomotive engines at different periods : “ Since the great questions which had been agitated respect- ing the effect which an increased width of rails would have on railway transit, and the effect which very large drawing wheels, of great diameter, would have on certain railways, the question of very vastly increased speed had acquired con- siderable interest. Very recently two experiments had been made, attended with most surprising results. One was the case of the Monmouth express. A dispatch was carried from Twyford to London on the Great Western Railway, a dis- tance of thirty miles, in thirty-five minutes. This distance was traversed very favourably, and being subject to less of those casual interruptions to which a longer trip would be liable, it was performed at the rate of six miles in seven mi- nutes, or six-sevenths of a mile in one minute (very neariv fifty-one and a half miles an hour). He had experimented on speed very largely on most of the railways of the country, and he had never personally witnessed that speed. The evaporating power of those engines was enormous. Another performance, which he had ascertained since he arrived in this neighbourhood, showed that great as was the one just mentioned, they must not ascribe it to any peculiar circum- stance attending the large engines and wide gauge of the Great Western Railway. An express was dispatched a short time since from Liverpool to Birmingham, and its speed was stated in the papers. One engine, with its tender, went from Liverpool, or rather from the top of the tunnel at Edge Hill, to Birmingham, in two hours and thirty-five minutes. But he had inquired into the circumstances of that trip, and it appeared that the time the engine was actually in motion, after deducting a variety of stoppages, was only one hour and fifty minutes in traversing ninety-seven miles. The feat on the Great Western was performed on a dead level, while on the Grand Junction the engine first encountered the Whiston in- cline, where the line rises 1 in 96 for a mile and a half ; and after passing Crewe, it encountered a plane of three miles to the Madeley summit, rising 20 feet a mile, succeeded by an- other plane, for three miles more, rising 30 feet a mile ; yet with all these impediments it performed the ninety-seven miles in one hour and fifty minutes, or 110 minutes; conse- quently the distance traversed in each minute was 97 divided by 110, or 52 10-llths, nearly 53 miles an hour — a speed which, he confessed, if he had not evidence of it, he could scarcely have believed to be within the bounds of mechanical possibi- lity. The engine which performed this feat had driving wheels of 51 feet diameter ; their circumference would be 17^ feet. Taking the speed at 53 miles an hour, it was within a very minute fraction of 80 feet in a second of time. This was not the greatest speed of the engine, but the average speed spread over 97 miles and there could be little doubt that it must have exceeded sixty miles an hour during a considerable por- tion of the distance.” That man should be happy, is so evidently the intention of the Creator, the contrivances to that end are so multitudinous and so striking, that the perception of the aim may be called universal. Whatever tends to make men happy, becomes a fulfilment of the will of God. Whatever tends to make them miserable, becomes opposition to his will Harriet Martineau. Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin. — Agents : — R. Groombrii>ge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London ; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester ; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool; Slocombe and Simms, Leeds; Fraser and Crawford, George Street, Edinburgh ; and David Robertson, Tron. gate, Glasgow, Number 37. SATURDAY, MARCH 13, 1841. Volume I. ROSS CASTLE We hare heard some of our readers express surprise that we should not before this have taken notice, among our topo- graphical collections, of some of the features of the far-famed Lakes of Killarney ; but the truth is, that those features, though of the highest beauty, are not, for the greater part, such as wood-cut illustrations could adequately express ; and even those which are properly suited to the powers of the gra- ver have been in most instances already so often drawn and described, that it is now almost hopeless to expect to find either any new points of view or historical incidents connected with them, which have not already been made familiar to the reading public. Still, as our little weekly pennyworth is not intend- ed exclusively for the wealthy and well informed, but even to a greater extent for those by whom more expensive publica- tions are unattainable, it is right that we should occasionally notice subjects of popular interest, however familiar they may have been already made to a portion of our readers ; and in doing so, we trust that we shall be able to make them in some degree acceptable to all, by the fidelity of our draw- ings, or the occasional novelty of the facts with which we shall illustrate them. We have chosen, accordingly, as the first of our Killarney subjects, the old favourite Ross Castle ; not indeed as the best or least hacknied, but as properly that which should begin the •eries, for it is the first with which the Killarney tourist be- , KILLARNEY. comes familiar, and from which he usually starts to enjoy all the others. In a historical and antiquarian point of view, however, Ross Castle is indeed one of the most interesting objects to be found in connection with the enchanting scenery of the lakes. It is the time-worn fortress of their ancient chiefs, and its presence connects the history of man in distant times with the objects of eternal natural beauty by which it is surrounded, and imparts to them that delightful feeling or charm of romance which, exquisite as they are, they would necessarily want if it were absent. Ross Castle, as its present remains show, was similar in its plan and construction to most of those erected by the Irish chiefs in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and consisted of a lofty square tower or keep, to which were attached the domestic offices, all which were surrounded by out-works enclosing an ample bawn, and flanked by small circular towers at their angles. In its general character, therefore, Ross Castle has no peculiar features worthy of notice ; and its •chief interest is derived from its situation, which is of the most striking beauty, commanding the richest scenery of the lower lake, and its wooded isles, shores, and mountains. It is situated on the east shore of the lower lake, upon the narrow neck of the Ross or peninsula from which it derives its name, and which, by an artificial cut through a morasa % 290 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. across which a small bridge is thrown, has been converted into an island. Neither the date of the erection of this castle nor the name of its founder has been preserved; but its architectural style will not allow us to suppose it much older than the early part of the fifteenth century, and history shows that it was for a considerable period the residence of the illustrious family of O’Donoghoe, hereditary chiefs of the ter- ritory called the Eoganacht, or Onaght of Lough Lein, or the present lower lake of Killarney. The great antiquity and dignity of the family of O’Donoghoe still lives in the popular legends of the people, and is abun- dantly proved, by the Irish annals and genealogies. In an inaugural ode which was recited by the poet Cathan O’Duin- nin at the inauguration of Teige the Generous O’Donoghoe, in 1320, and which is still preserved in the MS. library of Trinity College, the pedigree of the O’Donoghoes, with their filiations, is given, through twenty-seven generations, from Core, the son of Lughaidh, King of Munster in 380, to that time, and there is no reason to doubt its accuracy or historic truth. Our space will not permit us to enter at any length on the history of this illustrious family, but we may observe, that its ancient rank is sufficiently proved by the fact, as stated in the Annals of Inisfallin, that their ancestor Donnell, the son of Duvdavoran, was the second in command of the Eugenian forces at the memorable battle of Clontarf, and that shortly after that conflict he contested the sovereignty of Desmond or South Munster with its king, and slew him in battle. In subsequent ages the family of O’Donoghoe split into three great branches ; that of O’Donoghoe More, or the great, of which Ross Castle became the residence; O’Donoghoe of the Glens; and O’Donoghoe of Lough Lein. Of these three fami- lies the first and last are supposed to be extinct, and are at least reduced to poverty; but that of the Glens is still re- presented by O’Donoghoe of Killarney, who is consequently the reputed chief of this illustrious family. By a happy chance, very rare in Ireland, O’Donoghoe, who is as yet a minor, pos- sesses a considerable portion of the estates of his ancestors of the Glens ; but the property of the O’Donoghoe More, or Ross, as well as that of the O’Donoghoe of Lough Lein, has been long in the possession of the noble house of Kenmare, of which their ancestor Sir Valentine Brown made a purchase from Donald M‘Carty More Earl of Clancarthy, as early as the year 1588, it having been forfeited by Rory O’Donoghoe More some time previously. These lands, as Dr Smith acquaints us, were subsequently confirmed to the grandson of the first purchaser, Valentine, son of Nicholas Brown, by letters patent of King James I. which passed the seal May 12, 1612, and included with others the entire country of Onaugh, alias Onaught O’Donoghoe More, in the county of Desmond, in which were contained the manor and lake of the Castle of Ross, with divers islands in Lough Lein, with all other his estate, con- taining 82 quarters of land, amounting to 6560 acres, besides the fishings belonging to the manor of Ross-I-Donoghoe, all which premises came to the family by immediate bargain and grant from the Earl of Clancarthy, by the indenture before mentioned. “ But,” as Smith adds, “some question being made of the validity of this grant from the crown, the king, by privy seal, dated at Greenwich, 28th May 1618, directed Sir Oliver St John, lord-deputy, to accept a surrender thereof from him [Valentine], and to re-grant the same to him in fee by a new patent, for clearing all doubt, and the better settle- ment of his estate.” But though the lands of O’Donoghoe More have passed away from his race, he still retains possession of the waters : and, though dead himself corporeally, he still lives, and go- verns spiritually in his ancient principality. If, reader, you doubt the truth of our statement, ask the people of the lakes, and they will at once remove your scepticism. They will tell you that he frequently appears to them on May-day, on a milk-white horse, gliding over the glassy lake to the sound of unearthly music, and attended by troops of spirits scattering spring flowers. They differ, indeed, a good deal in their ac- counts of the appearance of their ancient lord. Derrick, in his amusing Letters on Killarney, written in 1760, tells us that he was assured, when O’Donoghoe revisits his friends, which is every May morning before sunrise, he is “ attended by' an incredible number of followers, wrestling, hurling, and playing football upon the surface of the lake, which affords them as sure footing as the solid earth.” And Derrick’s friend, Mr Ockenden, whose letters descriptive of Killarney are printed in the same volume, describes O’Donoghoe’s horse not as a white but a black one. As this gentleman’s account of O’Donoghoe’s visits is the most minute, as w r ell as the earliest, that we have seen, we are tempted to give it in full. “ There lived in the largest island (for there are several islands on the lake) many hundred years ago, a petty prince, named O’Donoghoe, who was lord of the wffiole lake, the sur- rounding shore, and a large district of neighbouring country. He manifested, during his stay upon earth, great munificence, great humanity, and great wisdom ; for, by his profound knowledge in all the secret pow r ers of nature, he wrought wonders as miraculous as any tradition has recorded of saints by the aid of angels, or of sorcerers by the assistance of demons ; and among many other most astonishing per- formances he rendered his person immortal. After having continued a long time upon the surface of the globe without growing old, he one day, at Ross Castle (the place where he most usually resided), took leave of his friends, and rising from the floor, like some aerial existence, passed through the window, shot away horizontally to a considerable distance from the castle, and then descended. The water unfolding at his approach, gave him entrance down to the subaqueous regions, and then, to the inexpressible astonishment of all beholders, closed over his head, as they believed, for ever : but in this they were mistaken. He returned again some years after, revisiting, not, like Hamlet’s ghost, ‘the glimpses of the moon making night hideous,’ but the radiance of the sun making day joyful, to those at least who saw him : since which time he has con- tinued to make very frequent expeditions to these upper regions, sometimes three or four in a year ; but sometimes three or four years pass without his once appearing, which the bordering inhabitants have always looked on as a mark of very bad times. It was feared this would be the third year he would suffer to elapse without his once cheering their eyes with his presence : but at the latter end of last August he again appeared, to the inexpressible joy of all, and was seen by numbers in the middle of the day. I had the curiosity, be- fore I left Killarney, to visit one of the witnesses to this very marvellous fact. The account she gives is, that returning with a kinswoman to her house at the head of the lake, they both beheld a fine gentleman, mounted upon a black horse, ascend through the water with a numerous retinue on foot, who ali moved together along the surface towards a small island, near which they again descended under water. This account is con- firmed, in time, place, and circumstances, by many more spectators from the side of the lake, who are all ready to swear, and not improbably to suffer death, in support of their testimony. His approach is sometimes preceded by music inconceiv- ably harmonious ; sometimes by thunder inexpressibly loud ; but oftenest without any warning whatsoever. He always rises through the surface of the lake, and generally amuses him- self upon it, but not constantly : for there is a farmer now alive, who declares, as I am told, that riding one evening near the lower end of the lake, he was overtaken by a gentleman who seemed under thirty years of age, very handsome in his person, very sumptuous in his apparel, and very affable in his conversation. After having travelled for some time together, the nobleman (for such he judged him to be by his appearance) observed, that as night was approaching, the town far off, and lodging not easy to be found, he should be welcome to take a bed that night at his house, winch, he said, w r as not very distant. The invitation was readily accepted ; they approached the lake together, and both their horses moved upon the surface without sinking, to the infinite amazement of the farmer, who thence perceived the stranger to be no less than the great O’Donoghoe. They rode a considerable distance from shore, and then, descending into a delightful country under ’water, lay that night in a house much larger in size and much more richly furnished than even Lord Kenmare’s at Killarney.” With respect, however, to the colour of O’Donoghoe’s horse, the prevailing belief seems now to be, that it is a white one, and this notion has been adopted by our national bard, Moore, in his beautiful song called “ O’Donoghoe’s Mistress,” wdiich, as he informs us, is founded on one among other stories connected with this legend of the lakes, and in wffiich it is said that there was a young and beautiful girl, wffiose imagi- nation w 7 as so impressed with the idea of this visionary chief- tain, that she fancied herself in love with him, and at last, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 291 in a fit of insanity, on a May morning, threw herself into the lake. But we had better give the song itself : Of all the fair months, that round the sun In light-linked dance their circles run, Sweet May, shine thou for me ; For still, when thy earliest beams arise, That youth, who beneath the blue lake lies, Sweet May, returns to me. Of all the bright haunts, where daylight leaves Its lingering smile on golden eves, Fair lake, thou’rt dearest to me ; For when the last April sun grows dim. Thy Naiads prepare his steed for him. Who dwells, bright lake, in thee. Of all the proud steeds that ever bore Young plumed chiefs on sea or shore, White steed, most joy to thee ; Who still, with the first young glance of spring, From under that glorious lake dost bring My love, my chief, to me. While, white as the sail some bark unfurls. When newly launch’d, thy long mane curls. Fair steed, as white and free ; And spirits, from all the lake’s deep bowers, Glide o’er the blue wave scattering flowers. Around my love and thee. Of all the sweet deaths that maidens die, Whose lovers beneath the cold wave lie. Most sweet that death will be, Which under the next May evening’s light, When thou and thy steed are lost to sight, Dear love, I’ll die for thee. But we have been attracted by this phantom chief too long from our immediate subject, and we must now return to it. From the historical notices of Ross Castle, as collected by the historian of Kerry, it will be seen that it was of old a place of some strength and importance, and that its posses- sion was not to be acquired without expense and trouble. In his description of Ross island, published in 1756, Dr Smith states that “on it stands an ancient castle, formerly the seat of O’Donoghoe Ross, which hath a new barrack adjoining to it. This place hath been for some years past a military garrison, having a governor appointed for it upon the establishment. Before the castle are a few dismounted iron guns, which give it something the air of a fortification. The castle had been flanked with round turrets, which together with its situation rendered it a place of some strength. In the wars of 1641, it surrendered to Ludlow, who was attended in the expedi- tion by Lord Broughil and Sir Hardress Waller, and was the last place that held out in Munster against the English par- liament.” This sumender followed the decisive battle of Knockin- clashy, in the county of Cork, in 1652, fought by the Lord Broughil on the English side, and the Lord Muskerry on that of the Irish, after which the latter retreated into Ross Castle, and was followed thither by Ludlow, who, with 4000 foot and 209 horse, laid siege to the castle. The subsequent proceed- ings are thus described by Ludlow himself: — “ In this expedition I was accompanied by the Lord Broughil, and Sir Hadress Waller, major-general o£ the foot. Being ar- rived at this place, I was informed that the enemy received con- tinual supplies from those parts that lay on the other side, and were covered with woods and mountains ; whereupon I sent a party of two thousand foot to clear those woods, and to find out some convenient place for erecting a fort, if there should be occasion. These forces met with some opposition, but at last they routed the enemy, killing some, and taking others pri- soners : the rest saved themselves by their good footmanship. Whilst this was doing, I employed that part of the army which was with me in fortifying a neck of land, where I designed to leave a party to keep in the Irish on this side, that I might be at liberty, with the greater part of the horse and foot, to look after the enemy abroad, and to receive and convoy such boats and other things necessary as the commissioners sent us by sea. When we had received our boats, each of which was capable of containing one hundred and twenty men, I ordered one of them to be rowed about the water, in order to find out the most convenient place for landing upon the enemy ; which they perceiving, thought fit, by a timely submission, to prevent the danger that threatened them ; and having expressed their desires to that purpose, commissioners were appointed on both sides to treat.” After a fortnight’s debate, says Ludlow, articles were agreed upon and ratified on both sides ; and the son of the Lord Muskerry and Sir Daniel O’Brien were delivered up as hostages for the pei’formance of the treaty ; in consequence of which, about 5000 Irish, horse and foot, laid down their arms and delivered up their horses, and thus terminated the hostilities in Munster. Smith, in his History of Kerry, tells us that “ a man whose name was Hopkins, and who a few years ago was sexton of Swords, near Dublin, was present at the taking and surrender of this place, and assisted in drawing the above-mentioned vessel into the lake. The Irish,” he adds, “had a kind of prophecy among them, that. Ross Castle could not be taken until a ship should swim upon the lake ; and the appearance of this vessel contributed not a little to intimidate the garri- son, and to hasten the capitulation. The said Hopkins lived to the age of one hundred and fifteen years, and died at Swords.” We have already stated that a barrack was erected in connection with the castle in the commencement of the last century, and a small garrison was kept here till a few years ago. These hideous barracks, as Sir R. C. Hoare called them, were a dreadful eye-sore to all the lovers of the picturesque who visited the Killarney lakes ; but Ireland seems no longer to require such structures, and the barrack of Ross Castle has been some time dismantled, and its ivied walls now contri- bute to the picturesqueness of the parent fortress. P. EDUCATION OF YOUTH. Action of both mind and body ought to be so continued as to serve as relaxation to each other. The mind of a man, still more of a child, is incapable of long perseverance in mental exertion. This is a generally acknowledged truth, to which I shall add one more to the same purpose, which is less known. Young men, and those who are not advanced in years, if healthy and of warm constitutions, are never very greatly inclined to mental exertion till their bodies are to a certain degree fatigued, I do not say wholly exhausted. Till this fatigue is produced, their body has a preponderance over the mind, and in this case it is a truly natural want, which cannot easily be silenced. Each muscle requires exertion, and the whole machine strives to employ its powers ; this is vulgarly called to have no sit-still flesh. If the fatigue be once brought on, the call for bodily exertion is stilled; the mind is no longer disturbed by it, and all its labours are facilitated. Our common mode of education pays no regard to this : youths appear in school to be strengthened by sleep and food, and too frequently, alas ! thrown into an unnatural heat and commotion. How is it possible to fix the attention under such circumstances ? The body requires action ; if this be not allowed, it will obtain it in silence; it will act upon the passions, and, above all, the fiery temperament of youth will influence the imagination. Thus attention slumbers. We are barbarous when we attempt to awaken it with the rod ; we require from innocent children what is unnatural ; we inflict pain on the body to prevent its action; yet activity was bestowed on it by its creator ; yet nature reno- vates this activity every night; the mind is soon carried away by the whirlwind of corporal energies, and lost in the realm of chimeras. To facilitate the contemplation of them, I shall just repeat the desirable parallel between the qualities of the body and mind : — Health of body — serenity of mind — hardiness — manliness of sentiment — strength and address — presence of mind and courage — activity of body — activity of mind — excellence of form — mental beauty — acuteness of the senses — strength of understanding. Medicus. Ancient Music. — The Egyptian flute was only a cow’s horn with three or four holes in it, and their harp or lyre had only three strings ; the Grecian lyre had only seven strings, and was very small, being held in one hand ; the Jewish trum- pets, that made the walls of Jericho fall down, were only rams’ horns. Their flute was the same as the Egyptian ; they had no other instrumental music but by percussion, of which the greatest boast was the psaltery, a small triangular harp or lyre with wire strings, and struck with an iron needle or stick; their sacbut was something like a bagpipe; the timbrel was a tambourine, and the dulcimer was a horizontal harp, with wire strings, and struck with a stick like the psaltery. They had no written music ; had scarcely a vowel in their language, and yet, according to Josephus, had two hundred thousand musicians playing at the dedication of the Temple o. Solomon. Mozart would have died in such a concert in the greatest agonies Dr Burney s History of Music. 292 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. POETICAL LECTURE ON ANATOMY. The following is the purport of a lecture on anatomy. The lecturer is represented as taking up the human skull, containing the brain and its appendages, with the nervous cords exposed to observation, and with “ apostrophic eye ” pro- ceeding : — This is the tenement of thought, The mansion of the mind. Whose empire, as the universe. Is boundless, undefined ! ’Tis vaulted, like the evening sky In star-wrought grace unfurl'd. And like that very firmament, Hangs o’er a breathing world — A world of thought, a world of sense, A world of passion, pride, Reason, perception, hope, love, light, In glory side by side I Here gather, too, in crowded thrall Of agile grace and hue, Imagination’s thousand forms Fast thronging on the view. Here reason reigns, here genius dwells, And here ambition lives ! And brightest ’mid that mighty throng, The soul immortal thrives. Here, too, imperial will resides In regal state enshrined, In stern dominion over all, With majesty combined ! Mark this ! it is his messenger, That, like electric fire, Swift-wing’d, the mandate beareth forth Of reason or desire. This filament, this very thread, Hath power to shake the frame ; That, whispering to the heart's warm core, To light love’s genial flame. And this, or this, to sense inclined. Hath magic in its spell. To waken pleasure, pain, or hope, And rapture’s story tell. And this small cord sent to the eye, Can comprehend the whole— The limitless, the vast profound, Where world s unnumbered roll ! That, to the tongue can captivate, This, epicures enslave, That, to the same makes slander rife, And this perchance a knave. That, to the ear, oft makes thc soul Quake ’neath the thunder’s peal, Or to the heart, with genius warm’d, A dream’s low tones reveal. Concenter’d in one mass, this brain, These make man what he is. The offspring of yon world of light, The life and soul of this. — From an American work. The River St John, in New Brunswick. — Inthisriver there are several falls, not downwards, as in the ordinary course of rivers, but upwards against the current. The River St John is of the size of the Rhine. It drains a large portion of the province of New Brunswick. The mass of water it discharges into the Bay of Fundy is prodigious, espe- cially during the spring floods, when the tides rise to the height of 35, 50, and sometimes even 60 feet, above the ordi- nary level. The remakable fall of the water backwards is produced by the enormous volume of water, occupying a chan- nel in some places ten miles in breadth, being confined near St John’s into a breadth of 300 yards, which occasions it to roll back impetuously in the form of a magnificent cascade. Children of the Poor — Charles Lamb has truly and touchingly remarked, that common people’s children “ are dragged up, not brought up.” There is a precocity — not, indeed, of intellect, but of prudence and worldly wisdom — in them, that is truly painful. Care has usurped the empire of carelessness, that legitimate monarch of a child’s being ; and like all usurpers, has in the vehemence of his achievements anticipated the slow march of Time. Life itself, which among the children of the rich is an exuberant overflowing, that, lavish it as they may, still seems inexhaustible, among those of the poor is a lean phantom, grasped at with pain and main- tained with a struggle ; in short, they know nothing of youth but its feebleness and its wailing ; its bloom and its buoyancy being, like every other luxury, beyond their reach. To me the most painful sight in this world is a poor, that is, a desti- tute child. Whatever misery a grown-up person may be plunged into, a thousand suppositions are left for its palliation : they may once have been well off, or they may have been the artificers of their own ruin, and they may live to see better days : but children — they can have done nothing to deserve that the one blessing unmortgaged at the Fall, the careless- ness of youth, should be taken from them . — Lady JBulwer. THE DECAYED OLD GENTLEMAN, A SKETCH. There is something very touching about this character — something in his mild tone of speech, in his polite and gen- tle demeanour, that at once engages our sympathies. We have the poor old gentleman distinctly before our mind's eye at this moment. Let us endeavour to sketch him. He is of middle height, well proportioned, and of rather slender make. Flis clothes, though a good deal the worse for wear, are carefully brushed, and put on with scrupulous neatness. His linens are clean and bright, and his neck- cloth, equally faultless, is adjusted with nice precision ; for, old as he is, he has not lost, nor ever will lose, that sense of propriety which dictates a decent attention to external ap- pearance. Some sixty and odd summers have passed over the head of him who is the subject of our sketch, and they have left their usual traces behind. His hair is thin and scanty, and of the silvery hue of eild. His countenance is expressive at once of a gentle and benevolent nature, of a cultivated mind and re- fined taste. He has seen much, read much, and thought more. A certain air of mild, subdued dignity — for the old man, poor though he be, never for a moment forgets that he is a gentleman — adds a grace to all he says and does. When in society, or when accosted by a friend, a pleasant smile, speaking a sincere affability, plays on his cheerful countenance. But when alone, when there is no one present to demand the exercise of his politeness, the expression of that countenance subsides into a gentle melancholy. His look is then grave and thoughtful ; somewhat sad, but not morose. There has been disappointment in his life, high hopes laid low, and noble aspirations foiled in their aim. Delightful it is to see the old gentleman enter a room in which some friends are assembled — his bow is so graceful his smile so cheerful — his words of greeting so pleasant to the ear. All rise, smiling, to receive him — all hail his presence, with a quiet but heartfelt joy. Welcome, thrice welcome is he to all. His gentle manners, his exhaustless store of anecdote, all so well selected, all so neatly told. His intelli- gence and extensive information render him one of the most delightful of companions. A welcome visitor is he at all times— a welcome addition to the family circle into which it is his delight to drop, just in time to share in the sober, social cup of tea, his favourite beverage. The old gentleman is unmarried—he is a bachelor. There is some vague unconnected story of an early attachment and of disappointed love, but nobody knows any of the particu- lars — no one knows who the lady was, nor what were the circumstances of the case; and our old friend never alludes to them in the most distant manner. The history of this pas- sage in his life is a secret pent up within his own breast ; one that will go with him to the grave, and with him be buried within its silent precincts. But it is one over which he often broods in the solitude of his solitary chamber, and during those sleepless nights, and they are many, when re- miniscences of the past forbid the approach of forgetfulness. Being a bachelor, and his circumstances narrow — a small annuity being now his only dependence — our old friend has no house of his own. He lives in hired lodgings — humble, but cleanly, comfortable and respectable. His landlady is a “ decent widow,” and he has been her lodger for fifteen years. Little as he has, he has always paid her punctually, and to the last farthing ; and much does she esteem and respect her kind and gentlemanly inmate. Regular and temperate in all his THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 293 habits, and moderate in his desires, he gives her little trouble, and even that little he is at all times anxious to abridge. His cup of tea or coffee morning and evening is nearly all in the way of cookery that he requires at her hands. Quietly be comes in and quietly he goes out, and he never does either without saying something kind or civil as he passes. In all things easily pleased, he expresses thanks for every little attention shown him, and never raises his voice in anger, never even in querulousness or impatience. To every one around him, without distinction of rank or worldly circum- stances, he is all politeness, all gentleness, and all kindness. Who can but love and respect the decayed old gentleman ! C. THE ITALIAN ORGAN BOY. PART FIRST. The streets of a great city, whether swept by the tumultuous tide of life by day, or echoing only to the dull and solitary tread of the patrol by night, are never devoid of material for interesting remark or rumination to such as are so disposed. He must, indeed, be a man of sluggish sensibilities and slen- der fancy who could traverse any of our great thoroughfares without finding them occasionally touched by some of the thousand little tales of anxiety or satisfaction, mourning or merriment, legible in brief upon the faces of the motley and many- featured throng around him, or at least, by the supple- mental aid of a little imagination, plausibly constructed from the elements thereby supplied. There is perhaps no period so well fitted for these studies of life, as it is in its private and more important aspect, as the close of one of our short and busy winter days, when the pressure of diurnal toil is removed from men’s minds, whether its effect has been to sway them from the contemplation of joy or wretchedness, and unbiassed they are left to imprint their character on the countenance of each. When does cheerfulness appear so undiluted as when a long winter evening’s recreation spreads out before it, whether spent within the mellowed glow of a happy domestic hearth, with all its easy, pure, and unsuspicious pleasures, or in the social reunion with its friendly, careless, and unclouded gaiety ? and when does wretchedness feel so blank and dismal as when a weary length of dim and rayless hours gives space for all its melancholy broodings, undiverted by occupation, unmitigated by that spirit of hope which more or less mingles with the temperament of all by day, as if a constituent of the glad light of heaven in which we then live and move. A cursory reading of the countenance of each passer by will at this hour give the poorest physiognomist no inaccurate notion [ of the complexion of his domesticTot ; and, selecting an indi- vidual from the homeward-wending crowd, I often form my speculation as to the scene that awaits him, follow him in the freedom of all-privileged and all-pervading thought across the threshold of his abode, conjure up the circumstances of his reception, glance through the perspective of his evening arrangements, and, as I find them agreeable or the reverse, extend or curtail my domiciliary inspection. During a recent winter, on one of its most cheerless even- ings, I was thus exercising my discernment and my fancy in a long homeward walk through the centre of the city, and mentally apportioning to each that attracted my eye the share of satisfaction or discomfort that lay before him — my own mind subject to the lights and shadows, the glow and chill, which in various degrees were suggested as the lot of each. It was precisely the evening to lend the keenest zest to the happiness of the light-hearted, and a more poignant bitterness to the misery of the unfortunate. A cold icy wind whistled shrilly through every narrow' street and entry as I passed it, and swept more boldly down the wider spaces, bearing, occasionally, slanting showers of sleet, w'hich a glance at the dun and overcharged canopy of snow-clouds and of smoke above showed to be but premonitory intimations of a heavy and continuous fall. For the most part, all below was impatient motion and occupied expectation, because almost all had a goal in view to -which they hastened, the fierce incle- mency of the weather impelling alike the mirthful and the melancholy onward. The well-fed, well-defended passenger, with muffled neck and arms thrust to the elbow in the pockets of his dreadnought, rubbed shoulders with the half-paralyzed and shivering wretch that shuffled amid the hurrying throng, often apparently without other object than that of joining in the stream of fellow-creatures, whom he could resemble in no other way. Carriage after carriage rolled past, the chil- dren of affluence for their tenants, interchanging careless com- ments, or looking with languid and heedless gaze upon the squalid, the impoverished, the abandoned, the degraded, that, alas ! met the eye so often as to account for, and almost justify, the indifference displayed. “ What a collocation, not merely of the extremes of human condition, but of almost every interposed gradation !” thought I, as, sated with the multiform instances presented in the con- course, and half bewildered with the medley of sights and sounds — the glittering ostentation of the glaring shops, the hum and tramp of the jostling crowd, the din and rattle of ceaseless vehicles, from the lumbering dray to the elastic car- riage, the oft- mingled appeal of importunate mendicants, and, not least confounding, the sleet-laden and staggering blasts that met me with wild caprice at almost every cornel*— I gladly turned aside into a more sheltered and less frequented street, to pursue a route of greater ease, though at the ex- pense of a greater circuit. But misery in the aggregate can generally be encountered with less disturbance than when submitted to in the case of solitary sufferers ; and before I had proceeded half the length of a private and comparatively deserted street, I had more effective calls upon my charity — there was at that time no legal provision for the necessitous — than when passing among the abounding instances of destitu- tion I had just witnessed. My stock of small change, and I must add, co-equally therewith, that of my patience too, was nearly exhausted, when my eye fell upon the figure of a young lad, who stood indifferently sheltered from the wind under the projected doorway of an uninhabited house. I had made up my mind to the customary solicitation : but he seemed so ab- stracted as not to notice my approach, and, pitying the for- lorn looking youth, and wondering at his forbearance, I walked slowly past, to give him an opportunity. I found him to be an organ-player, for the instrument, unslung from his shoul- ders, rested upon the flag at his feet, and a brief notice of his collapsed but characteristic features showed him to be an Italian. A shivering marmoset, partly covered by his jacket, was lodged on the hollow of one arm, while the other, resting on his raised knee, supported his head, as, unconscious of my proximity and observation, he gazed fixedly upon the ground. The sight of mute personal privation and friendless loneliness would at such a crisis have been influential enough to stir up whatever humanity one had, but when witnessed in a stran- ger from a far land, in one, too, nurtured under the sapphire skies and blissful clime of Italy, and withering now by a dis- mal change beneath such dense and murky clouds, and such a pitiless and scourging breeze, the demand on one’s kindly offices was irresistible, and, drawing near to the desolate lad, I accompanied a small gift with a few words in his own most musical and thrilling tongue. He started from his musing posture as the electric syllables struck upon his ear, and, as he gazed with keen enthusiasm upon me, the blood mantled vividly upon his chilled and weather-wrinkled cheek, while with grateful but melancholy earnestness he poured out his thanks. There was something to me unusually touching in the aspect of the friendless young foreigner, as well as in the circumstances in which I found him. He had a cast of thought and maturity in his face which hardship, isolation, and self- dependence, seemed to have anticipated years in producing ; for his slender and stripling figure, and the unshaven down upon his lip, bespoke him still in an early stage of youth. After a word or two of compassion, I passed on. But his dashed and disappointed look at separation followed me : my conscience chid me for resting in a cold gratuity to one so dejected, yet so sensitive to relief — a spring of gladness for whom my acquaintance with his native language, it appeared, could so easily unseal. He was a stranger, weary, friendless, cheerless, and neces- sitous — unsusceptible of those mitigations of suffering which even the poorest experience among their own people and their own kindred. I was hastening to my unshared, ’tis true, but far, therefore, from joyless lodgings, an abundant board, a radiant fire, a storm and snow proof apartment, furnished with all the appliances of comfort which winter covets ; and would they be diminished by the admission of this homeless, and, from his countenance, I dare certify, guileless wanderer, to share for a time their influence ? No. I have it in my power to interpose one bright spot in his life of hardship and privation, to suspend for a while the yearnings with which doubtless, at this hour of dreariness and suffering, he turns in thought to the scenes of his but recent childhood in his own lovely land, to the sunny azure skies the joyous vine- THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 294 clad hills, the playmates that even now, perhaps, at the close of a bright and genial day, are clustering in merry meeting for the evening song and dance, his father’s cottage, his mother’s caress. “ Yes, I will turn back,” exclaimed I, “and enable him, if ever he rejoin the social circle in his own ardent home, to tell his eager listeners a trait of kindness and sympathy shared in the far off frigid country of the north.” As I con- cluded, I again stood before him, as with a shiver and a sigh the poor lad was about raising his organ upon his shoulder again ; and, telling him that I had been in and loved the land from which he came, that I was fond of its people, and of their music too, and wished to talk with and hear him play at lei- sure and in comfort by my own fireside, asked him to accom- pany me to it. A smile of gladness lighted up his pale expressive face as he gratefully declared his readiness ; and a car passing at the moment, I hailed it, and in a few se- conds, young Carlo Girardi — for that he told me was his name — his chattering and half perished marmoset, his muffled music mill, and my enlivened and approving self, were rattling rapidly to my lodgings. I found him a fine, intelligent, un- hacknied lad, to whose fervid heart my partial knowledge of his native tongue secured me ready access ; and, after cold and hunger had given way to fire and food, I experienced no difficulty in drawing from him an ingenuous and vivid narra- tion of his personal story — one so singular and romantic in its character, and so illustrative of the purest impulses of the human heart, as to merit a repetition better than many a more highly wrought and complex tale. Cleared of the cir- cumlocution caused by his indifferent stock of English, and converted into a dialect more uniform and familiar to our ears, it ran substantially thus : — “ I come from the neighbourhood of the little village of Montanio, at the foot of the great Appennines. My father was, and I pray is still, a small vine-grower and gardener, supply- ing the market of Telese, and other towns within reach, with fruits, flowers, and vegetables. We were a family of five — my father, my dear mother, my elder and only brother Ludovico, my beautiful and gentle sister Bianca, and myself;” and his tone grew touchingly tremulous, as, in connection with his cottage home, he went over the old, familiar, household names. “ Oh, that I was ever called upon to leave them to wander, unfriended and unknown, among rough and careless strangers, to forsake all pleasant things, the gay and glad green fields, the sunny hills, the sparkling mountain streams, the flowered and fruited gardens, and the ever bright and beautiful sky which stretched its unclouded azure overhead, for this cold and shivering, this dim and misty landl But yet I would do as much again, if such a call again were made upon me — dark shame upon me if I hesitated ! — and when I return to them once more — and oh, may heaven grant that now I shortly may ! — I will look with the greater rapture upon all I left, upon beauties and on blessings I then too little, far too little, cared for. My father was ever kind to us when we were in the way of obedience to his wishes and ideas of duty, but rigid and severe to resent every error we might commit. I have heard the elder neighbours say that in his own young days he had been wild and perverse, and entangled thereby in many troubles, and that, therefore, in affection and providence for us, he was the more exact in our care and education. I was too young to be much in the way of following my own bent, and so had little opportunity of offending him ; but my brother Ludovico, who was hot, daring, and adventurous, was often led to look for wild and irregular excitement with the roving hunters and rude shepherds from the mountains above, and his mingling in their lawless society always raised my father’s resentment, and, despite my mother’s exerted influence, often brought disquiet and disunion among us. But though reck- less and unsettled, Ludovico was ever frank, winsome, and honest-hearted, which, however, could not save him from sharing in the evil fame of his companions; and though his handsome figure, open temper, and ready offices for all who sought them, made him a favourite with the young, yet the elder looked grave and severe upon him, as one already com- mitted in the road to ruin. Our sister Bianca, who, not in our eyes only, was the sweetest and prettiest maiden within the circle of a league, drew to herself, as she grew up, the admiring looks of all ; and at our gay village festivals, at the sowing, vintage, and noted holidays, he was a happy and envied youth who could oftenest engage her hand for the ta- rantula, or follow her voice upon the mandoline. But the one who paid his court with most success was Francesco, the only son of Marcolini the wealthy miller, who was by far the richest man in our community. But when his son’s courtship became known to him, he forthwith fell into a rage at the notion of so imprudent a match, for he was a purse-proud man, who valued his gold above most other things, above the beauty and innocence of our Bianca, and the pledged affec- tion of Francesco, for whom he looked far above us humble people for a more equally dowered bride. Resolute to ex- tinguish his folly as he called it, at once, he solemnly vowed to cut him off with a carlino, if he pursued his thriftless pro- ject ; and, not assured that even this would deter him, he de- termined to engage, likewise, the authority of my father, whose strict and unswerving character was well known to him, and accordingly besought him to lay his prohibition upon Bianca. My father, who would have scorned to force a thus forbidden union, hurried to comply with his wishes ; and in Bianca’s obedience there was found a surer safeguard than in Francesco’s fear of poverty, as, even in defiance of his father’s menace, he vehemently urged my sister to become his, and trust to the labour of his hands for their mainten- ance. But my father’s injunctions were habitually para- mount; and poor Francesco, finding her hesitation not to be overcome, soon fell into despair and declining health. He be- came melancholy, faint-hearted, and neglectful of all his old occupations; and his strange and moody habits, quenched spirits, and fast failing strength, so wrought upon his father’s fear and affection, that he began to think it better to make some compromise, and forego a little of his ambition rather than endanger Francesco’s life. In consequence, he intimated to my father that on reflection he was disposed to forward the marriage, provided a certain sum, which he named, was settled upon Bianca, as it was scarcely to be expected, he urged, that he would give his son and the heir of all his money to a portionless bride. My father acknowledged his request to be but natural, but professed at once the insufficiency of his means to satisfy it without impoverishing the rest of his family; an act which, however devoted to the happiness of his daughter, conscience would not allow him to commit. Old Martolini, finding him intractable upon the point, proposed then, that as Bianca and Francesco were still very young, their marriage should be postponed for at least three years, at the end of which time, if he were prepared to give her a certain portion— making a large abatement from his first demand — it might with his consent take place. But, exaspe- rated at his disappointment and forced concession, he added a passionate oath, that on no other terms would he hear of the connection, even though his son Francesco were such a fool as to pine till it brought him to his death-bed. My father, balanced between his anxiety to close an arrange- ment so beneficial to Bianca, and his sense of the hardships and extreme frugality it would necessarily impose upon us all during the interval, desired a short time to make his de- cision. The same evening he called all of us, except my sister, to him — declared the proposal of Francesco’s father- asked our opinion separately upon it — and when with one voice we all professed our readiness, our eagerness, to undergo any and every additional labour and privation that might take a tear from our gentle Bianca’s eye, or add a blush or a smile to her now pallid cheek and lips, he answered, “ It is just spoken as I would have you speak, my dear wife and children: but saying is easy, doing difficult. Three years will give you many opportunities of proving this, for there must be much denial, frugality, and toil, brief nights and long and busy days, to enable us to accumulate within the time a sum so ill proportioned to our means.” Bianca was then informed of the arrangement, and smiles of re- kindled hope and rapture mingled with tears of grateful love and sensibility ; and her rapidly returning bloom and gaiety gilded every thing around with its own gladness, and rendered our ruder and scantier fare and more lengthened labour plea- santer at times than the merry meeting and the music, which we could now of course but rarely join. The impulse of af- fection for dear Bianca was strong in every heart, and this, with the prospect of a happy completion of our undertaking, almost changed every sacrifice into a delight. But, young though I be, I have now lived long enough to know, that as the brightest morning sky is often overcast before the close of day, so are our most shining hopes subject to many a cloud and chill before, if ever, they attain to their fulfil- ment.” (Here poor Carlo paused for a moment in his narra- tive ; and with your leave, gentle reader, I too shall rest, till I have the pleasure of meeting you again in next week’s Journal.) J. J. M. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 295 ON STIMULANTS. TOBACCO. Repose is the remedy which nature points out to tired mor- tals when exhausted either by mental or bodily fatigue. This is her prescription for refreshing man’s animal spirits, and enabling him to resume his labours. Stimulants are by no means congenial with her methods or her processes. They are like whip and spur to the weary steed ; they may force him on indeed, but it is at the expense of his constitution and his powers. In medical science, the great art, as the doctors say, is to assist nature ; and with this view, the skilful prac- titioner will sometimes order stimulants, and find them doubt- less highly useful to his patient ; but their habitual use is no maxim of the healing art, but much rather that of the de- stroying or disabling one, if I may use the expression. By the way, we are sadly prone to habits, and therefore it “ stands us upon,” in a most serious degree, to consider well the nature and probable results of any custom before we adopt it. In this astute and intellectual age of ours it has been discovered that it is much easier to abstain altogether from a dangerous indulgence than to adhere strictly to mo- deration, and temperance has been superseded by teetotal- ism ; and I would just add to this, by way of corollary, that it is much easier to slide into a bad habit than to get rid of it again. But to return to our theme. The eftects pro- duced by stimulants are all agreeable for the moment. Wine and opium raise men above earth and all its cares ; and so long as the stimulant lasts, they sit as it were at the supper of v the gods. Anacreon is then the only ballad-monger, and with him each is ready to sing, Strew me a breathing bed of leaves. Where lotus with the myrtle weaves ; And while in luxury’s dream I sink, Let me the balm of Bacchus drink 1 In this delicious hour of joy, Young Love shall be my goblet-boy Folding his little golden vest. With cinctures, round his snowy breast ; Himself shall hover by my side, And minister the racy tide ! But when the influence of the spell is over, immediately they sink down as much below the level of ordinary mortals, as they were before raised above it. For a delightful exhilaration of body and mind, they now experience a sad reverse, in which they find much more pleasing music in the prudent advice of the apothecary, than in all the Odes of Anacreon. The cry is not then, Let us drain the nectar'd bowl, Let us raise the song of soul — &c. But, Let us drain the saline dose. Let’s expel these humours gross. Now, though poets have favoured us with many a canto on the raptures inspired by flowing bowls and sparkling goblets, they have rarely condescended to give us one line, if it were only by way of note, on the “ state of the stomach” on the morning after one of those “ nights and suppers of the gods.” Such a detail indeed was never intended for the divine art of poesy. It is a job not at all calculated for the lover of agreeable fiction, and hence the world hears little on the subject. Those after-reckonings are nevertheless serious, though unpalatable things. Pleasure here acts much like a tavern host, who re- members most accurately all the good things he provides, though his guests are both apt and willing to forget them. Every item is carefully put down, and must be paid for. I shall only say, that fortunate is he who takes warning in time. I might moralise on this theme in good set phrase, but the ground has been so well and so frequently beaten by others, that I forbear. With respect to such articles as opium and spirits, the “ spirit of the age,” as I have al- ready intimated, runs quite in an opposite direction to that of indulgence ; and it is wisely considered that as those who can be temperate in the use of such ticklish commodities must owe a great deal to a happy temperament of constitu- tion, and be few in number, whilst the greater part of mankind are not so felicitously moulded, the rule of teetotaiism, viz., entire abstinence, is on the whole the safest and best. But there is one article in our pharmacopoeia of stimulants, upon which there seems to be some difference of opinion, and with regard to which I should wish to record my humble opinion. I allude to the nicotian leaf-tobacco. Now, I regret to say that a long and attentive study of the subject compels me to pronounce an unfavourable sentence on this article. Whatever value it may possess as a medi- cine — and that, in the present state of our knowledge, is not much — I must say that, as an instrument of luxury in ordi- nary use, it is unwholesome and injurious. To the physi- cian it may be satisfactory to ascertain in what way, pre- cisely, the injurious effect is produced ; but it may suffice others to learn from experience and observation what is the actual result. It is obvious that tobacco causes an excite- ment of the nervous system, and thus disturbs the course oi nature; but nature never is, and never can be, disturbed with impunity. To apply a stimulus to the system for which there is no natural demand, is to cause a waste of nervous energy, of which nature has need for her own legitimate pur- poses, and therefore to inflict an injury upon her, greater or less according to the amount of that uncalled for expenditure. To keep such an unnatural stimulus in constant action, is tan- tamount to the creation of a constitutional derangement of the functions, or the introduction of an actual disease into the body ; and nobody will pretend to say that this is not in- jurious. To my simple apprehension, it is anti-hygeian prac- tice with a vengeance. I am no physician, but I believe this to be the true theory of our subject, regarded in a physio- logical point of view, and it is decisive against the nicotian habit, however small the quantity of the article used may be. People are rather indisposed to believe that an “ agreeable” sensation can be an “ unwholesome” one ; but unfortunately for poor humanity, and the popularity of us sages, nothing in nature is more certain than the possibility of such a conjunc- ture. It is not only certain, but, alas, commonly known by experience, that an agreeable thing may be unwholesome, and a pleasant sensation anything at all but a symptom of health- ful action. Again, people are apt to suppose that no injury is done to their health, because they are not sensible of the wound at the moment ; but this also is a notion which we must class among vulgar errors. It is a matter of demonstration, not merely of hypothesis, that we may sustain most grievous injury of which we are not instantly sensible ; nay, that so long a time may elapse after the impression has been imparted, that we become unable to trace the effect to its cause ; and yet the re- lation of cause and effect stands sure, however ignorant or unconscious we may be of it. As an illustration of this posi- tion, I shall mention a case which came under my own obser- vation. I was once acquainted with a gentleman, who at eighty years of age was what would be called a stout, healthy old fellow. He was certainly of a most robust constitution, and had never addicted himself to any habit “ calculated to shorten life,” as they say at the Insurance Offices, saving and excepting that of taking snuff. Well, it has been said to me, “ See how your anti-nicotian theory is set at defiance by this hearty old fellow. If tobacco be a slow poison, it must be, as was said of tea, very slow indeed, or how should we have such an exemplary octogenarian as this, ‘ o’er all its ills vic- torious ?’ He has been taking snuff all his life, and yet, you perceive, is nothing the worse for it.” Now, I did not per- ceive any such thing, but was well aware that the con- trary was the case. I was of opinion, and am now fully convinced of the fact, that he suffered extremely, nay, in- tensely, from the habit, without himself or others being at all aware of it. I do not speak of a nose and face perpetually begrimed with snuff — of a w’aistcoat and inexpressibles em- browned and powdered all over with it — of the expenditure of pocket-handkerchiefs, and waste of time in nose-blowing— everlasting sneezing and coughing, &c. : such matters are mere trifles in the estimate of your professed snuff-takers ; but I do speak of an habitual depression of spirits, and fre- quently an access of the most miserable melancholy, to which this gentleman was subject, and which I attribute to his in- veterate habit of snuff-taking, and to no other cause. He w’ould complain bitterly of his wretchedness on those occasions, and ascribe it to the skyey influences — the humidity of our climate, the fogs, and I know not what besides ; but it was nothing but “ the snuff.” Such intelligence would have doubtless been very unwelcome ; for this very snuff — this actual fons et oiigo malorum, ay, “ more snuff” — w r as his most favourite remedy and consolation under these distress- ing visitations ! So much for our ignorance of causes. The late Doctor Adam Clarke w’as a great enemy to the tobacco leaf, and published a strong paper in condemnation of it. He takes high ground upon the subject. “ That it is sinful to use it, as most do,” he says, “ I have no doubt — if destroying the constitution, and vilely squander- ing away the time and money which God has given for other 296 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. purposes, may be termed sinful. I have observed some whole families, and very poor ones too, who have used tobacco in all ? ossible ways, and some of them for more than half a century. low, suppose the whole family, consisting of four, five, or six, to have used but Is. 6d. worth a- week, then, in the mere article of tobacco, nearly £200 sterling is totally and irre- coverably lost in the course of fifty years. Were all the attending expenses, such as appropriate implements, neglect of business, and other concomitants, taken into account, pro- bably four times the sum would be too small an estimate.” Captain Scott, in his interesting work “ Rambles in Egypt and Candia,” says — “ All the Arab race are addicted to the use of the pipe, and to this pernicious habit may be traced the origin of most of their vices, and a great proportion of their misery.” And again, in a note, he observes — “ Nothing tends so much as the pernicious and universal habit of smoking to retard all improvement amongst the natives of the East, producing habitual indolence, and occasioning an irreparable loss of time.” He calls it elsewhere the “ predominant vice of Mahomedanism.” Now, with such warning and such ex- amples before me, I own that I cannot contemplate the possi- bility of my countrymen becoming a nation of smokers, without the utmost pain. I would wish to put all parties, but especially the young, on their guard against the insidious and seductive approaches of the habit. The elegant pipe, the splendid snuff-box, and all the curious conveniences of tube, light, tobacco-pouch, and so on, are so many lures to the unwary ; and many, by simply nibbling at these captivating baits, have been gradually led on, and at last turned into confirmed consumers. There is a temptation in the furniture of our fashionable snuff and cigar shops — “ divans,” as they are called, which it is hard to resist. It would seem almost worth while to “ consume,” for the sake of encompassing one- self with such beautiful toys ; but I class all such resorts in the same category with the gin-palaces of London. Look to the end — observe what a confirmed habit of snuffing or smoking is — how wasteful, how enervating, how every way pernicious I The tyranny of it is dreadful. No man knows it thoroughly but he who has once been its slave. The craving of the nose once accustomed to be fed, for snuff — of the throat and fauces once seasoned to the use, for smoke — and of the teeth and gums once used to be drawn, for the reiterate chew — oh, it is dreadful! — and I say there is no remedy against the evil but teetotalism. I have said nothing on those popular stimulants, tea and coffee, for, as generally used, I think they are both innocent, as they are certainly agreeable beverages. Let not my fair countrywomen, however, when they indulge in the “ cup that cheers but not inebriates” — I mean the Howqua, or any other tea-mixture — aim at celebrity for preparing it over strong ; for in this state, like other stimulants that we have been con- sidering, I have no doubt that it is bad for Aveak nerves. F. People with one Idea. — There are people who have but one idea : at least if they have more, they keep it a secret, for they never talk but of one subject. There is Major C ; he has but one idea, or subject of discourse, Parliamentary Reform. Now, Parliamentary Reform is (as far as I know) a very good thing, a very good idea, and a very good subject to talk about ; but why should it be the only one? To hear the worthy and gallant Major resume his favourite topic is like law-business, or a person who has a suit in Chancery going on. Nothing can be attended to, nothing can be talked of but that. Now it is getting on, noAV again it is standing still ; at one time the Master has promised to pass judgment by a certain day, at another he has put it oft’ again, and called for more papers ; and both are equally reasons for speaking of it. Like the piece of pack-thread in the barrister’s hands, he turns and twists it all ways, and cannot proceed a step without it. Some schoolboys cannot read but in their own book ; and the man of one idea cannot converse out of nis OAvn subject. Conversation it is not, but a sort of recital of the preamble of a bill, or a collection of grave arguments for a man’s being of opinion with himself. It would be well if there was any thing of character, any thing of eccentricity in all this ; but that is not the case. It is a political homily per- sonified, a walking common-place Ave have to encounter and listen to. It is just as if a man was to insist on your hearing him go through the fifth chapter of the Book of Judges every time you meet, or like the story of the Cosmogony in the Vicar of Wakefield. It is a tune played on a barrel-organ. It is a common vehicle of discourse into Avhich people get and are set down when they please, without any pains or trouble to themselves. Neither is it professional pedantry or Hading quackery : it has no excuse. The man has no more to do Avith the* question which he saddles on all his hearers than you have. This is what makes the matter hopeless. If a farmer talks to you about his pigs or his poultry, or a physician about his patients, or a lawyer about his briefs, or a merchant about stock, or an author about himself, you know how to ac- count for this ; it is a common infirmity ; you have a laugh at his expense, and there is no more to be said. But here is a man who goes out of his way to be absurd, and is trouble- some by a romantic effort of generosity. You cannot say to him, “ All this may be interesting to you, but I have no con- cern in it you cannot put him off in that way. He has got possession of a subject which is of universal and paramount interest, and on that plea may hold you by the button as long as he chooses. His delight is to harangne on Avhat noAvise regards himself ; how then can you refuse to listen to what as little amuses you ? The business admits of no delay. The question stands first on the order of the day — takes prece- dence in its own right of every other question. Any other topic, grave or gay, is looked upon in the light of imperti- nence, and sent to Coventry. Business is an interruption to it, pleasure a digression from it. As Cicero says of study, it follows the man into the country, it stays with him at home ; it sits with him at breakfast, and goes out with him to dinner. It is like a part of his dress, of the costume of his person, without Avhich he Avould be at a loss what to do. If he meets you in the street, he accosts you with it as a form of saluta- tion ; if you see him at his own house, it is supposed you come upon that. If you happen to remark, “ it is a fine day,” or “ the town is full,” it is considered as a temporary com- promise of the question ; you are suspected of not going the Avhole length of the principle. Is not this a species of sober madness more provoking than the real ? Has not the theo- retical enthusiast his mind as much warped, as much enslaved by one idea, as the acknoAvledged lunatic, only that the for- mer has no lucid intervals ? If you see a visionary of this class going along the street, you can tell as well what he is thinking of and will say next as the man that fancies himself a tea-pot or the Czar of Muscovy. The one is as inaccessible to reason as the other : if the one raves, the other dotes ! — Hazlitt’s Table- Talk. Comfortable Circumstances favour Foresight It is a most remarkable fact, totally at variance with Avhat might a priori be expected, but confirmed by the universal experience of mankind, that the dominion of reason over the passions, the habit of foresight, and the power of forming a systematic plan for the conduct of life, are just in proportion to the degree in which the danger of immediate or the pressure of actual suffering has been removed from mankind. The savage who has no stock whatever for his support— who is in danger of immediate starvation, if his wonted supplies from the chase or his herds were to fail — is totally regardless of the future in every part of the world ; while the rich man, whose subsistence and affluence are almost beyond the reach of chance, is incessantly in disquietude about the manner in which his subsequent life is to be spent. The certain prospect of instant death to himself and all that are dear to him, from the occurrence of a probable event, is unable to draw the at- tention of the one from the enjoyments of the moment ; while the slight and improbable chance of a diminution in the small- est articles of future comfort, renders the other indifferent to the means of present enjoyment which are within his reach Alison’s Principles of Population. Appreciation. — After all, it is appreciation rather than praise that is delightful. An artist, for instance, how tired he must be of hearing his pictures called “ beautiful, exqui- site !” — of being told for the one hundredth time that he has surpassed himself ; but let any one point out to him one of his own thoughts on the canvass, Avhich he supposed likely to escape the general eye, and hoAV grateful it is ! Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin.— Agents: — R. Groombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool; Slocombe & Simms, Leeds, Fraser and Crawford, George Street, Edinburgh ; and David Robertson, Tron- gate, Glasgow. Number 38. SATURDAY, MARCH 20, 1841. Y OLUME HOLY-CROSS ABBEY, COUNTY OF TIPPERARY. In a recent number of our Journal we led our readers to the banks of that beautiful river, “ The gentle Suirf., that, making way By sweet Clonmel, adorns rich Waterford and we now return to it with pleasure to notice another of the beautiful architectural remains of antiquity seated on its banks — the celebrated Abbey of the Holy Cross. This noble monastic ruin is situated in the barony of Eliogarty, county of Tipperary, three miles from Thurles, on the road to Cashel, and seven miles north-east of the latter. The origin as well as the name of this celebrated monastery is derived from a piece of the holy cross for which it was erected as a fitting depository. This relic, covered with gold and ornamented with precious stones, was, as O’Halloran states, but without naming his authority, a present from Pope Pascal IT, in 1110, to Murtogh O’Brien, monarch of Ireland, and grandson to Brian Boru,who determined to found a monas- tery in its honour, but did not live to complete it. But, however true this account may be as to the gift of the relic, there is every reason to doubt it as far as the date ot the foundation of the monastery is concerned, which, as appears from the original charter still in existence, was founded by Donald O’Brien, King of Limerick, the son of the Murtogh above named, as late as the year 1182, at which time it was richly endowed with lands for its support by its founder. These grants Avere confirmed in 1186, by King John, then Lord of Ireland, who further ordered that the monks of this abbey should enjoy all chartered liberties and freedoms, as appears from the foIloAving record of the 20th Edward I. a.d. 1320 : — “ Edward, by the grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Aquitain, to all to Avhom these presents shall come, greeting. Know ye that brother Thomas, Abbot of the Church of Mary of the Holy Cross, near Cashel, came into our Chancery of Ireland the day after the feast of Mi- chael the Archangel, in the 13th year of our reign, at Cashel, and exhibited in our said Chancery a certain charter, not cancelled, nor in any respect vitiated, under the seal of John, formerly Lord of Ireland and Earl of Morton, in these words : ‘ John, Lord of Ireland and Earl of Morton, to all justices, barons, &c., as well French as English, Welsh and Irish, and all other liege men of Ireland, greeting. Know ye, that, for the love of God, and for the salvation of my own and the souls of my predecessors and successors, I have granted and given, and bv these presents do grant and give, to God and the blessed Mary of the Holy Cross, and to the Cistertiaa 298 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. «K<* Monks serving God there, in free, pure, and perpetual alms, the under-written lands, as fully and freely as Do mu aid O’Brien, King of Lymberick, gave and granted, and by this charter confirmed to the Cistertian Monks of the Holy Cross ; to wit : Kelkaterlamunu, Ballydubal, Ballyidugin, Bally- girryr, Ballymyoletobin, and Ballytheloth, Gardath, Ballas- chelagh, Ballythougal et Ithologin. These lands I have given for the salvation of my soul, and those of my predeces- sors and successors, and for the souls of my soldiers who lie there, to enjoy peaceably, with all liberties and free customs, without any secular exactions in fields, ways, forests, fisher- ies, &c. I have also granted that they shall be free from all mulcts in my courts, for what cause soever they shall be amerced, and also free of all toll whatever ; they shall sell or buy, for their own use, throughout my land of Normandy, England, Wales, and Ireland; and that their lands be not put in plevine. — Witnesses, a Bishop of Ferns ; John de Cour- cy, de Angulo, Riddel, Chancellor, and David of Wales.’ ” It appears also that in 1233 the above charter of King John was confirmed by King Henry III, who took this monas- tery into his protection, which protection he again renewed in 1234; and that it was again confirmed by King* Richard II. in 1395, and that in 1414, James Earl of Ormond, and the Lord Deputy Thomas le Botiller or Butler, prior of St John of Jerusalem, further granted the protection of the crown to this house. Thus protected and fosteved by royalty, the Abbey of the Holy Cross became one of the most magnificent and wealthy in the kingdom, and its mitred abbot was styled Earl of Holy Cross, the lands belonging to the abbey constituting an earl- dom. He was also a baron of parliament, and usually vicar- general of the Cistertian order in Ireland. The abbey was originally a daughter of the Abbey of Maig, or Monaster- Nenagh, in the county of Limerick, and was subjected to that of Fumes in Lancashire by the Abbot of Clarevaux, in a general chapter of the order in L2-I9. After the dissolution of the monasteries in Ireland, Holy Cross Abbey with its appur- tenances was granted by Queen Elizabeth in 1563 to Gerald Earl of Ormond, in capite , at the annual rent of £15, 10s. 4d. ; and we believe this constitutes at present the estate, by pur- chase, of a worthy and deeply learned fellow of Trinity Col- lege, namely, Dr Wall. As a monastic ruin, the Abbey of Holy Cross ranks in popular esteem as one of the first, if not the very first, in Ireland. But though many of its architectural features are of remarkable beauty, it is perhaps as a whole scarcely de- serving of so high a character; and its effect upon the mind is greatly diminished by the cabins and other objects of a mean character by which it is nearly surrounded. Like most monastic structures of considerable importance, its general form is that of a cross, consisting of a nave, chancel, and transept, with a lofty square belfry at the intersection of the cross : but it is distinguished from other structures of the kind in having in both of its transepts two distinct chapels beautifully groined — a feature which imparts much interest and picturesqueness to the general effect. Between two of these chapels and the south transept there is a double row of three pointed arches, supported by twisted pillars, each distant about two feet four inches from the other, and having a simi- lar pointed arch in front. The object of this singular feature has given rise to much conjecture, but the more rational opinion seems to be, that it was designed as a resting place for the dead bodies of the monks and other persons previous to interment in the abbey, or its cemetery. In addition to this, the interior of the church has another very unique and remarkable feature, namely, that the choir arch is not placed as usual beneath the tower, but thirty feet in advance of it, thus making the choir of greater length by four- teen feet than the nave, which is but fifty-eight feet long, the entire length of the church being one hundred and thirty feet. This peculiarity appears, however, to be an after-thought, and not the design of the original architect, which was evi- dently to limit, as usual, the length of the choir to the arch in front of the tower, and the second arch is unquestionably of more modern construction. The steeple rests on four beautifully groined arches, the supporters of which are con- nected in the centre by a great variety of ogives passing dia- gonally from their angles ; and the roof of the choir, as well as those of the side chapels, is similarly enriched. The nave appears to have been of meaner architecture, and has lost its roof; but it has aisles formed by four pointed arches on each side, and which lead into the transepts. Of the windows in this church we may observe generally, that they are of very elegant taste of design. Thus much of the abbey church itself ; but of the ruins of the cloisters, which are of meaner architecture, and of all the other edifices appertaining to a monastic establishment of this grandeur, though in a tolerable state of preservation, it would be tedious to the general reader to give a detailed account, nor would our present space permit it. Neither can we de- scribe what is of higher interest, the magnificent monumental remains for which this abbey is so eminently distinguished. But we shall return to the subject in a future number, and in the mean time we shall only add, that this abbey is well worthy the attention of the antiquary and architectural student, and that to the pleasure toui’ist of cultivated tastes it is of the most delightful interest. P. THE ITALIAN ORGAN BOY. CONCLUSION. Carlo having recovered himself, proceeded as follows : — “ In the thus light-hearted and unmurmuring though tedious and toilsome accumulation of the fund that was to purchase station and happiness for Bianca, the first of the three years sped prosperously past. Francesco — for old Marcolini, con- fiding in the integrity and industry of my father to fulfil the conditional arrangement, laid no restraint upon him — was our almost daily visitor, and not rarely a cheerful assistant in the lighter labours of our garden, in tending our rich parterres, our fig-trees, and our vines. One serious drawback on our happiness — the first flush of devotion to Bianca over — we soon experienced. Ludovico, though at times he worked harder and longer than the rest, and rejected the occasional cheap indulgences my father permitted, had unfortunately been so entangled with his lawless and loose-living com- panions, that after a while he was again seduced by them into scenes of profligate amusement and disgraceful licence. It mischanced that near the close of the year, the very day before the great fair of Telese, to which we had long looked forward as likely to swell our savings much, our father met with an accident which disabled him from going to it. The cart, laden with our richest and choicest garden produce, my mother’s eggs and poultry, and Bianca’s contribution of nose- gays, needlework, and straw plaits, was in his unfitness necessarily entrusted to the charge of Ludovico. At the fair he unfortunately fell in with some of his low-principled asso- ciates, who seduced him into a gambling booth, where soon, infected with the excitement of play, he hazarded a small sum, which by an evil chance was returned to him threefold. Inflamed by the easy acquisition, he thought with rapture how mueh readier a way this was for a lucky fellow, as he appeared to be, to make his money, than by the slow and dull and difficult returns of labour, and almost anticipated his returning home that night with Bianca’s fortune in his pocket, and an immediate abridgement, in consequence, of the weary postponement of her wedding. He risked a higher sum with success, another with disappointment, and so on with varying fortune, till a friendly neighbour, who had heard where he was, came in and forced him with difficulty from the fatal fascina- tion. He had been at the table but a short time, and had lost but little, which, to escape detection, he replaced by a loan ; but he was inspired with a passion for play, which, when- ever an occasion was afforded, he eagerly indulged. But not- withstanding this, and the occasional losses and anxious evasions to which it exposed us, our efforts flourished, and our reserved earnings increased apace. Never before had we gathered such abundant returns from our garden and few' fields, for never before had we tended them with half the care. Our sales were quick as our produce v'as luxuriant, and before half the allotted period had expired, Bianca’s purse w-as by the half more valuable than w r e had ventured to expect. At this time my father was induced by my mother’s influence and representations to try and bring the suspense and post- ponement of the nuptials to a close, by borrowing on security what would complete the stipulated sum, and engage old Marcolini’ s consent to an immediate union. This v'as ac- cordingly done, the necessary sum furnished by a money-lender, Marcolini’s approval obtained, a day fixed, our festive arrange- ments made, and all w r as light and merriment. But, alas and alas ! a cruel blow' w r as in w r ait to dash to piqces our fond and joyous schemes, just as they seemed to approach reality. One morning, as by sunrise my father was going to the THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 299 garden— it was to decorate a bridal ai'bour which we had constructed for the occasion — I heard from him, as he passed through the inner room, a cry of astonishment and dismay, and hurrying in, found him gazing in horror upon an open and, alas, empty box — it was the one in which Bianca’s long hoarded dower had been kept ! Ail was gone — the hardly gathered earnings, the borrowed money, and with it all our mirthful plans and sparkling expectations ; and, though a grave, strong-minded man, he was for the time quite crushed and broken by the shock. ‘ Carlo,’ said he, ‘ we are ruined, utterly undone. Villains have plundered us : your sister’s heart will be broken, and there is nothing left for us but des- pair. These weakened limbs could not go through such another term of trial in the face of such misfortune. It will be well if they last long enough to earn what will meet the demands of Bartolo the broker. Your brother, to whom we might else have looked for aid, is getting worse and worse in his evil ways : he has turned — that ever I should have to speak such words of son of mine ! — yes, turned a worthless profligate and gamester. The God of Heaven grant,’ con- tinued he, turning ghastly pale, and staggering against the wall as his eye fell upon a well-known knife, that, with its blade broken, lay upon the floor, ‘ that it be not even worse. Carlo, look on that, and tell me, O tell me, that you know it not !’ With horror I recognized my unhappy brother’s knife ; and a fragment of the steel fixed in the box showed too plainly in what base work it had been employed. I was struck speechless at the sight ; but in defiance of all evidence, when I thought of my warm-hearted generous brother, I burned with anger at myself for my momentary misgiving, and almost fiercely chid my father for his dark suspicion. ‘ Carlo,’ answered he gravely, ‘ you are yet childish and in- experienced, and know not the power of evil company, the blight of that accursed vice upon every principle of truth and honesty. Your brother, I have told you, is an abandoned gambler— consorts with all the dregs and refuse of the coun- try, mocks at the entreaties of a mother, the warnings of a father, the honest, ay, till he bore it, the ever honest name of his family ; and he who does all this, will, time and tempta- tion pressing him, but feebly shrink from the basest act. But go,’ added he with stern emphasis, ‘ call him. Though guilty, I will see him face to face before I lay my curse upon him.’ With fear and trembling, for I knew how terrible my father’s temper was when roused, I was obliged to confess that he had not spent the night at home ; and his forehead grew still gloomier and more wrinkled as he listened. He said nothing, but fell upon a seat, folded his arms, and remained looking fixedly upon the ground in great and fearful agony of thought. About half an hour afterwards, my heart leaped within me as I caught the sound of Ludovico’s cautiously approaching bteps for on such occasions he strove to steal in unnoticed and I rushed to the door. There indeed he was coming up the walk in front. But what a figure ! — his eyes were blood- shot, his face haggard, his dress disordered, his gait uneven, and altogether he appeared still under the power of a deep overnight debauch. My father upon hearing rose to meet him, and at the sight of his agitated and afflicted features, Ludovico, overcome with dismay and confusion, only afforded confirmatory evidence of guilt. Without a word, my father beckoned with his hand to him, and walking into the room, pointed to the forced and vacant box, fixing his eyes sternly and accusingly upon my poor brother, who with fainting knees accompanied him. With constrained silence he then lifted up the broken knife from the floor, fitted it before Ludovico’s eyes to the fragment remaining in the lid, and then turning up the haft, presented it to him. A cry of dismay and horror broke from his lips as he recognized his knife, and the terrible truth burst upon him. * I am innocent, oh, my father, I am innocent,’ he cried as he fell on his knees before him. But, alas, the action, in place of removing, was about to rivet the evidence of his guilt, for as he stooped, a key fell from his pocket — a false one for the door which led from the very room into the garden, which he had privately procured for the purpose of secret admission when belated in his revels. My father, without other reply, seized it, applied it to the door, and opened the lock. He then turned to him, as if every stay and doubt were banished, and with a voice in which pain and sorrow only aggravated passion, exclaimed, ‘ Wretched boy, I disown thee ! Never shall villain, gambler, robber, liar, be called son of mine. Away, then, from my presence and my roof for ever ! He who could so basely forget every lesson of honesty he was taught from his childhood, who could plunder his poor sister of what we have painfully earned for her by the sweat of our brows, and doom her to hopelessness and life-long loneliness, to feed his own vile profligacy, would not scruple to dip his hand in blood, ay, in the blood of his household, for their inhe- ritance. We are not safe with such a one. Away to your brigand comrades of the hills — lead the villain life you incline to — do what you will — but never cross this threshold again !’ My mother and Bianca, roused by the noise, now hurried fear- fully into the room, and a glance at Ludovico’s horror-struck and supplicating posture, at the shattered box, and my fa- ther’s inflamed and convulsed countenance, was enough without words to inform them of the revolting truth. ‘ My father’s heart is hardened against me,’ exclaimed Ludovico, ‘ and I wonder not. I have indeed been loose- lived and disobedient, but never base nor dishonest, and let me not be now condemned because these appearances are against me. I solemnly swear by ’ My father fiercely checked him. * Add not perjury to infamy — it needs not swearing — the matter can be put beyond a doubt, ay, even beyond your own audacious denial. Mark those footsteps in the soft soil before the door : that bed was left by me smooth and unruffled yesternight — they are those of the vil- lain thief ; and, Ludovico, I cannot mistake the footprints of him who has wrought by my side since boyhood — wretched father that I am ! they are yours. Deny it if you can.’ Convinced in my own heart of his innocence, I sprang forward to apply the test, but soon recoiled in horror, as before the anxious eyes of all I proved the accurate correspondence of the marks — a shock which for a moment crushed my own faith in my brother’s truth. What now availed my mother’s entreaties, my sister’s tears, Ludovico’s continued passionate assertion of Lis innocence, to change the stern conviction of my father? He vehemently reiterated his sentence of banish- ment, and counselled him, if he would mitigate the keenness of remorse, to confess his crime and return its ill-gotten fruits. Ludovico, stung to the quick by his reproaches, and by. the agonies of my mother and Bianca, felt resentment rise in his heart to strengthen him to support his fate, and indignantly rose to’depart. ‘ Cease your prayers, my mother and my Bianca. Carlo, you will live, I feel, to see me righted, and my father, too, to repent his harshness to his son, and his distrust in one whom he has often detected in error, but never yet in ignominy. My sister, if my heart’s blood could at this mo- ment be coined into treasure to replace that which you have lost, and build again your shattered hopes, freely would I pour it out. But words are idle to make your heart what it was but an hour ago. I go — better any where than here — and if you hear of me again, it will be of one who has learned seriousness from suffering, and proved by acts his love and interest for you all.’ As he finished speaking, he hurried from the door without further farewell, and, plunging among the thickly wooded slopes, was speedily lost to my passionate pursuit. That evening, however, a boy left a billet from him to Bianca, in which he mentioned his intention of trying to turn his musical talent to account, by proceeding to England, where he was told that money was but lightly thought of, and purses were ever open, and where he might readily glean both what would support himself, and supply something towards enabling my father to meet Bartolo the usurer, and perhaps, too, old Marcolini, upon the day first fixed for her union with Francesco. He concluded by asking pardon from our offen- ded confidence and affection for once more scornfully denying the odious charge — a denial which, amid our joint tears over the letter, we believed as firmly as the words of holy writ. Why need I stay to mention all the gloom and grief which was now spread over our but lately so bright and hopeful household, for Ludovico, despite his thoughtless frowardness, had been the life and spring of all our movements. My father’s dark locks soon became streaked with grey, for his pride of honesty in an unblemished name was sorely abased: his heart was wounded and enfeebled; and when the fever of his first anger was past, he began to think at times that perhaps he had dealt too hardly and hastily with Ludo- vico. My mother often wept : my sister’s cheek became wan and pale even with Francesco by her side : my own heart was faint and joyless : a cloud of spiritless sadness and depression settled over all, and every thing seemed to lament him who was far away among strangers, in loneliness and disgrace — . him whose bold spirit, athletic form, and buoyant beauty, had, 300 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. notwithstanding his frailties, been the pride and glory, secret or avowed, of all. But Providence is able and merciful to cleanse the character of the innocent and calumniated in the end, and after many weary months Ludovico’s was cleared before all the village by the death-bed confession of one of his former associates, who, under the impulse of a late remorse, stated that the robbery had been committed by himself — -that Ludovico had on the night in question been designedly drugged by some of his accomplices — his knife taken and purposely left in the room, and his shoes borrowed for the same end, of warding search ©r suspicion from themselves by his condemnation. By way of expiation for the diabolical villany, he secretly menaced his partners in the plot that he would reveal their names and give them up to justice, unless the money with the interest in full was forthwith restored, which in consequence was quickly done. And now that his son’s good fame was estab- lished in the light of day, my father’s breast was lightened of the burthen of conscious disgrace, but only to suffer the more keenly the poignancy of self-reproach for the extreme and unjust severity of his treatment ; and often would he bitterly accuse himself of savage inhumanity, and madly wish that by the sacrifice of his own life be could restore his exiled son to his embrace once more. As I listened to his painful lamenta- tions and upbraidings, I formed a scheme, which was no sooner devised than I hurried to execute, of following Ludovico to England, of finding him, as in the credulity of inexperience I doubted not readily to do, and bringing him back with me to home, to reputation, and to happiness. Knowing the op- position I would meet if 1 mentioned my secret, I collected as speedily as I could what money I supposed would defray my first expenses, procured this organ, and my poor little marmo- set, as 1 knew my wandering countrymen were wont to furnish themselves ; and leaving a letter with a young neighbour to give when I was gone, took my way to Naples, whence I got a passage to London. My heart often died within me as I wandered through its great and busy streets, and many is the hour of sorrow and hardship I endured; but desire "for Ludovico, and the hope of finding him which never failed me, carried me through all. For nearly a year I traversed England, much of Scotland and Ireland, supporting myself by grinding this poor music. I have not my brother’s fine voice and skill, but the people here are for the most part indulgent, and not so delicate to please as those of Italy. But the good God guided me at last to a happy meeting with an old Neapolitan, who alone, of the hundreds whom I ques- tioned, was able to give me any information of Ludovico, with whom he had fortunately fallen in a few months before in this very city. With that cordial confidence which one is apt to place in a fellow countryman when east among strangers, Ludovico had made known to him all his story, adding that, having now by prudence and exertion of his talent for music — and few could touch a guitar or raise a voice like him — gathered a sufficient sum of money, he was about to return to Italy and to the neighbourhood of his native village, to apportion Bianca once more, and set on foot some inquiry to redeem, if possible, his forfeited character, and fix the guilt of the robbery upon the real offenders, whom long reflection on the circumstances had erewhile led him to suspect. Oh ! how my heart thrilled and burned within me as I listened to the long- sought blissful words, and knew that in very deed I was at last upon the track of him — though the rapture of an unex- pected meeting in this foreign land I was not to have — after w T hom I had made such a weary pilgrimage in vain. Not in vain neitner. I have done what I could, and when I stand proudly amid my family once more, and receive their embraces and congratulations, say, shall 1 be without my reward? My daily gleanings 1 hoard with the eagerness of a miser : little do I spend on food or lodging : for when I think of my own dear Montanio, of those to complete whose happiness I alone am wanting, I have but one wish, one prayer — to have where- withal to carry me to my own beautiful land again, to my father’s blessing, my brother’s love, my mother’s and my sister’s arms.” Tears of tenderness and rapture started to the eyes of the ardent and devoted youth as he thus concluded his narrative, in which the fervour and interest of truth were, as he told it, beautifully blended with much of the elevation and singu- larity of romance. Further particulars respecting this generous witness to the disinterestedness and fortitude with which family and frater- nal love can inspire the young, the delicate, and the undisci- plined, my necessary limitation of space compels me to forego. I need scarcely add that I was instrumental in furnishing a supplement for his insufficient means, and I did not lose sight of tlni noble lad, till, with mixed emotions of buoyant anticipation, and perhaps momentarily regretful gratitude, he parted from me on his return to Italy. In imagination I often make one of the reunited family, and at times, too, indulge the hope that the chances and changes of a shifting lot may some time en- able me in very deed to look on old Girardi and his spouse, Carlo and the reformed Ludovico, the fair Bianca and the faithful Francesco, and claim a return in kind — an evening spent among their gleeful rural party — for the fellow-feeling I had the good fortune to conceive for the desolation, and the part I was privileged to take in abridging the banishment, of the Italian Organ Boy. J. J. M. KNOWLEDGE AND IGNORANCE. Second Article. BOULDERS— CONTINUED. If the dreary waste of the sandy desert, when the hot and suffocating blast sweeps over its parched surface, appears to the affrighted traveller invested with all the charac- ters of sublimity, not less impressed with awe is the wan- derer of polar regions, when, gazing on the heart-chilling mag- nificence of the interminable ice which surrounds him, he hears the sigh of the coming snow-storm, fraught with dan- ger or with death. But at a time when repeated voyages and spirit-stirring narratives have rendered familiar to every one the beauties and the dangers of ice in every conceivable form of floe, of field, or of berg, and have excited sympathy for the sufferings or admiration of the daring of those who, to advance the cause of science, or to pursue for commercial purposes the mighty whale, have ventured within the precincts of that icy kingdom, it is not necessary to describe the solitary grandeur of a scene in which ice spreads like a sea beneath the feet, and rises as a mountain above the head. Not even, then, by the side of a cheerful fire, in these more temperate regions, shall we unnecessarily indulge in shudder- ings at the thought of distant powers of congelation, or enter further into the subject of polar picturesqueness. It is as a geological agent that we have now to contemplate ice in the various forms of fields and bergs, or of glaciers; its efficiency as a moving power being first considered. Scoresby justly denominates ice-fields “ one of the wonders of the deep. They are often,” he says, “met with of the diameter of twenty or thirty miles; and when in a state of such close com- bination that no interstice can be seen, they sometimes extend to a length of fifty, or nearly a hundred miles.” The average thickness of these fields is from ten to fifteen feet, and their surface is varied by hummocks, which rise to a height of from forty to fifty feet. The weight of a piece of field ice, one mile square and thirteen feet thick, is, according to Scoresby ’s estimate, 11,314.284 tons ; and, from the difference of specific f ravity between ice and sea-water, this floating mass is suf- ciently buoyant to support a weight of stones or other heavy bodies equal to 1,257,142, or in round numbers one million tons. Grand, however, as such floating fields of ice are, they are exceeded in magnificence by bergs. One of these, Scoresby relates, was one mile in circumference, fifteen hundred feet square, and a hundred feet above the level of the sea ; so that, allowing for the inequalities of its surface, he considered its depth in the water seven hundred feet, its total thickness eight hundred feet, and its weight about forty-five millions of tons — an enormous mass, capable of transporting at least five millions of tons of extraneous weight. In number, too, they are as remarkable as in magnitude : above five hundred were counted by Scoresby from the mast-head at one time, of which scarcely one was less than the hull of a ship, about a hundred as high as the ship’s mast, and some twice that height, or two hundred feet above the surface of the sea ; hence in total thick- ness about sixteen hundred feet. These, then, it must be ad- mitted, are mighty engines fitted for the transport of rocks of colossal magnitude. But in the reasonings of sound philo- sophy, the apparent fitness of an object to perform some par- ticular function cannot be deemed sufficient to establish the reality of its action : further proof is necessary, either de- rived from analogy or from positive facts. In respect to uc-fiolds, the easiest of observation, it is remarkable that neither of the Captains Scoresby speaks of having noticed ex- THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 301 traneous matter upon them, unless the expression “ heaps of rubbish,” in a passage of the voyage of Scoresby senior, means rubbish of stones as well as rubbish of ice. Examples will indeed be quoted from other writers, but the comparative scarcity of transported matter on the upper surface of the fields of ice, seems a natural consequence of their mode and place of formation. Formed in bays or gulfs, some portions of them are broken off by the violence of the waves at a dis- tance from the shore, and never therefore come in contact with rocks or stones ; whilst others, grounding in shallow wa- ter, encase many in the substance of their lower surface, al- though none are seen on the upper. The conditions, indeed, which are necessary to ensure a load for the carrying ice, such as proximity to the rocks the detached fragments of which are to rest on its surface, are more peculiarly present in ice formed under or brought into contact with precipitous rocky banks, and in that formed in deep narrow gulfs — in short, in ice constituted after the manner of glaciers. A large portion, therefore, of field ice must necessarily float about unencumbered with rubbish or fragments of rocks. Boethlingk, in treating on the diluvial and alluvial formations of South Finland, incidentally touches upon this subject. “ The dispersion,” he observes, “of these blocks, is very probably in accordance with a phenomenon which may be observed on many seas and rivers, and which depends on the presence of blocks of stone near the shore. Through what force and in what manner the deposition of large blocks on the surface of all those formations which are at the water’s brink even now happens, can be observed every spring, by any one who, at the breaking up of the ice, repairs to those parts of the coast where the shore bears testimony, by the numerous blocks heaped up one upon the other, of their forcible deposition. Near Kiwinjemei, on the W woxen, there is, as it Avere, a wall nine feet high, stretch- ing alongtheflat shore, composed ofblocks of stone which have been gradually raised by the masses of ice. In several places such stones, three feet in diameter, were lying on flakes of ice, which, pressing onwards to the shore, had been shoved one over the other to the height of six or eight feet ; so that no one could doubt the fact that the ice-flakes had been the carriers of the stones ; and also, Avhere the steepness of the ground permits the near approach of ice- shoals to the shore, that the blocks would be heaped up one over the other into a terrace or Avail ; whilst, on the contrary, on shalloAV coasts they would be scattered in the water, at a distance from the shore. The deposition of blocks depends therefore on the shore being accessible to ice-shoals driven in by winds or currents. Small blocks, also, are often cemented together by ice when the Avater over shalloAvs, the bottoms of which are covered Avith loose stones, freezes ; and when the water rises in the spring, or in consequence of storms setting in from the sea, the ice also rises, and Avith it the encased stones ; and being driven out to sea, the stones, by the melting of the icy cement, are dropped in va- rious places. In this way it is very probable that the boulders which lie scattered over the surface of the countries south of the Baltic Avere transported from Scandinavia and Finland on ice-shoals, at a time when the East Sea yet spread over those regions. Banks also are throAvn up along the shore by the ice ; they are never composed of large stones, but on flat sandy shores principally of sand. Where the Avater-level Avas constant for a considerable time, during which banks Avere formed, they shoAV by their height above the present flow of the Avater Iioav much the condition of the latter has been changed. When tAvo such banks lie one behind the other, at the same level, or suc- cessively like terraces, we are justified in concluding that the level of the water has changed and the land been increas- ed, or that the one has sunk and the other in consequence ad- vanced upon it. In confined basins this sinking may have been the consequence of the outlet Avidening by Avear, and in open seas by the upheaving of the land. On all the large lakes of Finland are seen banks and terraces, as well as single blocks of stone, on the slopes. The terraces of- ten lie one above the other, A\-hich indicates sudden depres- sions of the Avater’s surface at different periods, each bank or terrace marking the water-line of a particular period, in Avhich Avere deposited in strata many kinds of detritus mixed up Avith vegetable substances.” These remarks of Boethlingk, originally recorded in the “ Bulletin of the Aca- demy of Sciences of St Petersburg,” are here cited from the “ Neucs Jahrbuch von Leonhard und Bronn.” They are valuable, as results of personal observation, and have doubtless already given a tolerable inkling of the reasons upon which this species of explanation of the phenome- non of boulders has been founded. Captain Bayfield, of the Royal Navy, the able surveyor of the Canadian lakes and of the river St Lawrence, records similar facts, ob- served by him in that river. The St Lawrence is in winter loA\ r , and the ice on the shallows along both banks of the river is frozen into one connected mass by a tempera- ture which often sinks to thirty degrees beloAV zero, or sixtv- two degrees below the freezing point. When the thaw sets in, these masses are raised up and floated away, and Avith them an extraordinary quantity of blocks and stones Avhich had been encased by the frost in their substance. In like manner, anchors Avhich for the security of the ship in winter had been fixed near the shore, were obliged to be cut out of the ice, or they AA’ould have been carried away. Half a ton weight of one of the strongest chain cables Avas torn off' and carried many yards aAvay, when means Avere taken to cut it out. Captain Bayfield also mentions the fact that he had often seen at sea icebergs laden with stones. In the Straits of Belleisle the captain examined one amongst many Avhich must have come from Baffin’s Bay ; it Avas thickly covered oA’er with blocks, gravel, and stones. M. Reine'cke, an officer of the Russian navy employed on a sur- \'ey of the coast of Finland, relates two pleasing though minor incidents of a similar kind. The fishermen of SAvea- borg pointed out to his officers that the sea-bottom of their coast Avas subject to frequent change, partly from the action of the Avaves in violent storms, but more particularly from the force of traction exercised by enormous bodies of ice Avhich are set adrift at the breaking up of the frost, and being arrested in their progress by some of the numerous headlands of the coast, or by the shoals which there encumber the sea, are heaped up one upon the other into colossal masses, AA'hich, li- berated by some neAV shock, are again violently urged forward, and drag along Avith them the sand of the bottom, and even large fragments of the rocks. At the village of Kittelholm, near Sweaborg, the inhabitants directed the officers’ special atten- tion to tAvo such erratic blocks of stone, which at a very re- cent period had changed their place : resting on a rock of the coast called Witthella, and at a height of three sagenes (about 21 feet) above the level of the sea, there noAv appears a block of granite, called by the sailors “ sea calf,” from its resemblance to a seal basking in the sun. This block was first seen in its present position in 1815. It had been encased in a mass of ice, Avhich, raised up by the waves in a storm, had rested on the level top of the rock, and there melted as it thaAved ; the boulder, brought probably from a distant region, being left where itnoAv stands. The other erratic block or boul- der of Kittelholm had been observed by the inhabitants in the winter of 1806 to shift its place, being dragged on by the ice for a distance of about one-third of a mile. But all these were carriers of small note and name when compared to those of vast bulk and power described by Scoresby. “ Many,” says he, “ of the icebergs contained strata of earth and stones, and some Avere loaded Avith beds of rock of great thickness, and Aveighing by calculation from 50,000 to 100,000 tons.” When, therefore, Ave see such operations going forward in our oavh time— the iceberg loaded with its freight of gravel and of rocks, moving sloAvly from the frozen north to the south, AA r here, melted by the increasing heat, it is destined to dis- charge its cargo indiscriminately on mud, on gravel, or on rock, in the plain or on the hill, in the valley or on the mountain top (for all these forms of matter and of feature may be reasonably assumed to diversify the bottom of the present ocean, as it did that of a former one, now the sur- face of our dry land) — may Ave not conclude with Lyell or with Wissman, with Murchison or Avith Darwin, that Avere that bottom exposed dry to our vieAv, it Avould in like man- ner exhibit its phenomena of gravel and of boulders ? Nor would these appearances be confined to the nor- thern regions ; the reign of frost and snoAv has extended over a wider space in the antarctic than it has in the arctic circle. Mr Murchison quotes from a letter of Captain Harcourt, R. N., Avho in returning from South America met Avith a vast number of ice-floes in the Pacific, in latitude 50 degrees. Some of them were not less than two miles square, and 250 to 300 feet above the Avater, and consequently about 2000 feet thick. It is remarkable that this phenomenon occurred from 85 degrees Avest longitude, at a considerable distance from any land, to the meridian of Cape Pillar, while the immediate coasts of Chili and Cape Horn offered 302 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. no trace of them. The winter was comparatively milcl, which might indeed account for the liberation of such large masses of ice from the South Pole, and their being wafted into seas usually quite free from them. The number and size of these ice-floes were so astonishing, that Captain Harcourt, during the long winter moonless nights of eighteen hours, had great difficulty in steering through them without shipwreck ; their course seemed to be from south-east to north-west, and they were met with through five degrees of latitude (50 to 55 degrees), which would be the exact position of England if transferred to the other hemisphere. May we not then shud- der at the thought of that dreary future, in which, by some physical changes of the earth’s surface, according to the theory of Mr Lyell, the conditions of the earth’s superficial temperature may be reversed, and bring down upon the coasts of our ill-fated island those frost-bearing monsters to bite up every living thing by one common congelation ; for we may ■well suppose, that long ere that dismal period our cold-dispel- ling fuel, turf, coal, and all, will have been utterly consumed. But let us comfort ourselves with this selfish reflection — it will not be in our day. Numerous as the icebergs of the antarctic regions are, they have as yet afforded few examples of transported materials. One, however, of very considerable interest, is thus recorded in a Journal of Discoveries in the Antarctic Ocean in 1839, by Mr John Balleny, communicated to the Geographical Society by Mr Enderby, the ship-owner. “ March 13. Light variable winds from the eastward ; surrounded by icebergs. In latitude 61 degrees, longitude 103 degrees 40 minutes, passed within a quarter of a mile of an iceberg about 300 feet high, with a block of rock attached to it.” The rock is de- scribed as about 12 feet in height and about one-third up the berg. The nearest certainly known land (Enderby ’s Land) was distant from the spot 1400 miles ; Sabrina Land, if such exists, was distant 450 miles ; and it is very improbable that any land will be discovered within 100 miles. Mr Darwin, in an interesting note on this Journal, mentions a preceding case of an iceberg with a considerable block lying on it, seen east of South Shetland by Mr Sorrell, when in a sealing vessel ; and though another voyager, Captain Briscoe, during several cruises in the antarctic seas, had never once seen a piece of rock in the ice, he remarks, that if but one iceberg in a thousand or in ten thousand transports its fragment, the bot- tom of the antarctic sea and the shores of its islands must already be scattered with masses of foreign rock, the coun- terpart of the erratic boulders of the northern hemisphere. Such, then, are the facts on which modern geologists, and more especially Mr Lyell, have founded the theory of ice- transported boulders, appealing to the experience of that which is now occurring in existing seas as evidence of that which did occur in seas not now existing — seas which once covered or at least rose to the level of places which exhibit these relics of their presence. Presuming, then, for an in- stant, that the fact is conceded, that at some ancient epoch the low lands of a large portion of the northern and southern hemispheres were under water, wdfilst the higher hills and mountains were covered with snow, and their gorges and valleys filled with glaciers, which on descending to the ocean carried with them fragments of rocks, and became as ice- bergs their carriers to distant regions, do we not obtain an explanation of the phenomena of boulders more simple and rational than any of those previously advanced ? For example, Kirwan in his Essays tells us that the Bay of Galway must have been occupied by a granitic mountain, which in a great catastrophe was shattered and swallowed up, because he found a mass of granite called “ the Gregory” on one of the isles of Arran, 100 feet above the sea, and 8 or 10 miles from the nearest granitic locality, the islands themselves being limestone. But such a mass, though 20 feet long, 10 high, and 1 1 broad, if floated across on an iceberg, could have been deposited at its destined place by machinery more simple than such a catastrophe. In like manner, how easily the granitic blocks of Scandinavia could by similar means have been transported across the Baltic ! — and at the same time many of the phenomena of drift (a name now given by many geologists to what was formerly called diluvian) might be explained, as shown by Mr Lyell in his account of the Norfolk drift, by the action of floating fields of ice carrying with them sand and gravel, or grating and heaping up the sand and gravel of shoals on which they were beginning to ground, as shown in the examples cited. The long lines of drift and boulders extending from north to south in northern Europe were indeed in all probability the result of the joint operation of the marine current which moved onwards the floating ice, and of the ice itself. In these lines or trainees, two sets have been discovered — one crossing the other at a very acute angle, a circumstance which may possibly be explained by supposing two currents simultaneously running from the north being inflected by local peculiarities into slightly differing directions, and then, on meeting, proceeding in a direction the resultant of the two ; the direction of the resultant varying at differ- ent epochs according as one or the other current, from varying local causes, possessed the greater or less velocity ; if so, the natural result of such meeting currents wrnuld be to deposit along their resulting direction lines of drift, to form in this manner shoals on which the floating ice would occasionally ground, and by its load of gravel and boulders assist the work of detritic accumulation. In as far, then, as the phenomenon of boulders is exhibited in the low lands of Europe (leaving other countries out of the question), it seems quite in conformity with the operations of causes such as have been here explained. But it may next be asked. How does the ice-transporting theory explain the boulders of the Alps ? Had the waters been sufficiently ele- vated to convey icebergs over the Jura chain, the Scandina- vian mountains would have been deeply submerged, and no longer, therefore, a source either of ice or of boulders. This is unquestionably a difficulty, unless it be assumed either that some great change of relative altitude has taken place by the uplifting of the Alps since the deposition of its boul- ders, or that the Alpine boulders have not been conveyed by marine agencies. Lyell supposed it possible that falling “hill-sides” might have dammed up the vallies of Switzerland, and have formed lakes, on which the icebergs from its uplifted glaciers might have floated across to the Jura, and have been carried down to the low country at the base of the Alps, by the sudden bursting of the barrier, and the flood following it ; and Wissmann (who strangely enough ranks Lyell, manifestly his precursor in this idea, amongst the advocates of the theory of torrents) in like manner assumes the existence of a large sea extending over the low portion of Switzerland, the country now bordering on the Lake of Constance, and the greater part of Bavaria, on the waters of which the ice of falling glatiiezs with its cargo of boulders floated across. This sea was not however, like Lyell’s, the result of a secondary accident, but arose, encircled and walled in by mountains, on the last up- heaving of the Alps. Its waters overflowing their boun- dary at the lowest points, according to Wissmann enlarged the passages of discharge, which giving vent to the waters, gradually lowered and finally emptied the sea, leaving the valley of the Rhone and of the Rhine as a relic. If, how- ever, hypotheses of at least equal probability have been re- jected either as depending too much on supposititious data, or as being imperfect explanations of the phenomena, there seems no greater reason for admitting these. Such accidents as those suggested by Mr Lyell have indeed occurred in the Alpine regions ; rivers have been dammed up either by fall- ing hill-sides or by falling masses of ice, and on bursting through these obstacles, have poured down in fearful de- struction on the plain below. But how diminutive ar® such catastrophes in comparison to that which must have attended on the dispersion of the Alpine boulders ! and al- though the lake of Wissmann’s hypothesis is sufficiently ex- tensive to transport the boulders through a very wide space, it is insufficient to account for those in Franche- comte ; whilst, if we suppose with him that the last elevation of the Alps was prior to the deposition of the Molasse, it seems improbable that all the great openings of discharge, or vallies, should have been formed since that period. Must we then turn from these explanations, and again suppose great relative changes of altitude by vast upheavings of mountain chains in comparatively recent times, giving rise to diluvial waves, or, as supposed by De Beaumont, such upheavings being accompanied by a sudden rise of temperature, to the sudden melting of huge masses of snow and ice, and to pow- erful torrents resulting from it ? Are we in short to appeal with Kapp to the testimony of the Chinese Annals, elucidated by Edward Biot of the French Academy, for evidence of such changes ? In them, mention is indeed made at dates of 2400 and 3300 years before our era, of the elevation of two mighty chains of mountains, by which an ancient sea was raised up and became the present Marsh of Gobi, having been drained by an arm of the Yellow River, or through the val- ley of Tsiscbi, and at the same time the course of the Yellow THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. and many other rivers were greatly changed. But, truly cu- rious as such documents undoubtedly are, and worthy of the most attentive research in order to ascertain what support can really be given to geological theories by historical evi- dence, they could not be received as conclusive in respect to the face of Europe, unless something like a chain of de- ductive reasoning from observed facts could be adduced in support of them. What, then, is the state of the case ? Must we reject the ice-transporting theory as insufficient, and stand in despair of ever finding a clue to our difficulties ? Far from it : the very difficulty itself points to the true ex- planation. The northern or Scandinavian boulders are not mixed with the Alpine on the low grounds at the base of the Jura, and this circumstance shows us that there was a limit to the space over which these boulders were transpor- ted, and that limit was, probably, the result of the ele- vation at which the ocean then stood. Whilst, then, this ancient ocean was conveying from the Scandinavian peaks its falling glaciers loaded with fragments of rocks, the glaciers of the Alps were conveying over the ice-covered land the fragments of its broken pinnacles. Such a union of the two modes of transport, combined with sea currents, seems at once consistent with reason and efficient in explana- tion ; for example, it explains the difficulty experienced in understanding the ancient glaciers of the northern face of our Dublin mountains, where we see limestone gravel and fragments of red sandstone accumulated against their base up to a certain point where they end abruptly, and gravel of primitive rocks begins. The limestone gravel and fragments of sandstone may have been conveyed there, and heaped up by the pressure of drifting ice, whilst the descending glacier conveyed primitive fragments, and pushed up be- fore it into a heap the limestone gravel. We have there- fore now come to the consideration of the glacier theory, which, propounded and explained by Agassiz, has assumed not merely a character of sublimity, but of demonstration. This I shall enter upon in another article, to which I shall also defer some necessary remarks on the supposed causes of that great and general refrigeration which Agassiz assumes, and the facts support. But even now I cannot refrain from answering a question which may possibly be asked by some, Why do you place so abstruse and difficult a subject before the readers of a popular work ? I do so, because, though assuredly of no easy solution, the boulder question is one replete with interest, and calculated to excite the attention of many who perhaps never before thought that in those time- worn stones was matter to exercise the deepest reflection of the philosopher. But this is not all. To follow up the theories of the astronomer, instruments, and “ appliances to boot,” are necessary, which few can possess ; but to seek for geolo- gical data, the inquirer needs only health, his hammer, and his bag. When, therefore, as so powerfully urged by Mr Pat- terson, in his beautiful address to the Natural History Society of Belfast, our national system of education shall include within it an elementary course of natural history, we may hope to see in each of its trained schoolmasters not a “ vil- lage Hampden,” but a “village White” or a “village Saus- sure,” and in each locality around him a group of young and ardent naturalists growing up with a taste and enthusiasm for scientific research w'hich not only will infuse happiness over their own breasts, but multiply the data for correct de- ductions. And in what branch of geological inquiry is such a multiplication of materials more required than in the one we have been discussing ? Happy times, then, for science, mo- rality, and religion, when a taste for research shall have been budded on the earliest shoot of man’s intelligence ! J. E. P. Cruelty to Animals — Though civilization may in some degree abate the native ferocity which prompts men to tor- ture the brute creation, it can never quite extirpate it. The most polished are not ashamed to be pleased with scenes of bar- barity, and, to the disgrace of human nature, to dignify them -with the name of sports. They arm cocks with artificial weapons, which nature had kindly denied to their malevolence, and with shouts of applause and triumph see them plunge them into each other’s hearts ; they view with delight the trembling deer and defenceless hare, frying for hours in the utmost agonies of terror and despair, and at last sinking under fatigue, devoured by their merciless pursuers. They pee with joy the beautiful pheasant and harmless partridge drop from their flight, weltering in their blood, or perhaps perishing with wounds and hunger, under the cover of some friendly thicket to which they have in vain retreated for safety ; they triumph over the unsuspecting fish, whom they have decoyed by an insidious pretence of feeding, and drag him from his native element by a hook fixed to and tearing out his entrails ; and to add to all this, they spare neither labour nor expense to preserve and propagate these innocent ani- mals, for no other, and but to multiply the objects of their persecution. What name should we bestow on a superior being whose whole endeavours were employed and whose whole pleasure consisted in terrifying, ensnaring, tormenting, and destroying mankind? — whose superior faculties were exerted in fomenting animosity amongst them, in con- triving engines of destruction, and inciting them to use them in maiming and murdering each other ? — whose power over them was employed in assisting the rapacious, deceiving the simple, and oppressing the innocent ? — who, without pro- vocation or advantage, should continue from day to day, void of all pity and remorse, thus to torment mankind for diversion, and at the same time endeavour with the utmost care to preserve their lives, and to propagate their species, in order to increase the number of victims devoted to his malevolence, and be delighted in proportion to the miseries wffiich he occasioned ? I say, what name detestable enough could we find for such a being ? Yet if we impartially con- sider the case, and our intermediate situation, we must acknowledge, that, with regard to inferior animals, just such a being is a sportsman — Disquisitions on Several Subjects, by Soame Jenyns. HISTORY OF PAPER-HANGINGS. Abridged from a paper by Mr Crace, read before the Royal Institute of Architects. Paper hangings maybe divided into three separate branches, the flock, the metal, and the coloured; and each of these seems to have been invented at a different time, as an imita- tion of a distinct material — the flock to imitate the tapestries and figured velvets, the metal in imitation of the gilt leather, and the coloured as a cheap substitute for painted decorations. Professor Beckman says that the former of these, the flock, was first manufactured in England, and invented by Jerome Langer, who carried on the art in London in the reign of Charles the First, and obtained a patent for his discovery, dated May 1st, 1634. Various French and German authors give us the credit of this invention, yet it is disputed by a Frenchman, M. Tierce, who in the Journal iEconomique says, that a man named Francois carried on this art at Rouen so early as the years 1620 and 1630, and affirms that the wooden blocks employed are still preserved with the before-mentioned dates inscribed on them. Francois was succeeded by his son, who followed the business with success for fifty years, and died at Rouen in 1748. M. Savary, in his Dictionnaire de Com- merce, thus describes the manner in which the French manu- factured their tonture de lane, or flock hangings : The artist having prepared his design, drew on the cloth, with a fat oil or varnish, the subject intended to be represented ; and then the flocker, from a tray containing the different tints of flocks, arranged in divisions, took the colours he required, and sprinkled them in a peculiar manner with his finger and thumb, so that the various shadows and colours were properly blended, and an imitation of the wove tapestry produced. Of the second branch, the metal papers, I do not find much mentioned by the older writers ; and of the coloured papers I almost despaired of finding any early account, till, in an old French dictionary of commerce” printed in 1723, under the head, of Dominoterie, I discovered an account which seems to give the origin of the present system of paper-staining. Dominoterie is an ancient French name for marble paper, such as used by bookbinders ; and the early French paper- stainers w'ere associated with the makers of that article, as a class called dominotiers. The manufacture is thus described : — The design having been dravm in outline, on paper pasted together of the size required, the paper was then divided into parts of a suitable size, and given to the carver or wood engraver, to cut the designs on blocks of pear-tree, much in the same manner as at present. The outline thus cut was printed in ink with a press, resembling that then used by the letter-press printers, on separate sheets of paper. When dry, they were then painted and relieved with different colours in, 304 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. distemper, and afterwards joined together, so as to form the required design. The author then adds, that grotesques and panels in which are intermingled flowers, fruits, ani- mals, and small figures, have up to this time succeeded better than imitations of landscapes, or other tapestry hangings, which are sometimes attempted, and refers to article 61 of the French laws in 1686, which confirms the statutes pub- lished in 1586, 1618, and 1649, in which rules are given as to what kind of presses, &c. are to be used by the dominotiers, and prohibiting them under heavy penalties from printing with types. Recurring to the subject as connected with this country : in the year 1754, a Mr Jackson, a manufacturer of paper- hangings at Battersea, published a work on the invention of printing in chiaro oscuro, and the application of it to the mak- ing of paper-hangings, illustrated, with prints in proper colours. This book is a sort of advertisement of the kinds of papers made, and the mode of manufacture employed by him. He adopted a style of paper-hangings executed with blocks in chiaro oscuro, in imitation of the most celebrated classic subjects. To use his words, “ The persons who cannot purchase the statues themselves, may have these prints in their places, and thus effectually show their taste. ’Tis the choice and not the price which discovers the true taste of the possessor ; and thus the Apollo Belvedere, the Medicean Venus, or the Dying Gladiator, may be disposed of in niches, or surrounded with a mosaic work in imitation of frames, or with festoons and garlands of flowers, with great taste and elegance ; or, if pre- ferred, landscapes after the most famous masters may be in- troduced into the paper. That it need not be mentioned to any person of taste how much this way of finishing with colours, softening into one another with harmony and repose, exceeds every other kind of paper-hanging hitherto known, though it has none of the gay, glaring colours in patches of red, green, yellow, and blue, &c. which are to pass for flowers and other objects in the common papers.” By the account of this gentleman we find that paper-hang- ings were then in common use, and had reached a certain degree of perfection, for that even arabesques were executed ; and I therefore conceive that the art discovered by Lanyer had been continued from his time to the present ; particularly as in the year 1712, the 10th of Queen Anne, a duty of l|d. per square yard is imposed on this manufacture. In the reign of that queen the Chinese paper-hangings were very much employed, and have continued in fashion to the present day. These hangings, though parts of them may be executed by blocks or stencils, are almost wholly painted by hand. Cotemporary with Jackson, I have learned that a Mr Taylor, the grandfather of one of our present most eminent manufac- turers, carried on this business to a considerable extent, and accumulated a large fortune. He was succeeded bv his son, who, I am informed, visited France, and was enabled to give the manufacturers there considerable information. He said on his return that he found the French paper-hangings, very inferior to our own, both as to execution and beauty of design. In those days we had an extensive export trade in this mate- rial to America and other foreign parts, but we are now driven out of this market by the French. The paper-hang- ings at that date, about 1770. were manufactured nearly in the same manner as at present ; I have indeed seen a flock paper of a large rich damask pattern, more than 100 years old, which resembles in every way the modern material ; it is singular that this art of flocking was disused and almost lost during a period of twenty years, and revived only about forty years ago ; a mode of decorating papers was also formerly employed, which is now never adopted. I have seen papers ornamented with a substance commonly called frost, a species of talc. In the year 1786, there was established at Chelsea a manu- factory for paper-hangings of a superior description, con- ducted by Messrs George and Frederick Echardts, gentlemen of considerable taste and spirit. The mode of manufacture was different to that in general use ; for, besides the usual printing blocks, copper plates, on which were engraved de- signs of great finish and beauty, were likewise employed, and they not only printed on paper, but also on silk and linen; and by an underground of silver or gold, they obtained very beautiful effects of colour. Only part of the design was given by printing ; it was finished by artists constantly retained by the manufacturers, men of considerable talent, who again were assisted in the inferior parts by young girls, of whom more than fifty were employed ; and had this undertaking been supported by the government, it would, I think, have been more available as a school for our rising artists, and of infinitely greater service, than our present school of design, for it would have been a working school, and no other, I am convinced, will be of any use in forming a talented race of decorative artists in this country. There was also about this time another establish- ment similar to the former, conducted by Mr Sheringham, in Marlborough-street. From this time the French began to excel in this superior branch of the art, which with us had fallen on such barren ground. Their manufacturers were encouraged in every w r ay by their government and the Emperor Napoleon to attempt that perfection which they have now so successfully attained. — Engineer and Architect' s Journal. Sir Walter Scott. — The following extract from the Diary of Sir Walter Scott (see his Life by Lockhart) touch- ingly exemplifies the state of his feelings at the period of his ruin, of the total loss of property and frustration of all his bright hopes by the bankruptcies of the Ballantynes and Con- stable : — “ It is a bitter thought ; but if tears start at it, let them flow. My heart clings to the place I have created. There is scarce a tree on it that does not owe its being to me. What a life mine has been !— half educated, almost wholly neglected or left to myself ; stuffing my head with most non ■ sensical trash, and undervalued by most of my companions for a time ; getting forward, and held a bold and clever fellow, contrary to the opinion of all who thought me a mere dreamer ; broken-hearted for two years ; my heart handsomely pieced again, but the crack will remain till my dying day. Rich and poor four or five times ; once on the verge of ruin, yet opened a new source of wealth almost overflowing. Now to be bro- ken in my pitch of pride, and nearly winged (unless good news should come), because London chooses to be in an up- roar, and in the tumult of bulls and bears, a poor inoffensive lion like myself is pushed to the wall. But what is to be the end of it ? God knows ; and so ends the catechism. No- body in the end can lose a penny by me ; that is one comfort. Men will think pride has had a fall. Let them indulge their own pride in thinking that my fall will make them higher, or seem so at least. I have the satisfaction to recollect that mv prosperity has been of advantage to many, and to hope that some at least will forgive my transient wealth on account of the innocence of my intentions, and my real wish to do good to the poor. Sad hearts, too, at Darnick, and in the cottages of Abbotsford. I have half resolved never to see the place again. How could I tread my hall with such a diminished crest? How live a poor indebted man, where I was once the wealthy — the honoured. I was to have gone there on Satur- day in joy and prosperity to receive my friends. My dogs will wait for me in vain. It is foolish ; but the thoughts of parting from these dumb creatures have moved me more than any of the painful reflections I have put down. Poor things, 1 must get them kind masters ! There may be yet those, who loving me, may love my dog, because it has been mine. I must end these gloomy forebodings, or I shall lose the tone of mind with which men should meet dis- tress. I feel my dogs’ feet on my knees. I hear them whin- ing and seeking me everywhere. This is nonsense, but it is what they would do, could they know how things may be. An odd thought strikes me — when I die, will the journal of these days be taken out of the ebony cabinet at Abbotsford, and read with wonder, that the well-seeming baronet should ever have experienced the risk of such a hitch ? Or will it be found in some obscure lodging-house, where the decayed son of chivalry had hung up his scutcheon, and where one* or two old friends will look grave and whisper to each other, “ Poor gentleman” — “ a well-meaning man” — “ nobody’s enemy but his own” — “ thought his parts would never wear out” — “ fa- mily poorly left” — “ pity he took that foolish title." Who can answer this question ? ' — ■ = — — - -=» Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin. — Agents: — -It. Groombhidge, Panyer Aliev, Paternoster Row, London ; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool; Slocombe and Simms, Leeds : J. Menzies, Prince's Street, Edinburgh ; and David Robertson, Trongate, Glas- gow. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. N -UMBER 39. SATURDAY, MARCH 27, 1841. Volume I. THOMOND BRIDGE AND T There is scarcely in all Ireland a scene which has so many exciting associations connected with it as that which we have chosen as the pictorial subject for the present number of our Journal. The bridge is indeed a new one ; but it is erected on the site of that most ancient one which was the scene of so many a hard-fought battle for all that men hold dear ; and the castle — ruined and time-worn, it is true — is the same fortress which served in turn the race by whom it was erected, and, as if partaking of the change which our soil is said to make in the feelings of all those who settle on it, became the last and most impregnable stronghold of those it was designed to subdue. But some of the events connected with this scene — and these events, too, the most important — though honourable to the manly character of all concerned in them, and such as all the members of the great family of the British empire may now feel a pride in — are still associated with remembrances which to many are of a saddening cast, and which require to be soft- ened by distance or time before they can be distinctly awaken- ed without giving pain — like our country’s music, of which even some of the most exhilarating movements have strange tones of sorrow blended with them, which to many tempera- ments are too touching if strongly accented. And we do not HE CASTLE OF LIMERICK. therefore regret that in the short notice of Limerick Bridge and Castle which we have to present to our readers, neither our plan nor our space w T ill permit us to give any sketch of their history but such as may be read by all, if not with plea- sure, at least without pain. The Castle and Bridge of Limerick owe their origin to the first Anglo-Norman settlers in Ireland, and w'ere erected to secure their possessions and facilitate the extension of them. It is probable, however, if not certain, that the site of the castle had been previously occupied by a stronghold of the Ostmen or Danes who settled in Limerick in the ninth century, and with whom, if they were not its founders, its authentic history as a city at least begins ; for the earlier historical notices connected with it relate only to its church or churches. These churches, with whatever towm may have been con- nected w r ith them, were plundered by the Danes as early as the year 812 ; and there is every reason to believe that they fortified the island in the Shannon, or what is now called the English toAvn, with walls and towers very shortly afterwards, as our annalists record the predatory devastations of the Danes of Limerick in Connaught and Meath as early as the year 843, as well as at various years subsequent. They 306 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. were, however, at length conquered, but not removed, by the victorious arms of Brian Boru, and afterwards Limerick ap- pears in history only as an Irish city, though its inhabitants were chiefly of Danish descent. It was here that Turlogh O’Brien, king of Munster, received in 1064 the homage of Donlevy, king of Ulidia ; and his son and successor, Mur- togh O’Brien, having given Cashel, the ancient metropolis of Munster, to the church, made Limerick his chief residence and the capital of the province, from which time it continued to be the seat of the kings of Thomond or North Munster, who were hence called kings of Limerick until its final conquest by the English in the commencement of the thirteenth century. But though thus relieved from the terrors of foreign ag- gression, Limerick was not secured from the equally sangui- nary attacks of the Irish themselves ; and our annalists re- cord the burning of the city by Dei’mod Mac Murrogh in 1014, the very year after the death of Brian, and again in 1088 by Donnell Mac Loughlin, king of Aileach, or the Northern Hy Niall. It was besieged in 1157 by Murtogh, the son of Niall Mac Loughlin, at the head of the forces of the North and of Leinster, when the Danish inhabitants were forced to re- nounce .the authority of Turlogh O’Brien, and to banish him east of the Shannon ; and though he was soon after re- stored to a moiety of his principality, he was obliged in 1160 to give hostages to Roderic O’Conor, to escape his ven- geance. Thus weakened and harassed by the intestine divisions which so fearfully increased in Ireland after the successful and splendid usurpation of the supreme monarchy by their ancestor Brian Boru, it should not be wondered at if the kings of Limerick had made but a feeble resistance to the en- thusiastic and disciplined bravery of the Anglo-Norman adventurers, or that their city should have been easily won and as easily kept by these bold warriors ; and yet it was not till after many towns of greater importance, if not strength, had been taken by them and securely held, that Li- merick ceased to acknowledge its ancient lords as masters. Its king, Donnell O’Brien, was indeed one of the first of the Irish princes, who, forsaking the Irish monarch after the ar- rival of Strongbow, leagued himself with the English in sup- port of Mac Murrogh, whose daughter, the half sister of the Earl’s wife, he had married ; and as a reward for his defection, the king of Limerick claimed the assistance of Strongbow in attacking the king of Ossory. The result of this request is so honourable to the character of one of the Norman chiefs, and is so graphically sketched by Maurice Regan, the king of Leinster’s secretary, that we are tempted to relate it in his own words, as translated by Sir George Carew. “ The Erie was no sooner come to the city (Waterford) but a messenger from O’Brien, kyng of Limerick, repaired unto him from his master, praying hym with all his forces to march into Ossery against Donald, that common enemie. The cause of friendship between the Erie and O’Brien was, that O’Brien had married one of the daughters of Dermond, kyng of Leinster, and half sister to the Erie’s wife. Unto the message the Erie made answeare, that he would satisfie O’Brien’s request, and they met at Ydough, and being joined, their forces were two thousand strong. Donald, fearinge the approach of his enemies, sent to the Erie to desire hym that he mought have a safe guard to come unto him, and then he doubted not but to gyve hym satisfaction. The request was graunted, and Maurice de Prindergast was sent for hym ; but he, for the more securitie, obtained the words of the Erie and O’Brien, and the othes of all the chieftains of the army, that the kyng of Ossery shuld come and return in safetie ; which done, he went to Donald, and within fewe hours he brought hym to the campe in the presence of all the army. The Erie and O’Brien chardgedhim with divers treasons and practices which he had attempted against his lord the kyng of Leinster, deceased ; and O’Brien, and all the captens, disallowinge of his excuses, councelled the Erie to hang him, and O’Brien, without delay, commanded his men to liarrasse and spoile Donald’s countrie, which willingly they performed. Maurice de Prindergast misliking these proceedings, and seeinge the danger the king of Ossery was in, presently mounted on his horse, commaunded his companie to do the like, and said, ‘ My lords, what do you mean to do ?’ and turning to the captens, he tould them * that they dishonoured themselves, and that they had falsified their faitths unto hym,’ and sware by the cross of his sword that no man there that day shoulde dare lay handes on the kyng of Ossery ; whereupon the Erie having sense of his honour, calling to mynde how far it was ingaged, delivered Donald unto Maurice, commaunding him to see him safely conveyed unto his men. Upon the way in their retorn they encountered O’Brien’s men, laden with the spoiles of Ossery. Prindergast chardged them, slaying nine or ten of those free hooters ; and having brought Donald to his men, lodged with him that night in the woods, and the next morn- ing returned to the Erie.” For the part which Donnell O’Brien thus acted, he had to defend himself from the merited vengeance of the Irish mo- narch ; and though he was for a time able to ward it off by the assistance of Robert Fitzstephen, he deemed it prudent, on the death of Mac Murrogh in 1 171, to return to his allegiance to Roderic, and give him hostages for his fidelity. On the arrival of King Henry II. in Ireland, however, in 1172, he again submitted to the authority of the English monarch, to whom he came upon the banks of the river near Cashel, swore fealty, and became tributary. But these oaths were not longheld sacred by Donnell. The return of the king to England was soon followed by a general outburst of the Irish princes against the unjust encroach- ments of the adventurers, and Donnell O’Brien, once more taking possession of Limerick, led his troops, which were strengthened by the battalions of West Connaught, into the strongholds of the English in Kilkenny, who hastily retreated before them into Waterford, and left the country a prey to their devastations. To punish these daring aggressions of Donnell, Earl Strongbow, in the following year, as stated in the Annals of Inisfallen, collecting a large body of the English from the various parts of Ireland, marched into the heart of O’Brien’s territory, where he was met and encountered by him at Thurles, and defeated with a loss of four knights and seven hundred men. Strongbow, returning to Waterford, found the gates closed against him ; the people, hearing of his defeat, having seized on the garrison in his absence, and put them to the sword. After a month’s sojourn on the little is- land, as it is called, in the mouth of the river at Waterford, Strongbow returned to Dublin, and summoning a council of the chiefs, it was determined to carry on the war with the king of Limerick with the greatest vigour. The success which they experienced might, however, have been of a differ- ent kind, if they had not been joined on this occasion by the king of Ossory, who had been already so grievously treated by O’Brien, and who was naturally rejoiced at the opportunity thus afforded him of wreaking his revenge upon his old enemy. “ With the good likeinge,” says Maurice Regan, “ of all the chieftains, Reymond le Grosse, the Constable of Leinster, whoe was a man discreete and valiaunt, and by his parents of good livelyhood, was designed to be general of the army : their randevouse for the assembling of their, troops was Ossory. The kyng of Ossory joined with them, and undertook to guide the army upon O’Brien. Nevertheless, Reymond mistrusted his faith, whyche the kyng of Ossory perceaving, protested his integritie with suche fervency, as it gave full satisfaction, that he would be faithfull unto him ; which Donald performid with sinceritie, in guiding the army until it came to the cittie of Limerieke, whyche was invironed with a foule and deepe ditch with running water, not to be passed over without boats, but at one foord onely. At the first approach the soldiers were discouraged, and mutinied to return, supposing the cit- tie, by reason of the water, was impregnable. But that va- liaunt knight, Meyler Fitz Henry, having found the foord, wyth a loud voice cried, ‘ St David, companions, let us coura- geouslie pass this foord.’ He led the waye, and was followed but by four horsemen, who, when they were gotten over, were assailed by the enemie.” The account given by Cambrensis of this affair, as transla- ted by Sir R. C. Hoare, is somewhat different in its details, lie says that “ upon this occasion, one David Walsh clapped spurs to his horse, and, plunging boldly into the stream, reached the opposite shore in safety, and exclaimed loudly ‘ that he had found a ford,’ yet never a man w r ould follow him, save one Geoffrey Judas, who, on his return with David to conduct the army across the river, was carried away by the impetuosity of the current, and unfortunately drowned. Meyler, however, undismayed by this accident, and seeing the awkward manner in which his kinsman Reymond was placed, ventured into the river, and gained the opposite bank ; and whilst he was engaged in defending himself against the citi- zens of Limerick, who attacked him with stones, and threat- ened to kill him, Reymond, who had hitherto been employed in the rear of his army, appeared on the river side, and seeing THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 307 the imminent danger to which his nephew Meyler was exposed, exhorted his troops to try the passage of the Shannon ; and such was the influence of this brave leader over them, that at the risk of their lives they followed him across the river, and having put the enemy to flight, took quiet possession of their city.” Having left a strong garrison in Limerick under the com- mand of his kinsman Milo of St David’s, Reymond returned to Leinster with the remainder of his army. But in conse- quence of unfavourable representations respecting his conduct made to the king, he was on the point of returning to England, when intelligence reached Strongbow that Donnell O’Brien was again in arms, and investing Limerick with a powerful army ; and that, as the garrison had nearly consumed their whole winter stock of provisions, immediate succour was absolutely necessary. Strongbow resolved accordingly to fly to their relief without loss of time ; but the whole army refused to march to Limerick under any leader but Reymond, who was consequently persuaded to postpone his departure, and to take command of the troops. He set out, accordingly, for Munster, at the head of 80 knights, 200 cavalry, and 300 archers, to which were joined a considerable body of Irish, as they passed through Ossory and Hy Kinselagh, under the com- mand of their respective princes. Donald O’Brien was not inactive, but advanced to meet him to the pass at Cashel, which was not only strong by nature, but rendered more difficult of access by trees and hedges thrown across it. Meyler’s usual success, however, attended him. Whilst Donald was animating his troops to battle, the impatient Meyler burst forth like a whirlwind, destroyed the hedges, opened a passage by his sword, and putting the enemies to flight, again took possession of the city. Shortly afterwards, a parley was held with Reymond by the king of Limerick and Roderic O’Conor, in which the Irish princes once more swore allegiance to King Henry and his heirs, and delivered up hostages as a guarantee of their fidelity. The death of Earl Strongbow, however, which followed soon after these events, once more restored Limerick to its native prince, never again to be wrested from him but by death. In consequence of the necessary departure of Reymond, from Ireland, it was deemed expedient, as well by himself as by his friends, to relinquish the possession of a city so surrounded by enemies, and which it required so large a force to defend, and particularly as no person could be found willing to take the command of its garrison after his departure. Making a virtue of necessity, therefore, Reymond unwillingly conferred the command on Donnell himself, as a liege servant of the king, who, in accepting of it, renewed his former promises of fidelity and service by fresh oaths of allegiance. But oaths were very lightly observed by all parties in those troubled times ; and Reymond and his followers had scarcely passed the farther end of the bridge, than the citizens, at the insti- gation of Donnell, who declared that Limerick should no lon- ger be a nest for foreigners, broke it down, and set fire to the city in four different quarters. Yet "it was not resigned to Donnell without another effort. In 1179, a grant of the kingdom of Limerick, then wholly in the possession of the Irish, having been made to Herbert Fitz-Herbert, who resigned it to Philip de Braosa, or Bruce, the English, with their Irish allies, led by Miles Cogan and Robert Fitzstephen, invested the city, with a view to establish Bruce in his principality ; but they were no sooner perceived from the ramparts of the town than the garrison gave a strik- ing proof of their inveterate hostility by setting it on fire; and though Cogan and Fitzstephen still offered to lead on the attack, Bruce and his followers refused to risk their lives in a contest whose first beginnings gave so bad an omen of success. After a series of conflicts with the English in different parts of Munster, in which he was usually the victor, Donnell O’Brien died a natural doath in 1194, and with him the fine of Irish kings of Limerick may be said to have terminated. In the following year w r e find the town in the possession of the English, and though it was again taken from them in 1198, it was recovered shortly afterwards by the renowned William de Burgo, who formed a settlement, which from that period defied all the power of the Irish. This result was in a great measure owing to the natural strength of position of the city itself ; but it was not till years afterwards that its strength was rendered such as it might be supposed was impregnable, by the erection of the proud fortress, of the ruins of which our view will give a tolerable idea. This castle, and the bridge, which has been recently rebuilt, were erected by King John in 1210 ; and though the former has since that period been the scene of many a na- tional conflict, its ruins still display a proud magnificence, and are not an unworthy feature of the scenery on the banks of that mighty river which has so often witnessed its trials and contributed to its defence. P. EDITORIAL SQUABBLES. There are not many things we like better than a row, a paper war between a couple of newspaper editors ; there is something so delectable in the sincere cordiality with which they abuse each other — so amusing in the air of sur- passing wisdom and knowledge with which they contradict, and in the easy confident superiority with which they demo- lish each other’s assertions and positions. The most pleasant feature perhaps in the whole, however — and it is one that pervades all the manifestoes of their High Mightinesses — is the obvious conviction of each that he is demolishing, annihi- lating his antagonist ; while you, the cool, dispassionate, and unconcerned reader, feel perfectly satisfied (and here lies the fun of the thing) that this said antagonist, so far from being demolished or annihilated, will become only more vigorous and rampant for the castigation inflicted on him. Another amusing enough feature of editorial controversies is the infallibility of these worthy gentlemen. An editor is never wrong ; it is invariably his “ contemporary,” who has misunderstood or misrepresented him, either through igno- rance or wilfulness. He did not say that — what he did say was this ; and if his contemporary had read his article with ordinary attention, he wmuld have found it so. The editorial war being carried on in different styles accord- ing to circumstances and the tempers of the belligerents, the hostile articles assume various characters, amongst which are what may be called the Demolisher or Smasher, the Contradictor (calm and confident), the Abuser, and the Re- joinder and Settler (with cool and easy accompaniments). Of these various styles we happen to have at this moment some pretty tolerable specimens before us, two or three of which we shall select for the edification of our readers. The first is from “ The Meridian Sun,” and is of the description which we would call THE DEMOLISHER. Our contemporary “ The Northern Luminary,” as that con- centration of dullness and opacity has the effrontery to call itself, is, we see, at his old tricks again. In the present case he is amusing himself with nibbling and cavilling at our ac- count of the great public political dinner given by the inha- bitants of our good town to our independent member, Josiah Priggins of Parsley-green, Esq. Our veracious contemporary accuses us of having omitted all notice of the hisses with which, he says, some portions of Mr Priggins’s speech were received. He further charges us with passing over in silence certain “ disgraceful disturbances” by which, he asserts, the evening was marked, and concludes by stigmatizing the meeting as one of the lowest in character, and most unruly in conduct, that ever brought odium on a respectable community. Now, can our readers guess the secret of all this spleen on the part of “ The Northern Luminary,” of which, by the way, a certain prominent feature of that gentleman’s face is no bad type ? W e will tell them : he was not invited to the dinner ! And, more, let us tell him, had he presented himself, he would not have been admitted ! Here, then, is the whole secret of the affair, and having mentioned it, we have explained all, and need not say that the “ hisses” and “ disgraceful disturbances” are gratuitous inventions of the enemy — in other words, downright fabri- cations. We had the honour of being at the dinner in question, and sat the whole evening at Mr Priggins’s left hand, and, thus si- tuated, if there had been hissing, we certainly must have heard it. But there was none. Not a single hiss ; and for the truth of this assertion we unhesitatingly pledge our word of honour. So far from any part or parts of Mr Priggins’s speech being hissed, every sentiment, almost every word that gentleman utt ered, was hailed with unanimous and unbounded applause. In fact, $ r e never heard a speech that gave such general satisfaction. As to the “ disgraceful disturbances,” 308 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. these we leave to the party of which the Northern Luminary is the avowed supporter. Has he forgotten the scene that occurred at the last public dinner of his friends at the Hog and Pigs Tavern ? He may, but we have not. This statement, of course, rouses the utmost wrath of the editor of the “ Northern Luminary,” who to the Hemolisher of his contemporary replies with a red-hot ABUSER. It is (says the editor of “ The Northern Luminary”) the na- ture of the serpent to sting, of the cur to bite, and of the editor of the Meridian Sun, save the mark ! — the farthing candle — to fabricate falsehoods. This low scurrilous scribbler, this vile reptile, who leaves his slimy track on every subject over which he crawls, is again spitting his venom at us, and the friends of social order. But we will put our heel on the loath- some toad, and crush him as we would the disgusting little animal which he so much resembles. We were not invited to Mr Priggins’s dinner ! We were, thou prince of liars ! We were invited to the dinner, but we treated the invitation with the contempt it deserved. We knew that you, the editor of the Farthing Candle, w r ere to be there — (when did you refuse a dinner, pray ?) — and on this account we declined the invitation. We would not be seen sitting in the company of a man so ut- terly devoid of the feelings and principles of a gentleman, as the person alluded to is well known to be ; and this, we re- peat, was the reason why we did not honour the dinner in question with our presence. That Priggins was hissed, and that the evening was marked by a most disgraceful disturbance, w r e have most respectable and most undoubted authority for repeating, and we repeat it accordingly. The effrontery is indeed monstrous and un- blushing that would deny facts so notorious. Let the das- tardly editor of the Farthing Candle again deny these facts if he dare. Our next specimen is from “ The Patagonian,” a paper of gigantic dimensions. It is THE CONTRADICTOR (with calm and confident accompaniments). Our contemporaray “ The Watch Tower” is grossly mis- taken when he asserts that Ministers were outvoted on the question of the potato monopoly. They were not outvoted. They merely abandoned the measure, as we foresaw they would do from the first, and as we from the first advised them to do. Our contemporary is equally wrong in ascribing to a certain political party an undue influence in the affairs of this city. We know for certain that the party alluded to have no such influence. The idea is absurd. Pray what can “ The Watch T ow r er” mean by saying that the balance of power would not be in the least disturbed by Rus- sia’s taking possession of Timbuctoo. Absurd ! The ba- lance of power would be disturbed, and very seriously too, by such a proceeding. By gaining possession of Timbuctoo, Russia would gain possession of Africa ; and by gaining pos- session of Africa, Russia would gain possession of Cape Coast Castle, the coast of Guinea, and the Cape of Good Hope ; and by gaining the Cape of Good Hope, she would deprive us of the East Indies. And, pray, where would we be then ? We put the question to our contemporary with solemn earnest- ness, and with calm composure wait for his reply. Really, our friend “ The Watch Tower” is but a so-so hand at politics. He positively should be more cautious how he speaks of matters with which he is unacquainted. The con- sequence of an opposite conduct is a series of the most ridicu- lous blunders. “The Watch Tower” is not to be contradicted and brow- beat in this way with impunity. He gives in return A rejoinder (with cool and easy settler). In reply to certain captious remarks that appeared in yes- terday’s Patagonian on our leading article of the 15th instant, we beg to say, for the information of the editor of that paper, that we did not say that Ministers were outvoted on the po- tato question. What we did say was, that Ministers would have been outvoted on that question had they brought it to issue. Strange that our contemporary 1b ill not read us aright. Again, in ascribing a certain influence to a certain party, we guarded our expressions by the word “ conditionally,” which, however, our contemporary, with his usual candour, has chosen to overlook, and thus entirely altered our meaning. Our contemporary concludes his tirade by asking us what we mean by saying “ that the balance of power would not be in the least disturbed by Russia’s taking possession of Timbuctoo.” Now, what will our readers think when we tell them that we made no such assertion ? What we said was, that the balance of power would not be disturbed by Russia’s occupying Tim- buctoo, not possessing it, which difference of expression makes, we apprehend, a material difference in meaning. We sup- posed Russia occupying Timbuctoo as a friend, not possess- ing it as an enemy ; and in this view of the case we repeat that the balance of power would in no ways be affected. We grant our contemporary’s conclusions, but deny his premises. With regard to our contemporary’s sneer at our political knowledge, we would reply by calling his attention to his own blundering articles— (see his incomprehensible article on the corn-laws, his interminable article on the poor-rates, his un- intelligible article on free trade and the Kamschatkaloan, &c. &c. &c. The editor of the Patagonian may rest assured that he has much to learn in the science of politics, and much, too, that we could teach him, although it is no business of ours to enlighten his ignorance. C. SLIGHTED LOVE, FROJI THE SPANISH, BY M. “ — And this is poor Anselmo's grave ! Ah, Juan ! say of what he died — For he was young, was young and brave. Yet gentle as the cooing dove.” — “ He died, alas !” — and Juan sighed, — “ He died , he died of slighted love.” “ — Poor youth 1 — -And, Juan !— spake he aught Of what he felt, before he died ? ’ — “ — He said that all his pains were nought Save one — of which he would not speak — Alas ! we had not far to seek For that it was the one dark thought Wherewith in vain his spirit strove — “ He died, he died of slighted love.” “ —And when Death hovered nearer still, What said he of his mournful fate ?” “ — That death was not so sharp an ill — That Life, o'erdarkened by Despair, Was bitterer far than Death to bear ; That rest awaits us in the tomb, Where Anguish sleeps with Love and Hate. Thus much he spake — and some were there Who wept aloud his early doom ; But others knelt in silent prayer, — And when they said that such as he Were flowers that God took up to bloom In Heaven, he smiled so thankfully ! And raised his failing eyes above — He died, he died of slighted love.' “ — And — Shepherd 1 — when the heavenly spark Was flickering in its lamp of clay, Before the glassy eye grew dark, What said he more ? or said he aught ?” — “ — But this — ‘ The pilgrim goes his way -. — Farewell the beauty of the moon ! Farewell the glory of the noon ! The home of rest my heart hath sought So long in vain will soon be mine — Soon will that heart, all quelled and cold. Lie low aneath the trodden mould, Which brings it Peace, — a welcome boon ! Yet Love, ah, Love is still divine, And surely Goodness never dies !’— He said no more — we closed his eyes — We laid him in the grassy grove — He died, he died of slighted love.” — Dublin University Magazine. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 309 ROOSHKULUM, OR THE WISE SIMPLETON, A LEGEND OF CLARE. BY J. G. iPTEAGUE. Corney Neyean, our village schoolmaster, when any ques- tion of arithmetic may be proposed to him which he is in no humour to answer, and would rather turn off by a joke, has been frequently known to reply to it by asking another question, like this : — “ Now, boys, ye’re striving to puzzle me ; and I’ll engage none of ye can answer something that I’ll ask ye, now.” “ What is it, Corney? Let’s hear it !” “ How many grains of oatenmale are contained in one given square foot of stirabout ?” This is, in its turn, a poser ; but probably the number of schemes, tricks, and contrivances, in an Irish cranium, might be found as hard to be enumerated as the grains of meal in the aforesaid foot of stirabout ! Thus, while around the blazing turf fire, on a winter’s evening, the story, the pipe, and the joke, take their rounds by turn, you will invariably discover that that tale always gains a double share of applause which may contain a rela- tion of some clever successful scheme or trick, or the “ sayings and doings” of some remarkably clever fellow, albeit perhaps a great rogue ; in fact, such stories as these are suited to the conceptions and tastes of a shrewd and ready-witted people. But without tiring myreader with any more “ shanachus,” for so we term “ palaver” in Clare, let me endeavour to pre- sent him with one of these very stories, which, if it boasteth not of much interest, may perhaps amuse him by its originality. Honour to that man, whomsoever he may be, who first res- cued these curious legends from oblivion, and found in our Irish Penny Journal an excellent repository for their safer preservation ! The reader must not be surprised if my story contains a slight dash of the marvellous, probably bordering on the hy- perbolical ; but this, which I verily believe is but a kind of ornament, something superadded by the genius of the narra- tors, as it has descended, must be taken as it is meant, and will in most instances be found capable of translation, as it were, into language easily and naturally to be explained. A very long time ago, then, somewhere in the western part of the province of Munster, lived, in a small and wretched cabin, a poor widow, named Moireen Mera. She had three sons, two of whom were fine young men ; but the third — and of him we shall soon hear a good deal — -though strong and active, was of a lazy disposition, which resulted, as his mother at least always thought, not so much from any fault of his own, as from his natural foolishness of character ; in fact, she really considered him as of that class called in Ireland “ na- turals.” But before we say anything of the third son, let us trace the histories of his two elder brothers. Now, the first, whose name was Mihal More, or Michael Big Fellow, either that he considered the small spot of land which his mother held quite unable to support the family, or was actuated by some desire to improve his condition away from home, never let his mother rest one moment until she had consented to his starting, in order that he might, as he said, should he fall in with a good master, return, and per- haps make her comfortable for the remainder of her days. To this plan, after much hesitation, Moireen Mera at length agreed, and the day was fixed by Mihal for starting. “ And, mother,” said he, “ though you have but little left, and it is wrong to deprive you of it, if you would but bake me a fine cake of wheaten bread, and if you could but spare me one of the hens — ah ! that would be too much to ask ! — against the long road ; could you, mother ?” “ Why not, Michael ? I could never refuse you any thing ; and you will want the cake and the hen badly enough. And, Mihal, a vick asthore ! if you should ever meet one of the good, people, or any thing you may think is’nt right, pass it by, and say not a word.” It was evening wdien he began his expedition, nor did he stop on the road till daylight returned, when he found him- self in the centre of a wood, and very faint and hungry. Seeing a convenient-looking rock near a place where he thought it most probable he should find water, he seated him- self, with the intention of satisfying his hunger and thirst. He had not been many moments engaged in eating some of his bread, and had just commenced an attack on the hen, by taking off one of her wings, wdien there came up to him a poor greyhound, which looked the very picture of starvation. Greyhounds are proverbially thin, but this was thinner than the thinnest, and, it was easy to see, had doubtlessly left at home a numerous young family. Mihal More was so very intent on eating that he heeded not the imploring look of the poor greyhound, and it was not till, wonderful to say, she addressed him in intelligible Irish, that he deigned to notice her. But when the first word came from her mouth, he w r as sure she must be one of those against any communication with whom his mother had so emphati- cally warned him, and accordingly determined to apply her maxim strictly to the occurrence. “ You are a traveller, I see,” said the greyhound, “and were doubtless weary and fainting wfith hunger when you took your seat here. I am the mother of a numerous and helpless family, who are even now clamorous for subsistence; this I am unable to afford them, unless I am myself supported. You have now the means. Afford it to me, then, if only in the shape of a few of the hen’s small bones ; I will be for ever grateful, and may perhaps be the means of serving you in turn when you may most want and least expect it.” But Mihal continued sedulously picking the bones, and when he had finished, he put them all back into his wallet, still resolving to have nothing whatever to do with this fairy, represented, as he imagined, by the greyhound. “ Well !” said she, piteously, “ since you give me nothing, follow me. You are perhaps in search of service ; my mas- ter, wdio knows not my faculty of speech, lives near : he may assist you. And see,” continued she, as he followed, “ behold that well. Had you relieved me, it was in my power to have changed its contents, which are of blood, to the finest virgin honey ; but the honey is beneath the blood, neither can it now be changed ! However, try your fortune, and if you are a reasonably sensible fellow, I may yet relent, and be reconciled to you.” Mihal still answered not a word, but followed the greyhound, until she came to the gate of a comfortable farmer’s resi- dence. She entered the door, and Mihal saw her occupy her place at the side of the fire, and that she was quickly be- sieged by a number of clamorous postulants, whose wants she seemed but poorly adequate to supply. At a glance he perceived that the house contained a master and a mistress ; but an old lady in the chimney corner, hav- ing by her a pair of crutches, made him quail, by the sinister expression of her countenance. Still, nothing daunted, he asked the master of the house at once for employment. “ Plenty of employment have I, friend, and good wages,” answered lie, “ but I am a man of a thousand : and I may also say, not one man of a thousand will stop with me in this house.” “ And may I ask the reason of this, sir ?” said Mihal, taking off his hat respectfully. “ I will answer you immediately ; but first follow me into my garden. There,” said he, pointing to a heap of bones which lay bleaching on the ground, “ they are the bones of those unfortunate persons who have followed in my service ; if now, therefore, you should so ivish, you have my full per- mission to depart unhurt : if you will brave them, hear now the tei’ms on which I must be served.” “ Sir,” answered Mihal, “ you surprise me. I have tra- velled far, have no money, neither any more to eat ; say, therefore, your terms ; and if I can at all reconcile myself to them, I am prepared to stop here.” “ You must understand, then,” said the farmer. “ that I hold my lands by a very unusual tenure. This is not my fault. However, you will find me an indulgent master to you, at all events ; for, in fact, you may chance to be my master as much as I yours, or perhaps more ; for these are the terms : — “ If I, at any time, first find fault with any one thing you may say or do, you are to be solemnly bound to take this (pointing to an immense and sharp axe), and forthwith, without a word, strike me till / shall be dead : but should you, at any one time, first find fault with one of my words or actions, /must be equally bound to do the very same dreadful thing to yourself. Blame me not, therefore, should you find fault with me, for it will be my destiny, nay, my duty, to do as I have described ; and, on the contrary, if it happen other- wise, I must be ready to submit to my fate. Consider, and reply.” “ O, my master !”said Mihal More, “I have but the alter- native of starvation ; I am in a strangely wild country, without a friend. I must die, if I proceed, and nothing more 310 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. dreadful than death can happen to me here. I therefore throw myself on your compassion, and agree to your terms.” They then returned to the house, and Mihal felt somewhat refreshed, even by the smell alone of the savoury viands which the mistress was then preparing for the afternoon’s repast ; the greyhound, too, cast occasionally wistful glances towards the operations going forward. At length the dinner hour being all but arrived, the old lady in the chimney-corner then opened her lips for the first time since Mihal had come in, and expressed a wish to go out and take a walk ; “ for,” said she, “ I have not been out for some weeks, ever since our last servant left us. What is your name, my man?” So he told her. “ Come out, then,” said she, “ Mihal, and assist me about the garden, for I am com- pletely cramped.” Mihal muttered a few words about dinner, hunger, and so on, but was interrupted by the farmer, who said, “ Mihal, you must attend my mother ; she has sometimes strange fan- cies. Besides, remember our agreement. Do you find, fault with me ?” “ O, by no means, sir,” said Mihal, frightened ; “ I must do my business, I suppose.” The dinner was actually laid out on the plates to every one when Mihal and the old lady walked out. No sooner had they done so, than the greyhound, before she could be prevented, pounced on his dinner, and devoured it in a moment ! The old lady thought proper to walk for some hours in the garden ; and now was Mihal very hungry, for he had tasted nothing since he had finished the hen early that morning ; he almost began to wish that he had relieved the greyhound. When they came in at last, the supper was being prepared. Mihal was now quite certain that his wants would be attended to ; but how woefully was he doomed to be disappointed ! For, no sooner had they entered the house than the ac- cursed old lady seized a large cake of wheaten bread, which ■was baking on the embers, and, hastily spreading on it a coat of butter, directed Mihal to attend her again into the garden ! He could say nothing, for his master’s eyes were on him. He was completely bewildered. In despair he went with the old lady, and as it was a lovely moonlight night, she stopped out an unusual time, and it was very late when they came in. Mihal stretched himself, quite fainting, on the bed, but slept not a wink. How I wish, now, thought he, that I had given the greyhound not only the small bones, but even half my hen ! The next morning the family early assembled for breakfast, and again were the cakes put down to bake over the glow- ing fire. Again did the old lady seize one, and command Mihal into the garden ! He was now completely exhausted ; and, determining to expostulate with his master when he came in, went up to him, craving some food. “ No,” said the farmer ; “ we never eat except at stated times, and my mother keeps the keys.” “ Ah, sir, have pity on me !” answered Mihal; “ how can I exist, or do your business ?” “ And can you blame me ?” said the master. Mihal, now quite losing sight of the agreement, and con- fused by the question, put in so treacherous a manner, an- swered, “ that of course he could not but blame any per- son who would permit such infamous conduct.” Here was the signal. Mihal, in his enfeebled state, was no match for the sturdy farmer ; in a moment his head was rolling on the floor by a vigorous stroke of the fatal axe, while grins of satisfaction might be seen playing on the coun- tenances both of the old lady, and her greyhound ! The feelings of the poor widow may be imagined, when no tidings ever reached her of her Mihal More. But, on the expiration of a year, the second son, Pauthrick Dhuv, or Patrick Black Fellow, so called from his dark complexion, also prevailed on his mother to let him go in search of his brother, and of employment. But why should I describe again the horrid scene ? Let me satisfy you by merely saying that precisely the same oc- currences also happened to poor Pauthrick Dhuv, and that his bones were added to those of his brother, and of the other victims behind the farmer’s garden ! But when, in the course of another year, neither Mihal nor Pauthrick appeared, the widow’s grief was unbounded. How was she, then, astonished, when “ the fool,” as he was yet always called, although his real name was Rooshkulum, actually volunteered to do the same ! Nothing could stop him : go he would. So the cake was baked, the hen was killed and roasted, and Itooshkulum, “ the fool,” set out on his expedition. And there, at the rock in the wood, was that very same greyhound ; and as soon as she had looked him in the face, he said, “ Why, poor thing ! I have here what I cannot eat, and you seem badly to need it ; here are these bones and some of this cake.” It was then the greyhound addressed him. “ Come w r ith me,” said she ; “ lo ! here is the well, of which your two bro- thers could not drink : behold ! here is the honey on the top, clear and pure, but the blood is far beneath !” When “ the fool” had satisfied himself at this well, he fol- lowed the greyhound to the farmer’s house. It may be barely possible that by the road he received from her some excellent advice. The conversation that ensued when Itooshkulum arrived at the farmer’s, and offered himself for his servant, was much of the same nature as I have before detailed while relating the former part of my story. “ But,” said Itooshkulum the fool, “ 1 will not bind myself to these terms for ever ; I might get tired of you, or you of me ; so, if you please, I will agree to stop with you for certain till we both hear the cuckoo cry when we are together.” To this they agreed, and went into the house. However, just before they stepped in, the farmer asked Rooshkulum his name. “ Why,” said he, “mine is a very curious name : it is so curious a name, indeed, that you would never learn it ; and where is the occasion of breaking your jaws every minute trying to call me ‘ Pondracaleuthashochun,’ which is my real name, when you may as well call me always ‘ the Boy ?’ ” “ Well ! that will do,” answered the master. The dinner was now prepared, and laid out on the plates, and the old tricks about to be played. Rooshkulum, as with the others, could not find fault, for, fool as he was, he knew the consequences. As he went out with the old lady, she too inquired his name. ■*- “ Why, really,” said he to her, “ mine is a name that no one, I venture to sav, was ever called before. All my bro- thers and sisters died, and my father and mother thought that perhaps an unusual queer kind of name might have luck, so they called me ‘ Mehane.’ ” And, reader, if thou understandest not our vernacular, know that “ Mehane” signifies in English “ myself.” They spent some hours, as usual, in the garden, and Roosh- kulum returned tired and exhausted. But when he expected to get his supper, and when she again brought him out, and ate the fine hot buttered cake before his very eves, it was more than flesh and blood could stand. However, he pre- tended not to mind it in the least, but was very civil to the old lady, amusing her by his silly stories. “ And now, ma’am,” said he, “ let’s walk a little way down this sunny bank before we go in.” Certain it was that the sun did happen to shine on the bank at that very time, but it was to what were growing on it that he wished to direct her close attention ; for when he came to a certain place where there was a cavity filled by a rank growth of nettles, thistles, and thorns, he gave his charge such a shove as sent her sprawling and kicking in the midst of them, uttering wild shrieks, for the pain was great. But Rooshkulum had no notion of helping her out, and ran into the house, which was some distance away, desiring the farmer to run, for that his mother would walk there, and had fallen into a hole, from which he could not get her out. And then the farmer ran, and cried, “ O, mother, where are you ? what has happened ?” “ Alas, my son ! here I am down in this hole ! Help me out ! I am ruined, disfigured for life !” “ And who is it,” said the farmer, “ that has dared to serve you thus ?” “ O,” said she, “it was Mehane! Mehane a veil Me- hane /” (Myself has ruined myself!) “ Who ?” said the farmer, as he helped her out. “ O, it was Mehane ,” answered she; “ Mehane a veil Mehane /” “ Well, then,” said the farmer, “ I suppose it can’t be helped, as it was yourself that did it. So here, ‘ Boy !’ take her on your back, and carry her home ; it was but an accident !” So Rooshkulum carried her off and put her to bed, she all the time crying out, “ Ah ! but it was Myself that ruined My- self!” till her son thought her half cracked. She was quite unable to rise next morning ; so Rooshkulum “ the fool” made THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 311 an excellent and hearty breakfast, which he took care also to share with the greyhound. But then the old lady called her son to her bedside, and ex- plained how that it was “ the Boy” who had done the mis- chief, “and I command you,” said she, “ to get rid of him, and for that purpose desire him at once to go and make ‘ cuisseh na cuissheh na guirach’ (the road of the sheeps’ feet), that you have long been intending to do, and then to send him with the flock over the road to the land of the giant ; we shall then never see him more ; and it is better to lose even a flock of sheep than have him longer here, now that he has discovered our trick.” The farmer called Rooshkulum to him, and taxed him with what he had done to his mother. “ And,” said Rooshkulum, “ could you blame me ?” “ Why, no,” answered the farmer, remembering his part of the agreement, “ I don’t blame you, but you must never do it any more. And now you must take these (pointing to the sheep), and because the bog is soft on the road to the ‘land of the giant,’ you must make ‘ the road of the sheeps’ feet’ for them to go over, and come back when they are fat, and the giant will support you while you are there. Do you blame me for that ?” “ No,” said Rooshkulum, driving away the sheep. But, contrary to all their expectations, in an hour’s time in marched Rooshkulum, covered with bog dirt and blood. “ O !” said he, “ I have had hard work since, and made a good deal of the road of the sheeps’ legs ; but, indeed, there are not half enough legs after all, and you must give me more legs, if you would wish the road made firm.” “ And, you rascal, do you tell me you have cut off the legs of all my fine sheep ?” “ Every one, sir ; did you not desire me? Do you blame me ?” “ O dear no ! by no means ! Only take care, and don’t do it any more.” They went on tolerably for a few days, for they were afraid of Rooshkulum, and let him alone, till one morning the farmer told him he was going to a wedding that night, and that he might go with him. “ Well,” said Rooshkulum, “ what is a wedding ? what will they do there ?” “ Why,” answered the farmer, “ a wedding is a fine place, where there is a good supper, and two people are joined together as man and wife.” “ O, is that it ? I should like much to see what they’ll do.” “ Well, then, you must promise me to do what I’ll tell you with the horses when we are going.” “ Why, wdiat shall I do ?” “ O, only when we are going, don’t tahe your eyes from the horses till we get there ; then have your two eyes on my plate, and an eye on every other person’s plate ; and then you’ll see what they’ll do.” Rooshkulum said nothing. They went to the wedding ; but when they sat down to supper, all were surprised to find a round thing on their plates, covered with blood, and not looking very tempting. But the farmer soon guessed the sad truth, and calling Rooshkulum aside, he sternly asked him what he had done. “ Can you blame me ?” answered the provoking Roo.thku- lum ; “ did you not desire me not to take the eyes from the horses till I got here, and to put them on the plates, and two on your own plate, and that I would see what they would do then ?” “ O, don't imagine I blame you,” said the farmer ; “ but I meant your own eyes all the time ; and, mind me, don’t do it any more !” They were all by this time heartily sick of Rooshkulum, especially the old lady, who had never left her bed ; and one morning, feeling something better, she called the farmer to her bedside, and addressed him thus: — “You know, my son, that your agreement with that rascal will terminate when you both shall hear the cuckoo. Now, in my youth I could imitate the cuckoo so well that I have had them flying round me. Put me up, therefore, in the big holly bush ; take him along with you to cut a tree near ; I will then cry ‘ cuckoo !’ ‘ cuckoo !’ and the agreement will be broken !” said she, chuckling to herself. This seemed a capital idea ; so the farmer lifted his mother out of bed, and put her up into the holly bush, calling Roosh- kulum to bring the big axe, for that he intended to fell a tree. Rooshkulum did as he was desired, and commenced cutting down a certain tree, which the farmer pointed out. And not long had he been thus engaged when the old lady in the holly bush cried out “ cuckoo !” “ cuckoo !” “ Hah ! what’s that ? ’ said the farmer ; “ that sounds like the cuckoo !” “ O, that cannot be,” said Rooshkulum, “ for this is winter !” But now the cuckoo was heard, beyond a doubt. “Well,” said Rooshkulum, “before I’ve done with you, I’ll go and see this cuckoo.” “ Why, you stupid fool !” said the farmer, “ no man ever saw the cuckoo.” “ Never mind !” said R,ooshkulum, “ it can be no harm to look. Wouldn’t you think, now, that the cuckoo was speaking out of the holly bush ?” “ O, not at all ! — perhaps she is five miles away. Come awav at once and give up your place. Did not we both hear her ?” “Stop !” said Rooshkulum; “stay back! don’t make a noise! There! did not you see something moving? Ay ! that must be the cuckoo !” So saying, he hurled the axe up into the holly bush with his whole force, cutting away the branches, scattering the leaves and berries, and with one blow severing the head from the shoulders of the farmer’s mother ! “O!” said the farmer, “my poor old mother ! O! what have you done, you villain! You have murdered my mother !” “ And,” said Rooshkulum (seemingly surprised), “ I sup- pose you blame me for this, do you ?” And now was the farmer taken by surprise, and in the heat of his passion answered, “ How 7 dare you, you black- hearted villain, ask me such a question ? Of course I do ! Have you not murdered my mother ? Alas ! my poor old mo- ther.” “ O, very well !” said Rooshkulum, as the farmer conti- nued looking at his mother, and lamenting, “ perhaps you also remember our own little agreement. I have but too good reason to think that you and your accursed old mother, by your schemes, caused the death of my tw r o fine brothers. But now for the fulfilment of my share of the bargain !” In a moment the axe descended on his head ; and Rooshku- lum, the wise simpleton, having now got rid of his enemies, took possession of all the farmer’s property, returned home for his mother, and lived free from care or further sorrow for the remainder of his happy life ; but he never forgot the ser- vices of the greyhound, and never allowed her to want. And here let us conclude our legend, by observing, by way of moral, “ Be ever charitable to the distressed, whether of the brute or human kind, for you know not but that they also may belong to the ranks of ‘ the good people !’ ” AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION FOR THE WORKING CLASSES. That agricultural improvement is extending with very rapid strides in many parts of Ireland, is evident to all who have had an opportunity of observing the country ; the best proof of which is, perhaps, that our agricultural exports have been greatly increased for some years past, whilst during the same period the population has been augmented to a degree unpre- cedented in any of the old countries of the world. That our exporting food to such an extent is a proof of the wealth or happiness of those who produce it, may wrnll admit of doubt, otherwise the miserable serfs of Russia, Poland, and other corn-growing countries, would be entitled to rank higher in the scale of happiness than the English farmers, who are not ableto raise sufficientfoodfortheir own country ! Butnotwith- standing the pleasing proofs of improvements in farming which meet the eye of the tourist in various parts of. the coun- try, and particularly in the north, he will in too many places find it difficult to imagine anything worse either in the farms, the habitations, the cattle, or the implements, even should he extend the retrospect to a period ever so remote. Agricultural schools, with even a single acre of land attached, and worked by the elder boys on a system of rotation adapted to the ground and to the district in which it happened to be situated, would soon effect a wonderful reformation in the farming of the country. That such would be the happy result, is self-evident ; and we are strengthened in our conviction by having witnessed in very many instances the good effect of the agricultural education imparted at Templemoyle, in the county of Londonderry. Entertaining these views, we need hardly say how much we were gratified by a visit to one of these schools a short time since, situated in a remote and se- 312 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. eluded part of the county of Donegal. Here, on the estate of "Sir Charles Styles, Bart., and under the direction of his effi- cient agent, whose anxiety and exertions towards bettering the condition of the poor of this county are well known and appreciated, we found a small piece of ground being laid out into five divisions, as an example of the five-course rotation suited to that part of the country ; in the school-room were suspended tables, exhibiting at one view, plain, practical in- structions as to the season for performing the different work on the farm ; the quantity and best kind of seeds to be sown ; and, in one word, the modus operandi, according to the most improved, practice ; and the proficiency of many of the boys, not only in agriculture, but in levelling and surveying, was most creditable. We cannot, perhaps, better second the exertions of Captain Kennedy and other philanthropists en- gaged in the regeneration of their country, than by bringing under the notice of the public an instance of the successful working of the system we have here advocated. The undrained fenceless farm, with its many-angled small fields and crooked ridges, exhausted to the last degree by successive corn crops, is still but too general ; and the habi- tations, notwithstanding the marked improvement in their appearance in many places, in many others accord but too faithfully with the melancholy picture that has been drawn of them by so many observers — “ walls decayed, roofs bent and sunken, thatch tattered, no windows, no chimneys ; the turf- smoke rolling slowly from the doors, or seeking its way through the chinks and crevices innumerable with which these hovels abound. The appearance of the inmates corresponds with that of the miserable tenements — ill clad, squalid, hag- gard, listless and idle, in every countenance discontent strongly marked, and in some an expression akin to despair.” Such is the description given by Mr Weld in his Statistical Survey of Ros- common, takenin 1831. One epithet in that accurate descrip- tion requires to be qualified to those who have not seen the interesting and highly valuable work from which it is taken. The poor of Elphin were “ idle,” not of choice, but because the employment which offered itself in the wastes and sites for manufactories with which he describes the country to abound, were not rendered available ; and throughout the country, wherever idleness and its concomitant misery are ob- servable, there also it will be found that these evils are trace- able to a want of sympathy and exertion on the part of the owners of the soil ; for abundantly remunerating employ- ment abounds in every part of the country. We cannot re- sist, even at the risk of extending this paper beyond the limits which we had at first proposed to ourselves, the temptation to bring forward an instance of that industry which we have never seen wanting when the inducement or even the possibi- lity of exercising it with effect was present, afforded too by these same “ idle” people of Elphin, as recorded in the same work. “ Girls,” observes Mr Weld, “ amongst whom some were really pretty and delicate, and of an age and frame of body seemingly but ill-suited to the task, sought a precarious and hard-earned livelihood in hawking turf about the town in cleaves, which they had carried on their backs from the bog, distant about two miles. The ordinary weight of one of these cleaves was three stones, or forty-two pounds, sometimes more. The price ashed for two cleaves was only 3^d, but as demands of this kind ordinarily exceed the selling” price, l^d might probably be set down as the utmost price of a single cleave ; from this was to be deducted the price of the turf at the bog, the small surplus being all the gains for bearing this heavy burden, mostly up hill, and afterwards hawking it from house to house.” The cattle in the demesnes of the gentry and on dairy farms have in like manner been greatly improved within a few years, but amongst the small farmers the de- scription of stock is in many places bad in the extreme ; im- provement in this branch of economy cannot take place, however, except as the consequence of an improved system of farming. As a powerful means of extending a knowledge of improved husbandry, if properly exercised, we have regarded since their establishment the National Schools of Ireland. A cotemporary says, “ The agriculture of Bavaria has ex- perienced a great improvement in consequence of the sys- tem of national education which has been adopted, and by the teaching of agriculture and gardening both by books and examples in the schools. One of the first consequences was an improved rotation of crops. Almost the whole of the details of agricultural improvement in Bavaria have originated with M. Hazzi, an agricultural writer, and editor of an agricultural journal in Munich. The activity and patriotic benevolence of this gentleman are beyond all praise. It was chiefly through his exertions that a piece of ground was added to every parochial school in Bavaria, to be cultivated by the scholars in their leisure hours, under the direction of the master. In these schools, Hazzi’s Catechism of Gardening, of Agriculture, of Domestic Economy and Cookery, of Forest Culture, of Orchard Culture, and others, all small duodecimo volumes with woodcuts, sold at about fourpence each, are taught to all the boys ; and those of Gardening, the Management of Silk Worms, and Domestic Economy, to the girls. Since these schools have come into action, an entirely new generation of cultivators has arisen ; and the consequence is, that agricul- ture in Bavaria, and especially what may be called cottage agriculture and economy, is, as far as we are able to judge, carried to a higher degree of perfection than it is any where else in the central states of Germany ; at all events, we can affirm that we never saw finer crops of drilled Swedish and common turnips, or finer surfaces of young clover, than we observed along the road sides in October and November 1828. The fences also were generally in perfect order, and a degree of neatness appeared about the cottages which is far from common either in France or Germany. These remarks are not the results of observations made, as is frequently the case, from the cabriolet of a public diligence, but from deliberate inspection. The result of the whole of the information procured, and of the observations made, is, that we think the inhabitants of Ba- varia promise soon to be, if they are not already, among the happiest people in Germany.” M. Circassian Women. — We observed two women looking out of a balcony, and earnestly beckoning to us. We entered the house, and saw two Russian grenadiers, who by a mistake of their corporal had taken their quarters here, and whose presence was the cause of the inquietude manifested by the two ladies, ivho, with an old man, were the only inhabitants of the house. Whilst the soldiers were explaining these things to us, they appeared at the top of the stairs, and again renewed their invitation by violent gesticulations. On a nearer approach, we guessed by their age that they were mother and daughter. The former, who still preserved much of the freshness and beauty of youth, wore very wide trou- sers, a short tunic, and a veil, which fell in graceful folds on her back ; while round her neck she had some valuable jew'els, though badly mounted. With respect to the daughter, wffio was scarcely fifteen years of age, she was so extraordinarily beautiful, that both my companion and myself remained awhile motionless, and struck with admiration. Never in my life have I seen a more perfect form. Her dress consisted of a short white tunic, almost transparent, fastened only at the throat by a clasp. A veil, negligently thrown over one shoulder, permitted part of her beautiful ebony tresses to be seen. Her trousers were of an extremely fine tissue, and her socks of the most delicate workmanship. The old man re- ceived us in a room adjoining the staircase ; he was seated on the carpet, smoking a small pipe, according to the custom of the inhabitants of the Caucasus, wdio cultivate tobacco. He made repeated signs to us to sit down, that is to say, in the Asiatic manner — a posture extremely inconvenient for those who like ourselves wore long and tight trousers, whilst the two beautiful women on their side earnestly seconded his request. We complied with it, though it was the first time that either of us made the essay. The ladies, having left the room for a moment, returned with a salver of dried fruits, and a beverage made with sugar and milk ; but I was so much engaged in admiring their personal attractions, that I paid but little attention to their presents. It appeared to me an inconceivable caprice of nature to have produced such prodigies of perfection amidst such a rude and barbarous people, who value their women less than their stirrups. My companion, who like myself was obliged to accept of their refreshments, remarked to me, whilst the old man was con- versing with them, what celebrity a woman so transcendantly beautiful as the daughter was, would acquire in any of the capitals of Europe, had she but received the benefits of a suitable education New Monthly Magazine. Printed and published very Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. G, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin.— Agents : — It. Groombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster How, London ; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester ; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool; Slocombe & Simms, Leeds; John Menzies, Prince’s Street, Edinburgh i & David Robertson, Trongate, Glasgow, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 40. SATFJRDAY, APRIL 3, 1841. Volume I. Wm iffll |[ ffii f i 1 j 1 Sgfei wm m.r Jr AV '' N jf " Nv IU v- 1 *. . THE IRISH MIDWIFE, Part III.—DANDY KEHO’S CHRISTENING. BY WILLIAM CARLETON. The following Sunday morning, Rose paid an early visit to her patient, for, as it was the day of young Dandy’s christen- ing, her presence was considered indispensable. There is, besides, something in the appearance and bearing of a midwife upon those occasions which diffuses a spirit of buoyancy and light-heartedness not only through the immediate family, but also through all who may happen to participate in the cere- mony, or partake of the good cheer. In many instances it is known that the very presence of a medical attendant com- municates such a cheerful confidence to his patient, as, indepen- dently of any prescription, is felt to be a manifest relief. So is it with the midwife ; with this difference, that she exercises a greater and more comical latitude of consolation than the doctor, although it must be admitted that the one generally falls woefully short of that conventional dress with which we cover nudity of expression. No doubt many of her very choicest stock jokes, to carry on the metaphor, are a little too fashionably dressed to pass current out of the sphere in which they are used ; but be this as it may, they are so traditional in character, and so humorous in conception, that we never knew the veriest prude to feel offended, or the morosest tem- perament to maintain its sourness, at their recital. Not that she is at all gross or unwomanly in any thing she may say, but there is generally in her apothegms a passing touch of fancy — a quick but terse vivacity of insinuation, at once so full of fun and sprightliness, and that truth which all know but few like to acknowledge, that we defy any one not irre- trievably gone in some incurable melancholy to resist her humour. The moment she was seen approaching the house, every one in it felt an immediate elevation of spirits, with the exception of Mrs Keho herself, who knew that wherever Rose had the arrangement of the bill of fare, there was sure 314 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. to be what the Irish call “ full an’ plinty” — “ lashins an’ lavins” — a fact which made her groan in spirit at the bare contemplation of such wrnste and extravagance. She was indeed a woman of a very un-Irish heart — so sharp in her tem- per and so penurious in soul, that one would imagine her veins were filled with vinegar instead of blood. “ Banaght Dheah in shoh” (the blessing of God be here). Rose exclaimed on entering. “ JBanaght Dheah agus Murra ghuid ” (the blessing of God and the Virgin on you), replied Corny, “an’ you’re welcome, Rose ahagur.” “ I know that, Corny. Well, how are we? — how is my son?” “ Begarra, thrivin’ like a pair o’ throopers.” “ Thank God for it ! Hav’nt we a good right to be grate- ful to him any way ? An’ is my little man to be christened to-day ?” “ Indeed he is — the gossips will be here presently, an’ so will her mother. But, Rose, dear, will you take the ordherin’ of the aitin’ an’ drinkin’ part of it ? — you’re betther up to these things than we are, an’ so you ought, of coorse. Let there be no want of any thing ; an’ if there’s an overplush, sorra may care ; there’ll be poor mouths enough about the door for whatever’s left. So, you see, keep never mindin’ any hint she may give you — you know she’s a little o’ the closest ; but no matther. Let there, as I said, be enough an’ to spare.” “ Throth, there spoke your father’s son, Corny : all the ould dacency’s not dead yet, anyhow. Well, I’ll do my best. But she’s not fit to be up, you know, an’ of coorse can’t dis- turb us.” The expression of her eye could not be misunder- stood as she uttered this. “ I see,” said Corny — “ devil a betther, if you manage that, all’s right.” “ An’ now I must go in, till I see how she an’ my son’s gettin’ an : that’s always my first start ; bekase you know, Corny, honey, that their health goes afore every thing.” Having thus undertaken the task required of her, she passed into the bedroom of Mrs Keho, whom she found determined to be up, in order, as she said, to be at the head of her own table. “ Well, alanna, if you must, you must ; but in the name of goodness I wash my hands out of the business teetotally. Dshk, dshk, dshk ! Oh, wurra ! to think of a woman in your state risin’ to sit at her own table ! That I may never, if I’ll see it, or be about the place at all. If you take your life by your own wilfulness, why, God forgive you ; but it must’nt be while I’m here. But since you’re bent on it, why, give me the child, an’ afore I go, any how, I may as well dress it, poor thing ! The heavens pity it — my iittle man — eh ? — where was it ? — cheep — that’s it, a ducky ; stretch away. Aye stretchin’ an’ thrivin’ an, my son ! Oh, thin, wurra! Mrs Keho, but it’s you that ought to ax God’s pardon for goin’ to do what might lave that darlin’ o’ the world an orphan, may be. Arrah be the vestments, if I can have patience wid you. May God pity you, my child. If anything happened your mo- ther, what ’ud become of you, and what ’ud become of your poor father this day ? Dshk, dshk, dshk 1” These latter sounds, exclamations of surprise and regret, were produced by striking the tongue against that part of the inward gum which covers the roots of the teeth. “ Indeed, Rose,” replied her patient, inher sharp, shrill, quick voice, “ I’m able enough to get up ; if I don’t, we’ll be harrished. Corny’s a fool, an’ it’ll be only rap an’ rive wid every one in the place.” “ Wait, ma’am, if you plaise. Where’s his little barrow ? Ay, I have it. Wait, ma’am, if you plaise, till I get the child dressed, an’ I’ll soon take myself out o’ this. Heaven pre- sarve us ! I have seen the like o’ this afore — ay have I — where it was as clear as crystal that there was something over them— ay, over them that took their own way as you’re doin’.” “ But if I don’t get up”, “ Oh, by all manes, ma’am — by all manes. I suppose you have a laise o’ your life, that’s all. It’s what I wish I could get.” “ An’ must I stay here in bed all day, an’ me able to rise, an’ sich wilful waste as will go an too ?” “ Remember you’re warned. This is your first baby, God bless it, an’ spare you both. But, Mrs Keho, does it stand to raison that you’re as good a judge of these things as a woman like me, that it’s my business ? I ax you that, ma’am.” This poser in fact settled the question, not only by the reasonable force of the conclusion to be derived from it, but by the cool authoritative manner in which it was put. “ Well,” said the other, “in that case, I suppose, I must give in. You ought to know best.” “ Thank you kindly, ma’am ; have you found it out at last ? No, but you ought to put your two hands undher my feet for previntin’ you from doin’ what you intinded. That I may never sup sorrow, but it was as much as your life was worth. Compose yourself ; I’ll see that there’s no waste, and that’s enough. Here, hould my son — why, thin, isn’t he the beauty o’ the world, now that he has got his little dress upon him ?- — till I pin up this apron across the windy ; the light’s too strong for you. There now: the light’s apt to give one a headache when it comes in full bint upon the eyes that way. Come, alanna, come an now, till I show you to your father an’ them all. Wurra, thin, Mrs Keho, darlin’,” (this was said in a low confidential whisper, and in a playful wheedling tone which baffles all description), “ wurra, thin, Mrs Keho, dar- lin’, but it’s he that’s the proud man, the proud Corny, this day. Rise your head a little — aisy — there now, that’ll do — one kiss to my son, now, before he laives his mammy, he says, for a weeny while, till he pays his little respects to his daddy an’ to all his friends, he says, an’ thin he’ll come back to mammy agin— to his own little bottle, he says.” Young Corny soon went the rounds of the whole family, from his father down to the little herd-boy who followed and took care of the cattle. Many were the jokes which passed between the youngsters on this occasion — jokes which have been registered by such personages as Rose, almost in every family in the kingdom, for centuries, and with which most of the Irish people are too intimately and thoroughly acquainted to render it necessary for us to repeat them here. Rose now addressed herself to the task of preparing break- fast, which, in honour of the happy event, was nothing less than “ tay, white bread, and Boxty,” with a glass of poteen to sharpen the appetite.” As Boxty, however, is a descrip- tion of bread not generally known to our readers, we shall give them a sketch of the manner in which this Irish luxury is made. A basket of the best potatoes is got, which are washed and peeled raw ; then is procured a tin grater, on which they are grated ; the water is then shired off them, and the macerated mass is put into a clean sheet, or table-cloth, or bolster-cover. This is caught at each end by two strong men, who twist it in opposite directions until the contortions drive up the substance into the middle of the sheet, &c. ; this of course expels the water also ; but lest the twisting should be insufficient for that purpose, it is placed, like a cheese-cake, under a heavy weight, until it is properly dried. They then knead it into cakes, and bake it on a pan or griddle ; and -when eaten with butter, we can assure our readers that it is quite delicious. The hour was now about nine o’clock, and the company asked to the christening began to assemble. The gossips or sponsors were four in number ; two of them wealthy friends of the family that had never been married, and the two others a simple country pair, who were anxious to follow in the ma- trimonial steps of Corny and his wife. The rest were, as usual, neighbours, relatives, and cleaveens, to the amount of sixteen or eighteen persons, men, women, and children, all dressed in their best apparel, and disposed to mirth and friend- ship. Along with the rest was Bob M‘Cann, the fool, who by the way could smell out a good dinner with as keen a nostril as the wisest man in the parish could boast of, and who on such occasions carried turf and water in quantities that indicated the supernatural strength of a Scotch brow- nie rather than that of a human being. Bob’s qualities, how- ever, were well proportioned to each other, for, truth to say, his appetite was equal to his strength, and his cunning to either. Corny and Mrs Moan were in great spirits, and indeed we might predicate as much of all who were present. Not a soul entered the house who was not brought up by Corny to an out-shot room, as a private mark of his friendship, and treated to an underhand glass of as good poteen “ as ever went down the red lane,” to use a phrase common among the people. Nothing upon an occasion naturally pleasant gives conversation a more cheerful impulse than this ; and the consequence was, that in a short time the scene was animated and mirthful to an unusual degree. Breakfast at length commenced in due form. Two bottles of whisky were placed upon the table, and the first thing done was to administer a glass to each guest. “Come, neighbours,” said Corny, “we must dhrink th© THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 315 good woman’s health before we ate, especially as it’s the first time, any how.” “ To be sure they will, achora, an’ why not ? An’ if it’s the first time, Corny, it won’t be the Musha ! you’re wel- come, Mrs ! an’ jist in time too” — this she said, address- ing his mother-in-law, who then entered. “ Look at this swaddy, Mrs ; my soul to happiness, but he’s fit to be the son of a lord. Eh, a pet ? Where w-as my darlin’ ? Corny, let me dip my finger in the whisky till I rub his gums wid it. That’s my bully ! Oh, the heavens love it, see how it puts the little mouth about lookin’ for it agin. Throth you’ll have the spunk in you yet, acushla, an’ it’s a credit to the Kehos you’ll be, if you’re spared, as you will, plaise the heavens !” , “ Well, Corny,” said one of the gossips, “ here’s a speedy uprise an’ a sudden recovery to the good woman, an’ the lit- tle sthranger’s health, an’ God bless the baker that gives thirteen to the dozen, any how !” “ Ay, ay, Paddy Rafferty, you’ll have your joke any way ; an’, throth, you’re welcome to it, Paddy ; if you were’nt, it is’nt standin’ for young Corny you’d be to-day.” “ Thrue enough,” said Rose, “ an’, by the dickens, Paddy is’nt the boy to be long under an obligation to any one. Eh, Paddy, did I help you there, avick ? Aisy, childre ; you’ll smother my son if you crush about him that way.” This was addressed to some of the youngsters, who were pressing round to look at and touch the infant. “ It won’t be my fault if I do, Rose,” said Paddy, slyly eyeing Peggy Betagh, then betrothed to him, who sat oppo- site, her dark eyes flashing with repressed humour and affec- tion. Deafness, however, is sometimes a very convenient malady to young ladies, for Peggy immediately commenced a series of playful attentions to the unconscious infant, which were just sufficient to excuse her from noticing this allusion to their marriage. Rose looked at her, then nodded comi- cally to Paddy, shutting both her eyes by way of a wink, adding aloud, “ Throth you’ll be the happy boy, Paddy ; an’ woe betide you if you are’nt the sweetest end of a honeycomb to her. Take care an’ don’t bring me upon you. Well, Peg- gy, never mind, alanna ; who has a betther right to his joke than the dacent boy that’s — aisy, childre : saints above ! but ye’ll smother the child, so you will Where did I get him, Dinney ? sure I brought him as a present to Mrs Keho ; I never come but I bring a purty little babby along wid me — than the dacent boy, dear, that’s soon to be your lovin’ hus- band? Arrah, take your glass, acushla ; the sorraharm it’ll do ji you. “ Bedad, I’m afeard, Mrs Moan. What if it ’ud get into my head, an’ me’s to stand for my little godson? No, bad scran to me if I could — faix, a glass ’ud be too many forme.” “ It’s not more than half filled, dear ; but there’s sense in what the girl says, Dandy, so don’t press it an her.” In the brief space allotted to us we could not possibly give any thing like a full and correct picture of the happiness and hilarity which prevailed at the breakfast in question. When it was over, they all prepared to go to the parish chapel, which was distant at least a couple of miles, the midwife stay- ing at home to see that all the necessary preparations were made for dinner. As they were departing, Rose took the Dandy aside, and addressed him thus : “ Now, Dandy, when you see the priest, tell him that it is your wish, above all things, ‘that he should christen it against the fairies.’ If you say that, it’s enough. And, Peggy, achora, come here. You’re not carryin’ that child right, alanna ; but you’ll know betther yet, plaise goodness. No, avillish, don’t keep its little head so closely covered wid your cloak ; the day’s a burnin’ day, glory be to God, an’ the Lord guard my child ; sure the least thing in the world, where there’s too much hait, ’ud smother my darlin’. Keep its head out farther, and just shade its little face that way from the sun. Och, will I ever forget the Sunday whin poor Mally M'Guigan want to take Pat Feasthalagh’s child from under her cloak to be christened, the poor infant was a corpse ; an’ only that the Lord put it into my head to have it privately christened, the father an’ mother’s hearts would break. Glory be to God ! Mrs Dug- gan, if the child gets cross, dear, or misses any thing, act the mother by him, the little man. Eh, alanna ! where was it ? Where was my duck o’ diamonds — my little Con Roe ? My own sweety little ace o’ hearts — eh, alanna ! Well, God keep it, till I see it again, the jewel !” Well, the child was baptized by the name of his father, and the persons assembled, after their return from chapel, lounged about Corny’s house, or took little strolls in the neighbourhood, until the hour of dinner. This of course was much more convivial, and ten times more vociferous, than the breakfast, cheerful as that meal was. At dinner they had a dish, -which we believe is, like the Boxty, peculiarly Irish in its composition : we mean what is called sthilk. This consists of potatoes and beans, pounded up together in such a manner that the beans are not broken, and on this account the pota- toes are well champed before the beans are put into them. This is dished in a large bow r l, and a hole made in the middle of it, into which a miscaun or roll of butter is thrust, and then covered up until it is melted. After this, every one takes a spoon and digs away w r ith his utmost vigour, dipping every morsel into the well of butter in the middle, before he puts it into his mouth. Indeed, from the strong competition which goes forward, and the rapid motion of each right hand, no spectator could be mistaken in ascribing the motive of their proceedings to the principle of the old proverb, devil take the hindmost. Sthilk differs from another dish made of po- tatoes in much the same way, called colcannon. If there were beans, for instance, in colcannon, it would be sthilk. This practice of many persons eating out of the same dish, though Irish, and not cleanly, is of very old antiquity. Christ himself mentions it at the Last Supper. Let us hope, however, that, like the old custom which once prevailed in Ireland, of several persons drinking at meals out of the same mether, the usage we speak of will soon be replaced by one of more cleanliness and individual comfort. After dinner the whisky began to go round, for in these days punch was a luxury almost unknown to the class we are writing of. In fact, nobody there knew how to make it but the midwife, w 7 ho wisely kept the secret to herself, aware that if the whisky were presented to them in such a palatable shape, they would not know when to stop, and she herself might fall short of the snug bottle that is usually kept as a treat for those visits which she continues to pay during the convalescence of her patients. “ Come, Rose,” said Corny, who -was beginning to soften fast, “ it’s your turn now to thry a glass of what never seen wather.” “ I’ll take the glass, Dandy — ’deed will I_but the thruth is, I never dhrink it hard. No, but I’ll jist take a drop o’ hot wather an’ a grain o’ sugar, an’ scald it ; that an’ as much carraway seeds as will lie upon a sixpence does me good ; for, God help me, the stomach isn’t at all sthrong wid me, in regard of bein’ up so much at night, an’ deprived of my nathural rest.” “ Rose,” said one of them, “ is it thrue that you war called out one night, an’ brought blindf'oulded to some grand lady belongin’ to the quality?” “ Wait, avick, till I make a drop o’ wan-grace * for the misthress, poor thing ; an’, Corny, I’ll jist throuble you for about a thimbleful o’ spirits to take the smell o’ the wather off it. The poor creature, she’s a little weak still, an’ indeed it’s wonderful how she stood it out ; but, my dear, God’s good to his own, an’ fits the back to the burden, praise be to his name ! She then proceeded to scald the drop of spirits for herself, or, in other words, to mix a good tumbler of ladies’ punch, making it, as the phrase goes, hot, strong, and sweet — not for- getting the carraways, to give it a flavour. This being accom- plished, she' made the wan-grace for Mrs Keho, still throw- ing in a word now and then to sustain her part in the conver- sation, which was no*# -rising fast into mirth, laughter, and clamour. “ Well, but, Rose, about the lady of quality, will you tell us that ?” “ Oh, many a thing happened me as -well worth fellin’, if you go to that ; but I’ll tell it to you, childre, for sure the curiosity’s nathural to yez. Why, I w-as one night at home an’ asleep, an’ I hears a horse’s foot gallopin’ for the bare life up to the door. I immediately put my head out, an’ the horseman says, ‘ Are you Mrs Moan ?’ ‘ That's the name that’s an me, your honour,’ says myself. ‘ Dress yourself thin,’ says he, ‘for you’re sadly wanted ; dress yourself, and mount behind me, for there’s not a mo- ment to be lost !’ At the same time I forgot to say that his hat was tied about his face in sich a way that I couldn’t catch a glimpse of it. Well, my dear, we didn’t let the grass grow undher our feet for about a mile or so. ‘ Now 7 ,’ says he, ‘ you must allow yourself to be blindfoulded, an’ it’s useless to op- '■* A wan-grace is a kind of small gruel or meal tea sweetened with sugar. 316 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. pose it, for it must be done. There’s the character, may be the life, of a great lady at stake; so be quiet till I cover your eyes, or,’ says he, lettin’ out a great oath, ‘ it’ll be worse for you. I’m a desperate man an,’ sure enough, I could feel the heart of him heatin' undher his ribs, as if it would burst in pieces. Well, my dears, what could I do in the hands of a man that was strong and desperate. * So,’ says I, ‘ cover my eyes in welcome ; only, for the lady’s sake, malke no delay.’ Wid that he dashed his spurs into the poor horse, an’ he foamin’ an’ smokin’ like a lime-kiln already. Any way, in about half an hour I found myself in a grand bedroom ; an’ jist as I was put into the door, he whishpers me to bring the child to him in the next room, as soon as it would be born. Well, sure I did so, afther lavin’ the mother in a fair way. But what ’ud you have of it ? — the first thing I see, lyin’ an the table, was a purse of money an’ a case o’ pistols. Whin I looked at him, I thought the devil, Lord guard us ! was in his face, he looked so black and terrible about the brows. ‘ Now, my good woman,’ says he, ‘ so far you’ve acted well, but there’s more to be done yet. Take your choice of these two,’ says he, ‘ this purse, or the contents o’ one o’ these pis- tols, as your reward. You mustmurdher the child upon the spot.’ In the name of God an’ his Mother, be you man or devil, I defy you,’ says I ; ‘ no innocent blood ’ll ever be shed b y these hands.’ ‘ I’ll give you ten minutes,’ says he, ‘ to put an end to that brat there ;’ an’ wid that he cocked one o’ the pistols. My dears, I had nothin’ for it but to say in to myself a gather an’ ave as fast as I could, for I thought it was all over wid me. However, glory be to God ! the prayers gave me great stringth, an’ I spoke stoutly. ‘ Whin the king of Jerusalem,’ says I — ‘ an’ he was a greater man than ever you’ll be — whin the king of Jerusalem ordhered the midwives of Aigyp to put Moses to death, they wouldn’t do it, and God preserved them in spite of him, king though he was,’ says I ; ‘ an’ from that day to this it was never known that a midwife took away the life of the babe she aided into the world— -No, an’ I’m not goin’ to be the first that’ll do it.’ ‘ The time is out,’ says he, puttin’ the pistol to my ear, ‘ but I’ll give you one minute more.’ ‘ Let me go to my knees first,’ says I ; ‘ an’ now may God have mercy on my sowl, for, bad as I am, I’m willin’ to die, sooner than commit murdher an the innocent.’ He gave a start as I spoke, an’ threw the pistol down. ‘ Ay,’ said he, ‘ an the innocent — an the innocent — that is thrue ! But you are an extraordinary woman : you have saved that child’s life, and previnted me from committing two great crimes, for it was my intintion to murder you afther you had murdered it.’ I thin, by his ordhers, brought the poor child to its mother, and whin I came back to the room, ‘ Take that purse,’ says he, ‘ an’ keep it as a reward for your honesty.’ ‘ Wid the help o’ God,’ says I, ‘ a penny of it will never come into my company, so it’s no use to ax me.’ ‘ Well,’ says he, ‘ afore you lave this, you must swear not to mintion to a livin’ sowl what has happened this night, for a year and a day.’ It didn’t signify to me whether I mintioned it or not ; so being jack -indifferent about it, I tuck the oath, and kept it. He thin bound my eyes agin, hoisted me up behind him, an’ in a short time left me at home. Indeed, I wasn’t the betther o’ the start it tuck out o’ me for as good as six weeks afther !” The company now began to grow musical ; several songs were sung ; and when the evening got farther advanced, a neighbouring fiddler was sent for, and the little party had a dance in the barn, to which they adjourned lest the noise might disturb Mrs Keho, had they held ‘it in the dwelling- house. Before this occurred, however, the “midwife’s glass” went the round of the gossips, each of whom drank her health, and dropped some silver, at the same time, into the bottom of it. It was then returned to her, and with a smil- ing face she gave the following toast : — “ Health to the parent stock ! So long as it thrives, there will always be branches ! Corny Keho, long life an’ good health to you an’ yours ! May your son live to see himself as happy as his father ! Youngsters, here’s that you may follow a good exam- ple ! The company’s health in general I wish ; an’, Paddy Rafferty, that you may never have a blind child but you’il have a lame one to lead it! — ha ! ha ! ha ! What’s the world widout a joke? I must see the good woman an’ my little son afore I go ; but as I won’t follow yez to the barn, I’ll bid vez good night, neighbours, an’ the blessin’ of Rose Moan be among yez !” And so also do we take leave of our old friend Rose Moan, the Irish Midwife, who we understand took her last leave of the world only about a twelvemonth ago. THE BAROMETZ, OR TARTARIAN LAMB. Before steam and all the other facilities for travel had made us so well acquainted with the productions of remote parts of the earth as we are at present, every traveller on his return astonished his auditors or the readers of his works with ac- counts of monsters which existed only as the creations of his ingenuity, and to give importance to his discoveries. One out of many which could be produced, and whioh, as they may afford innocent amusement, we purpose from time to time to bring under the notice of the readers of the Penny Journal, we lately met with in an account of Struy’s Travels through Rus- sia, Tartary, &c, in the seventeenth century. The object of won- der was in this case the Scythian or Tartarian lamb, a creature which, it was stated, sprang from the ground like a plant, and, restrained to the spot on which it was produced, devoured every vegetable production within its reach, and was itself in turn eaten by the wolves of the country. This singular produc- tion has since been found to be nothing more than a plant of the fern tribe, the Aspedium barometz, found occasionally in arid plains, where scarcely any other vegetable production can exist ; it rises like many others of the tree ferns with a rugged or shaggy stem ; and the plant having decayed or been uprooted by any accident, it is not impossible that by means of a storm or otherwise it might be found supported on its feet, namely, the stumps of the leaves ; but that it pastured on other plants, or was mistaken by the wolves for a lamb, al- though speculations which the wonder-seeking traveller might be tempted to indulge in, it need hardly be said are ornamen- tal additions introduced to suit the taste of the narrator, and to pander to that love of the marvellous which prevailed in the age in which he lived. The following is his account of this wonderful plant-animal : — “ On the western side of the Volga there is an elevated salt plain of great extent, but wholy uncultivated and uninhabited. On this plain (which furnishes all the neighbouring countries with salt) grows the boranez, or bornitch. This wonderful plant has the shape and appearance of a lamb, with feet, head, and tail distinctly formed. Boranez, in the language of Mus- covy, signifies a little lamb. Its skin is covered with very white down, as soft as silk. The Tartars and Muscovites esteem it highly, and preserve it with great care in their houses, where I have seen many such lambs. The sailor who gave me one of those precious plants found it in a wood, and had its skin made into an under-waistcoat. I learned at Astrican from those who were best acquainted with the sub- ject, that the lamb grows upon a stalk about three feet -high, that the part by which it is sustained is a kind of navel, and that it turns itself round, and bends down to reach the herbage which serves it for food. They also said that it dries up and pines away when the grass fails. To this I objected, that the languor and occasional withering might be natural to it, as plants are accustomed to fade at certain times. To this they replied, that they had also once thought so, but that numerous experiments had proved the contrary to be the fact, such as cutting away, or by other means corrupting or destroying the grass all around it ; after which they assured me that it fell into a languishing state and decayed insensibly. These persons also added, that the wolves are very fond of these vegetable lambs, and devour them with avidity, because they resemble in taste the animals whose name they bear, and that in fact they have bones, blood, and flesh, and hence they are called zoophytes, or plant-animals. Many other things' I was like- wise told, which might, however, appear scarcely probable to such as have not seen them.” M. Method of making Tar at Archangel They dig a hole in the ground, of sufficient size, some two or three fathoms deep, and little more than half way down they make a platform of wood, and thereon heap earth about a foot deep, except in the middle, where a hole is left in the form of a tunnel. They then fill the pit with fir billets piled up from the platform, and rising about a fathom or more above ground, which part they wall about with turf and clay to keep in the fire. They command the fire by quenching : for which use they make a lixivium of the ashes of fir. When all is ready, they set fire a-top, and keep the wood burning, but very leisurely, till it has sunk within a foot or two of the partition ; and then they heave out the fire as fast as it is possible ; for if it once laid hold of the tar which is settled down into the lower pit, it blows all up forthwith. These tar -pits take up THE IRISH 'PENNY JOURNAL. 317 a great deal of trouble, and many men to tend them during the time of their burning, that the fire may descend even and leisurely, whereby the tar may have time to soak out of the wood, and settle down into the pit. As it comes from the wood it is pure tar, but in the pit it mixes with water, which issues from the wood also ; therefore it is afterwards clarified. — Life of Sir Dudley North. Aurora Borealis According to Crantz, ithe Green- landers hold the northern lights for a game of tennis, or for a dance of departed souls ; and this opinion is not a whit more irrational than the superstition of the oriental nations, the Greeks and Romans, and all the unenlightened people of the middle ages, who, in the aurora borealis, and other fiery me- teors, sawfighting armies, flaming swords, chariots and spears, battles and blood, and even thought that they heard the clash- ing of arms and the sound of martial music. In the rainbow the ancient inhabitants of the north discovered a bridge from earth to heaven, and called it the bridge of the gods, which was watched by a dog, whom no art could elude, and whose auditory faculty was such, that he could hear the grass grow or the wool on the sheep’s back ; the Kamschatkadales make of it a new garment for their aerial spirits, edged with fringes of red-coloured seal-skin, and leather thongs of various gaudy dyes. THE ISLE OF SAINTS. “ Primus ordo sanctissimus ; secundus ordo sanctior ; tertius sanctus. Primus sicut sol ardescit ; secundus sicut luna ; tertius sicut Stella." — See the ancient catalogue of the three classes of Irish saints, as published by Usher and Lanigan. There lived in Erin's hallowed borders, In days of yore, three saintly Orders. And first, the simply holy : — They Shed like the stars a flickering ray. The second — holier — poured a light Moon-like, subdued and calmly bright. The third, or holiest of all, Shone like the sun — or like Saint Paul. But, oh, the state of man’s unrest In good ! — the last were first and best. The middle but a term between The purest and the least serene ; Less than the greatest — greater far Than those whose emblem is the star. Waning they ran a downward race, With fainter faith and lessening grace, Till, reaching to the stage most lowly. The least and latest were the Holy. Oh, that they there had staid ! — that sin Had, to this swept and garnished inn Returning, found the entrance barred, And Faith still keeping watch and ward ! — Alas ! — they slept in Ease’s bower ; They could not “watch one little hour.” The stars their ineffectual light In slumber sealed. ' The thief by night Entered ; and o’er the rich domain Sowed tares among the better grain. Sin flourished ; — poverty and strife Embittered all the charms of life ; And passion, with unbounded sway. Swept sun and moon and stars away. And yet not ever such, sweet Isle, Shall be thy fate. The stars shall smile Again upon thy valleys green, Again the moon shall beam serene Upon thy mountains ; and the bright Celestial sun clothe thee with light, With plenty bless, and warm and cheer Thy long-delayed millenial year. Even'now the sacred morning dawns, The clouds are fleeting’from thy lawns ; And, as light thickens in the sky, Lo ! Riot and Intemperance fly ; And chaste sobriety imparts Her eup, and Industry his arts. Peace, Love, and Holiness once more Row their sweet ark towards thy shore ; And Heaven renews the favouring smile That made thee once the Saintly Isle. n ANIMAL CHARMING, OR THE SUBJUGATION OF ANIMALS BY MEANS OF CHARMS, SPELLS, OR DRUGS. Third and Concluding Article. In my last paper I endeavoured to show how exceedingly absurd and unfounded was the notion of the Abbe Dubois and Denon, that the serpent-charmers of India were and are a set of juggling impostors, who practise on the credulity of the vulgar, and vainly set forward pretensions to an art which has no actual existence, and which, consequently, possesses no legitimate claims on the attention of the philosophic in- quirer. I now wish to bring all that I would observe upon this very curious subject to a conclusion. I acknowledge my inability to furnish my readers with a thorough explanation of the means by which these wonders are performed, but I think I may be able, at all events, to suggest such hints as may place them on the direct path to the attainment of the knowledge they desire ; after which, nothing will be necessary but some degree of research and perseverance to afford them a complete gratification of their wishes. It is evident, that whatever may be the supplementary means employed in serpent-charming, music is necessary to its accomplishment. I should not be satisfied on this point were it merely dependent upon the assertions of the jug- glers themselves, as in such case it might not unnaturally be set down as a mere external cloak for some more important secret which the performers did not wish to be discovered ; and for this reason I made the observation in my first article on this subject, that the precise importance of the music in these operations was not as yet entirely apparent. I wish it to be understood, however, that although the degree of impor- tance in which music should be held as an adjunct to the charming of snakes, or as a primary part of the process, has not as yet been ascertained by those who have investigated or endeavoured to investigate the business, and published the results of their inquiries, I for my part am fully satisfied on the subject. To return, however, to our more immediate matter of discussion. Many have conceived that "serpent-charming depends in the first instance upon the snakes being previously deprived of their fangs, and thus rendered innocuous. This opinion I have already demonstrated as palpably erroneous. Others, again, hold that the jugglers possess a power, by eating cer- tain herbs, or chewing the leaves or roots of certain plants, of rendering themselves proof against animal poisons. In order to render themselves perfectly secure, it is said that their practice is to chew the herbs, to inoculate various parts of their body with the juice, and even bathe themselves in water in which these herbs have been steeped. It is supposed that the bodies of the charmers thus become not merely proof against the most deadly poison should they chance to be bitten, but that those thus prepared exhale from their persons an odour which produces a benumbing or stupifying effect upon the reptiles, and renders them an easy capture. Whether or not it be true that such is the case, we know that the Psylli not merely profess the power of charming snakes, but also that of curing by spells, and the application of certain herbs, such as have been bitten by them. We are informed by the historian and biographer Plutarch, that Cato in his march through the desert took with him many of those persons called Psylli (then a distinct tribe, though at the present day that name is applied indiscriminately to all professing the art of serpent-charming) to suck out the poison from the wounds of any of his soldiers that might chance to be bitten by any of the numerous venomous serpents which infested his route. The. powers of the Psylli were then always attributed to magic, and the performers themselves took care to confirm that opinion by accompanying the application of remedies to their patients with muttered spells or elaborately wrought and. imposing incantations. This is a testimony respecting the ancient repute in which charmers were held, not lightly to be rejected. While some travellers are too sceptical, I have likewise to complain that others are too credulous. For instance, while Dubois and Denon scout the idea of serpents being charmed at all, Bruce asserts, and that from minute personal observation, that all the blacks of Sennaar are completely armed by nature against the bite of either scorpion or viper. “ They will,” says he, “take their horned snakes (there the most common and one of the most fatal of the viper tribe) in their hands at all times, put them in their bosoms, and throw them at on e 1 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL 318 another as children will balls or apples, during- which sport the serpents are seldom irritated to bite, or if they do, no mischief results from the wound.” Of course it must be evi- dent that Bruce in this instance ascribed rather too much to the bounty of nature, and forgot how far art might have aided in producing the appearance which astonished him. Don Pedro D’Orbies Y. Vargas, who published in the year 1791 the result of a series of investigations he instituted to ascertain the secret on which serpent-charming depended, informs us that it is also extensively practised by the natives of South America, and that they produce the wished-for end by means of a certain plant named the quacho-mithy, so de- signated from its having been first observed to have been resorted to by the serpent-hawk, or, as the bird is sometimes styled, the “ quacho-mithy,” and by it sucked, preparatory to its encounters with the poisonous reptiles which it fought with and destroyed for its prey. Taking the hint from the natur- ally and instinctively instructed bird, the Indians chewed the lant thus discovered, and inoculated and washed their odies with its juice, rubbing it into punctures made in their breasts, hands, and feet ; and, thus prepared, they dreaded not the bite of the most venomous snake. Don Pedro himself, and the domestics of his household, used after these simple precau- tions to venture into the thickest woods and the most danger- ous meadows, and fearlessly seize in their hands the largest and most poisonous serpents ; the creatures seemed as if un- der the influence of a sort of charm or fascination, and very rarely attempted to bite ; and at any rate, even if they did, no evil consequence resulted from the wound beyond the tempo- rary inconvenience produced by the laceration of the flesh by the animals’ teeth. The same gentleman to whom I was indebted for the anec- dote of the encounter with the cobra de capella, mentioned in a preceding paper, informed me that he had detected a snake-charmer in the act of chewing and inoculating him- self with some plant, the name or character of which he could not however ascertain, though he offered the juggler a considerable sum for the information. One of the leaves of this plant, and the only one he saw, he states to have been of a long and narrow form, with the sides indented or scol- loped, somewhat like those of our own common dandelion. Now, it appears to me by no means difficult of deduction from the facts brought forward in this and the preceding papers on the same subject, that the secret of the snake- charmers is dependent upon two ingi'edients, viz, in the first place the employment of an antidote which will not only mollify the effects of the reptiles’ venom, should the experiment- ers happen to be bitten, but, from some peculiar odour which it emits, stupify or intoxicate the snake, and indispose it from violence, inclining it rather to appreciate the melody with which they are treating it, and luxuriate in hearing of their fife ; and, in the second place, the sounds of music which the whole class of reptiles appear more or less to be sensible of, and which will induce the serpents to quit their holes when they come within the sphere of the influence of the intoxicating odour, and, abandoning themselves to its effects, fall into a state of temporary oblivion, and are taken captive. We our- selves are well acquainted with several substances which are capable of producing upon such creatures as we are conver- sant with in these islands, effects no less astonishing than those produced upon the snakes by the charmers of India or South America. It is, for instance, a very common thing, and an experiment I have not only often seen tried, but have tried myself dozens of times, and that with success, to charm trout, perch, or roach, with assafoetida. If you sprinkle this substance, finely powdered, upon the Surface of the water, you will presently see the fish crowding to the spot ; and even if you rub your hands well with it, and, gradually approaching the water, gently immerse them in it, you will ere long find the fish attracted towards you, and, losing their natural timi- dity, actually permit themselves to. be taken. Many have imagined that it was upon the use of a certain drug that the wonderful power possessed and successfully exerted by Sulli- van, the whisperer, depended ; but for my part I think the cir- cumstance of Sullivan’s son having been unable to nroduce similar effects, although instructed by his father in the mys- tery, is sufficient to show that Sullivan’s trick depended upon some means less certain in operation than the mere employ- ment of a drug would be, and in which mechanical dexterity and personal bearing occupied places of no mean importance. Rat-catchers used formerly to employ certain drugs, or com- binations of them, to collect these vermin into one place, and thus destroy them wholesale, or to entice them into the trap ; and it has been pretended by some worthy members of this ancient and mystic calling, that they are possessed of secrets by which they can, if they please, draw away all the rats from any premises on which they may be employed. I have, however, sought after the most talented living professors of rat-catching, and I cannot say I have ever witnessed miracles equal to that. I have, however, seen a trap placed in a cel- lar haunted by rats, and left there all night, filled next morning with these vermin to the number of thirty, and surrounded by a host of others, who actually could not enter from want of room ! I have seen a tame white rat smeared with a certain composition, let loose in a vault, and in less than half an hour return, followed by at least half a dozen others, who appeared so enamoured of the white-coloured decoy, or of some scent that hung about him, that they suffered themselves to be taken alive in the rat-catcher’s hand, and never so much as offer to bite. I purchased this secret from an old rat-catcher, and have much pleasure in communicating it to the public, and more especialy to the discriminating patrons of the Irish Penny Journal. It consists of the following simple prepa- ration : — Powdered assafoetida 2 grains. Essential oil of rhodium 3 drachms. Essential oil of lavender 1 scruple. Oil of aniseed 1 drachm. Let the assafoetida be first well triturated with the ani- seed, then add the oil of rhodium, still continuing to rub the material well up together in a mortar, after which add the oil of lavender, and cork up the mixture in a close bottle until required. The method of employing this receipt is very sim- ple, and consists merely in smearing the decoy rat with it, in mixing a few drops of it with a little flour or starch, and employing the paste thus formed as a bait for the trap ; and if you anoint your hands with this mixture, you may put them into a cage full of rats without the slightest danger of a bite. I have done so repeatedly myself, and never got bitten unless when I had prepared the composition improperly, or displayed timidity in proceeding to handle the animals — a defect of de- meanour which appears capable of counteracting the working of the charm. The liking which rats exhibit for the perfume produced by the above simple composition is truly wonderful, but will be readily admitted, even while as yet its efficacy remains un- tested, by any person who has witnessed the passion exhi- bited by cats for valerian, or of dogs for galbanum, and after much consideration and attentive observation I have come to the conclusion that the effects produced by different sub- stances upon these animals have a common origin, viz, in the peculiar odour calling into play the sexual appetite, and that too in a more than commonly energetic manner ; of course I only mean to apply this latter observation to the case of dogs, rats, and cats. I have no intention of thus seeking to explain away the effect produced upon serpents or fishes by certain odours, accompanied by music ; indeed, in these instances I should rather ascribe the effects produced to a sort of intoxicating, fascinating influence, bearing no dis- tant resemblance to the power exercised towards other ani- mals by many of the serpent tribe themselves. The fascina- tion of the rattle-snake, for example, seems in a great mea- sure to depend upon the agency of a certain intoxicating odour which the reptile has the power of producing at pleasure. In support of this opinion I may adduce the testimony of Major A. Gordon, who thus explains the fascination of ser- pents in a paper read before the New York Historical So- ciety. He adduced various facts in support of his opinions, and amongst the rest mentions a negro, who could by smell alone discover a rattle-snake when in the exercise of this power, at the distance of two hundred feet, and who, follow- ing such indications, never failed of finding some poor animal drawn within its vortex, and in vain struggling with the irre- sistible influence. By no means remotely allied to charming and fascination would appear to be that mysterious and as yet doubtful power, animal magnetism, a subject on which I shall not dilate, as it hardly falls within the limits indicated by the heading of this paper, which has now run to a length considerably greater than I contemplated at starting ; and consequently I think it time to take my leave, trusting I have at lea^t given a clue to the great secret on which depends the magical influence of the serpent-charmer. H. D. R. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 319 WHY DO ROOTS GROW DOWNWARDS, AND STEMS TOWARDS THE HEAVENS? Second Article. Our readers may remember a very simple experiment, but pregnant with important results, which we described in our former article : namely, if an onion plant, exposed to day light, be laid horizontally on the ground, the extremities of the stem and roots will in the course of a few hours turn themselves in their natural directions, the one upwards and the other downwards ; if a similar plant be placed in a dark cellar, to which no light has access, the same things will take place ; but that which happens in a few hours in the one in- stance, will require as many days in the other. From this experiment we were led to conclude that in the production of the proper directions of stems and roots, two classes of causes operate, namely, the light ; and, secondly, some other principle distinct from light. Our former article was devoted to the explanation of the manner in which light causes stems to ascend, and roots to descend ; we shall now endeavour to investigate that other principle, less powerful, but more uni- versal, which shares in the production of the same phenomena. If the flower stalk of the common dandelion be split verti- cally into a number of portions, each of these will be seen, spontaneously, to curl outwards ; the same tendency must be familiar to every one in celery dressed for the table; if the root of the dandelion be split vertically into two or more parts, these will likewise be found to curve, but in a contrary direction from those of the stem ; they will curl inwards. We thus find that all the portions of stem placed round the central axis have a natural tendency to curl outwards ; while all the portions of root round the central axis have a ten- dency to curl inwards. The stem may be therefore considered as consisting of a number of springs placed round a central axis, and all endeavouring to burst away from each other ; w r hile the root, in a like manner, may be regarded as com- posed of a number of springs placed round a central axis, and all pressing against each other. These natural tenden- cies are overcome, in the living plant, by the mutual cohesion of these parts or springs ; but when this cohesion is removed by the knife, their influence becomes acknowledged. Now, if we imagine a number of springs, all of equal strength, and either dragging away from each other or press- ing together, it will be easily understood that in such cases perfect equilibrium should result : for, of two springs pulling in opposite directions, for either to overcome, it is necessary that one should be the more powerful ; and the same applies to springs pressing against each other. As long, therefore, as a stem consists of a number of equal springs, all endea- vouring to burst away from each other, its direction will be in a straight line ; and as long as a root is composed of equal springs pressing towards each other, its direction, likewise, will be straight. If a stem or root be placed for a certain length of time in a horizontal position, the peculiar tendency to curvation of its parts will become modified. If a stem which has been thus treated be split along its axis, the part which, while it was in a horizontal position, was superior, wall have it3 ten- dency to curl outwards increased ; while that -which was under the same circumstances inferior, will have its tendency to curl outwards diminished. If a root be placed, during a certain period, horizontally, and then split along its axis, the superior portion will be found to have its tendency to curl inwards increased, while the inferior portion will have the same tendency diminished. A horizontal position is there- fore found to increase the peculiar tendencies to curvation of the superior parts of stems and roots, and to lessen those of the inferior half. Now, we have already ascertained that while equal springs either pull against or press towards each other, equilibrium is obtained ; but if from any cause the springs become un- equal, the greater power may be expected to overcome the less. When a stem or root has been kept for some time ho- rizontally, the upper half has its elastic power increased, while the spring of the most depending portion has become diminished ; we have therefore now springs of unequal power placed round a central axis, the superior being ren- dered more energetic, while their antagonists have become weakened ; it is reasonable, therefore, to expect that the respective directions of roots and stems under sucncircum- stances should be obedient to the excess of elasticity which the upper half has acquired over the lower ; in other words, these stems and roots ought to direct themselves in accor- dance with the natural tendencies of the superior springs which enter into the structure of these organs. Now, the superior springs of the stems have a natural tendency to curl out- wards, or when placed horizontally, upwards ; and the supe- rior half of the root has an equally natural tendency to curl inwards, or, when placed horizontally, downwards. Need we be surprised, therefore, if in obedience to these more pow- erful springs the stems and roots of vegetables shall (as experience shows us they will do) curve, after having been placed for some time in a horizontal position, the former up- ward and the latter downward ? Let us now endeavour to explain the causes which produce these peculiar and different tendencies to curvation of stems and roots, and for this purpose it will be necessary for us to premise, that the fleshy substance which constitutes the basis of vegetable structure is composed of a multitude of little vesicles or cells, each perfectly distinct in itself, and merely adhering by its external surface with those surround- ing it, while it contains a thick syrupy liquid ; these cells, although pressed to a certain extent against each other, are not so closely approached as to obliterate completely the spaces existing between them, so that little passages, called intercellular passages, continue to remain, during the life of the plant, between the cells through which the ascending sap rises in its passage to the buds. This ascending sap is not so viscid a liquid as that contained in the cells : thus, the syrupy contents of the latter must, according to the princi- ple of endosmose described in a previous article, absorb into the cells the ascending sap, in a way similar to that whereby syrup placed in a bladder, immersed in a basin of water, will attract the latter liquid through the membrane, until the blad- der be filled. While the sap continues to ascend, therefore, the cells must necessarily continue swollen in proportion to their size. If we examine the relative size of the cells in stems and roots, we will meet with a remarkable phenomenon: in stems the largest cells are situated towards the centre ; but on the con- trary, in roots, the largest cells are placed near the circum- ference. Now, we have ascertained in the preceding para- graph that all the cells have a tendency to swell in proportion to their size : it follows that the central cells of stems and the circumferential cells of roots possess the greatest tendency to swell. The centre of a stem has therefore greater elasticity than the circumference, while the circumference of a root has greater elasticity than the centre. When this elasticity in either case is permitted to exert itself by means of a vertical section, it causes each half of the stem to curl outwards, and each half of the root to curl inwards. If the influence of endosmose be acknowledged, the explanation is perfect. But it may be said, what proof have we that endosmose operates in these cases ? An experiment instituted by Dutro- chet, and repeated by the writer of this article, sufficiently demonstrates its influence. A plant of dandelion was im- mersed in syrup, and after a certain time the root and stalk were severally split in a vertical direction : the tendencies to incurvation of these organs were now seen to be completely changed from what they are under ordinary circumstances ; the parts of the stalk curled inwards, those of the root out- wards : this was exactly what might be expected, if we suppose endosmose to be the cause of these phenomena ; placed in syrup, this thick fluid attracted liquid out of the cells, which consequently shrunk in place of expanding; and the larger cells contracting more than the smaller, the former elasticities became reversed. It remains to be seen why it is that when roots and stems are planted for some time in a horizontal position, the proper elasticities of the superior parts become increased, while those of the inferior become diminished. These phenomena can be explained by recollecting that the ascending sap is a heterogeneous fluid, composed of mucilage and syrup, mixed with light water and carbonic acid, which have been drawn up unchanged from the extremities of the roots, and are des- tined to escape, or undergo decomposition in the leaves. It is not difficult to imagine that this heterogeneous fluid con- tained in the intercellular passages should be subjected to the influence of gravity ; if this be admitted, we can then understand how in a horizontal root or stem the heavier and more viscid portion of the sap should descend into the inferior half, and the lighter ascend between the cells of the superior half ; endosmose will take place in proportion to the differ- 320 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. ence of density between the liquid in the intercellular pas- sages and that contained in the cells ; therefore it will take place more energetically in the superior half, where is the lighter fluid; and as the elasticity depends upon the energy of endosmose, the upper portion will, according to its nature, curve with greater force, while the elasticity of the lower part will be lessened. This explanation acquires increased weight from the fact that the specific gravity of the most depending portions of stems and roots growing horizontally in the dark, is greater than that of the upper. But we have stronger arguments in favour of the supposi- tion that gravity is essentially connected with the several directions of stems and roots. These directions take place naturally in the “line of gravity,” that is, parallel to a line drawn from the centre of the mass towards the centre of the earth ; at the same time it is to be remarked, that although roots grow in the direction of gravity, that is, to- wards the centre of the earth, stems grow in exactly the op- posite way. An experiment made by Mr Knight has been repeated by different philosophers, to determine whether these directions of stems and roots bear to other physical laws the same relation they do to gravity. Seeds permitted to germinate in wet moss were attached to the circumference of a wheel made to revolve constantly in a vertical manner ; under these circumstances the roots grew outwards, away from the circumference of the wheel, and the stems towards its centre ; the roots were thus found to obey the centrifugal force, and the stems the centripetal ; but while the wheel re- | volved vertically, gravity and the centrifugal force were | operating in the same direction. It was necessary to cause them to act in different directions, and for this purpose the wheel was made to revolve horizontally : in this case the cen- trifugal force acted at right angles to the line of gravity, and it was accordingly found, in obedience to the law of the com- position of forces, that the roots no longer grew towards the centre of the earth, nor towards the circumference of the wheel, but in a plane between these two forces ; and the angle which they formed with the line of gravity could be rendered more or less acute by increasing or diminishing the velocity with which the wheel rotated. It was thus made evident that roots and stems were influenced by physical laws, although growing in opposite directions. We liave thus shown why roots grow downwards and stems towards the heavens : in the dark these things arise through the influence of gravity controlling endosmose, and thus producing the proper incurvations of the parts of stems and roots. Under the influence of light the same phenomena more energetically arise from the agency of this element over vegetable growth. J. A. THE LADY WITH THE SPECTACLES. Beauty in spectacles is like Cupid in knee breeches, or the Graces with pocket handkerchiefs— an excrescence of refine- ment ; an innovation of the ideas which spiritualize woman into a goddess ; a philosophical blossom of the “ march of mind.” Beauty in spectacles ! and has it come to this ? Burke said that the age of chivalry was past, and publishers say that the age of poetry has followed it ; powder and pe- riwigs destroyed the one, and spectacles have gone far to an- nihilate the other. Think of the queen of beauty of some tournament — thanks to my Lord Eglintoun for making such words familiar to us — looking on the encountering knights through a patent pair of spectacles ! — picture to yourself a beautiful and romantic young lady parting from her lover, taking the “ first long lingering kiss of love,” as pretty Miss Pardoe terms it, and just imagine the figure the spectacles would cut in such an encounter ; think of Mary Queen of Scots, Lady Jane Grey, Scott’s “ Jewess,” or Shakspeare’s “ Lady Macbeth,” with such appendages ! think of a heroine in a novel taking off her spectacles to shed “ salt tears” for her lover’s absence, or in the emotion of a distressing junc- ture throwing herself at the feet of some obdurate tyrant, breaking the lenses of her “ sight preservers think of all this, and judge of the effect which spectacles, as an ornament, have upon romance. Beauty has three stages — the coy, the dignified, and the intellectual. The first exists until about twenty, the second until twenty-five, and the last until beauty has made unto itself wings and flown away. It is in this last stage that women wear spectacles. The symptoms of spec- tacles begin at an early age. The young Miss has a prim- ness, a staidness, ana a miniature severity of aspect, at variance from her years. They never seem young ; there is no freshness of heart in them : they become women faster than other girls, and become old faster than other women ; they are remarkable for thin lips, sharp noses, and white artificial teeth. They are walking strictures upon human life bleak visions of philosophy in petticoats — daughters, not it would seem of love, but of Fellows of the Royal Society ! They are fond of phrenology and meetings of scientific asso- ciations. They like a good pew in church, and write long letters to their unfortunate “ friends in the country.” They are generally spinsters, or, if married, motherless. No young wife with “ six small children” ever wore spectacles. They go a good deal into company, where they are seen seated on sofas talking to ladies older than themselves, or turning over the leaves of a book, and with interesting abstraction poring over it. They dance quadi’illes, but never waltz. Heaven and earth ! think of a pair of spectacles whirling in a waltz. They have a genius for the “ scholastic profession,” and fre- quently exercise it as amateurs; “ never eat suppers ;” and are, many of them, members of the Horticultural Society. The lady with the spectacles ! Half a century ago this would have been understood to refer to some one stricken in years, but now-a-days infirmity of eye-sight has been raised to the rank of a charm. The moment spectacles become really useful they are abandoned ; it is the harmonious combination of youth and short-sightedness which gives beauty to the guise. Intense interest is expected to be felt towards her, who, still young and lovely, abandons the frivolities of her sex for the calm secluded pleasures of intellect. This is the point our heroines aim at. But we have done with them. They may be very good in their way, but their ways are not as our ways. Flirts, coquettes, prudes, and a host of other orders into which the sex are classified, have their failings, but they, at least, are women ; while the “ lady with the spectacles” seems hardly a daughter of Eve, but a mysterious being ; a new creation, come into the world to gladden the lovers of modern science, and patronise the house of Solomons and Co. — Couit Gazette. Marriage It is the happiest and most virtuous state of society, in which the husband and wife set out early together, make their property together, and with perfect sympathy of soul graduate all their expenses, plans, calculations and de- sires, with reference to their present means, and to their future and common interest. Nothing delights me more than to enter the neat little tenement of the young couple, who within perhaps two or three years, without any resources but their own knowledge or industry, have joined heart and hand, and engage to share together the responsibilities, duties, in • terests, trials, and pleasures of life. The industrious wife is cheerfully employing her own hands in domestic duties, putting her house in order, or mending her husband’s clothes, or preparing the dinner, whilst, perhaps, the little darling sits prattling upon the floo 1 *, or lies sleeping in the cradle — and everything seems preparing to welcome the happiest of hus- bands and the best of fathers, when he shall come from his toil to enjoy the sweets of his little paradise. This is the true domestic pleasure, the “ only bliss that survived the fall.” Health, contentment, love, abundance, and bright prospects, are all here. But it has become a prevalent sentiment, that a man must acquire his fortune before he marries — that the wife must have no sympathy, nor share with him in the pur- suit of it, in which most of the pleasure truly consists ; and the young married people must set out with as large and ex- pensive an establishment as is becoming those who have been wedded for 20 years. This is very unhappy. It fills the community with bachelors, who are waiting to make their fortunes, endangering virtue and promoting vice — it destroys the true economy and design of the domestic institution, and it promotes idleness and inefficiency among females, who are expecting to be taken up by a fortune, and passively sus- tained, without any care or concern on their part — and thus many a wufe becomes, as a gentleman once remarked, not a “help-mate,” but a “ help-eat.” — Winslow. Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin.— Agents : — K. Groombridgb, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London ; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool ; Slocombe and Simms, Leeds ; J. Menzies, Prince’s Street, Edinburgh ; and David Robertson, Trongate, Glas- gow. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL Number 41. SATURDAY, APRIL 10, 1841. Volume I. KILLYMOON, COUNTY OF TYRONE, THE RESIDENCE OF LIEUTENANT-COLONEL W. STEWART The subject which we have chosen as an embellishment to our present number, is a view of one of the most aristocratic residences in the province of Ulster, or, as we might perhaps say, in all Ireland. It is therefore deserving of a place in our topographical illustrations from its own importance ; but we confess that it is not on that account only that we have thus se- lected it for illustration, and that, even if its attraction had been less, it would still have paramount claims on our notice, as the residence, w'hen delicate health permits, of one of the best of landlords, and most estimable and accomplished gentlemen in his native province. Such, at least, is the impression made on our mind from all that we have ever heard of Colonel Stewart’s private character ; and it is only, therefore, in har- mony with what might be expected of such a proprietor, that the enjoyment of the beauty and magnificence which nature and art have conjointly contributed to create at Killy- moon should not be restricted to himself or friends, but be freely extended without solicitation to all ranks of the com- munity, whom indeed he may justly and proudly class under the same denomination. Killymoon House, or Castle, as it is popularly called, is situated in the immediate vicinity of Cookstown, and on the north bank of the Ballinderry or Kildress river, a beautiful stream w'hich winds through the demesne. It was erected for the father of the present proprietor by the celebrated English architect Mr Nash, and cost, it is said, no less a sum than £ 80 , 000 . Like that of most architectural compositions of Mr Nash, the general effect of Killymoon is at once imposing and pictur- esque. Its form is that of a parallelogram ; the north and east sides, which are the principal architectural fronts, and contain the chief apartments, being but little broken in their surfaces, and forming two sides of the square ; while the re- maining sides, which contain the offices, are of an irregular ground-plan, and are much hidden by trees. The east, or principal front, wdiich is that represented in our wood-cut, has a large circular tower nearly at its centre, and is terminated at its northern angle by an octagon tower of inferior height, but otherwise equal dimensions ; and the north front, extend- ing from the octagon tower above mentioned, has a square tower at its west extremity, with which is connected, in a nearly continuous line, a structure in the style of a Gothic chapel, having stained glass window's, and buttresses intervening, and a belfry at its western termination : this portion of the build- ing, however, is used as a library, and is the only part re- maining of the original mansion which existed on the estate when the ancestor of Colonel Stewart purchased it from the Earl of Tyrone, and which w r as subsequently destroyed by an ac- cidental fire. The north or entrance front is adorned with a porch leading into a small vestibule, and thence into the hall, 322 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. which is of great size, and is terminated by a stone staircase having two return flights leading to a corridor which commu- nicates with the bed-chambers. This hall also communicates by doors with the several portions of the building below, those on the west side leading to the servants’ rooms, and those on the east to the state apartments, which consist of a breakfast parlour, dining-room, ante-room, and drawing-room, all of which are of noble proportions, and their woodwork of polished oak. It will be seen from the preceding description that the ge- neral character of this building is that of a castle ; and we may add, that the details of its architecture are for the most part those popularly but erroneously called Saxon. But, like most modern structures of this kind, it has but little accurate resemblance to an ancient military fortress, and its architec- tural details present that capricious medley of styles of various ages, ecclesiastical, domestic, and military, so commonly found in modern buildings of this description. Such an in- congruous amalgamation of styles, however, in an architectural composition, is, it must be confessed, not very consistent with refined taste, and cannot be too strongly reprobated ; but it has existed for a considerable time, and will unfortunately continue till architects become skilful antiquaries as well as tasteful artists, and their employers acquire such an accurate judgment and knowledge of art as will enable them to form a correct opinion of the capabilities of those they employ, and not take their estimate of them, as now, from fashion or popu- lar reputation. The demesne attached to this noble residence ranks second to none in Tyrone in extent, the beauty of many of its fea- tures, and the fineness of its timber. The Kildress river, which passes through it, is crossed about the centre of the demesne by a picturesque bridge of five arches ; and from this point the most favourable views of the surrounding scenery are to be had. Looking northwards, the sloping banks of the river, at the opposite sides of an extensive meadow, are thickly planted with larch, fir, beech, and ash, from the midst of which, an aged oak is here and there seen to rise above its younger and less aspiring companions ; and, looking westward, the turrets of the castle overtop the deep masses of foliage which cluster round it on every side. In like manner, to the east, the river winds its way through a tract of rich meadow land, the banks of which are fringed with sallows and thorn trees ; and to the south, the grounds slope gently up from the river, and present detached groups of elms and oaks of the most luxuriant cha- racter. The views in this demesne are indeed such as might naturally be expected in conjunction with a mansion of such magnificence, and will, as we are persuaded, not create a feel- ing of disappointment in the minds of any, whether artist or pleasure tourist, who may be led by our remarks to visit them. P. THE SPANISH MOTHER. During that dark and ill-recorded period in which Spain was little more than a field of battle between the Moors and the Christians, the Sanchos of Navarre held the most conspicu- ous rank among the peninsular potentates, and Sanchez “ et Mayor” was the most conspicuous of the Sanchos. Besides tne throne of Navarre, he had succeeded to the royalty of Arragon, and the sovereignty of Castile was the dower of his queen. He had married the beauteous Elvira Muna early in life ; and before he had reached the full prime of manhood, two of his sons, Garcia and Gonsalo, were able to bear the panoply of a knight ; and a third, Fernando, a boy of thirteen, was sighing for the day to come when he too should have the spur upon his heel and the sword upon his thigh. Another son, also, King Sancho boasted of, but not by Donna Elvira. In his very first battle he had been taken prisoner by a Moor- ish captain of high rank, and confined in a dreary dungeon many days and nights, until at length his escape was effected by means of the daughter of his conqueror, a maiden of ex- quisite beauty named Caya, who had seen him, and fallen in love with him. This Moorish girl the generous young prince would gladly have married, if the political or religious laws of Navarre would have permitted him ; but he tried to per- suade himself and her, that, under such circumstances, the tie which bound them together after their flight from her father’s fortress would be nearly as sacred as if it were a conju- gal one. The offspring of their love was a boy, whom Sancho named Ramiro, and who grew up with the king’s legitimate chil - dren, Caya too — it was the custom of those days — lived at court, and was paid respect and honour besides, as the deliverer of the country’s hope. She had abjured, at least outwardly, her Moslem creed, and, for the sake of her son, whom she tenderly loved, conformed in all respects to the customs of her adopted one. In truth, however, she was a quiet, unpretending crea- ture, who never said or did anything to the injury of any one with malice prepense, and not being feared, was not hated. Even Elvira herself, hateful to Caya for giving her no rea- sonable cause for jealousy since her marriage with Sancho (which was a mere matter of state policy), made the Moorish woman the confidante of most of her joys and sorrows. And many were the sorrows of that gentle queen. Sancho had ever been indifferent towards her, though she repaid his cold- ness with devoted attachment. He was, besides, continually away at the wars, in imminent danger from the chances of battle, while she, at home, was ever mourning over the ne- glect of her lord and the disobedience of her children. Garcia had made, before his twentieth year, no fewer than three dif- ferent attempts to excite a revolt in Ribagorza during the absence of the king, impatient as he was to seize the reins of command. Gonsalo, cunning as a fox, and darkly-working as a mole, was continually endeavouring, by secret machina- tions, to render the people of Navarre discontented with the government of his mother and her councillors ; and even the child Fernando had exhibited signs of a rebellious nature, and was but too apt to listen to the dangerous instructions of his brothers. Elvira, therefore, was greatly to be pitied, de- barred, as she thus found herself, from all the joys which she naturally yearned for as a wife and a mother. If Caya was an ambitious woman, as most of her nation were, or if she had cherished, under an outward show of meekness and con- tentedness, thoughts and purposes of bringing about by means of her opportunities the establishment of the Moorish dynasty in Christian Spain, she might have drawn hope of success in her schemes from the dissensions of the royal family ; at least she might have sought in them some excuse for making her darling Ramiro a sharer in one of those arbitrary parti- tions of the Spanish kingdoms which the barbarous notions of the times rendered of frequent recurrence. But Caya was gifted with too noble a mind to seek any advantage, however tempting, by unworthy means. She still fondly loved the chi- valrous prince with whom she fled from a cruel father’s roof, and with whom, for a few happy, happy years, she had for- gotten the pleasant olive groves of Grenada, under the wild pine forests and glaciers of the Pyi’enees. She sincerely com- passionated the sorrows of Elvira, and therefore the afflicted queen had a safe and steady friend in her generous rival. Let the reader “judge with knowledge” these two women in their affection for one another — In those old, romantic days, Mighty were the soul’s commandments To support, restrain, or raise ! Their rivalry was of the forbearing kind which existed between the two wives of that old crusader mentioned in the Orlandus of Kenelin Henry Digby, and which the first poet of our day * has thought it worth his while to embalm for all eternity in his “ Armenian Lady’s Love,” But Elvira had another trusty friend in Sancho’s “ master of the horse,” whom he was wont to leave behind him as deputy when he went to the wars. Don Pedro Sesse was a faithful minister and a merciful viceroy. A gallant soldier in his youth, he was an enemy to treachery and to everything that tended to infringe the laws of chivalry. He it was who had frustrated the designs of Garcia and Gonsalo, and had therefore earned their hatred. Elvira looked to him as her best guide and protector amidst the sorrows of her lot. In this state was the kingdom of Navarre, when the news came of a great victory gained by Sancho over the Moors of Corduba, a place at that time the metropolis of Moorish Spain. As this event was considered a decisive blow to the hopes entertained by the Moors of obtaining possession of Castile, which was their principal object, Sancho’s speedy return, after an absence of several years, was anticipated at home, and great were the preparations made for his triumphal entry to the fortress of Najara, where was the royal palace and the residence of the chief nobility. In the midst of these prepara- tions, however, matters took place which turned the palace into a scene of mourning and dismay. Don Pedro had a beautiful daughter named Blanca, whom the unprincipled Garcia had long but vainly tried to influence * Wordsworth, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 323 by his dishonourable proposals. The virtuous Blanca repel- led his advances with proper scorn ; and when at length he found that he could not obtain her willing consent, he deter- mined to carry her off by violence. An opportunity soon arrived. Blanca was sitting alone one day in her garden, enjoying the loveliness of the prospect that stretched from the terrace-foot to the summits of the distant mountains, when Garcia, who had been waiting for a favourable moment, seized her in his arms, and bore her away towards a spot where he had horses and attendants ready for the accomplish- ment of his villanous project. Before the maiden was out of the reach of aid from such as might be disposed to assist her, her shrieks were heard by Ramiro, who happened to be saun- tering near the place. He was at her side in an instant with his drawn sword in his hand. “ Ruffian, desist !” exclaimed he, with wrath in his voice and eye, as, passing his left arm round the waist of Blanca, he waved his armed right hand before the ravisher’s face ; “ though thou bearest my father’s blood in thy degenerate veins, it shall dye the turf at our feet, if thou loosest not hold of this maiden.” “ Away ! base-born hound — half- Spaniard, away ! and dare not to thwart me in my pleasure,” cried Garcia, foaming with rage and disappointment. Ramiro answered not, but, freeing the frighted girl by a dexterous manoeuvre from the grasp of Garcia, and placing himself between them, he struck the latter with the flat side of his weapon, as if he thought him unworthy of a severer blow, though the fire of his royal blood tingled in his cheeks at the insult. Garcia quailed before the lofty scorn of Ramiro, and he shouted to his attendants to come to his aid. “ Now, for my father’s kingdom I would not let thee escape, dastard as thou art !” said Ramiro, as he strode up to Garcia and forced him to defend himself. In a moment Ramiro was standing over his prostrate and bleeding antagonist with his sword lifted for the death-blow. As he was about to strike in self-defence, hearing the rapid step of Garcia’s assistants, he saw that they were already panic-struck at the sight of their fallen master, and were turning back in flight. Staying his hand, he said, “ Rise, Garcia — for thy father’s sake I spare thee. Thou wilt henceforth avoid the son of the Moorish Caya.” Then taking the lady Blanca, who was fainting with the effects of her terror, once again in his arms, he bore her into the house of Don Pedro, and left the vanquished ravisher in pain of body and mortification of heart. “ Tell me, lady,” said Ramiro, as he leant over the form of the reviving Blanca, “ how art thou ? Assure me that I leave thee well and happy.” “ Leave me not yet, noble Ramiro,” said Blanca sweetly. “ How can I sufficiently repay thee for thy valiant protection ? — all I can imagine would be too poor a recompense !” “ Oh, not too poor, dear Blanca,” said Ramiro passionately, “is the gift thou canst bestow : give me thy love, if one who hath the stain of Moorish lineage may hope to deserve it, and I will bless the opportunity that gave thee to my anus.” Blanca only blushed in answer. She knew Ramiro had loved her long before, and that he was honoured and esteemed by her father. The lovers plighted their troth to each other that hour, and felt themselves worthy of one another. The ferocious temper and evil heart of Garcia left him no repose until he had matured a scheme of vengeance to effect the ruin of Ramiro, if possible, before the return of his father. All the more violent means he rejected, as he was unwilling to compass so important an event except by plausible pre- texts. He therefore determined to work upon the fears of Elvira, and as far as possible to arouse her jealousies. Hav- ing first simulated a show of repentance for his past ill treat- ment, which he did so well as effectually to deceive the unsus- picious queen, ho next informed her that a secret correspon- dence had been carried on between Caya and the king during the whole period of the last expedition, forged proofs of which he showed her ; and insinuated that Caya had succeeded in making the king promise to put Ramiro in possession of the fairest portion of his dominions, to the exclusion of Elvira’s offspring. This latter stratagem did not succeed so well with Elvira, and she openly told him she had too great faith in Caya’s friendship for her to believe she would seek to de- prive her of her queenly prerogative, or her children of their just rights. Garcia for a long time continued to follow up his plan by these insinuations and others of a similar kind, but when he found he was playing a wrong game, he could no longer conceal his rage, and he warned Elvira not to oppose him in his attempts to get rid of Ramiro, with a sincerity which the unhappy woman well knew was unaffected. Garcia’s first step was a demand that a council of the nobi- lity should be held to determine upon a matter to be brought forward by him, at which council the queen should preside in person. This being granted, he formally accused Ramiro of having attempted his assassination, exhibited his wound, and produced his attendants, who had been suborned by him, to testify to the truth of the accusation. Ramiro was then summoned to answer to the grave charge of having attempted the life of the heir to the crown — a crime for which death by torture was the punishment in Navarre. Ramiro defended himself by narrating the circumstance of his encounter with Garcia simply as it occurred, along with the cause which led to it ; and the beautiful Blanca shrank not from appearing before the court and the nobles, to bear witness for her be- trothed. Several of the nobles, however, who were in the interest of Garcia and the abettors of his projects, declared that the testimony of Blanca was not sufficient to clear Ramiro of the imputation, and demanded that judgment should be given against him. Don Pedro, who had been aware of the true facts of the case, burning as he was with resentment against Garcia, besought of the queen, for the sake of justice, and as a punishment due to a rebellious and unnatural son, that Garcia, on the contrary, should be made to plead against the charge of having offered violence to the daughter of the king’s vicegerent. Elvira was about to decree that Garcia’s charge had not been substantiated, when she caught the eye of the accusant fixed upon her with a look of demoniac malignity which chased the blood from her cheek, and made her tongue cleave to the roof of her mouth. Her fortitude was nearly deserting her, and her love of justice giving way to her fear of Garcia’s cruel revenge, when a stir was heard at the entrance of the court, and Caya, with disor- dered dress, dishevelled hair, and eyes of. fire, rushed up to the foot of the tribunal, and throwing herself on her knees on the marble step, clasped the feet of Elvira, and looked up into the queen’s face without speaking a word. “ What does this Moorish devil in our hall of justice ?” said Garcia, in a stern voice: “ remove her.” No one stirred, for all were intently watching the scene. Caya still knelt without speaking, looking up to the queen’s face ; but now the large tears were gathering in her eyes, under their jet-black lashes, and now they rolled down upon her dark cheek, which was no longer lustrous with the hue which Sancho in his youthful years had loved to look upon. Elvira gently stooped her head towards the suppliant, and was about to speak to her, when Garcia, with increased vehe- mence in his tone, again demanded her removal, and Elvira, shudderingly, drew back. “ Oh, listen not to him !” at length gasped Caya; “ heed not his cruel voice. Thou wilt not give my boy to his bloody vengeance ; thou wilt not put his precious limbs upon the wheel ; thou wilt not tear his manly sinews with red-hot pin- cers ! Oh, queen, give me back my Ramiro !” “ Nay, Caya, what will become of me? — there is misery before me whichever way I turn !” said Elvira, as she saw Garcia approaching. “ Stand back !” shouted Caya, springing to her feet, and speaking to Garcia ; then turning to Elvira, “ I charge thee let him not touch me — if thou valuest the life of thy son, admonish him to beware of hurting a hair of the Moorish woman’s head, or of that of his child : and not of my child alone — of the child of Sancho of Navarre. And thee, too, Elvira, I charge to beware how thou givest over to judg- ment the offspring of thy lord J Hast thou no pity, Elvira ? Look not to Garcia — look to me. Dear Elvira (and here Caya ventured to take the queen’s hand), pity thy poor Caya, thy servant, and Sancho’s servant, who never willingly offended thee. Thou wilt — I see thou wilt. I am thy friend once more — thy sister !” she whispered, as her tears flowed upon the neck of the subdued Elvira, and she clasped her to her bosom. The queen, then, confirmed in her decision by the assenting looks and murmurs of the lord deputy and the majoi’itv of the council, declared Ramiro guiltless of the crime imputed to him, and the assembly broke up. “ Caya,” said Elvira, as they retired together, “ I have done much for thee this day. I have leaned towards thy child against my own. I have made an enemy of the fruit of 324 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. my own womb for the sake of a rival in my husband’s love.” “ For the sake of truth and justice thou hast done it,” replied Caya, “ and thou shalt have thy reward.” “ Thou knowest not what it is to fight against the tempta- tions which nature puts in our path— pray that thou mayest not know them.” “ I have had a victory many times over such,” said Caya, “ or thou wouldst not now be queen. Perchance other such temptations may arise — and oh, Elvira, be sure they shall not overcome me.” Caya spoke prophetically, but even she could not have guessed how soon or to what an extent her constancy was to be tried. Garcia left the council maddened -with rage, and burning with thoughts of vengeance, not only against Ramiro, who had supplanted him in his love, and Pedro, who had been made deputy, principally with the intent that he should watch and counteract his villanies, but against Elvira and Caya, and even Blanca. Some faint outlines of a design either to cut off Sancho himself, and usurp the whole of his father’s posses- sions, or at least compel him to share the sovereignty with him, began also to connect themselves together in his thoughts. In short, he was determined that he should accomplish the ruin of all, and that some blow should be struck instantly, for Sancho was already on his -way to Navarre. A circumstance, of trifling moment in itself, furnished him ■with sufficiently plausible means of entering at once upon his plan. Sancho had taken in fight from a Moorish chieftain a most beautiful horse, which in a short time became such a favourite with him, that, fearing some accident would deprive him of the noble steed amidst the perils of war, he had sent him home to Elvira, with strict injunctions that no one should be suffered to mount him in his absence. These injunctions were forgotten by the queen, who suffered Don Pedro to use the animal occasionally. This fact Garcia laid hold of to sus- tain him in accusing the queen of adultery with Don Pedro, and he announced to the nobles his intention of so doing on the arrival of his father. Sancho had been six years away, and had heard of nothing in the interim from Navarre that was not calculated to diminish the little love he ever felt for Elvira, and increase the romantic attachment he felt towards Caya. Ramiro, the offspring of that attachment, he loved beyond all his sons for his noble- ness of nature and person, and he secretly wished for some excuse for distinguishing him above the others. For those six years he had been sojourning in the scenes ofCaya’s child- hood, where every thing reminded him of her, and of his early amour ; and as it would only have been of a piece with the practices of royalty in even later and more civilised times to have divorced himself from Elvira, he must not be over- harshly dealt with if he confessed to himself that he would be happier to find her dead than living on his return. What his thoughts were, therefore, may be guessed, when, as the gates of Najara were flung open for his entrance, he was met with the intelligence that his queen and her alleged paramour were conspiring against his honour, his kingdom, and his life! Sancho could imagine no possible motive by which Garcia might be actuated in preferring his accusation, ignorant as the king was of what had lately occurred, so he at once or- dered the queen to be arrested, and to be brought to trial in the Cortes of the kingdom. The unhappy Elvira was not allowed even to see her lord on his return, but was thrown into a dungeon, as was also Pedro, until the preparations for the trial were complete. When the day arrived, Elvira and Pedro were led prisoners into that hall of justice in which they had so lately sat as judges. Elvira cast a mournful and reproachful look towards Sancho, who sat cold and severe upon his chair of state, but he did not notice her. She was so thin, and pale, and wretched-looking, that the very officials of the court wept at the sight of her ; while those to whom she had been kind and merciful in her day of power, groaned audibly as they surmised the event of the trial. She was placed on a seat in the centre of the hall, and the preliminaries were at once proceeded with. Garcia first came forward, and repeated his accusation, adding a tissue of circumstances calculated to confirm his statement. When he had finished, an officer desired the queen to defend herself against his testimony. “ If I had been unfaithful to Sancho,” said she, “ it was be- fore thy birth, Garcia ; for neither a gleam of Sancho’s good- ness, nor a feature of his face, has descended to thee ! Some devil betrayed me in my dreams, and left me his image to nurse at my bosom, and bring up at my knee.” “Is this thy answer?” said Garcia, with a bitter smile ; “this reviling of the first-born of thy king will not save thee from the stake.” “ The stake !” shrieked Elvira, “ and is it to this thou bringest me?” And then rising, and standing before Garcia, she continued — “ Man — for son I cannot call thee now — how canst thou be so cruel ? Is there no voice in a mother’s misery to touch thy heart ?” Garcia answered not, but desired the officer to proceed and summon the next witness. The officer called out the name of Gonsalo ! Not alone Elvira, but the whole court were surprised to see the king’s second son presenting himself as his mother’s accu- ser. Gonsalo had a new series of alleged facts to produce. He had been allured by the promises of Garcia, and his avarice and love of power outweighed whatever feelings of reluctance he might otherwise have experienced. His courage failed him, however, as he perceived those looks of aversion among the spectators which it required more firmness than he possessed to disregard; and having closed his testimony, he was slink- ing away, in order to escape the glance of Elvira, when she called him back, and catching his hand, addressed him “ What have I done to thee, Gonsalo, that thou shouldst blast my fame and take away my life? I would not injure a hair of tliy head ! Three times I snatched thee from the grave before thy childhood was past, when thou wert ailing. I lost strength and sleep and beauty while bending over thy cradle. I would I had been in my grave before thou sawest the light ! I will not eurse thee — I will not even beg thy pity ; but when thou hast children of thine own, thou mayest guess what thou hast made me suffer, and that will be curse enough— go!” “ The infante Don Fernando, appear !” cried the officer. A pang, as if her brain had been pierced with a fiery needle, smote the wretched mother as the boy answered to his name. A loud buzz of disapprobation ran through the assembly, and Sancho himself seemed as if he coidd bear the unnatural scene no longer ; but intense curiosity now prevailed with all, and overcame every other feeling. A dead silence ensued while Fernando stood confronting the queen. He was a pale, light-haired lad, with exceedingly soft blue eyes, which he inherited from the pure stock of the Gothic sovereigns of Spain, descending to him unbroken from that glorious time when Pelayo swayed the strongest European sceptre, before Tarik led his conquering bands from Africa. His ringlets streamed down his shoulders as he bent his head and crossed his small white hands upon his breast in token of reverence towards the king. As he appeared there in the graceful dress suited to his years, he looked more like a crea- ture of dreams, when holy imaginations colour them, than a false witness against his own mother. Elvira looked at him for full a minute without moving or speaking, until at length his innocent-looking beauty gave birth to some vague confi- dence in her that ne was not coming to destroy her, but perhaps the contrary. The moment this feeling took pos- session of her, she bounded forward with a shriek of delight, and flinging herself on the ground before him, she clasped his knees, and letting her head sink between her arms, she en- deavoured to stay so, while she wept for the first time since she entered the hall. Fernando, however, drew back violently, and disengaged himself from her embrace. The queen looked up at him half-vacantly as he did so ; and then she arose, and in a solemn though flattering voice she said, “ What art thou going to do or to say, Fernando? They may take me away to the stake and burn me, if thou beliest me now, for thy crime will be worse torture to me than any they can inflict.” “ Speak, Fernando,” said the king. Fernando trembled and hesitated, but a motion from Garcia caught his eye and emboldened him to go on. He told that he had seen Elvira giving to Don Pedro Sesse, from the royal stables, that favourite steed which the king had ordered should be ridden by none but himself. Sancho’s brow flushed with sudden anger when he heard this. “ Elvira ! Pedro !” said he, “is this true ?” “ It is true,” said Elvira, “ but I alone am guilty ! Pedro knew not of thy command. As I live, he did not. Let me suffer, oh, Sancho, for this one fault, but pardon the inno- cent !” “ She prays for pardon for her paramour !” cried Garcia, exultingly; “ what other proof is needful?” THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 325 “ Hast thou aught more to declare ?” said the king to Fer- nando, in a tone of displeasure. Again the boy trembled, and looked towards Garcia, whose eagle eye was like a guilty spell upon him. “ Let him look at the queen as he speaks,” said Sancho. The boy turned towards his mother, but his cheek red- dened as he did so, and he cast his eyes towards the ground without speaking. “ Speak on !” said the king. “ He W'ill not speak !” said Elvira; “he will not make a liar of Nature, who is telling the truth for him in his cheeks and eyes ! Look, monsters, the tears are coming to his eyes. Oh holy drops, ye should be treasured among saintly relics — ye shall be balm to these parched and thirsty lips !” And here the queen bent to the earth, and kissed the tear-drops on the ground which had fallen from Fernando’s eyes. “ Fernando, speak !” said Garcia. In a voice broken by sobs and terror, Fernando began to say that he had seen Don Pedro stealing by night to the queen’s chamber, when he was interrupted by Elvira, who again clung to him wuth frantic earnestness. “ Thou sawest it not ! Oh, say thou sawest it not ! My boy, the heavy wrath of God will fall upon thee if thou dost not unsay this fearful falsehood. I am not cursing thee, but I would avert the curse. Thou must unsay it. It is not possible mine own flesh could all rebel against me. What is it has bewitched thee, Fernando, to do what devils would leave undone ? Dost thou know what thou art doing to me ? They will burn thy poor mother in the market-place for an adul- teress ! Thou wilt give thy mother to die in the torments of the damned — thy mother, that never crossed thee in thy ways — that fed thee with the milk of her breasts — that re- joiced in thy beauty. Oh, my God ! oh, my God! have pity upon me, and soften this boy’s heart !” said she, looking up for a moment, and then coaxingly fawning upon Fernando, with a faint smile upon her features. She continued— “My child! my pretty boy Fernando! wilt thou not unsay those wicked words? Ah, let me kiss thee, and say I forgive thee, and we shall be mother and son together for the rest of our days in some far off place out of the ways of these people. I will love thee better than they, Fernando. They are killing thy soul now, and they will kill thy body after, as they are killing mine, if thou dost not hearken to me. Oh, that I might have life and length of days, only to be away with thee where I could look into thy blue eyes and play with thy golden curls from morning till night. Oh, child, have mercy upon me !” “ Mother !” cried Fernando, throwing himself upon the queen’s neck, “ forgive me, and I will unsay all 1” Elvira wound her arms about the infante’s form, kissed him without saying a word, and fainted at his feet. “ Her artifices have prevailed with the boy,” said Garcia, with ill-dissembled rage, “but the testimony of others is not to be thus overborne.” “ Wilt thou enter the lists against her champion, if any dare to defend her with his sword ?” said the king. Garcia was silent. “ If thou wilt not,” said Sancho, “ Elvira shall be declared innocent, and her accusers traitors.” “ Let her champion appear, then,” replied Garcia. “ What my tongue asserts, my sword shall ever prove. There lies my guage,” and he threw his glove into the centre of the floor. But in all that crowded assembly there was not one who came forward to take up the guage of Garcia. They all pitied the queen, and believed her innocent, but the dread of the future tyrant w r as too powerful a motive to keep them, so far at least, on his side. “ At the end of three days,” said the king, “ if no cham- pion appear for the queen, she shall perish by the flames, and with her, her alleged paramour.” * * * * * * The lists were prepared, and at the noon of the second day a knight in bright silver armour, whose name was unknown, appeared in the queen’s defence. His vizor was drawn over his face, and his device gave no clue to the curious. The whole court was assembled to witness the combat, and Elvira occupied a seat nearest to the side at which her champion appeared. The signal was given, and the contest commenced. It was soon decided. The unknown knight quickly unhorsed isa antagonist, and after a brief struggle with the sword, Ghrcia fell to the earth desperately wounded. “ Confess the innocence of the queen,” said the unknown knight, in a voice which struck Garcia to the soul, “ or thou diest on the spot.” “ She is innocent !” feebly articulated Garcia, as he -writhed in the agony of his wounds. Taking up the sword of his vanquished adversary, the un- knowm cavalier brought it to the feet of Elvira, and then, gracefully bending on one knee, he lifted the vizor from his casque, and for the first time the queen knew that she had been indebted for life and the preservation of her fair fame to the son of the king by her Moorish rival. “ Madam,” said Ramiro, “ not to me alone, but to Caya thy friend, thy thanks are due. Thou hast been a sister to her — let me be a son to thee.” Elvira could only weep her thanks. ****** We find in Mariana, and also in Rodrigo of Toledo, that Sancho of Navarre, at his death, partitioned his kingdom thus : — To his eldest son Garcia he left Navarre and Biscay ; to Gonsalo he left Ribagorza; to Fernando, Castile ; and Arragon to a natural son named Ramiro. This was that Ramiro of whom mention is made in the preceding narrative. But v r e do not find in any of the old authors (and much we wonder that any event connected with so curious and touching a piece of history could have escaped them) that this same Ramiro enjoyed the lordship of Arragon with Blanca, the beautiful and virtuous daughter of the cavalier Don Pedro Sesse. R. M. ON THE IMPORTANCE OF SELECTING CLEAN FLAX SEED. In recent numbers of the Penny Journal, Martin Doyle has published two valuable papers upon the necessity of selecting good seed, and I would wish to call the attention of the cul- tivators of flax, who form so numerous a body amongst the small farmers of the north and west of Ireland, to the absolute necessity of attending to the seed of that plant, and not to purchase the cheaper seed that is sometimes offered to them, in preference to that which, although rather more expensive, is yet free from the seeds of a very noxious weed which are usually mixed with the cheaper flax-seed. The weed to which I refer is one of those curious plants, which, from their pecu- liar structure, are unable to draw their nourishment directly from the earth, but are obliged to feed themselves by sucking the juices of other plants, and thus destroying them, or weak- ening them so greatly as to prevent their producing a crop that will repay the cultivator for his labour and expense. In the case of the flax, the weed grows from seeds deposited in the earth with the seed of the flax, and at first appears as a slender pale thread, twisting about in different directions un- til it meets with one of the stems of the flax, when it immedi- ately twists itself round it, and produces curious little knobs upon its inner side, which pierce the outer coat or bark of the stalk of the flax, and suck from it the juices which it has drawn from the ground, and prepared for its OAvn nourish- ment. The root of the weed then withers away, but the weed itself commences its most vigorous growth, for until it had obtained a victim upon which to feed, it had been unable to produce any thing except the slender fibre that I have already mentioned, and Avould have soon died if it had not succeeded in seizing upon the flax. Its stem then increases in thickness, and, twisting round all the flax plants that it can reach, it receives enough of nourishment to produce its flowers, which form pretty little yellowish white heads, of about half the size of a nut, consisting of numerous small flowers so placed toge- ther as closely to resemble a small mulberry in form and ap- pearance, although not in colour. This Aveed is called Dod- der, or by botanists Cuscuta epilinum, and is commonly to be found in flax-fields in several parts of England and Scotland, but is happily less frequent in Ireland, although I have seen it (in 1840) in the county of Mayo. In England it often quite destroys the crop, and I understand that such was the case a few years since in the neighbourhood of Westport and NeAAqjort, county Mayo. I have noAv to point out the way to avoid this pest. It is found that the seed of flax obtained from America is quite free from it, but that it is nearly always very plentiful in seed from Odessa and other parts of Russia. Now, the Russian seed is cheaper than that from America, and so the poor peo- ple are tempted to buy the former in preference to the latter, although, by following an opposite course, they would escape 326 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. the risk of loss which results from the use of seed which is mixed with seeds of the dodder. This I consider as a remarkable proof of the necessity of obtaining clean seed rather than cheap, and deserves in my opinion to be made generally known throughout Ireland by means of the Penny Journal. I conclude by saying to all cultivators of flax, When buying your seed, always ask for that from America, and do not be tempted by the cheaper but dirty seed from Russia, as by doing this you will avoid the most destructive weed to which the crop is liable. C. C. B. ORIGIN AND MEANINGS OF IRISH FAMILY NAMES. BY JOHN O’DONOVAN. First Article. It has for a long time appeared to me a desirable object, as regards the history of Ireland and the information of the Irish people, to communicate to the public a correct account of the origin and signification of the proper names, tribe names, and surnames of the people of Ireland ; more especially as some of the popular writers of the last century have misled them generally into the most, erroneous notions with regard to these classes of names. The errors of these writers have not only been adopted by the usually shallow compilers of county surveys, county histories, and other topographical works down to the present time, but also to some extent by writers of a higher order and greater learning and research, as Lanigan and Moore. Indeed, strange as the fact may seem, it is nevertheless unquestionable that there are very few in the country whose ideas upon this subject are conso- nant with the truth ; and hence, upon most occasions on which an Irishman adopts an anglicised form of his Christian name and surname, the effect of the alteration is such as completely to conceal, and not unfrequently to misrepresent, their original orthography and meaning. On this account it becomes un- avoidably necessary for me, before I enter upon the series of articles which I propose furnishing on this subject, to exhibit and expose the ignorance of those writers to whom I have alluded, and whose theories have produced so erroneous an im- pression upon the minds of the Irish people ; and to this object I purpose to devote the present introductory paper. The fallacies which I have to expose were unknown to the Irish people until towards the close of the last century ; the writers of an earlier period having been too well informed to lead their readers into error. But their works being for the most part in a dead language, and very rarely to be met with, they ceased to have an influence on the public mind, and left the way open for a new race of writers, very ignorant of the ancient language and history of Ireland, to impose their crude theories upon the uninstructed reader. A society of such persons, of whom General Vallancey, Mr Beauford,* and Dr Ledwich, were the most active, was formed for the purpose of giving to the public a series of essays on the antiquities, ancient literature, and topography of Ireland ; and the result of their joint labours made its appearance in a work published periodically under the title of “ Collectanea de Rebus Hiber- nicis,” and since popularly called Vallancey ’s Collectanea. These gentlemen, however, after a time found that their sys- tems had nothing in common, each considering the other as insufficiently informed on the subjects treated of, and I think, with justice ; for, as I trust I shall be able to show on a fu- ture occasion, all were alike ignorant of the matters they pro- fessed perfectly to understand. But though the labours of these gentlemen contributed generally to the propagation of erroneous theories on the subject, it was a work of Mr Beauford’s, published in No. 11 of the Collectanea, which, treating more immediately of this subject, has had the greatest influence on the popular mind ; an influence less owing to any celebrity attached to his own name than to that of Vallancey, whose sanction and approbation this work is generally suppo- sed to have received. With this writer originated the novel theory that the names of tribes and families in Ireland, as usual among the Saxons and Normans, were derived from earlier appellations of the territories and localities which they occupied. To establish this hypothesis he adopts a process of etymological investigation unparalleled in the annals of * Let not the reader confound this Beauford with the author of the ec- clesiastical map of Ireland, for the latter was Dr Beaufort, and his works are distinguished for their accuracy. antiquarian research. In the first place, he takes the liberty of dividing the words into as many parts as he thinks proper ; secondly, he makes such changes in the vocables thus obtained as he finds convenient to his purpose ; thirdly, he gives each of these words new meanings of his own ; and lastly, he places the tribes whose names he thus explains in localities which many of them never occupied. As the errors of this writer, though so long before the pub- lic, have never been sufficiently exposed, I shall here un- dertake the task, by the exhibition of a few examples of his process of investigation, taken without selection, and given as a fair specimen of the whole. It will be necessary for me, however, in fairness, to quote in the first instance the author’s own account of the theory which he has put for- ward to account, in his novel manner, for the origin of the names of men and tribes in Ireland. “ On the increase of population and the introduction of agri- culture, these wandering tribes were under the necessity of confining themselves to certain permanent districts ; which districts were generally denominated either from their situa- tion or quality of the soil, and from which also the inhabitants obtained their collective appellation ; whence, in the most ancient Irish poems and histories, we frequently find clan and slioght added to the name of the country , to signify the inha- bitants ; as clan Cuilean, slioght Breoghain, and slioght Gae ; wherefore the children and race of any division were the invariable names by which the ancient Hibernian septs were distinguished from the remotest antiquity, and not, as fre- quently asserted, the children and descendants of their respec- tive leaders.” Again, “ The chiefs of every district were elected from the elder branches of the dynasts ; and the kings of the princi- palities from the senior chief of the subordinate districts, who on their advancement to the dignity obtained the name of the district or clan over which they presided ; it being an univer- sal custom amongst all the Celtic tribes to denominate the noblesse, with their other appellations, from the place of their residence ; a custom in some measure yet retained in the Highlands of Scotland. The variety of names used by the ancient Irish have occasioned great confusion in their history; for before the tenth century surnames were not hereditary, and prior to the establishment of the Christian religion in this country no person was distinguished by one permanent nomination. It is true, during their pagan state every child at his birth received a name generally from some imaginary divinity under whose protection he was supposed to be ; but this name was seldom retained longer than the state of infancy, from which period it was generally changed for others arising from some perfection or imperfection of the body, the disposi- tion and qualities of the mind, achievements in war or the chace, the place of birth, residence, &c. so that it frequently happened that the same person was distinguished by several appellations. Our ancient historians, not properly attending to this, have committed great errors in relating the transac- tions of early periods, by asserting the same action to be per- formed by several different people, which in reality was per- formed by one only, thereby throwing their history and antiqui- ties into too distant a period. A similar error has also been committed by not considering the dignitary names of the chiefs, who on their election to the government constantly obtained the name appertaining to the clan over whom they presided, or rather that of the district. These dignitary names becoming in the tenth century hereditary and family distinctions, created new difficulties to genealogists of latter ages.” — Collectanea, vol. iii, p. 257. Now, it will be very easy to prove that these assertions are wholly erroneous, and are mere conjectures, unsupported either by history or etymology. In the first place, the three instan- ces above given to show that the words clan and slioght were prefixed to the names of territories among the Irish, instead of supporting the author’s assumption, go to prove the very contrary, for in the first two instances the names adduced are not names of territories, but of men ; and with regard to the third instance, there was no such name among the ancient Irish, and it is a pure fabrication of Beauford’s own imagina- tion ! As for his assertion that in the time of paganism every child at his birth received a name generally from some imagi- nary divinity under whose protection he was supposed to be, it is another pure fabrication ; there is no authority in any of our ancient documents that men were called after their pagan deities, except in three instances, in the darkest period or Irish history ; and even from these it does not appear that THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 327 such names were given immediately after the birth of the individuals referred to, but that they assumed them after having arrived at the age of maturity. These instances are to be met with in ancient Irish MSS. concerning the history of the Tuatha De Dananns, a colony said to have preceded the Scoti in Ireland, at a period now generally believed to be beyond the reach of authentic history ; but granting that what has been handed down to us concerning this colony is authentic, it does not follow from any thing stated that even among them every child at his birth received a name from a divinity under whose protection he was placed ; for the sum of what has been handed down to us on this subject is, that on the arrival of the Scotic or Milesian colony in Ireland the Tuatha De Dananns were governed by three kings, who were distinguished by surnames derived from the names of the gods whom they worshipped. Thus, one of those kings, whose real name was Eochy , was, it is said, usually styled Mac Greine, because he worshipped the sun; the second, whose proper name was Eathur, was called Mac Cuill , because he worshipped the hazel tree, for I suppose men generally lived on nuts in his time ; and the third, whose proper name was Teathur, was called Mac Ceachta, i. e. son of the plough, for he worshipped that useful implement as his god ! We have no instance of men having been named after pagan deities but these three, and I venture to say that they are not suffi- cient to establish Beauford’s hypothesis. But a stronger ar- gument than this can be urged against his theory, namely, that among all the pagan names of men which have been pre- served by our authentic annalists, not one appears to be called after a pagan deity ; and if it had been a general cus- tom to call children after such deities, it might be expected that at least a few of them would have been transmitted. Since, then, they have not been transmitted, how, I would ask, did Mr Beauford discover that such a custom had ever ex- isted ? It is true that after the establishment of Christianity in the fifth century, the descendants of the pagan Irish who entered into holy orders, or into the monastic state, had their pagan names sometimes changed, as we learn from the lives of the saints of the primitive Irish church, but no documents now remain to prove, or even suggest, that such a change had been made previous to the introduction of Christianity. It is undeniable that cognomens, epithets, or sobriquets, were fre- quently added to the first name from some warlike exploit, or from some perfection or imperfection of body, colour of hair, or disposition of mind ; but this continued to be the custom in Christian times, and still continues so, but no authority has been discovered even to suggest that any change of the origi- nal pagan name had occurred previous to the introduction of Christianity ; and we find that even long after that period many distinguished Irish bishops, abbots, and other ecclesias- tics, bore the names of their pagan ancestors. It is also a groundless assumption that the chief changed his name for that of the territory after his election to the government, or that the names of either the clan or district became surnames or family names in the tenth century. Can any one believe that Brian was the name of the territory of the O’Briens before the establishment of the name O’Brien? Was Donnell the name of the territory of the O’Donnells pre- vious to the tenth century ? Was Mall the name of the prin- cipality of the O’Neills ? So much then for Mr Beauford’s general theory as put for- ward in the introduction to his "work. I shall now proceed to show the equal fallacy of the etymological processes by which he attempts to sustain his theoretical assumptions in the work itself ; namely, that the names of Irish tribes and fami- lies were derived from the situations and natural features of the territories they inhabited. 1. “ Clann Cuilean, or the race or children of the corner of the water ; called also Hy na mor, or the district of the sea ; the chiefs of which were denominated Mac na mor aois, the sons of the elders of the sea, by contraction Macnamara,” See. Now, what will be thought of all this etymological induction, ■when it can be proved from history that clann Cuileain sig- nifies the race of Cullen ? The Cuilean or Cullen from whom this tribe took their name is found in the pedigree of Mac Namara, within the authentic period of Irish history, for he flourished in the eighth cen- tury, a period to which our authentic annals reach with per- fect historical certainty. Let us then see how this meaning “ children of the corner of the water” is obtained from the compound clann Cuileain . Apparently by a Yery simple pro- cess, thus : clann means descendants, cuil means corner, and ean water; but regular as this process appears, it is neverthe- less utterly fallacious, for the word clann means children or descendants relatively to an ancestor, not to a locality ; and though the name Cuileain (now anglicised Cullen or Collins) when cut in two, would apparently make the words cuil and ean, still the word is not compounded of cuil, a corner, and ean, water, for the first syllable is short, and the last syllable is a diminutive termination of the same power with the Latin ulus, as in the compounds campulus, colliculus, catulus ; and the word cuilean, whether taken as a common noun substantive or as a proper name, is synonymous with the Latin catulus, or Ca- tullus. The next assertion above made, that clann Cuileain was also called Hy na mor, is untrue, for the name Hy na mor had never any existence except in Mr Beauford’s fancy ; and even if it had, the meaning given for it would not be correct, for hy does not properly mean district, nor does mor mean sea. The assertion that the chiefs of clann Cuileain were called Mac na mor aois is also untrue, for the name was never so written by any one except Mr Beauford. They were uniformly called Mic Conmara, as being the descendants of Cu-mara , who was chief of the clann Cuileain in the tenth century ; and the name Cumara, signifying hero of the sea, was first given to a chief of this family, from his being an expert seaman, not from his dwelling on the sea, for the clann Cuileain or Mac Namaras were not located on the sea, or near the sea, but in an inland territory in the south-east of the county of Clare. 2. “ Cineal Eoghean, or Cean all Eoghain, from cean thuath oil Eogh-an, pronounced Connal Owen, or the princi- pal division of the northern county of the Oil or Bolgse, an ancient district in the province of Ulster, comprehending originally the present counties of Tyrone, Armagh, Donegal, and part of the county of Derry, being'the ancient divisions of Eirgal or Orgall,” &c. Here the name Cineal Eoghain, which had been translated genus Eoghain, i.e., race or progeny of Eoghan, by all the early Irish writers, is made to signify the principal division of the northern county of the Oil or Bolgse. Let us examine how this interpretation has been wrested from Cineal Eogh- ain. In the first place, he spells the name incorrectly, though we cannot see that he gains any point by doing so ; next he takes asunder what he conceives to be its component parts, first metamorphosing the word Cineal, which is cognate with the Latin genus and the English kind, kindred, into Cean all, which he made to signify “ principal division,” and resolving Eoghan, a man’s name, into Eogh-an, to make it signify I know not what ; but as the four vocables thus obtained would not answer his purpose, he took the liberty of adding one more of his own coining, thus making five distinct words of the two original ones. But even allowing that these five vocables are legitimately obtained from the two original ones, I have still a further objection to them, for they do not grammatically co- alesce, or bear the meaning he affixes to them, as there is no word among the five to express principal division or county. And granting further that the five words thus formed could really bear the signification he gives them, it would not follow that the name Cineal Eoghain is so compounded, while in op- position to the testimony of all authentic history ; and we have the testimony of all the authentic Irish annals, the lives of the Irish apostle, and of the most ancient genealogical books, to prove that the great northern race called Cineal Eoghain took that appellation from their great ancestor Eoghan (the son of Niall of the Nine Hostages), who was contemporary with St Patrick, as did a neighbouring race that of Cineal Conaill, from Eoghan’s brother, Conall Gulban. But the supporters of Mr Beauford’s system may say that although it may be true that the Cineal Eoghain took their appellation from their ancestor Eoghan, still that this Eoghan may have taken his name from the territory over which he ruled. I answer, that this does not bear even the semblance of probability, for we have the authority of Cormac’s Glos- sary for asserting that the proper name ' Eoghan (still used as a man’s name in every part of Ireland, and anglicised Owen and. Eugene) was understood by the ancient Irish literati to signify the good offspring, or the goodly born, and this looks much more probable than the signification which Mr Beau- ford wrings from it, for the Irish had many other names simi- larly compounded, as Finghin (now Florence), meaning the fair offspring ; Coemhghin (now Kevin), the beautiful off- spring, &c. Thus it appears that Beauford’s derivation of ‘ the tribe name of Cineal Eoghain is a mere etymological 328 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. phantasy, unsupported by history or etymology. I have also to mention that the extent he gives to the territory of this tribe is too great, for it never comprised the one-fourth part of the present county of Donegal, or any part of Armagh. But I am exceeding the space allowed me for this article, and must defer the remaining examples till next number. LETHE: AN ALLEGORY. BY J. U. U. Has it e’er crossed thy fancy to explore The mystery of that old forgetful river In which the Shade, permitted to renew Its servitude to clay, went down to drink Oblivion of itself and all it was : A dread completion of the work of Death ! Now lend a patient hearing, and I’ll tell thee • — Thou wilt receive it as a wayward dream — The course of this old river. Know it glides Beneath thy steps, with lapse invisible, For but by glimpses mortals may behold it ; And these seem far too glorious for one thought Of dull oblivion ever to intrude On the rapt vision. Not a shadow there From gloomy Hades clouds the living light That glances gaily down the rippling stream. But past description's power, ’tis loud and bright | With trumpet voices, and with silken sails Full-blown with Fortune’s breath ; while from the bank Hope lifts her siren strain, and bids them speed For ever on to happy isles afar. And every ripple teems with springing thoughts — In one sense faithful to the Samian’s creed— A constant iteration of old fancies As if the wise and fools of time came back With their old dreams : forgetful of experience. There system swells on system, bubbles gay. Conventions, empires, powers, authorities, Song’s intellectual fabric, pictures, modes, Those myriad lights, the glory and the glitter Which make that current gaily beautiful. And so it rolls, in its magnificence Tumbling and sparkling up into the sun Like an eternal thing : buoyant and bright Beneath the airs of Heaven that murmur mirth And hope, and life, and pauseless interest. While on its living course no spot is seen That is not far too bright and glorious For the approach of grim decay, or that More mighty and more terrible shadow Death To find a cave to lurk in Thou wilt say, This is not Lethe, whose dull waters glide Sunless among the silent fields of death, Oblivion’s formless valley. Yet attend— Mark well the course of each bright-crested wave : — As it rolls by, the gallant barks it bore Are vanished, and have left no trace, as if They never had existence. Though for ever New shadows fast emerge into the Sun (So like the last, that scarce one notes the change), And take a look of immortality, Incredulous of the Fast, blind to the Future ; Not knowing whence they come, from what they are. Or whither tend. Alas, the]stream With all that went before, is lost below In dim Oblivion's world : It were a dream ' Most fleeting and fantastic, were there not A chain of awful consequence that binds What has been, with what must be. Death and Life, The Past, the Present, and the Future, are But names bestowed on one perpetual stream, In different provinces beneath the Crown Of Him who is the source from whence all comes] And to whom all returns — we see no more But as the gazer from some narrow bridge Looks down upon the waters, when beneath They come from far, and so pass, and are gone. The Domestic Man — T here is no being of the mascu- line gender whom “ the sex” so heartily despise as the do- mestic man. He is an anomaly — a sort of half-way house be- tween the sexes — a concentration of weaknesses — a poor driblet of humanity— a vile caudle-drinker — an auditor of laundress’s bills — an inquisitor of the nursery — a fellow that likes his bed warmed, and takes note of the decay of car- pets — a reader of works on “ cookery” and a “ treatise on teething” — a pill bolter — a man that buys his wife’s gowns and his children’s dresses— a scolder of maid-servants — a fre- quenter of the kitchen — a person who can tell you the price of treacle, and how long a mop should last — a gazer at butchers’ windows — a consumer of ginger wine — a slop eater — a market visitor — a tea maker — Faugh ! He looks like the aborigine of abed-room. He is lean and bilious — delights in black gaiters and a brown greatcoat. He gives his little bandy-legged child a walk in the Park, where he is taken for a brother of one of the nursery maids in delicate health. He entertains his visitors with his discoveries of the tricks of bakers and the machinations of grocers — ennuies them to death with long stories about bad bread, and “ coffee without adulteration.” He always knows what is to be for dinner, what remains in the larder — and employs his gigantic intellect in considering the best mode of cooking it. He is naturally fretful and peevish, and in cold weather has a helplessness of aspect peculiar to himself. These men never look like Englishmen. They never acquire that manly bluff appearance which is the character of our nation. God knows what is the matter with them, but they always seem out of sorts. Their features are sharp — their voices are effeminate, and they are nearly all of them “ troubled with colds.” The business of life with them is to regulate the affairs of housekeeping — their tastes, habits, thoughts, and rivalries, are womanish. Their conversation is about “ poor Mrs” this, and “ poor Lady” that — antiqua- ted matrons, with whom they occasionally compare notes in matters of condolence — yet who have enough of the spirit of their sex in them to despise their male coadjutor, and in their souls they think “ poor Mr” so-and-so the greatest bore alive. They are always complaining ; if not positively unwell themselves — a case of rare occurrence — some of their family is sure to be so — or, if all that should fail, then, at least, a dish has been broken, and there is always a number of stand- ing grievances ready to be produced when occasion requires. “Well, heaven help them!” as Shakspeare says, “for they are sad fools.” They live a long time, these fellows, but they die at last — all the pills and possets in the world will not avert death. The passenger who sees the hearse and mutes, thinks some rational being has died — the stranger, wdio reads the tombstone, thinks that a man moulders below. But are they deceived ? We think so Court Gazette. Petrarch’s Opinion of Money He who expends it properly, is its master ; he who lays it up, its keeper ; he who loves it, a fool ; he who fears it, a slave ; and he who adores it, an idolator. The whole of human virtue may be reduced to speaking the truth always, and doing good to others. Many an acknowledged truth was once a controverted dogma ; the basis of every science has been considered a fun- damental error. Truth is the most compendious wisdom, and an excellent instrument for the speedy dispatch of business. It creates confidence in those we have to deal with, saves the labour of many inquiries, and brings things to issue in a few words. — Spectator. Let us hope the best rather than fear the worst, and believe that there never was a right thing done, or a wise one spoken in vain, although the fruit of them may not spring up in the place designated, or at the time expected. George II., being informed that an impudent printer was to be punished for having published a spurious King’s speech, replied, that he hoped the punishment would be of the mildest sort, because he had read both, and as far as he understood either of them, he liked the spurious speech better than his own. Printed and published very Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin. — Agents: — R. Groombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester ; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool; Slocombe & Simms, Leeds, John Menzies, Prince’s Street, Edinburgh j & David Robertson, Trongate, Glasgow. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 42. SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 1841. Volume I. SfiA i src v. s " ANTRIM CASTLE, THE RESIDENCE OF THE EARL OF MASSARENE The fine old mansion of the noble family of Skeffington, of which our prefixed wood-cut will give a very correct general idea, is well deserving of notice, not only from its grandeur of size and the beauty of its situation, but still more as present- ing an almost unique example, in Ireland, of the style of do- mestic architecture introduced into the British islands from France, immediately after the Restoration. This castle is generally supposed to have been erected in or about the year 1662, by Sir John Clotworty, Lord Massa- rene, who died in 1 665, and whose only daughter and heir, Mary, by her marriage with Sir John, the fifth baronet of the Skeffington family, carried the Massarene estate and title into the latter family. But though there can be no doubt, from the architectural style of the building, that Antrim castle was re-edified at this period, there is every reason to believe that it was founded long before, and that it still preserves, to a great extent, the form and walls of the original structure. The Castle of Antrim, or Massarene, as it is now generally called, appears to have been originally erected early in the reign of James I., by Sir Hugh Clot worthy, who, by the es. tablishment of King James I. had the charge of certain boats at Massarene and Lough Sidney, or Lough Neagh, with an entertainment of five shillings Irish by the day, and 18 men to serve in and about the said boats, at ten-pence Irish by the day each. This grant was made to him by patent for life, in 1609; and on a surrender of it to the king in 1618, it was re-granted to him, and his son and heir John Clotworthy, with a pension of six shillings and eight-pence per day, and to the longer liver of them for life, payable out of the revenue. For this payment Sir Hugh Clotworthy and his son were to build and keep in repair such and so many barks and boats as were then kept upon the lough, and under his command, without any charge to the crown, to be at all times in readi- ness for his Majesty’s use, as the necessity of his service should require. John Clotworthy succeeded his father as captain of the barks and boats, by commission dated the 28th January 1641, at 15s. a-day for himself ; his lieutenant, 4s. ; the master, 4s. ; master’s mate, 2s. ; a master gunner. Is. 6d. ; two gunners, 12d. ; and forty men at 8d. each. On the breaking out of the rebellion shortly afterwards, the garrison at Antrim was considerably increased, and the for- tifications of the castle and town were greatly strengthened 330 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. by Sir John Clotworthy, who became one of the most distin- guished leaders of the parliamentary forces in the unhappy conflict which followed. Still commanding the boats of Lough Neagh, that magnificent little inland sea, as we may not very improperly call it, became the scene of many a hard contest between the contending parties, of one of which Sir R. Cox gives the following graphic account. It took place in 1642. “But the reader will not think it tedious to have a descrip- tion of a naval battel in Ireland, which happened in this man- ner : Sir John Clot worthy’s regiment built a fort at Toom, and thereby got a convenience to pass the Ban at pleasure, and to make incursions as often as he pleased into the county of Londonderry. To revenge this, the Irish garrison at Char- lemont built some boats, with which they sailed down the Black- water into Loughneagh and preyed and plundered all the bor- ders thereof. Hereupon, those at Antrim built a boat of twenty tun, and furnished it with six brass guns ; and they also got six or seven lesser boats, and in them all they stowed three hundred men, under the command of Lieutenant- Colonel Owen O’Conally (the discoverer of the rebellion, who was a stout and active man) and Captain Langford. These sailed over the lough, and landed at the mouth of the Black-water, where they cast up two small forts, and returned. But the Irish found means to pass by these forts, in dark nights, and not only continued their former manner of plundering, but also raised a small fort at Clanbrazill, to protect their fleet upon any emergency. Upon notice of this, Conally and Langford manned out their navy again, and met the Irish near the shore of Clanbrazill ; whereupon a naval battel en- sued : but the rebels being fresh-water soldiers, were soon forced on shore ; and the victors pursuing their fortune, fol- lowed them to the fort, and forced them to surrender it : and in this expedition sixty rebels were slain, and as many were taken prisoners, which, together with the boats, were brought in triumph to Antrim.” But Sir John Clotworthy’s little fleet were not always so successful against the Irish as on this occasion. In an Irish MS. journal of the rebellion it is stated that on the 15th September 1645, a boat belonging to the governor of Mas- sarene was captured by Sir Felim O’Neil, in which were two brass cannon, ten muskets, twelve barrels of salted fish, some sailors, and a company of soldiers. They brought it to the mouth of the river Black-water, at Charlemont. The journalist coolly adds, “ Some of the men w'ere hanged, and some redeemed ! ” And again, according to the same authority, in May 1646, Sir Felim had the good fortune to capture seven boats, taking fourteen men prisoners, and killing above twenty more. However, upon the whole, the governor of Massarene did good service to the cause of the Protector, for wdiich, in consideration of the surrender of his pension of 6s. 8d. a-day, &c, an indenture was perfected on the 14th of August 1656 between the Protector and him, whereby a lease was granted him for 99 years of Lough Neagh, with the fishing and soil thereof, and the islands therein, and also the lough and river of Ban, and as far as the Salmon-leap, containing six salmon- fishings, and two mixed fishings of salmon and eels, &c. ; and being instrumental in forwarding the restoration of King Charles II. after Cromwell’s death, he was raised to the peer- age by patent, dated at Westminster, Nov. 21, 1660, by the title of Baron of Lough Neagh and Viscount Massarene, en- tailing the honours, in case of failure of his issue male, on Sir John Skeffington and his issue male, with whom they have since remained. A new patent, constituting Sir -John Skeffington captain of Lough Neagh, was granted to him in 1680. We shall conclude with a few words upon the castle itself, which is beautifully situated at the extremity of the principal street of the town of Antrim, on the banks of the Six-mile- water river, and immediately contiguous to Lough Neagh. The entrance from the town is through a fine gate-house, in the Tudor style of architecture, built of cut lime-stone, and closed by two folding-doors of cast iron, which are opened from a room overhead by means of machinery. The prin- cipal front of the castle faces the gate-house, and is in the centre of a curtain wall, connecting two large square towers placed at the angles of the building, and which again have smaller circular towers at three of their angles. This front is approached by a magnificent double stone staircase, and presents a great variety of enrichments in the French style of the seventeenth century, and is also decorated with shields having the armorial bearings of the founder’s family, and with medallions containing the portraits of Charles I. and II, The greatest length of the castle, however, runs parallel with the river, from whichjtis separated only by a low parapet wall, while the terraces of the gardens are situated on the other side. These gardens are no less attractive than the castle itself, with which they appear to be of equal age ; they are laid out in the French style, the flower-beds being formed into a variety of patterns, among which that of the fleur-de- lis is the most common and conspicuous. This design is in its way extremely beautiful, and to carry it out fully, no ex- pense or trouble seems to have been spared. The borders are often of triple and quadruple rows of box, between which is laid fine gravel of different colours, wdiich adds greatly to the effect. It is said that a red kind of this gravel was im- ported from Holland, and cost upwards of Is. 2d. a quart. This garden is traversed from east to west by a succession of fish-ponds, of which the most central one is circular, and the rest oblong : and miniature cascades conduct the water from the most elevated of these ponds to the lowest. The timber in this garden is of great age and beauty, particularly the lime and oak ; and it contains two or three specimens of the rhododendron, wdiich are celebrated for their magnifi- cence, being fully fifteen feet in height, and of corresponding circumference. The house contains some fine pictures and curious articles of antique furniture. P. ORIGIN AND MEANINGS OF IRISH FAMILY NAMES. BY JOHN O’DONOVAN. Second Article. In returning to the subject of the origin of Irish family names, I feel it necessary to adduce two or three additional instances of the erroneous statements put for-ward by Mr Beauford, as they have had such an injurious influence with subsequent Irish writers on this subject : — 3. “ Osragii, derived from Uys raigagh, or the kingdom be- tween the waters, the present Ossory, called also Hy Pau- druig, or the district of the country between the rivers, &c., the hereditary chiefs of wdiich were denominated Giolla Pau- druig, or the chief of the country between the rivers, called also Mac Giolla Padruic &c. This seems an exquisite specimen of etymological induction, and I have often heard it praised as beautiful and ingenious ; but it happens that every assertion made in it is untrue ! Osragii is not the Irish name of this territory, but the Latin- ized form of the name of the inhabitants. Again, Osragii is not compounded of Uys and raigagh ; and even if it were, these two vocables are not Irish words, and could not mean what is above asserted, the kingdom between the waters. Again, Ossory was never called Hy Pau-druic, and even if it were, Hy Pau-druic would not mean “ district of the country between the rivers.” Next, the hereditary chiefs were not denominated Giolla Paudruic, but Mic Giolla Paudruic (a name afterwards anglicized Fitzpatrick), from an ancestor called Giolla Paudruic, who was chief of Ossory in the tenth century, and who is mentioned in all the authen- tic Irish annals as having been killed by Donovan, the son of Imar, king of the Danes of Waterford, in the year 975. Moreover, Giolla-Pkadruic, the name of this chieftain, does not mean “ chief of the country between the rivers,” as Mr Beauford would have us believe, but servant of Saint Patrick, which, as a man’s name, became very common in Ireland shortly after the introduction of Christianity, for at this time the Irish were accustomed to give their children names not only after the Irish apostle, but also after other distinguished saints of the primitive Irish church ; and the names of these saints were not at this period adopted as the names of the children, but the w’ord Giolla, or Maol, servant, was gene- rally prefixed to the names of the saints to form those of the children : thus, Giolla Padruic, the servant of St Patrick ; Giolla Ciarain, the servant of St Kieran ; Giolla Caoimhghin, the servant of St Kevin; Giolla Coluim, the servant of St Columb, &c. 4. “ Conmaicne mara, or the chief tribe on the great sea, comprehending the western parts of the county of Galway on the sea coast ; it was also called Conmaicne ira, or the chief tribe in the west, and Jar Connaught, that is, west Connaught ; likewise Hy Iartagh, or the western country ; the chiefs of which were denominated Hy Flaherty or O’Flaherty, that is, the chief of the nobles of the western country, and con- THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 331 taining the present baronies of Morogh, Moycullen, and Ballinahineh.” This is also full of bold assertions, unsupported by history or etymology. Conmaicne does not mean the chief tribe, but the race of a chieftain called Conmac ; Conmaicne mara, which is now anglicised Connamara, was never called Con- maicne ira, and Conmaicne mara and Iar Connaught are not now coextensive, nor were they considered to be so at any period of Irish history. Conmaicne mara was never called Hy Iartagh, and O’Flaherty was not the ancient chief of Conmaicne mara, for O’Flaherty was located in the plains of Moy Seola, lying eastwards of Lough Corrib, until he was driven across that lake into the wilds of Connamara by the De Burgos in the 13th century. Again, the surname O’Flaherty does not mean “ the chief of the nobles of the western district,” but is derived from Flaithbheartach, who was chief of Hy JBriuin Seola, not of Conmaicne mara, in the tenth century ; and this chief was not the first who received the name, for it was the name of hundreds of far more distinguished cheiftains who flourished in other parts of Ireland many centuries before him, and O’Flaherty became the name of a far more power- ful family located in the north of Ireland ; which shows that the name has no reference to north or west, but must look for its origin to some other source. Now, to any one ac- quainted with the manner in which compound words are formed in the Irish language, it will be obvious that the name Flaithbheartach is not derived from a locality or territory, but that it is formed from flaith, a chief, and heart, a deed or ex- ploit, in the following manner : flaith, a lord or chief, flaith- bheart, a lordly deed or exploit ; and by adding t-he adjective and personal termination ach (which has nearly the same power with the Latin ax), we have flaithbheartach, meaning the lordly-deeded, or a man of lordly or chieftain-like exploits. According to the same mechanism, which is simple and regu- lar, are formed several other compound words in this language, as oirbheart, a noble deed ; oirbheartach, noble-deeded, &c. Finally, Mr Beauford is wrong in the extent which he gives to Conmaicne mara. He is wrong in giving Morogh as the name of a modern barony, for there is none such in existence; and we have the most indisputable evidence to prove that the territory of Conmaicne mara, now called Connamara, never since the dawn of authentic history comprised more than one barony. It is to be regretted that these etymological phan- tasies of Mr Beauford about the country of O’ Flaherty are received as true history by the O’Flahertys themselves, and repeated in modern topographical and literary productions of great merit. I shall give one specimen more of this writer’s erroneous mode of explaining topographical names, and I shall then have done with him. 5. “ Caikbre Aobhdha, or the district on the water, from cairbre, a district, and aobhdha, waters ; the present barony of Kenrv, in the county of Limerick. This country was also denominated Hy dun na bhan, or the hilly district on the river ; the ancient chiefs whereof were called Hy Dun Navan or O’Donovan, that is, the chiefs of the hilly country on the river.” Here every single assertion comprises a separate error. Cairbre does not mean a district, and aobhdha does not mean waters. This territory was not otherwise called Hy Dunna- van ; and even if it were, that name would not mean “ the hilly distinct on the river.” Again, the territory of Cairbre Aobhdha is not the barony of Kenry, neither is it a hilly dis- trict, but one of the most level plains in all Ireland ; and lastly, the name O’Donovan does not mean “ chiefs of the hilly district on the river,” for this family name was called after Donovan, the son of Cathal, chief of the Hy Figeinte, a people whose country extended from, the river Shannon to the summit of Slieve Logher, in the county of Kerry, and from Brurec and the river Maigue westwards to the verge of the present county of Kerry. He flourished in the tenth century, and was killed by the famous Brian Boru in a pitched battle, fought in the year 977 ; and his name was derived, not from his “ hilly country on the river” Maigue, as Mr Beauford would have us believe (though it must be acknowledged that he resided at Bruree, which is a dun-abhann, or dun of the river), but from the colour of his hair : for the name is writ- ten by Mac Firbis and others Dondubhan, which signifies brown-haired chief. I trust I have now clearly proved the fallacy of Mr Beau- ford’s mode of investigating the origin and meaning of the names of Irish families and territories. It is by processes similar to the five specimens above given that he has attempted to demonstrate his theory, that the names of Irish tribes and families were derived from the territories and localities in which they dwelt, a theory never heard of before his time ; for up to the time of the -writers of the Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis, all were agreed that the Irish tribes took their surnames from certain distinguished ancestors, while the Saxons and Anglo-Normans took theirs generally from their territories and places of residence. For further information on this subject I refer the reader to Verstegan’s w'ork, entitled “ Restitution of Decayed Intelligence” and Camden’s “ Remains.” The learned Roderic O’Flaherty, in his Ogygia Vindicated, p. 170, speaks on this subject in terms which Mr Beauford could not have mistaken. “ The custom of our ancestors -was not to take names and creations from places and countries as it was with other nations, but to give the name of the family to the seigniory by them occupied/’ To prove that. I am not alone in the estimate that I have thus formed of the speculations of Mr Beauford, I shall here cite the opinions of a gentleman, the best acquainted of all modern writers with this subject, the venerable Charles O’Conor, of Belanagare, who, in a letter to the Chevalier Thomas O’Gorman, dated May 31, 1783, speaking of two tracts which he had published, to refute some errors of Dr Ledwich and Mr Beauford, says — “ Both were drawn from me to refute very injurious as well as very false representations published in the 9th number of the same Collectanea by .Mr Ledwich, minister of Achaboe, and Mr Beauford, a schoolmaster in Athy. Little moved by any thing I have written against these gentlemen, the latter published his Topography of Ireland in the 11th number, the most flagrant imposition that I believe ever appeared in our own or in any age. This impelled me to resume the subject of our antiquities, and add the topography of Ireland, as di- vided into districts and tribes in the second century ; a most curious record, preserved in the Lecan and Glendalough col- lections, as well as in your Book of Ballymote. I have shown that Beauford, a stranger to our old language, had but very slight materials for our ancient topography, and distorted such as he had to a degree which has no parallel, except perhaps in the dreams of a sick man in aphrenzy.”* Again, the same gentleman, writing to his friend J. C. Walker on the same subject, expresses himself as follows : “ Mr Beauford has given me satisfaction in his tract on our ancient literature, published in the Collectanea, and yet, in his ancient topography of Ireland, a book as large as his own might be written to detect his mistakes.” It is quite obvious from the whole testimony of authentic Irish history that the names of tribes in Ireland were not de- rived from the territories and localities in which they dwelt, but from distinguished ancestors; for nine-tenths of the names of territories, and of the names of the tribes inha- biting them, are identical. The tribe names were formed from those of the progenitors, by prefixing the following words : 1. Core, Corea, race, progeny, as Corc-Modhruadh, now Cor- comroe in Clare, Corca-Duibhne, now Corcaguinny in Kerry. 2. Cineal, race, descendants ; cineal Foghain, the race of Eoghan ; cineal Conaill, the race of Conall. This word is translated Genus throughout the Annals of Ulster. 3. Clann, children, descendants ; as clann Colmain, the tribe name of a great branch of the southern Hy-Niall. 4. Dal, tribe, descendants, as Dal-Riada, Dal-Araidhe Dal-g-cais, Dal Mesincorb, &c. This word has been explained by the venerable Bede, and from him by Cormac Mac Cullenan, archbishop of Cashel, as signi- fying part or portion in the Scottic language; but from the manner in which it is used in Irish genealogies, this would appear to be but a secondary and figurative meaning. O’Flaherty seems to doubt that this word could be properly translated part ; but Charles O’Conor, who gave much consideration to the subject, writes in a note to Ogygia Vindicated, p. 175, “ that dal properly signifies posterity, or descent by blood ; but in an enlarged and figurative sense it signifies a district, that is, the division or part allotted to such posterity : that of this double sense we have numberless instances, * Original in possession of Messrs Hodges and Smith, College Green Dublin. 332 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. and that in this second sense Bede’s interpretation is doubtlessly admissible.” 5. Muintir , family, people ; as Muintir Murchadha, the tribe name which the O’Flahertys bore before the establish- ment of surnames. 6. Siol, seed, progeny ; as Siol Aodha, seed of Hugh, the tribe name of a branch of the Mac Namaras in Thomond ; Siol Maoluidhir, the progeny of Maeleer, a great tribe in Leinster, who gave name to the territory of Shelmalier, in the county of Wexford. 7 . Tealach, family ; as Telach Eathach, the family of Eochy, the tribe name of the Magaurans in Breffney. 8. Sliocht, posterity ; as Sliocht Aodlia Slaine, the progeny of King Hugh Slany in Meath. 9 . Ua, grandson, descendant : nominative plural, ui ; dative or ablative, uibh. This prefix in its upright unin- flected form appears in the names of Irish tribes oftener than any of the other seven. Some ignorant Irish scribes have supposed that it signifies a region or coun- try, and some of the modern transcribers of Keating’s History of Ireland have taken the liberty to corrupt it to aoibh, a form not to be found in any ancient or correct MS. In support of the meaning above given may be adduced the high authority of Adamnan, abbot of Iona in the 7th century, who, in his life of his predecessor St Columbkille, invariably renders ua, ui, uibh, nepos, nepotes, nepotibus, in conformity with his habitual sub- stitution of Latin equivalent* for Irish tribe names, as often as he found it practicable. Thus, in the 16th chapter of the second book, he renders Ua Briuin, nepos JBriuni ; in the 5th chapter of the third book he trans- lates Ua Ainmirech, nepos Ainmirech ; in the 17th chap- ter of the same book he translates Ua Liathain, nepos Liathain ; in the 49th chapter of the first book he renders Ui Neill, nepotes Nelli, i.e., the race of Niall ; and in the 22d chapter of the same book he translates Ui Tuirtre, nepotes Tuitre. We have also for the same interpretation the authority of the annalist Tigernach, who, in his Annals of Ireland at the year 714, translates Ui Eachach (now Iveagh, in the county Down), nepotes Eochaidh. On this subject it may not be uninteresting to the reader to hear the opinion of the learned Roderic O’Flaherty. Treat- ing of the Hy Cormaic, a tribe located near Lough Foyle, in the present county of Londonderry, he says — “ Hy or I (which calls for an explanation) is the plural number from Hua or O, a grandson, and is frequently pre- fixed to the names of progenitors of families, as well to par- ticularize the families as the lands they possess, as Dal, Siol, Clann, Kinel, Mac, Muintir, Teallach, or any such name, pur- suant to the adoptive power of custom.” — Ogygia, Part III. Chap. 76. Besides the words above enumerated, after which the names of progenitors are placed, there are others to be met with after which the names of territories are placed, as Aes, people ; Fir or Fear a, men; Aicme, tribe; and Pobul, people; as Aes Greine, i.e., the people of Grian , a tribe located in the present county of Limerick ; Aes tri Magh, the people of the three plains, in the same county ; Feara Muiglie Feine, the men of Moy Feme, now Fermoy, in the county of Cork ; Fir Rois, the men of Ross, the name of a tribe in the present county of Monaghan ; Feara Arda , i.e., the men of Ard, a tribe in the present county of Louth ; Pobul Droma, in Tipperary. Many other names were formed by a mode not unlike the Latin and Greek method, that is, by adding certain termi- nations to the name or cognomen of the ancestors of the tribes. These terminations are generally raighe, aiglie, ne, and acht, as Caenraiglie, Muscraighe, Dartraighe, Calraighe, Ciarraighe, Tradraighe, Greagraighe, Ernaidhe, Mairtine, Conmaicne, Olnegmacht, Connacht, Cianacht, Eoghanaeht, &c. &c. This is the usual form of the tribe names among the descendants of the Belgic families enumerated in the Books of Lecan and Glendalough, as existing in Ireland in the first century, and it is not improbable that the tribe names given on Ptolemy’s Map of Ireland are partly fanciful translations, and partly modifications of them. It appears from the authentic Irish annals, and the whole tenor of Irish history, that the Irish people were distinguished by tribe names only up to the period of the monarch Brian Boru, who published an edict that the descendants of the heads of tribes and families then in power should take name from them, either from the fathers or grandfathers, and that these names should become hereditary and remain fixed for ever. To this period we must refer the origin of family names or surnames. Previously to this reign the Irish people were divided into various great tribes commanded by powerful chieftains, usually called kings, and these great tribes were further sub- divided into several minor ones, each commanded by a petty chieftain, but who was subject to the control of the Righ, or head of the great tribe. Thus, in Thomond the name of the great tribe was Dal Cais, from Cormac Cas, the proge- nitor of the regal family, and of all the sub-tribes into which this great race was divided. Immediately before the estab- lishment of surnames, Brian Boru, whose descendants took the name of O’Brien, was the leader and supposed senior re- presentative of this great race; but there were various other tribes under him, known by various appellations, as the Hy- Caisin otherwise clann Cuileain, who after the reign of Brian took the name of Mac Namara; the Kinel- Fearmaic, who took the name of O’Dea ; Muintir Iffernain, who took the name of O’Quin ; the Kinel Donghaile, who took the name of O’Grady ; the Sliocht Dunchuain, who took the name of O’Kennedy; the Hy-Ronghaile, who took the name of O’Sha- naghan ; th e Hy-Kearney, who took the name of O’ Ahern, &c. The chiefs of these tribes had generally the names of their fathers postfixed to their own, and sometimes, but not often, those of their grandfathers ; but previous to the reign of Brian in the tenth century, these appellations changed in every generation. The next article shall treat of surnames. BOYHOOD AND MANHOOD. Oh, for the merry, merry month of June, When I was a little lad ! When the small birds' throats were all in tune. And the very fields were glad, And the flowers that alas ! were to fade too soon, In their holiday clothes were clad. Oh, I remember — remember well, The scent of the morning grass , Nor was there a sight, sweet sound, or sweet smell. That can e’er from my memory pass : For they lie on my heart with the power of a spell, Like the first love I felt for a lass. Ay, there is the river in which I swam, The field where I used to play — The fosse where I built the bridge and the dam, And the oak in whose shade I lay : But, oh, how changed a thing I am ! And how unchanged are they ! Time was — ah ! that was the happy time ! — When I longed a man to be ; When a shaven chin was a"thing sublime — And a fine thing to be free ; And methought I had nought to do but climb To the height of felicity. But, alas ! my beard is waxen grey Since I mingled among men : And I'm not much wiser, nor half so gay. Nor so good as I was then And I'd give much more than I care to say To be a boy again. N. Old Age. — Remember, old man, that you are now in the waning, and the date of your pilgrimage well nigh expired ; and now that it behoveth you to look towards your final ac- counting, your force languisheth, your senses ' impair, your body droops, and on every side the ruinous cottage of your faint and feeble flesh threateneth the fall ; and having so many harbingers of death to premonish you of your end, how can you but prepare for so dreadful a stranger ? The young man may die quickly, but the old man cannot live long ; the young man’s life by casualty may be abridged, but the old man’s term by no physic can be long adjourned ; and there- fore, if green years should sometimes think of the grave and the judgment, the thoughts of old age should continually dwell on the same . — Remains of Sir Walter Raleigh . THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL.' 333 EXTRAORDINARY DETECTION OF MURDER. It is a speculation perhaps equally interesting to the philoso- phic as to the untutored mind, and dwelt on with as much placidity by the one as by the other, to reflect on the various and extraordinary modes by which the hand of Providence has through all ages withdrawn the dark mantle of conceal- ment from the murderer’s form, and stamped condemnation on his brow — sometimes before the marks of the bloody deed were yet dried, and sometimes after long years of security had seemed to insure final escape, whether the detection arose from some peculiar circumstance awaking remorse so power- fully as to compel the murderer to self-accusation through an ungovernable impulse ; from the hauntings of guilty terror ; from over-anxiety to avoid suspicion ; or from some utterly slight and unforeseen casualty. The popular belief has always been, that of all criminals the shedder of blood never escapes detection and punishment even in this life ; and though a very limited experience may show the fallacy of such belief as regards the vengeance man can inflict, who may conceive that inflicted by the tortured conscience ? — that hell which even the unbeliever does not mock, which permits neither hope nor rest, invests the sum- mer sunshine with a deeper blackness than that of midnight, peoples the air with moving and threatening spectres, em- bodies the darkness into terrible shapes, and haunts even slumber with visionary terrors more hideous than the worst realities. The records of crime in our own and other countries con- tain numerous striking examples of the detection of murder by singular and sometimes apparently trivial means. These have appeared in a variety of published forms, and are of course generally known ; but we shall select a few unpub- lished instances which have come within our own cognizance, and seem to us to possess peculiar and striking features of their own, in the hope that they may be found to possess some interest for the readers of the Irish Penny Journal. The case we shall first select, not so much for the manner of the murderer’s detection as for the singular plan he struck out to escape suspicion, and the strange circumstances con- nected with the crime and its punishment altogether, is that of a man named M'Gennis, for the murder of his wife. M'Gennis, when we saw him on his trial, was a peculiarly powerful-looking man, standing upwards of six feet, strongly proportioned, and evidently of great muscular strength. His countenance, however, was by no means good, his face being colourless, his brow heavy, and the whole cast of his features stern and forbidding. From his appearance altogether he struck us at once as one eminently fitted and likely to have played a conspicuous part in the faction fights so common during his youth at our fairs and markets. But though we made several inquiries both then and since, we could not learn that he had ever been prominent in such scenes, or remarkable for a quarrelsome disposition. He was a small farmer, resid- ing at a village nearly in a line between the little town of Claremorris, and the still smaller but more ancient one of Ballyhaunis, near the borders of Mayo. With him lived his mother and wife, a very comely young woman, it is said, to whom he had not been long married at the time of the per- petration of the murder, and with whom he had never had any previous altercation such as to attract the observation or interference of the neighbours. It was on a market evening of Claremorris, in the year 1830, that the mother of M'Gennis, a withered hag, almost doubled with age, and who on our first seeing her strongly reminded us of the witches that used, in description at least, to frighten and fascinate our boyhood, hobbled with great apparent terror into the cabin nearest her own, and alarmed the occu- pants by stating that she had heard a noise in the potato room, and that she feared her daughter-in-law was doing some harm to herself. Two or three of them accordingly returned speedily with her, and, entering the room, saw the lifeless body of the unfortunate young woman lying on the potatoes in a state of complete nudity. There was no blood or mark of violence on any part of the body, except the face and throat, round the latter of which a slight handkerchief was suffocatingly tied, by which she had evidently been strangled, as both face and neck were blackened and swollen. Who then had perpetrated the deed? was the question whispered by all the neighbours as they came and went. M'Gennis, according to his mother’s account, had not yet returned from the market ; the hag herself would not have had strength to accomplish the murder even if bloody-minded enough to attempt it, and it was next to an impossibility that the young woman herself could have committed self-destruc- tion in that manner. While the callous hag was so skilfully supporting her part in the murderous drama, the chief performer, who had not been seen to return from the market, immediately after the commission of the horrid deed, through whatever motive he had done it, crossed a neighbouring river to Bricken, where it intersects the high-road by means of stepping-stones, as bridge it had none,* though it is occasionally in winter a furious torrent. On the opposite side he chanced to meet a country tailor (we forget his name), who was proceeding from one village to another, to exercise his craft in making and mending ; and the devil suggesting a plan on the spur of the moment, which was to recoil with destruction on his guilty head, he forced the tailor to take on his knees the most fearful oaths that he would never divulge what should then be revealed to him, and that he would act in strict conformity with the directions he should receive, threatening, if he refused compliance, to beat out his brains with a stone, and then fling him into the river. The affrighted tailor having of course readily taken the required oaths, M'Gennis confessed to him the murder of his wife, using at the same time horrible imprecations, that if ever a word on the subject escaped the tailor’s lips, he would, dead or alive, take the most deadly vengeance on him. He then proceeded to cut and dinge his hat in several places, and inflict various scratches on his hands and face, directing the tailor to assert that he had found him attacked by four men on the road, on his return from Claremorris ; after which, to give the more appearance of probability to the tale, he obliged his involuntary accessory after the fact (as the law has it) to bear him on his back to a cabin at some distance, as if the murderer were too weak to proceed himself after the violent assault committed on him. And here, if we could venture to raise a smile in the course of so revolting a detail, we would observe, that it must have been a ludicrous sight to see the tailor, who was but a meagre specimen of humanity, trailing along the all but giant frame of the murderer. The poor tailor’s own feelings were, however, at the time much more akin to mortal terror than to mirth or humour, as he found at the same time his mind burdened with an unwished-for, terri- ble, and dangerous secret, and himself in company with the murderer, who might at any moment change his mind, re- pent his confession, and take his life too. On reaching the cabin, the tailor told the story of the pre- tended attack, as he had been directed, while M'Gennis himself, showing his scratches, and detailing in a weak voice the assault on him by men he did not know, affected such faintness as to fall from the chair on which he had been placed. A farrier was then procured at his request; and to such lengths did he proceed with the plan he had struck out, that he got himself blooded, though the farrier shrewdly perceived at the same time (according to his after evidence) that there seemed to be no weakness whatever about him, except in his voice, and that his pulse was strong and regular. It may seem strange at first that M'Gennis should have divulged to the tailor, an entire stranger, the secret of his guilt, then unknown to any being on earth but his mother ; but an instant’s reflection will show us that when once the thought occurred to make use of the tailor’s assistance in the manner described to aid him in avoiding detection, he might just as well confess the whole terrible secret, which, coming from him, would strike additional terror — the only engine on which he could rely for procuring the secrecy and assistance he required. Accordingly, so strongly was the terror im- pressed, that on the following day the tailor disappeared from that part of the country, and reappeared not, though M'Gen- nis and his mother were at once committed on suspicion, till the approach of the ensuing assizes, when he came forward, probably as much induced by the large reward offered for the murderer’s conviction, as for the purpose of disburdening him- self of his fearful secret in aiding justice. There was much interest excited at those assizes, we recol- lect, by the trial of M'Gennis and his mother, who were ar- raigned together, and of a grey-haired man named Cuffe, for a murder committed twenty-four years previously, of which more , anon ; and with respect to the former parties, there w r as * There is a bridge now in progress of erection over it at this spot. 334 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. ■ unmixed abhorrence expressed by the numerous auditors. It was indeed a revolting sight, and one not readily to be forgot- ten, the towering and powerfully proportioned son in the prime of life, and apparently with the most hardened callous- ness, standing side by side to be tried for the same heinous offence with his withered parent, whose age-bowed head scarce reached his shoulder, while her rheumed and still rat-like eye wandered with an eager and restless gaze round the court, as if she was only alive to the novelty of the scene, and utterly unconcerned for the fearful position she stood in. It was ab- solutely heart-sickening to see how repeatedly the wretched hag pulled her guilty son towards her during the trial, to whisper remarks and inquiries, frequently altogether uncon- nected with the evidence, and the crime she was accused of and believed to have instigated and aided in. Even in the strongly guarded court, it was on the side of the dock remotest from where M‘Gennis stood that the tailor ventured forward to give his evidence, though the murderer’s reckless hardihood of bearing altered not for a moment, either in consequence of his appearance, or during the course of his evidence ; in fact, he seemed to be principally occupied in an- swering his mother’s queries, and quieting her. The testimony of the tailor, bearing strongly the impress of truth, singular as it was, was strengthened by that of the brother of the deceased, who seemed greatly affected while deposing that he had met M‘Gennis in Claremorris on the day of the murder, and that the handkerchief afterwards found round his sister’s neck had been worn by the murderer on that occasion. There was not an iota of evidence for the prisoners, and accordingly a verdict against the son was in- stantly handed in, though the vile hag was acquitted for want of substantiating evidence against her, to the regret of a crowded court. After condemnation, M‘Gennis was placed in the same cell with Cuffe, the other murderer, who had been also convicted; and nothing could be more dissimilar than their demeanour while together. Cuffe was calm, communicative, and apparently pe- nitent, while M‘Gennis was sullen and silent ; nor could ail the exertions of the clergymen who attended him induce him to acknowledge either guilt or repentance. On the morning after conviction, an alarm was given in the cell by Cuffe, and on entering, the turnkeys found that M‘Gennis had anticipa- ted the hangman’s office, by rather strangling than hanging himself. He had effected the suicide by means of a slight kerchief appended to the latch of the door, which was scarcely three feet from the floor, and on a level with which he had brought his neck, by shooting the lower portion of his body along the cell-flags from the door ; and perhaps not the least remarkable fact connected with this extraordinary suicide is, that the handkerchief was the very one with which he had effected the murder of his wife, and which had been produced on the trial. It is very unusual for any article produced in evidence to find its way to the dock, but in this case it ap- pears the handkerchief must by some strange casualty have come into the hands of the murderer again ; and having soaped it highly (he was allowed soap even in the condemned cell), he consummated his fearful deeds with it. Shortly after the discovery of the suicide, we among others visited the cell to see the body, when, in a conversation with the acute and highly intelligent physician to the prison, he ob- served what iron nerves the murderer must have possessed to effect such a suicide, as from his own height, and the lowness of the latch, he must, in order to complete the strangulation, have persevered for several minutes in keeping his neck strained, during any one of which, up to the last few, he might have readily recovered himself. The body was still stretched on the flags, and exhibited the appearance of a very powerful frame ; and when we considered the desperate and utterly fearless mind that had actuated it, it struck us, and others who spoke on the same subject, with more surprise than ever, that M‘Gennis should not have been implicated in outrage and bloodshed long before. Such, however, it W'ould appear, was not the case. On being examined at the inquest, the other occupant of that fearful cell denied all knowledge of his brother convict’s intention to commit suicide, or of his having committed it, until morning, stating that he had slept soundly, and heard no noise whatever during the night— a circumstance which seems rather curious, as the cell was but of small dimensions, and M‘Gennis must have certainly made some noise, from the manner in which he had perpetrated the horrid deed. On the other hand, it is well known that persons, no matter how restless or uneasy they may have been previously, almost in- variably sleep soundly on the night before execution. AH doubts and uncertainty are then over ; the mental struggle has ceased. Rumours, indeed, were afloat that Cuffe had witnessed the commission of the suicide, and that M‘Gennis had urged him to do the like also, in order not to give their enemies and the crowd the gratification of witnessing their execution. But how could this circumstance be known, as Cuffe himself did not admit it ? Another rumour was, that M'Gennis’s mother, at parting with him, had instigated him to the terrible act ; and this we would be more inclined to give credit to, from what we have heard of her character, as well as from our own observation of her demeanour throughout the trial. The crime of murder is always that most revolting and abhorrent to our nature ; but when committed on our bosom partner, whom we have sworn to defend and cherish, and who in her helplessness looks up to us as her only stay and protection on earth, it assumes an utterly fiendish character. That it was felt to be so in M‘Gennis’s case, unfortunately prone as we sometimes are to have sympathy for crime, we were our- selves a witness, as, on the verdict against him being pro- claimed, there was an audible buzz of applause through the court ; and when the account of his suicide afterwards became public, men expressed the most heart-felt gratification that the world was rid of such a fiend. Yet, singular it is that never since has it transpired, at least as far as we could learn, what motive M‘Gennis could have had for the murder of his wife, to whom, as was before stated, he had not been long married. Reports there were, to be sure, that the wife and mother had led an uncomfortable and bickering life since coming together — unfortunately a very frequent case, and one which often produces much misery and crime in humble life ; and that it was in consequence of the division of some milk at their homely evening meal, that an altercation arose, which, through the hag’s instigation, led to the destruction of the daughter-in-law, and eventually to that of the son. But as these rumours only became current after the murder, it is not easy to attach much credit to them, especially if we place any reliance on the statement that M‘Gennis had re- turned home from Claremorris through fields and bye-paths to avoid being seen, as if he had been contemplating the crime. At all events, whether he had contemplated it, or whether it emanated from a sudden burst of wrath fanned by his parent’s wicked suggestions, it seems clearly not to have arisen from jealousy, hatred, or revenge — those passions so generally pro- ductive of such crime ; and there is no one now living to ex- plain the mystery, as the hag died without a word in expla- nation of it. The space we have limited ourselves to, prevents us from saying more in this number of Cuffe, whose crime was of a much more national character, and occupied a good deal the attention of the government of the period ; and whose detec- tion, after a lapse of twenty-four years — in fact, after his having declined gradually from the prime of manhood to hoary- headed age — seems to go farther in supporting the popular prejudice that the murderer can never escape detection. But we shall take an early opportunity to detail to the reader his case, and the state of society that led to it. A. THE BALD BARRYS, OR THE BLESSED THORN OF KILDINAN. “ Make curl'd-pate ruffians Quite bald.” Shakspeare. The breeze of the declining March day blew keenly, as I strode across the extensive fields towards the old burial- ground of Kildinan, in the county of Cork. On reaching the ancient church, I rested on the broken bank that enclosed the cemetery, to contemplate the scene before me, and pause upon the generations of men that have been impelled along the stream of time towards the voiceless ocean of eternity, since the day on which an altar was first erected on this desolate spot, in worship of the Deity. The most accurate observer would scarcely suppose that this enclosure had ever been a place of interment, save that certain little hillocks of two or three spans long, and defined by a rude stone, were scattered along its surface. To a fanciful imagination these would seem to have been the graves of some pigmy nation, concerning THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 335 which tradition had lost all remembrance. But the little se- pulchres were the resting-places of unfortunate babes that die in the birth, or but wake to a consciousness of life — utter the brief cry of pain, and sleep in death for ever. These unbap- tized ones are never permitted to mingle with Christian clay, and are always consigned to these disused cemeteries. With this exception, the old churchyard had long ceased to receive a human tenant, and its foundation could scarcely be traced beneath the rank grass. The father of the present proprietor of the land had planted the whole space with fir-trees, and these flourishing in the rich soil formed by decomposed human bodies for many a foot beneath, have shot up to an unusual size, and furnish a proof that even in death man is not wholly useless, and that, when his labour is ended, his carcase may fertilize the sod impoverished by his greedy toil. In these tall firs a colony of rooks had established their airy city, and while the young settlers were building new habitations, the old citizens of the grove were engaged in repairing the da- mage their homes had received from the storms of winter ; and the shrill discordant voices of the sable multitude seemed to mock the repose of them that occupied the low and silent mansions beneath. While indulging these grave reflections, I saw a man ap- proach by the path I lately trod. He was far advanced in the decline of life ; his tall figure, which he supported with a long- staff, was wrapped in a blue-grey coat that folded close under a hair cincture, and the woollen hat, susceptible of every im- pression, was drawn over his face, as if to screen it from the sharp blast that rushed athwart his way. He suddenly stop- ped, then fixed his glance upon a certain spot of the burial ground where stood a blasted and branchless whitethorn, that seemed to have partaken of the ruin of the ancient fabric, over whose grass-grown foundation it yet lingered. Then raising his eyes to heaven, he sank upon his knees, while his lips moved as if in the utterance of some fei^id ejaculation. Surely, thought I, this old man’s elevated devotion, at such a place and time, proceeds not solely from the ordinary motives that induce the penitent to pray — some circumstance, some tradition connected with this ancient place, has wrought his piety to this pitch of enthusiasm. Thus did my fancy con- jecture at the moment, nor was I mistaken. As the old man rose from his attitude of supplication, I approached and said, “ My friend, I hope you will pardon this intrusion, for your sudden and impassioned devotion has greatly awakened my curiosity.” He immediately answered in the Irish tongue, “ I was only begging mercy and pardon for the souls who in the close darkness of the prison-house cannot relieve themselves, and beseeching that heaven would cease to visit upon the children the guilt of their fathers. This spot brought to my memory an act of sacrilege which my forefathers perpetrated, and for which their descendants yet suffer ; and I did not conceive at the moment that a living being beheld me but God. “ Perhaps,” he continued, “ as you seem to be a stranger in these parts, you have never heard of the Bald Barrys, and the blessed Whitethorn of Kildinan. It is an old tradition, and you may be inclined to name it a legend of superstition ; but yonder is the whitethorn, blasted and decayed from the contact of my ancestors’ unholy hands ; and here stands the last of their name, a homeless wanderer, with no other inheri- tance than this mark of the curse and crime of his race.” So saying, he pulled off the old woollen hat, and exhibited his head perfectly smooth and guiltless of a single hair. “ That old heads should become bald, is no uncommon oc- currence,” I observed, “ and I have seen younger heads as hairless as yours.” “ My head,” he returned, “ from my birth to this moment, never knew a single hair ; my father and grandfather endured the same privation, while my great-grandfather was deprived of his long and copious locks in one fearful moment. I shall tell you the story as we go along, if your course lies in the direction of this pathway.” As we proceeded, he delivered the following legend. The old man’s phraseology was copious and energetic, qualities which I have vainly striven to infuse into the translation ; for an abler pen would fail in our colder English of doing justice to the very poetical language of the narrator. “ Many a biting March has passed over the heads of men since Colonel Barry lived at Lisnegar. He was of the true blood of the old Strongbow chiefs, who became sovereign princes in the land ; and forming alliances with the ancient owners of the soil, renounced the Saxon connection and name. This noble family gloried in the title of M'Adam ;* and the colonel did not shame his descent. He kept open house for all comers, and every day an ox was killed and consumed at Lisnegar. All the gentlemen of the province thronged thither, hunting and hawking, and feasting and coshering ; while the hall was crowded with harpers and pipers, caroughs and buckaughs, and shanachies and story-tellers, who came and went as they pleased, in constant succession. I my- self,” said the old man, sighing, “ have seen a remnant of these good old times, but now they are vanished for ever ; the genius of hospitality has retired from the chieftain’s hall to the hovel on the moor ; and the wanderer turns with a sigh from lofty groves and stately towers, to the shelter of the peasant’s shed ! David Barry and his seven brothers lived with M‘ Adam, and were of his own name and race ; and whether he enjoyed the sport of the chase, or took the diversion of shooting, or moved among the high and titled of the land, they always ac- companied him, and formed a sort of body-guard, to share his sports or assert his quarrels. At that time, on the banks of the Bride, near the ruined tower of Shanacloch, lived a man named Edmund Barry. A thick and briary covert on his farm had been for many years the haunt of a fox celebrated all over the south of Ireland for the extraordinary speed and prowess he evinced in the many attempts made to hunt him down. Many gallant and nobie huntsmen sought the honour of bearing home his brush, but in vain ; and it was a remark- able fact, that after tiring out both hounds and horses in the arduous pursuit, and though his flight might extend over a con- siderable part of the province, he invariably returned at night to his favourite covert. A treaty of peace, it would seem, had been tacitly instituted between Edmund Barry and the fox. Barry’s poultry for a series of years, whether they sought the banks of the Bride or the neighbourhood of the barn door, never suffered by the dangerous vicinity : Reynard would mix with Barry’s dogs and spend an hour of social inter- course with them, as familiarly as if he belonged to the same species ; and Barry gave his wild crafty friend the same pro- tection and licence that he permitted his own domestic curs. The fame of this strange union of interests was well known ; and to this day the memory of Barry’s madra roe survives in the traditions of the country. One evening as M‘Adam and his train returned from a long and unsuccessful chase of Edmund Barry’s fox, their route lay by the ruins of the ancient church of Kildinan ; near this sacred spot a whitethorn tree had stood, and its beauty and bloom were the theme of every tongue. The simple de- votee who poured his orisons to God beneath its holy shade believed that the hands of guardian spirits pruned its luxuri- ance and developed its form of beauty — that dews from hea- ven were sprinkled by angel hands to produce its rich and beautiful blossoms, which, like those of the thorn of Glasten- bury, loaded the black winds of December with many a token of holy fragrance, in welcome of the heavenly advent of Him who left his Father’s throne to restore to the sons of Adam the lost inheritance of heaven. M‘Adam was charmed with the beauty of the tree, and little regarding the sanctity or the superstitious awe attached to its character, was resolved to transfer it to Lisnegar, that his lawn might possess that rare species of thorn which blooms in beauty when all its sisters of the field are bare and barren. Next day, when M‘Adam signified hisintention of removing the whitethorn of Kildinan, his people stood aghast at his impiety, and one and all declared they would suffer a thousand deaths rather than perpetrate so audacious a sacrilege. Now, M‘Adam was a man of high blood and haughty bearing, and accustomed at all times to the most rigid enforcement of his commands. When he found his men unhesitatingly refuse to obey him, his anger sent the glow of resentment to flush his cheek ; he spurned the earth in a paroxysm of rage, exclaim- ing, ‘ Varlets ! of all that have eaten the bread of M‘Adam, and reposed under the shadow of his protection, are there none free from the trammels of superstitious folly, to execute his commands ?’ * Dr Smith, in his History of the County of Cork, thus mentions Colonel Barry : — “ The town of Rathcormack also belongs to this gentleman, who is descended from an ancient branch of the Barry family, commonly called M‘ Adam, who have been seated here 500 years, and formerly sat in parlia- ment ; particularly David de Barry of Rathcormack, who sat in the upper house, in a parliament held 30th Edward L, 1302. South of Rathcormack is a fair stone bridge over the Bride , upon which is this inscription ‘ The foundation of this bridge was laid June 22, 1734 ; Colonel Redmund Barry, Jonas Devonshire, and James Barry, gentlemen, being overseers thereof,”’ 33G THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. ‘ Here are seven of your own name and race,’ cried David Barry, ‘ men sworn to stand and fall together, who obey no commands but yours, and acknowledge no law but your will. The whitethorn of Kildinan shall leave its sacred tenement, if strong hands and brave hearts can effect its removal. If it be profanation to disturb the tree which generations have reverenced, the curse for sacrilege rests not with us : and did M‘ Adam command us to tear the blessed gold from the shrine of a saint, we would not hesitate to obey — we were but exe- cuting the will of our legal chief.’ Such was the flattering unction which the retainers of' M‘Adam applied to their souls, as they proceeded to dese- crate the 6pot hallowed by the reverence of ages, and around whose holy thorn superstition had drawn a mystic circle, within whose limit human foot may not intrude. Men have not yet forgotten this lesson of the feudal school ; the sack of cities, the shrieks of women, the slaughter of thousands, are yet perpetrated without ruth or remorse in obedience to superior command, and the sublime Te Deum swells to conse- crate the savage atrocity. On that evening M‘Adam saw the beautiful whitethorn planted in his lawn, and many were the thanks and high the reward of the faithful few who rose superior to the terrors of superstition in the execution of his commands. But his sur- prise was great when David Barry broke in upon his morn- ing’s repose, to announce that the tree had disappeared during the night, and was again planted where it had stood for ages before, in the ancient cemetery of Kildinan. M‘Adam, con- jecturing that this object of the people’s veneration had been secretly conveyed by them during the night to its former abode, dispatched his retainers again to fetch it, with strict injunc- tions to lie in watch around it till morning. The brothers, obedient to the call of their chief, brought the whitethorn back, and having supported its stem, and carefully covered its roots with rich mould, after the most approved method of planting, prepared to watch round it all night, under the bare canopy of heaven. The night was long and dark, and their eyes sleepless ; the night-breeze had sunk to repose, and all nature seemed hushed in mysterious awe. A deep and unde- finable feeling of dread stole over the hearts of the midnight watchers ; and they who could have rejoiced in the din of battle, were appalled by this fearful calm. Obedience to the commands of M‘Adam could not steel their bosoms against the goadings of remorse, and the ill-suppressed murmur rose against their sacrilegious chief. As the night advanced, im- pelled by some strange fear, they extended their circle round the mysterious tree. At length David, the eldest and bravest of the brothers, fell asleep. His short and fitful snatches of repose were disturbed by wild and indistinct dreams ; but as his slumbers settled, these vague images passed away, and the following vision was presented to the sleeper’s imagination : — t 1 He dreamt that as he was keeping watch where he lay, by the blessed thorn of Kildinan, there stood before him a vene- rable man ; his radiant features and shining vesture lighted all the space around, and pierced awful and far into the sur- rounding darkness. His hand held a crosier ; his head was crowned with a towering mitre ; his white beard descended to the girdle that encircled his rich pontificals; and he looked, in his embroidered ‘ sandal shoon’ and gorgeous array, the mitred abbot of some ancient monastery, which the holy rage of the Saxon reformation had levelled in the dust. But the visage of the sainted man was fearfully severe in its expression, and the sleeping mortal fell prostrate before the unearthly eye that sent its piercing regards to search his inmost soul. ‘ Wretch,’ said the shining apparition, in a voice of thunder, ‘ raise thy head and hear thy doom, and that of thy sacrile- gious brothers.’ Barry did raise his head in obedience to the terrific man- date, though his soul sank within him, before his dreadful voice and eye of terror. ‘ Because you,’ continued the holy man, * have violated the sanctity of the place consecrated to God, you and your race shall wander homeless vagabonds, and your devoted heads, as a sign and a warning to future times, shall abide the pelting of every storm, and the severity of every changing season, unprotected by the defence which nature has bestowed upon all men, till your name and race be faded from the land.’ At this wrathful denunciation the terrified man falls pro- strate to deprecate the fearful malediction, and awakes with a cry of terror which alarms the listeners. As he proceeds to reveal the terrible vision which his sleeping eyes beheld, the crash of thunder, the flash of lightning, and the sweep of the whirlwind, envelope them. As the day dawns, they are found senseless, at a considerable distance from the spot where they had lain the preceding night to guard the fatal tree. The thorn had likewise disappeared ; and, strange to relate, the raven hair which clustered in long ringlets, that any wearer of the ancient coolin might well have envied, no longer adorns their manly heads. The fierce whirlwind, that in mockery of human daring had tossed them, like the stubble of the field, had realized the dream of the sleeper, and borne off their long profuse hair in its vengeful sweep.” Such was the narrative of the last representative of the “ Bald Barrys.” I bequeath it to the reader without note or comment. He of course will regard it according to his par- ticular bias— will wonder how an imaginative people will at- tribute the downfall of families, or the entailment of hereditary disease, to the effect of supernatural intervention; or exclaim, as some very pious and moral men have done, that “ There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” E. W. The Influence of Women How often have I seen a company of men, who were disposed to be riotous, checked all at once into decency by the accidental entrance of an amiable woman ; while her good sense and obliging deportment charmed them into at least a temporary conviction that there is nothing so beautiful as female excellence, nothing so delightful as female conversation. To form the manners of men, nothing contributes so much as the cast of the women they converse with. Those who are most associated with women of virtue and understanding will always be found the most amiable characters. Such society, beyond everything else, rubs off the protrusions that give to many an ungracious roughness ; it produces a polish more perfect and pleasing than that which is received by a general commerce with the world. This last is often specious, but commonly superficial ; the other is the result of gentler feelings, and a more elegant humanity : the heart itself is moulded, and habits of undissembled courtesy are formed Fordyce. Our Attachment to Life— The young man, till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and if needs were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life ; but he brings it not home to himself any more than in a hot June we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of December. But now— shall I confess a truth ? I feel these audits but too powerfully. I begin to count the probabilities of my duration, and to grudge at the expenditure of moments and shortest periods, like misers’ far- things. In proportion as the years both lessen and shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and would fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the great wheel. I am not content to pass away “like a weaver’s shuttle.” Those metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide that smoothly bears human life to eternity, and reluct at the in- evitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth — the face of town and country — the unspeakable rural solitudes — and the sweet security of streets. I would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived — to be no younger, no richer, no hand- somer. I do not want to be weaned by age, or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave ! Any alteration on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, puzzles and discom- poses me. My household gods plant a terribly fixed foot, and are not rooted up without blood. They do not willingly seek Lavinian shores. A new state of being staggers me. Sun and sky, and breeze and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fire-side conversations, and jests and irony— do not these things go out with life ? Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides when you are pleasant with him? Life and Remains of Charles Lamb. A man cannot get his lesson by heart so quick as he can practise it : he will repeat it in his actions. Printed and published very Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin.— Agents : R. Groombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester ; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool; Slocombe & Simms, Leeds; John Menzies, Prince's Street, Edinburgh; & David Robertson, Trongate, Glasgow, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Number 43. SATURDAY, APRIL 24, 1841. Volume I. DRIMNAGH CASTLE, Among the many objects of historical or picturesque inter- est in the immediate vicinity of our metropolis, there are few, perhaps, better worthy of a visit than the subject of our prefixed illustration — the old Castle of Drimnagh, which is situated between the villages of Crumlin and Clondalkin, and distant about three miles from the city. We have here pre- sented to us an ancient castellated residence, of irregular but highly picturesque outline, still surrounded and protected by its ancient moat, and, though in good condition and inhabi- ted, still retaining to such an extent its original character as a place of strength, that as we look upon it, we might almost imagine ourselves living in the ages of its military greatness, and belonging to a state of society very different from that secure and peaceful one in which we happily have our exis- tence. In addition to these circumstances, the Castle of Drimnagh is highly interesting, from the beauty and pic- turesqueness of its situation, which is not only strikingly ro- mantic in itself, but commands a variety of views of the most pleasing character; as the scenery of the City and Bay towards the east; that of the Park, Castleknock, and Clondalkin, towards the north ; and, in congenial harmony with its ivied -walls, the dark mountains of the county of Dublin towards the south — the wild fastnesses of the Irish clans whose predatoi’y aggres- sions it was originally built to repress. The date of the erection of this castle is not exactly known, but there is every reason to presume that it was originally founded as early as the reign of John, by Hugh de Bernivale, who it is probable came with that Prince into Ireland, and COUNTY, OF DUBLIN. at all events received in 1215 a grant from him of the lands of Drimnagh and Terenure, which continued in the possession of his descendants for four centuries afterwards. It is from this Hugh de Bernivale, who, as it is said, derived his descent from the ancient Dukes of Brittany, that the several noble families of Barnwall, in Ireland, descend. He died in 1221, leaving a son and heir, Hugo, who died without issue the 8th of October 1237 ; and another son, Reginald, who becoming heir to his brother, had his inheritance of four carracutes of land with their appurtenances in Drimnagh and Terenure confirmed to him by patent, by king Henry III. These pos- sessions were ultimately, and after much litigation, alienated from the family in the reign of James I, when they passed into the hands of Sir Adam Loftus, ancestor of the noble fa- mily of Ely ; but Drimnagh Castle is at present the property of the Marquis of Lansdowne. The Castle of Drimnagh has been repaired or re-edified at various times, so that it is not an easy matter to determine at present what portions of it are of great antiquity, and w’hat are altogether of more recent date : but upon the whole it will convey a very good idea of the fortified residence of a noble family in Ireland previous to the close of the seven- teenth century. During the troubles consequent upon the great rebellion of 1641, it was considered a fortress of such consequence that the Duke of Ormond had, in 1649, some thoughts of strengthening its fortifications and making it hsl residence, but was dissuaded from doing so by General Purcile and other officers of his army. P. 338 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. THE FOSTER BROTHER. BY WILLIAM CARLETON. There is scarcely a trait of human nature involved in more mystery, or generally less understood, than the singular strength of affection which binds the humble peasant of Irish life to his foster-brother, and more especially if the latter be a person of rank or consideration. This anomalous attach- ment, though it may to a certain extent be mutual, is never- theless very seldom known to be equal in strength between the parties. Experience has sufficiently proved to us, that whilst instances of equality in feeling have been known to characterize it, the predominant power of its spirit has always been found to exist in the person of the humbler party. How to account for this would certainly require a more philosophi- cal acquaintance with human nature than has fallen to our lot ; we must therefore be content to know that the fact is pre- cisely as we have stated it. Irish history and tradition fur- nish us with sufficient materials on which to ground clear and distinct proofs that the attachment of habit and conti- guity in these instances far transcends that of natural affection itself. It is very seldom that one brother will lay down his life for another, and yet instances of such high and heroic sa- crifices have occurred in the case of the foster-brother, whose affection has thus not unfrequently triumphed over death itself. It is certainly impossible to impute this wild but indomitable attachment to the force of domestic feeling, because, whilst we maintain that the domestic affections in Ireland are cer- tainly stronger than those of any other country in the world, still instances of this inexplicable devotion have occurred in the persons of those in whom the domestic ties were known to be very feeble. It is true, there are many moral anomalies in the human heart with which we are as yet but imperfectly acquain- ted ; and as they arise from some wayward and irregular com- bination of its impulses, that operates independently of any known principles of action, it is not likely that we shall ever thoroughly understand them. There is another peculiarity in Irish feeling, which, as it is analogous to this, we cannot ne- glect to mention it. We allude to the Parisheen, a term which we must explain at further length to our readers. When the Dublin Foundling Hospital was in existence, the poor infants whom an unhappy destiny consigned to that gloomy and wither- ing institution were transmitted to different parts of the country, to be nursed by the wives of the lower classes of the peasantry — such as day-labourers, cottiers, and small farmers, who cultivated from three to six or eight acres of land. These children were generally, indeed almost always, called Parish- eens — a word which could be properly applied only to such as, having no known parents, were supported by the parish in which they happened to be born. It was transferred to the Foundlings, however ; although, with the exception of the metropolis, which certainly paid a parish tax for their maintenance, they were principally supported by a very moral act of Parliament, which, by the wise provision of a large grant, held out a very liberal bounty to profligacy. At all events, the opprobrious epithet of Parisheen was that usually fixed upon them. Now, of all classes of our fellow-creatures, one might almost naturally suppose that those deserted and forsaken beings would be apt, consigned as they uniformly were to the care of mercenary strangers, to experience neglect, ill-treatment, or even cruelty itself ; and yet, honour be to the generous hearts and affectionate feelings of our humble people, it has been proved, by the incontestible authority of a Commission ex- pressly appointed to examine and report on the working of the very hospital in question, that the care, affection, and ten- derness with which these ill-fated creatures were treated by the nurses to whom they were given out, was equal, if not su- perior, to that which was bestowed upon their own children. Even when removed from these nurses to situations of incom- parably more comfort— situations in which they were lodged, fed, and clothed, in a far superior manner — they have been known, in innumerable instances, to elope from their masters and mistresses, and return to their old abodes, preferring the indulgence of their affection, with poverty and distress, to any thing else that life could offer. All this, however, was very natural and reasonable, for we know that even the domestic animal will love the hand that feeds him. But that which we have alluded to as constituting the strong analogy between it and the attachment of the fos- ter-brother, is the well-known fact, that the affection of the children to the nurses, though strong and remarkable, was as nothing- -when compared with that which the nurses felt for them. This was proved by a force of testimony which no scepticism could encounter. The parting scenes between them were affecting, and in many instances agonizing, to the last degree. Nay, nurses have frequently come up to Dublin, and with tears in their eyes, and in accents of the most unfeigned sorrow, begged that the orphans might be allowed to stay with them, undertaking, rather than part with them, that they would support them at their own expense. It would be very difficult to produce a more honourable testimony to the moral honesty, generosity, and exquisite kindness of heart which characterize our people, than the authentic facts we have just mentioned. They fell naturally in our way when treating of the subject which preceded them, and we could not, injustice to circumstances so beautiful and striking, much less injustice to the people themselves, pass them over in silence. We shall now relate a short story, illustrating the attach- ment of a foster-brother ; but as we have reason to believe that the circumstances are true, we shall introduce fictitious names instead of real ones. The rebellion of ninety-eight was just at its height when the incidents we are about to mention took place. A gentle- man named Moore had a daughter remarkable for her beauty and accomplishments. Indeed, so celebrated had she become, that her health was always drunk as the toast of her native county. Many suitors she had, of course, but among the rest two were remarkable for their assiduous attentions to her, and an intense anxiety to secure her affections. Henry Irwin was a high loyalist, as was her own father, whose consent to gain the affections of his daughter had been long given to his young friend. The other, who in point of fact had already secured her affections, was unfortunately deeply involved in, or we should rather say an open leader on, the insurgent side. His principles had become known to Moore, as republican, for some time before the breaking out of the insurrection ; in con- sequence he was forbidden his house, and warned against hold- ing communication with any member of his family. He had suc- ceeded, however, before this, by the aid of Miss Moore herself, who was aware of his principles, in placing as butler in her fa- ther’s family his own foster-brother, Frank Finnegan — an ar- rangement which never would have been permitted, had Moore known of the peculiar bond of affection which subsisted between them. Of this, however, he was ignorant ; and in admitting Finnegan into his family, he was not aware of the advantages he afforded to the proscribed suitor of his daughter. This interdiction, however, came too late for the purposes of pru- dence. Ere it was issued, Hewson and his daughter had ex- changed vows of mutual affection ; but the national outbreak which immediately ensued, by forcing Hewson to assume his place as an insurgent leader, appeared to have placed a barrier between him and her, which was naturally considered to be insurmountable. In the meantime, Moore himself, who was a local magistrate, and also a captain of yeomanry, took an ex- tremely active part in quelling the insurrection, and in hunting down and securing the rebels. Nor was Irwin less zealous in following the footsteps of the man to whom he wished to re- commend himself as his future son-in-law. They acted toge- ther ; and so vigorous were the measures of the young loyal- ist, that the other felt it necessary in some instances to check the exuberance of his loyalty. This, however, was not known to the opposite party ; for as Irwin always seemed to act under the instructions of his friend Moore, so was it obviously enough inferred that every harsh act and wanton stretch of authority which he committed, was either sanctioned or suggested by the other. The consequence was, that Moore became, if pos- sible, more odious than Irwin, who was looked upon as a rash, hot-headed zealot; whilst the veteran was marked as a cool and wily old fox, who had ten times the cunning and cruelty of the senseless puppet he was managing. In this, it is unne- cessary to say, they were egregiously mistaken. In the meantime the rebellion went forward, and many acts of cruelty and atrocity were committed on both sides. Moore’s house and family would have been attacked, and most proba- bly murder and ruin might have visited him and his, were it not for the influence of Hewson with the rebels. Twice did the latter succeed, and on each occasion with great difficulty, in preventing him and his household from falling victims to the vengeance of the insurgent s. Moore was a man of great pei-- sonal courage, but apt to underrate the character and enter- prize of those who were opposed to him. Indeed, his prudence was by no means on a par with his bravery or zeal, for he has often been known to sally out at the head of a party in quest THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 339 of his enemies, and leave his own mansion, and the lives of those who were in it, exposed and defenceless. On one of those excursions it was that he chanced to capture a small body of the insurgents, headed by an intimate friend and distant relative of Hewson’s. As the law at that un- happy period was necessarily quick in its operations, we need scarcely say, that, having been taken openly armed against the King and the Constitution, they were tried and executed by the summary sentence of a court-martial. A deep and bloody vengeance was now sworn against him and his by the rebels, who for some time afterwards lay in wait for the purpose of retaliating in a spirit prompted by the atrocious character of the times. Hewson’s attachment to his daughter, however, had been long known, and his previous interference on behalf of her fa- ther had been successful on that account only. Now, however, the plan of attack was laid without his cognizance, and that with the most solemn injunctions to every one concerned in it not to disclose their object to any human being not officially acquainted with it, much less to Hewson, who they calculated would once more take such steps as might defeat their sangui- nary purpose. These arrangements having been made, mat- ters were allowed to remain quiet for a little, until Moore should be off his guard ; for we must observe here, that he had felt it necessary, after the execution of the captured re- bels, to keep his house strongly and resolutely defended. The attack was therefore postponed until the apprehensions created by his recent activity should gradually wear away, and his ene- mies might with less risk undertake the work of bloodshed and destruction. The night at length was appointed on which the murderous attack must be made. All the dark details were arranged with a deliberation at which, removed as we now are from the sanguinary excitement of the times, the very soul shudders and gets sick. A secret, however, communicated even under the most solemn sanction to a great number, stands a great chance of being no secret at all, especially during civil war, where so many interests of friendship, blood, and mar- riage, bind the opposing parties together in spite of the pub- lic principles under which they act. Miss Moore’s maid had a brother, for instance, who, together with several of his friends and relatives, being appointed to aid in the attack, felt anxious that she should not be present on that night, lest her acquaintance with them might be ultimately dangerous to the assailants. He accordingly sought an opportunity of seeing her, and in earnest language urged her to absent herself from her master’s house on the appointed night. The girl was not much surprised at the ambiguity of his hints, for the truth was, that no person, man or woman, possessing common sense, could be ignorant of the state of the country, or of the evil odour in which Moore and Irwin, and all those who were active on the part of government, were held. She accordingly told him that she would follow his advice, and spoke to him in terms so shrewd and significant, that he deemed it useless to preserve further secrecy. The plot was thus disclosed, and the girl warned to leave the house, both for her own sake and for that of those who were to wreak their vengeance upon Moore and his family. The poor girl, hoping that her master and the rest might fly from the impending danger, communicated the circum- stances to Miss Moore, who forthwith communicated them to her father, who, again, instead of flying, took measures to collect about his premises, during the early part of the dreaded night, a large and well-armed force from the next military station. Now, it so happened that this girl, whose name was Baxter, had a leaning towards Hewson’s foster-brother Finnegan, who in plain language was her accepted lover. If love will not show itself in a case of danger, it is good for nothing. We need scarcely say that Peggy Baxter, apprehensive of danger to her sweetheart, confided the secret to him also in the early part of the day of the attack. Finnegan was sur- prised, especially when he heard from Peggy that Hewson had been kept in ignorance of the whole design (for so her brother had told her), in consequence of his attachment to her young mistress. There was now no possible way of warding off such a calamity, unless by communicating with Hewson ; and this, as Finnegan was a sound United Irishman, he knew he could do without any particular danger. Fie lost no time, therefore, in seeing him ; and we need scarcely say that his foster-brother felt stunned and thunderstruck at the deed that was about to be perpetrated without his knowledge. Finne- gan then left him, but ere he reached home, the darkness had set in, and on arriving, he sought the kitchen and its comforts, ignorant, as were indeed most of the servants, that the upper rooms and out-houses were literally crammed with fierce and well-armed soldiers. Matters were now coming to a crisis. Hewson, aware that there was little time to be lost, collected a small party of his own immediate and personal friends, not one of whom, from their known attachment to him, had been, any more than him- self, admitted to a knowledge of their attack upon Moore. Determined, therefore, to be beforehand with the others, he and they met at an appointed place, from whence they went quickly, and with as much secrecy as possible, to Moore’s house, for the purpose not only of apprising him of the fate to which he and his were doomed, but also with an intention of escorting him and all his family as far from his house as might be consistent with the safety of both parties. Our readers are of course prepared for the surprise and capture of honest Hewson and his friends, of whose friendly intentions they are aware. It is too true. Not expecting to find the house defended, they were unprepared for an attack or sally ; and the upshot was, that in a few minutes two of them were shot, and most of the rest, among whom was Hewson, taken prisoners on the spot. Those who escaped communicated to the other insurgents an account of the strength with which Moore’s house was defended ; and the latter, instead of making an attempt to rescue their friends, abandoned the meditated attack altogether, and left Hewson and his party to their fate. A gloomy fate that was. Assertions and protestations of their innocence were all in vain. An insurgent party were expected to attack the house, and of course they came, headed by Hewson himself, who, as Moore said, no doubt intended to spare none of them” but his daughter, and her, only, in order that she might become a rebel’s wife. Irwin, too, his rival in love and his foe in politics, was on the court-martial, and what had he to expect ? Death ; and nothing but the darkness of the night prevented his enemies from putting it into immediate execution upon him and his companions. Hewson maintained a dignified silence ; and upon seeing his friends guarded from the hall where they were now assembled into a large barn, he desired to be placed along with them. “ No,” said Moore ; “ if you are a rebel ten times over, you are a gentleman ; you must not herd with them ; and besides, Mr Hewson, with great respect to you, we shall place you in a much safer place. In the highest room in a house unusually high, we shall lodge you, out of which if you escape, we will say you are an innocent man. Frank Finnegan, show him and those two soldiers up to the observatory ; get him refresh- ments, and leave him in their charge. Guard his door, men, for you shall be held responsible for his appearance in the morning.” The men, in obedience to these orders, escorted him to the door, outside of which was their station for the night. When Frank and he entered the observatory, the former gently shut the door, and, turning to his foster-brother, exclaimed in accents of deep distress, but lowering his voice, “ There is not a moment to be lost ; you must escape.” “ That is impossible,” replied Hewson, “unless I had wings and could use them.” “ We must try,” returned Frank ; “ we can only fail — at the most they can only take your life, and that they’ll do at all events.” “ I know that,” said Hewson, “ and I am prepared for it.” “ Hear me,” said the other ; “ I will come up by and bye with refreshments, say in about half anhour ; be you stripped when I come. We are both of a size; and as these fellows don’t know either of us very well, I wouldn’t say but you may go out in my clothes. I’ll hear nothing,” he added, seeing Hewson about to speak ; “ I am here too long, and these fellows might begin to suspect something. Be prepared when I come. Good bye, Mr Hewson,” he said aloud, as he opened the door ; “ in troth an’ conscience I’m sorry to see you here, but that’s the consequence of turnin’ rebel against King George, an’ glory to him — soon and sudden,” he added in an undertone. “ In about half an hour I’ll bring you up some supper, sir. Keep a sharp eye on him,” he whispered to the two soldiers, giving them at the same time a knowing and con- fidential wink ; “ these same rebels are like eels, an’ will slip as aisily through your fingers — an’ the devil a betther one vez have in there and as he spoke, he pointed over his shoulder with his inverted thumb to the door of the observatory. Much about the time he had promised to return, a crash was heard upon the stairs, and Finnegan’s voice in a high key ex- claiming, “ The curse o’ blazes on you for stairs, an’ hell pre- 340 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. sume all the rebels in Europe, I pray heavens this night ! There’s my nose broke between you all !” He then stooped down, and in a torrent of bitter imprecations — all conveyed, however, in mock oaths — he collected and placed again upon the tray on which they had been, all the materials for Hewson’s supper. He then ascended, and on presenting himself at the prisoner’s door, the blood was copiously streaming from his nose. The soldiers — who by the way were yeomen — on seeing him, could not avoid laughing at his rueful appearance — a cir- cumstance which seemed to nettle him a good deal. “ Yez may laugh !” he exclaimed, “ but I’d hould a wager I’ve shed more blood for his majesty this night than either of you ever did in your lives !” This only heightened their mirth, in the midst of which he entered Hewson’s room ; and ere the action could be deemed possible, they had exchanged clothes. “ Now r ,” said he, “fly. Behind the garden Miss Moore is waitin’ for you ; she knows all. Take the bridle-road through the broad bog, an’ get into Captain Corny’s demesne. Take my advice too, an’ go both of you to America, if you can. But, aisy. God forgive me for pullin’ you by the nose instead of shakin’ you by the hand, an’ me may never see you more.” The poor fellow’s voice became unsteady with emotion, although the smile at his own humour -was upon his face at the time. “ As I came in with a bloody nose,” he proceeded, giving that of Hewson a fresh pull, “ you know you must go out with one. An’ now God’s blessin’ be with you ! Think of one who loved you as none else did.” The next morning there was uproar, tumult, and confusion in the house of the old loyalist magistrate, when it was disco- vered that his daughter and the butler were not forthcoming. But when, on examining the observatory, it was ascertained that Finnegan was safe and Hewson gone, no language can describe the rage and fury of Moore, Irwin, and the military in general. Our readers may anticipate what occurred. The noble fellow was brought to the drum-head, tried, and sen- tenced to be shot where he stood ; but ere the sentence was put in execution, Moore addressed him. “ Now, Finnegan,” said he, “ I will get you off, if you tell us where Hewson and my daughter are. I pledge my honour publicly that I’ll save your life, and get you a free pardon, if you enable us to trace and recover them.” “I don’t know where they are,” he replied, “but even if I did, I would not betray them.” “ Think of what has been said to you,” added Irwin. “ I give you my pledge also to the same effect.” “Mr Irwin,” he replied, “ I have but one word to say. "When I did what I did, I knew very well that my life would go for his ; an’ I know that if he had thought so, he would be standin’ now in my place. Put your sentence in execution ; I’m prepared.” “ Take five minutes,” said Moore. “ Give him up and live.” “ Mr Moore,” said he, with a decision and energy which startled them, “ I am his Foster-Brother !” This was felt to be sufficient ; he stood at the appointed place, calm and unshrinking, and at the first discharge fell in- stantaneously dead. Thus passed a spirit worthy of a place in a brighter page than that of our humble miscellany, and which, if the writer of this lives, will be more adequately recorded. Hewson, finding that the insurgent cause was becoming hope- less, escaped,, after two or three other unsuccessful engage- ments, to America, instigated by the solicitations of his young •wife. Old Moore died in a few years afterwards, but he sur- vived his resentment, for he succeeded in reconciling the then government to his son-in-law, who returned to Ireland ; and it was found by his will, much to the mortification of many of his relatives, that he had left the bulk of his property to Mrs Hewson, who had always been his favourite child, and whose attachment to Hewson he had himself originally encouraged. There are two records more connected with this transac- tion, with which we shall close. In a northern newspaper, dated some fifteen years afterwards, there occurs the follow- ing paragraph : — “Affair of Honour — Fatal Duel — Yesterday morn- ing, at the early hour of five o’clock, a duel was fought be- tween A. Irwin, Esq. and J. Hewson, Esq. of Mooredale, the former of whom, we regret to say, fell by the second fire. "YVe hope the words attributed to one of the parties are not correctly reported. The blood of Frank Finnegan is now avenged.” The other record is to be found in the churchyard of , where there is a handsome monument erected, with the follow- ing inscription : — “ Sacred to the memory of Francis Finnegan, whose death presented an instance of the noblest virtue of which human nature is capable, that of laying down his life for his friend. This monument is erected to his memory by James Hewson, his friend and foster-brother, for whom he died.” TRINITY COLLEGE LIBRARY. With awe around these sacred walks I tread ; These are the lasting monuments of the dead : — “ The dead !’* methinks a thousand tongues reply : “ These are the tombs of such as cannot die ! Crown’d with eternal fame, they sit sublime, And laugh at all the little strife of time." Crabbe. Our College Library is a creditable establishment— a goodly structure to look at, both inside and out — and has a choice and ample collection of books of all sizes and in all languages. Gentle reader, have you ever felt the book passion ? Know you what it is ? If not, belike you might walk down our noble library’s length, and survey the books and busts, and stalls and gallery at each side, and the beautiful antique ma- nuscripts in glass cases at the end just before you enter the Fagel Library, and be no more impressed — you will excuse us — no more than a grave-digger in knocking about an old coffin or a skull, yea, though the skull should once have be- longed to poor Yorick, the king’s jester ! Ah, sir, the pas- sion is a tender one, if you knew but all— full of lack-a-daisi- cal and melancholy, yet pleasing fancies. There are people smitten by the mere outside of a book — by the fineness of the paper, the breadth of the margin, or the beauty of the letter- press ; but they know nothing of the true affection. Give them an annual, or an album, or any other bit of gilt ginger- bread, and they will have all they require to their hearts’ content. Let them make sonnets to their mistress’s eye- brow ; there is no soul in them ; they are mere dandies ; they have nothing congenial with the true passion. To be a pro- per lover of books a man must have been a great reader of them; and the more his reading, the stronger will be his love for them. They then present themselves to him with their train of associations, and as his eye passes along the shelves, he recognises each volume as an old acquaintance ; some ho shakes hands with cordially ; with some he exchanges a few words ; others he just nods to, and to some perhaps he may give the cut direct ; but he knows them all in some way or other. As the review of a fine army to an old general, so is a fine library to a true student. He loves to see his levy cn viasse , and in detail. The sight of them cheers his spirits, elevates his mind, and — mark this, gentle reader — gives him the idea of power. There lies a great secret, which in these costermonger days we deserve great credit for communicat- ing to the world free-gratis for nothing. Knowledge is power— that’s our major ; there one stands in the midst of a noble army of books — that’s our minor, or lieutenant ; then a man feels strong, and vastly well pleased with himself— and that is our fife and drum, or conclusion, by every law of drill or logic. In our juvenile days, before we wereA-B-C’d, and therefore before we enjoyed the privilege of free ingress and egress at the superb Old Trinity, we used to pass whole days of rumina- tion in the quiet pastures of Marsh’s. This library, situate in an antique building to one side of Saint Patrick’s Cathe- dral, is graciously open to the public in general, and to all under-graduates of the University in particular, and wears a secluded, cloistered, antiquated air about it, that invites to contemplation. You are there on classic ground. The genius of Swift seems to hover o’er you. You fancy yourself with an age that has passed away, and among spirits that have long since winged their flight from earth. Many a summer’s day have we mused and read, and read and mused, in its delightful solitude, without any other interruption save the cackling of hens and crowing of cocks in some of the neighbouring yards, the playing or screaming of children in Kevin-street or Mitre-alley, the scolding of women in some of the adjoining houses, or a few words of conversational politeness interchanged between us and the Rev. Mr Cradoc, the librarian, chiefly on the news of the morning. But as a book-store, Marsh’s is not to be compai'ed with the College Library. Formerly this splendid repository was open only four hours in the day for public use, from eight till THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 341 ten in the morning, and from eleven till one ; but a more liberal access to its treasures has been conceded of late ; the entire is now free from nine in the morning till four in the afternoon, without interruption. This is a great acquisition to the privileged, and has been attended by a vast increase of readers and visitors ; but there is still room for amendment in particulars of no small importance to general convenience. We are happy to say, however, that to some of these the at- tention of the enlightened heads of the University has been directed, and that great improvements in the economy of the institution may at no distant day be expected. In the first place, the books are exceedingly ill arranged, and there is no printed catalogue of them, so that the visitor finds great diffi- culty in laying his hand upon those he may be in quest of ; in addition to which it may be stated, that there is no attendant librarian, or other official whose duty it is to give informa- tion, or procure the work which the visitor may require. They order this matter better in France ; but whatever may be intended as to such functionaries, we have learned with much satisfaction that a new catalogue is now in course of preparation, and that it is to be a printed one. The prepar- ing of so great a work for the press must necessarily occupy a good deal of time. It has been, we understand, now about two years in hands, and will be completed, it is expected, in about two more. There are six writing-clerks constantly employed in preparing slips for the printer, under compe- tent direction. A greatly improved classification will be effected, and the printed volumes, ■when perfected, will be offered for sale. Incidental to the execution of this great work, there will be a new and improved arrangement of the books on the shelves to correspond with that in the cata- logues ; and when both these important matters are effected, it is obvious that the difficulties which are now experienced in the pursuit of knowledge within this venerable gallery, will be in a great degree removed. There is another point on which complaints are sometimes made, namely, the excessive cold of the building in winter. It was originally intended that no fires should be lit in it, as a security to its valuable but highly combustible contents against accident through that medium ; but in this provision, it is plain, the preservative principle was much more attended to than the utilitarian, and is carried, as we conceive at the present day, to an unreasonable length. But, at all events, modern ingenuity can meet the difficulty ; for the air may be heated by means of tubes, without the immediate presence of com- bustion ; wherefore we are led to expect that the same liberal and enlightened spirit which has suggested and di- rected the realization of other improvements, will direct and realize this also in due time. By the bye, the origin of this great establishment is curious. On the defeat of the Spaniards by the English at the battle of Kinsale in 1603, we are told that the triumphant soldiery determined to commemorate their victory by some perma- nent monument, and that they collected among themselves the sum of £1800, which they resolved should be laid out in the purchase of books for a library, to be founded in the then infant establishment of Trinity College.* This sum was handed to the celebrated Ussher, and by him judiciously ex- pended, conformably to the wishes of the generous conquerors at Kinsale. And here we pause to pay our most profound respects to the memory of these literary warriors. Who would have expected that the most scientific, and studious, and intellectual men of our age, would owe the most splendid temple dedicated to their use, which the country can boast, to the bounty of a victorious soldiery in the beginning of the se- venteenth century ? There was a spirit of chivalry in this transaction which -we cannot sufficiently admire ; and though we live in an age in which we pique ourselves excessively on the march of intellect, we doubt that any testimonial more solid and convincing is producible by us to show that our organ of veneration in this respect is at all more highly de- veloped than that of men who went before us in the days of Queen Elizabeth. The bequest at all events does honour to the profession of arms, and we are sure wrnuld be duly ap- preciated by a grateful posterity, as a memorial of their mind and achievements, if it were only more generally known. So began our splendid University Library. In process of time its collection of volumes was increased by many valuable donations, till at length their growing number demanding a * The first stone of Trinity College was laid on the 13th March 1591, by Thomas Smith, Mayor ; it was opened two years afterwards, in 1593. corresponding increase of room, the present edifice was erected for their reception. It is built of hewn stone, with a rich Co- rinthian entablature, crowned with a balustrade, reminding us in its appearance of the gallery of the Louvre at Paris, and was completed in 1732. The room is certainly the finest in the empire appropriated to such a purpose. It is 210 feet long, 41 feet broad, and 40 feet high, and is very elegantly and suitably fitted up. At its farther end, in the eastern pa- vilion, is a fine apartment 52 feet long, 26 wide, and 22 high, containing the Fagel library, purchased at an expence of £8000, and comprising upwards of 17,000 volumes. This library was the property of Mr Fagel, Pensionary of Holland, who had it removed to London on the French invasion of Hol- land in 1794 ; the purchase money was a grant to the College from the Governors of Sir Erasmus Smith’s schools. The total number of volumes now in the entire building, including the Fagel library, and 1419 volumes of manuscripts, is 89,455. * The manuscripts are in Greek, Latin, English, Irish, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, and other languages. Many of them relate to Irish history and antiquities, particularly to the troubles of 1641, all the depositions relating to which are here ; as also the particulars of the settlement of Ireland and plantation of it by James I. There are many Latin manuscripts of the sacred scriptures, particularly of the New Testament, of various ages and remote antiquity. Several are in the Irish character but Latin language. There is also the Greek manuscript of the New Testament that belonged to Montfortius, and is the only one extant that reads the once contested verse, 1 Ep. John, ch. 5, v. 7. There are old translations of the Bible by Wickliffe, Pervie, Ambrose, Ussher, Sec. There is no fund for the aug- mentation of the library except what the Board may please to allot for the purpose ; but it receives a great annual increase by being entitled to one copy of every work entered at Sta- tioners’ Hall. Our library and the Bodleian at Oxford arc exactly of the same age ; audit is another curious fact, that while Ussher was laying out the soldiers’ money in London to the best advantage, he met there Sir T. Bodley engaged in a similar business for his establishment at Oxford. If there were auction rooms in those days, we have no doubt the two gentlemen were acceptable visitors, heartily welcome to the auctioneers, and that they seldom let a good thing go without a smart competition. With regard to Marsh’s Library, we may mention that it was founded in 1707 by Doctor Narcissus Marsh, then Archbishop of Dublin, and that the building is erected on part of the ground attached to what was formerly the archbishop’s palace. The books were originally the collection of the celebrated Bishop Stillingfieet, and were purchased by Doctor Marsh for the public use. Once upon a time each book was fastened by a chain to an iron rod which ran along the shelves, so that all who partook of the bounty of the good archbishop might read and satisfy their souls without any danger of violating the eighth commandment ; but this stringent system is now abolished : the chains are broken ; the prisoners are free ; the books are emancipated ! The change may be considered as a compliment to the honesty of modern times ; and all we say is, we wish they may deserve it. Much as we admire and commend these great public institutions, however, it is not to be denied that their real amount of utility is limited enough — limited at least when one compares the end with the means. Many thousand volumes must lie on their shelves from year to year, without ever being opened; there must be many that are fit only for burning, and that just occupy good room to the exclusion of their betters ; and as to the verv best books, how limited must the access to them necessarily be in a great public room ! Their use consists chiefly in their being available for consultation — a most important purpose, no doubt, but yet one the accomplishment of which still leaves a vast hiatus in our reading hours to be filled up by other means. Now, every individual, we humbly think, should have a library of his own, if it were ever so small. No man ever made a good gardener that had not a small garden, his own pro- perty, to begin with ; and it is something the same with a good reader. The careful, and leisurely, and repeated study of a few good books, does one more real good than a cursory and indigestive perusal of a vast number. This is well known ; and, therefore, wfithout detracting from the just value of public libraries, we would wish that a taste for book-collecting, as * This return is given from the most recent calculation officially made, and may be depended on. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 342 ' well as book-reading, were widely diffused among us. Take our word for it, there is no better company than good books ; you may choose from among them companions for all hours, and for all moods of the mind. Ask them questions, and they will be sure at all times to give you at least a civil answer. They are finger-posts to the travelling man, and travel through all regions to him who never moves from the chimney corner. They are implements of trade to the professional man, and a profession itself to him that has none. They are music to the melancholy, and as a dance to the merry ; as salt are they to the solid, and to the solid as salt. They are as a new world to him that has exhausted the old, for “ of making many books,” as the preacher saith, “ there is no end.” But we must come to an end ourselves. We would, in short, ad- vocate the claims of literature in general, and its high title to consideration, as it commends itself to all men in common ; and we plead guilty to the ambition of adding to the nume- rous honourable characteristics of our countrymen, that of being in an eminent degree a reading people. Irishmen ought to remember that their country was famous in ancient days for its learning, and cherish an honest ambition in modern times to retrieve its character. As one means of forwarding this object, we would seek to diffuse among them a reading habit, and give our best encouragement to whatever instru- mentalities might tend to increase libraries, and make reading easy to all classes. Cheap literature is a luxury of sterling value ; but until people have acquired a taste for it, they will hold it cheap enough. Never do we pass a book-shop, or an humble bookseller’s stall, without a feeling of reverence for the profession. There, say we, is a dispensary of ideal aliment indispensable to our mental existence, and, if properly used, yielding nothing but health, prosperity, and enjoyment to the soul. If our countrymen read, they will become in- formed — learned; and if they read good books, they must not only become informed and learned, but wise. The viva- city of their conversation will then be enriched with all the streams both of useful and entertaining knowledge. Read- ing will be a delightful resource to the working man, and no bad employment at least to the idle. Poverty will have its compensations. There will be another distinction set up in society besides that of having, or not having, mere worldly professions. The dignity of mind will be asserted. Mind with its congenial influences must act upon manners ; and if, as the inscription upon the old gate at Oxford beareth record, “ manours maketh ye man,” our country will be once more exalted among the nations. X. D. SANTA CROCE. by j. u. u. I stood and saw the pictured gloom unfold Grey Santa Croce, crossed by dusky rays That dimmed its columned aisle : as from of old Its ancient air lay slumbering o’er the cold Dark dwellers underneath. Wherftomy gaze, Shade-like, ’mid that grey gloom of distant day® ! She stood, whom Petrarch looked on there and caught That love too strong for death ! A tender gleam Like moonlight fell around her, baffling thought ; Strange ! ’twas remembrance thither stole, and brought That smile of sweetness from my breast’s deep stream More strong than fancy, and transformed the dream To thee — from her, whom a less hallowed fire Hath made immortal with the love-devoted lyre. Sensible Advice — Avoid condolence with those who are mourning the loss of friends. Condolences, as well as mourn- ings, are bad things. Men, and more especially women, give actual increase to their grief while, under the notion of duty, and even of merit, they make display of it. If mournings were altogether out of use, a vast mass of suffering would be prevented from coming into existence. Some savage or bar- barous nations make merry at funerals : they are wiser, in this respect, than polished ones Bowring's Deontology. When a native of Java has a child born, he immediately plants a cocoa-tree, which, adding a circle every year to its bark, indicates the age of the tree, and therefore the age of the child. The child, in consequence, regards the tree with affection all the rest of its life.— Buck’s Harmonies, fyc., of Nature, THE THUGS. The Thugs were known in the time of the Emperor Akbar of Delhi, by whom many were executed. They were first known to the British government in 1812, and then many were hanged in Bundelkund. Again, in 1817, they attracted notice by their horrible acts, and twelve villages in Bundel- kund, which were peopled almost entirely by them, were taken by a force sent against them. They were then dispersed, but assembled in various parts in Sindhia’s and the Nagpoor country, also in Holkar’s dominions. From 1817 till 1831 they were not molested, and, in consequence, increased greatly in the latter year. Measures were taken to suppress them, which have been attended with great success. One hundred and eleven were executed at Jubbulpoor, and upwards of four hundred transported for life to the eastern settle- ment of Pinang. The Thugs form a perfectly distinct class of persons, who subsist almost entirely upon the produce of the murders they are in the habit of committing. They appear to have derived their denomination from the practice usually adopted by them of decoying the persons they fix upon to destroy, to join their party ; and then, taking advantage of the confidence they en- deavour to inspire, to strangle their unsuspecting victims. There are several peculiarities in the habits of the Thugs, in their mode of causing death, and in the precautions they adopt for the prevention of discovery, that distinguish them from every other class of delinquents ; and it may be consi- dered a general rule whereby to judge of them, that they affect to disclaim the practice of petty theft, housebreaking, and indeed every species of stealing that has not been preceded by the perpetration of murder. The Thugs adopt no other method of killing but strangula- tion, and the implement made use of for this purpose is a handkerchief, or any other convenient strip of cloth. The manner in which the deed is done will be described hereafter. They never attempt to rob a traveller until they have in the first instance deprived him of life'; after the commission of a murder, they invariably bury the body immediately, if time and opportunity serve, or otherwise conceal it ; and never leave a corpse uninterred in the highway, unless they happen to be disturbed. To trace the origin of this practice would now be a matter of some difficulty, for if the assertions of the Thugs them- selves are entitled to any credit, it has been in vogue from time immemorial ; and they pretend that its institution is coeval with the creation of the world. Like most other inhu- man practices, the traditions regarding it are mixed up with tales of Hindoo superstition ; and the Thugs would wish to make it appear, that, in immolating the numberless victims that yearly fall by their hands, they are only obeying the in- junctions of the deity of their worship, to whom they say they are offering an acceptable sacrifice. A very considerable number of the Thugs are Mussulmans. No judgment of the birth or caste of a Thug can, however, be formed from his name ; for it not unfrequently happens that a Hindoo Thug has a Mussulman name with a Hindoo alias attached, and vice versa with respect to the Thugs who are by birth Mahommedans. In almost every instance the Thugs have more than one appellation by which they are known. They usually move in large parties, often amounting to one hundred or two hundred persons, and resort to all sort of subterfuges for the purpose of concealing their real pro- fession. If they are travelling southward, they represent themselves to be either proceeding in quest of service, or on their way to rejoin the regiments they belong to in this part of the country. When, on the contrary, their route lies towards the north, they represent themselves to be sepoys from corps of the Bombay or Nizam’s army, who are going on leave to Hindustan. The gangs do not always consist of persons who are Thugs by birth. It is customary for them to entice, by the promise of monthly pay or the hopes of amassing money that are held out, many persons who are ignorant of the deeds of death that are to be perpetrated for the attainment of these objects, until made aware of the reality by seeing the victims of their cupidity fall under the hands of the stranglers ; and the Thugs declare that novices have occasionally been so horrified at the sight as to have effected their immediate es- cape. Many of the most notorious Thugs are the adopted chil- dren of others of the same class. They make it a rule, when a murder is committed, never to spare the life of any one, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 343 either male or female, who is old enough to remember and re- late the particulars of the deed. But in the event of their meeting with children of such a tender age as to make it im- possible they should be enabled to relate the fact, they gene- rally spare their lives, and, adopting them, bring them up to the trade of Thugs. These men of course eventually become acquainted with the fact of the murder of their fathers and mothers by the very persons with whom they have dwelt since their childhood, but are still not deterred from following the same dreadful trade. It might be supposed that a class of persons whose hearts must be effectually hardened against all the better feelings of humanity, would encounter few scruples of conscience in the commission of the horrid deeds whereby they subsist ; but, in point of fact, they are as much the slaves of superstition, and as much directed by the obser- vance of omens in the commission of murder, as the most in- offensive of the natives of India are in the ordinary affairs of their lives. In the event of an expedition proving more than ordinarily successful, a pilgrimage is usually made to Bhowanee, and a portion of the spoil taken by the gang is set aside for the pur- pose of being sent to the pagoda at Binda Chul, near Mirza- poor, as an offering to the goddess Kalee. Propitiatory offer- ings are also made, and various ceremonies performed, should the Thugs have failed in obtaining any plunder for a length of time. In every gang of Thugs are to be found one or more offi- cers, who appear to hold that rank not by the choice of their fol- lowers, but in consequence of their wealth and influence in their respective villages, and having assembled their immediate followers in the vicinity of their homes. The profits of an offi- cer are of course greater than those of his followers ; he re- ceives six and a half or seven per cent, on all silver coin and other property, and then shares in the remainder in common with the other Thugs of the party. When gold is obtained in coin or in mass, the tenth part is taken by the officer, pre- vious to dividing it ; and he has a tithe of all pearls, shawls, gold embroidered cloths, brass and copper pots, horses, &c. Next to the officer, the most important person is the bhuttoat, or strangler, who carries the handkerchief with which the Thugs usually murder their victims. This implement is merely a piece of fine strong cotton cloth, about a yard long ; at one end a knot is tied, and the cloth is slightly twisted, and kept ready for use in front of the waistcoat of the person car- rying it. There is no doubt but that all Thugs are expert in the use of the handkerchief ; but if they are to be believed, only particular persons are called upon or permitted to per- form this office. When a large gang is collected, the most able-bodied and alert of their number are fixed upon as stran- glers, and they are made the bearers of the handkerchief only after the performance of various and often expensive ceremo- nies, and only on the observance of a favourable omen. The junior Thugs make a merit of attending upon the older and more experienced Thugs, shampooing their bodies, and per- forming the most menial offices. They gradually become ini- tiated into all the mysteries of the art, and if they prove to be powerful men, these promising disciples are made stranglers. When a murder is to be committed, the strangler usually fol- lows the particular person whom he has been nominated by the jemadar to strangle ; and on the preconcerted signal being given, the handkerchief is seized with the knot in the left hand, the right hand being about nine inches farther up, in which manner it is thrown over the head of the person to be strangled from behind ; the two hands are crossed as the victim falls ; and such is the certainty with which the deed is done, as the Thugs frequently declare, that before the body falls to the ground, the eyes start out of the head, and life be- comes extinct. Should the person to be strangled prove a powerful man, or the strangler inexpert, another Thug lays hold of t*he end of the handkerchief, and the work is comple- ted. The perfection of the act is said to be, when several persons are simultaneously murdered without any of them having time to utter a cry, or to be aware of the fate of their comrades. Favourable opportunities are given for stranglers to make their first essay in the art of strangling. When a single tra- veller is met with, a novice is instructed to make a trial of his skill ; the party sets off during the night, and stops while it is still dark to drink water or to smoke. While seated for the purpose, the jemadar inquires what time of the night it may be, and the Thugs look up at the stars to ascertain. This being the preconcerted signal, the strangler is immediately on the alert, and the unsuspecting traveller, on looking up at the heavens in common with the rest of the party, offers his neck to the ready handkerchief, and becomes an easy prey to his murderer. The strangler receives half a rupee extra for every murder that is committed, and if the plunder is great, some article of value is assigned to him over and above his share. One of the most necessary persons to a gang of Thugs is he who goes by the name of Tillaee, or spy. The Thugs do not always depend upon chance for obtaining plunder, or roam about in the expectation of meeting travellers, but frequently take up their quarters in or near a large town, or some great thoroughfare, from whence they make expeditions, according to the information obtained by the spies. These men are chosen from among the most smooth-spoken and intelligent of their number, and their chief duty is to gain information. For this purpose they are decked out in the garb of respectable persons, whose appearance and manners they must have the art of assuming. They frequent the bazaars of the town near which their associates are encamped, and endeavour to pick up intelligence of the intended dispatch or expected arrival of goods or treasure, of which information is forthwith given to the gang, who send out a party to intercept them. Inquiry is also made for any party of travellers who may have arri- ved, and who put up in the inns, or elsewhere. Every art is brought into practice to scrape an acquaintance with these people. They are given to understand that the spy is travel- ling the same road. An opportunity is taken to throw out hints regarding the unsafeness of the roads, and the frequency of murders and robberies ; an acquaintance with some of the friends or relatives of the travellers is feigned, and an invitation from them to partake of the repast that has been prepared where the spy has put up — the conveniences of which, and the superiority of the water, are abundantly praised. The result is, that the travellers are inveigled into joining the gang of Thugs, and they are feasted and treated with every politeness and consideration by the very wretches who are at the time plotting their murder, and calculating the share they shall ac- quire in the division of their property. Instances sometimes occur where a party of Thugs find their victims too numerous for them while they remain in a body, and they are seldom at a loss for expedients to create dissensions, and a consequent division among them. If all their arts of intrigue and cajolery fail in producing the desi- red effect, an occasion is taken advantage of to ply the travel- lers with intoxicating liquors ; a quarrel is got up, and from words they proceed to blows, which end in the dissension of the company, who, proceeding by different roads, fall an easier prey to their remorseless destroyers. Having enticed the tra- vellers into the snare they have laid for them, the next object is to choose a convenient spot for their murder. This, in their technical language, is called a bhil, and is usually fixed upon at some distance from a village on the banks of a small stream, where the trees and underwood afford a shelter from the view of occasional passengers. The Thug who is sent on this duty is called a bhilla; and having fixed on the place, he either returns to the encampment of his party, or meets them on the way to report the result of his inquiry. If the bhilla returns to the camp with his report, the grave-diggers are sent out with him to prepare a grave for the interment of the persons it is intended to murder. Arrangements are previously made, so that the party in company with the travellers shall not arrive at the bhil too soon. At the particular spot agreed on, the bhilla meets the party. The jemadar calls out to him, “ Have you cleared out the hole ?” The bhilla replies, “ Yes,” on which the concerted signal is given that serves as the death- warrant of the unsuspecting travellers, who are forthwith strangled. The division of plunder, as may be supposed, often leads to the most violent disputes, which it is astonishing do not end in bloodshed. But it might almost be supposed the Thugs have a prejudice against spilling blood ; for, when pursued, they refrain from making use of the weapons they usually bear, even in defence of their own persons. The most wanton prodigality occurs when plunder is divided ; and occasionally the most valuable shawls and brocades are torn into small strips, and distributed amongst the gang, should any differ- ence of opinion arise as to their appropriation. The Thugs say this is also done that every person may run the same risk, for such an article could not be shared among them until converted into money, and some danger is attendant upon the transaction. They appear invariably to destroy all bills of exchange that fall into their hands, as well as many other 344 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. articles that are likely to lead to detection. Ready money is what they chiefly look for ; and when they have a choice of victims, the possessors of gold and silver would certainly be fixed upon in preference to others. To facilitate their plan of operations, the Thugs have es- tablished a regular system of intelligence and communication throughout the countries they have been in the practice of frequenting, and they become acquainted, with astonishing celerity, ‘ with proceedings of their comrades in all directions. They omit no opportunity of making inquiries regarding the progress of other gangs, and are equally particular in sup- plying the requisite information of their own movements. For this purpose they have connected themselves with several persons of note residing in the Nizam’s dominions, who fol- low the profession of Thugs in conjunction with their agricul- tural pursuits. Such is the extent to which this dreadful system has been carried, that no idea can be formed of the expenditure of hu- man life to which it has given occasion, or the immensity of the wealth that has been acquired by its adoption. When it is taken into consideration that many of the Thugs confess to their having, for the last twenty-five or thirty years, annually made a tour with parties of more than a hundred men,- and with no other object than that of murder and rapine ; that they boast of having successively put their tens and twenties to death daily ; and that they say an enumeration of all the lives they have personally assisted to destroy would swell the catalogue to hundreds, and, as some declare, to thousands— some conception of the horrid reality may be formed ; of the amount of the property that they have yearly made away with, it must be impossible to form any calculation ; for, in- dependent of the thousands in ready money, jewels and bullion, the loads of valuable cloths, and every description of mer- chandise, that continually fall into their hands, the bills of exchange that they invariably destroy must amount to a con- siderable sum. The impunity with which the Thugs have heretofore earned on their merciless proceedings, the facility they have pos- sessed of recruiting their numbers — which are restricted to no particular caste or sect — the security they have had of escaping detection, and the ease with which they have usually purchased their release when seized by the officers of the weak native governments in whose dominions they have usually committed their greatest depredations, have altoge- ther so tended to confirm the system, and to disseminate it to the fearful extent to which it has now attained, that the life of no single traveller on any of the roads in the country has been safe, and but a slight chance has been afforded to large parties of escaping the fangs of the blood-thirsty demons who have frequented them Abridged from the New Monthly Magazine. Love and Poetry “ You know,” says Burns, “our coun- try custom of coupling a man and woman together as partners in the labours of harvest. In my fifteenth autumn my partner was a bewitching creature, a year younger than myself. My scarcity of English denies me the power of doing her justice in that language ; she was a bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass. In short, she altogether, unwittingly to herself, initiated me in that delicious passion, which, in spite of acid disappointment, gin-horse prudence, and book-worm philosophy, I hold to be the first of human joys, our sweetest blessing here below. How she caught the contagion I cannot tell ; you medical people talk much of infection from breathing the same air, the touch, &c. , but I never expressly said I loved her. Indeed, I did not know myself why I liked so much to loiter behind with her, when returning in the evening from our labours; why the tones of her voice made my heart-strings thrill like aniEolian harp ; and particularly why my pulse beat such a furious ratan when I looked and fingered over her little hand, to pick out the cruel nettle-stings and thistles. Among her other love-in- spiring qualities she sang sweetly ; and it was her favourite reel to which I attempted giving an embodied vehicle in rhyme. I was not so presumptuous as to imagine that I could make verses like printed ones, composed by men who had Greek and Latin ; but my girl sang a song which was said to be composed by a small country laird’s son, on one of his father’s maids with whom he was in love ; and I saw no reason why I might not rhyme as well as he ; for, excepting that he could smear sheep, and cast peats, his father living on the moorlands, he had no more scholarcraft than myself. Thus with me began Love and Poetry. ’’—Burns in a Letter to Dr Moore. 1787. H ' Phenomena of Sound — I n the Arctic regions persons can converse at more than a mile distant when the thermometer is below zero. In air, sound travels from 1130 to 1142 feet per second. In water, sound passes at the rate of 4708 feet per second. Sound travels in air, about 900 feet for every pulsation of a healthy person at 75 in a minute. A bell sounded under water may be heard under water at 1200 feet distant. Sounds are distinct at twice the distance on water that they are on land. In a balloon, the barking of dogs on the ground may be heard at an elevation of three or four miles. On Table Mountain, a mile above Cape Town, every noise in it, and even words, may be heard distinctly. The fire of the English on landing in Egypt was distinctly heard 130 miles on the sea. Dr Jameson says, in calm weather he heard every word of a sermon at the distance of two miles ! Water is a better conductor of sound than air. Wood is also a powerful conductor of sound, and so is flannel or ri- band. Sound affects particles of dust in a sunbeam, cob- webs, and water in musical glasses ; it shakes small pieces of paper off a string in concord. Deaf persons may converse through deal rods held between the teeth, or held to the throat or breast. Echoes are formed by elliptical surfaces combined with surrounding surfaces, or by’such of them as fall into the respective distances of the surface of an ellipse, and are, therefore, directed to the other focus of the ellipse ; for all the distances from both foci to such surface are equal, and hence there is a concentration of sounds at those points di- rect from one focus, and reflected back again from the other focus. An echo returns a monosyllable at 70 feet distance, and another syllable at every 40 feet additional. The echo of artillery is encreased or created by a cloud or clouds. Miners distinguish the substance bored by the sound ; and Physicians distinguish the action of the heart or lungs by a listening tube. Gamblers can distinguish, in tossing money, which side is undermost, though covered by the hand. General Run of Faculties. — S ociety is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs. The heaviest charge we can bring against the general texture of society is, that it is common-place; and many of those who are singular had better be common-place. Our fancied su- periority to others is in some one thing, which we think most of, because we excel in it, or have paid most attention to it ; whilst we overlook their superiority to us in something else, which they set equal and exclusive store by. This is fortu- nate for all parties. I never felt myself superior to any one who did not go out of his way to affect qualities which he had not. In his own individual character and line of pursuit every one has knowledge, experience, and skill ; and who shall say which pursuit requires most, thereby proving his own narrow- ness and incompetence to decide ? Particular talent or genius does not imply general capacity. Those who are more versa- tile are seldom great in any one department ; and the stupid- est people can generally do something. The highest pre- eminence in any one study commonly arises from the concen- tration of the attention and faculties on that one study. He who expects from a great name in politics, in philosophy, in art, equal greatness in other things, is little versed in human nature. Our strength lies in our weakness. The learned in books are ignorant of the world. He who is ignorant of books is often well acquainted with other things; for life is of the same length in the learned and the unlearned ; the mind can- not be idle ; if it is not taken up with one thing it attends to another through choice or necessity : and the degree of pre- vious capacity in one class or another is a mere lottery. — Hazlitt’s Charactei istics. Truth — T he confusion and undesigned inaccuracy so often to be observed in conversation, especially in that of un- educated persons, proves that truth needs to be cultivated as a talent, as well as recommended as a virtue Mrs Fry. Knowledge is an excellent drug, but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep. — Montaigne' s Essays. Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin. — Agents : — R. Groombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London ; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool ; Slocombe and Simms, Leeds ; J. Menzies, Prince's_ Street, Edinburgh ; and David Robertson, Trongate, Glas- gow. Number 44. SATURDAY, MAY l, 1841. Volume I. ARDFINNAN CASTLE, COUNTY OF TIPPERARY. In some of the recent numbers of our Journal we presented our readers with views of two or three of the many striking objects of picturesque and historic interest for which, among our numerous beautiful rivers, the gentle Suir is more than ordinarily remarkable; and we return again with pleasure to its green pastoral banks, to notice another of its attractive features — the magnificent ruin of Ardfinnan Castle. This is a scene that must be familiar to many of our readers, for the tra- veller must have been a dull and unobserving one, who, journey- ing between Cork and Dublin by way of Cahir, has not had his attention roused by its romantic features, and an impression of its grandeur and picturesqueness made upon his memory, not easily to be effaced. Ardfinnan is indeed one of the very finest scenes of its kind to be found in Ireland, and is almost equally imposing from every point from which it can be viewed. The Castle crowns the summit of a lofty and precipitous rock, below and around which the Suir winds its way in graceful beauty, while its banks are connected by a long and level bridge of fourteen arches, which tradition states is of coeval erection with the fortress, and which, at all events, is of very great antiquity. On every side the most magnificent outlines of mountain scenery form the distant back-grounds ; and every object which meets the eye is in perfect harmony with the general character of the scene. Ardfinnan is a village of considerable antiquity, and derives its present name, which signifies Finnan’s Height or Hill, from St Finnan the leper, a celebrated ecclesiastic who founded a church and monastery here in the seventh century, previously to which the place had borne the name of Druim-abhradh, Of this religious establishment, there are however no remains, as it was plundered and burnt by the English in 1179; and the present castle was erected on its site in 1185, by Prince John, then Earl of Morton, of whom it has been remarked that he achieved nothing during his stay of eight months in Heland, but the construction of this and two other castles, namely, Lismore and Tiobrad Fachtna, now Tibraghny on tlio Suir, which he erected with a view to the conquest of Munster. From these castles he sent parties in various directions to plunder the country ; but being met. by the Irish under the command of Donall O’Brien, Dermod Mac Carthy, and Ro- derick O’Conor, they were defeated with groat slaughter, four knights having been killed at Ardfinnan; after which John was glad to return to England. Prince J ohn, however, or those under whose advice he acted, showed a considerable degree of judgment and military skill in the selection of Ardfinnan as the site of a fortress, which commanded one of the chief passes into South Munster ; and the castle itself w r as of a princely magnificence, and of such a degree of strength as must have rendered it impregnable before the use of artillery. Its general form, as its ruins still sufficiently show, was that of a parallelogram, strength- ened by square tow r ers at the corners, and having a strong entrance gateway. This gateway still remains, as well as the greater part of the walls ; but the edifices of the interior are in a state of great dilapidation, and only part of the roof o. one room remains. It is stated by the editor of Lewis’s To- pographical Dictionary, but on what authority we know not, that this castle belonged to the Knights Templars, and that 346 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. on the suppression of that establishment it was granted to the Knights of St John of Jerusalem, and subsequently to the Bishop of Waterford. But be this as it may, it was preserved as a military fortress till it was dismantled in 1C49 by that great destroyer of Irish castles, Oliver Cromwell, who, plant- ing his cannon on the opposite hill near the bridge, made a breach in the walls, which speedily induced the garrison to sur- render. The breach there is still shown, and according to an old tourist the following story is told in connection with it : — “ When the place was besieged by Oliver, abutcherwas within the walls, who while the siege lasted could never be prevailed on to come out of the room where he had placed himself ; but when the breach was made, and the soldiers began to storm, he took up a handspike, and defended the breach almost alone for some time, and knocked down several soldiers that strove to enter ; but finding none to second him, he retired without the least hurt. When the castle was surrendered, he was asked why he would not come to the walls before the breach was made ? He replied, * Damn them, I did not mind what was doing on the outside, but I could not bear their coming into the house,’ as he called it.” Ardfinnan is a parish in the barony of Iffa and Offa west, county of Tipperary, above four miles S. S. E. from Cahir, and contains about nine hundred inhabitants. The village itself, which extends into the adjoining parish of Ballybacon, contains above three hundred. It was once a place of greater note, and appears to have had a corporation, as it is on record, 4th of Edward II (1311), that a grant of “ pontage for three years” was made “ to the Bailiffs and good men of Ardfynan” at the request of the Bishop of Limerick. P. PUSS IN BROGUES, A LEGEND. It was about Christmas in the year 1831 that I received an invitation to spend the holidays with a friend who resided in a valley embosomed amongst the loftiest of those mountains which form the boundary between the King’s and Queen’s counties. The name of my host was Garret Dalton ; he held a considerable tract of land at a low rent, and by hard work- ing and thrifty living contrived not only to support his family in comparative comfort, but to “ lay up a snug penny in the horn” for his only daughter Nanny, who was at this time about fourteen years of age, and, as her fond father often proudly boasted, “ the patthern ov as purty a colleen as you’d find from the seven churches of Clonmacnoise to the hill ov Howth — wherever that was.” Garret was generous and hospitable ; his house “ was known to all the vagrant train,” and the way-worn pilgrim, the wandering minstrel, the itinerant “ boccough,” and the strolling vender of the news and gossip of the day, were always secure of a welcome reception at his comfortable fireside. Amongst the most constant of his guests was one Maurice O’Sullivan, a native of the county of Cork. Maurice was a most venerable-looking personage — tall, gaunt, athletic, and stone blind. He was about eighty years of age ; his white hair flowed on his shoulders, and he played the Irish bag- pipes delightfully. He was the lineal descendant of a family still famous in the annals of the “ green isle and although now compelled to wander through his native land in the garb and character of a blind piper, he had once seen better days, and was possessed of education and intelligence far superior to most of his caste. He was intimately acquainted with the sad history of his country, was devotedly attached to the dogmas of the fairy creed, could recite charms and inter- pret dreams, and was deeply conversant in all those witch legends and traditions for which the Munster peasantry are so peculiarly celebrated. Hence Maurice was always a spe- cial favourite with my enthusiastic friend, who regularly en- tertained him at his own table, and who, when they would have disposed of their plain but comfortable and substantial meal, would treat his blind guest to repeated “ rounds” of good “ half and half,” composed of water from the spring, and the potteen of the valley. It was night-fall when I arrived, and the happy family, consisting of Garret and his wife, Nanny their eldest girl, and her two little brothers, with Paddy Bawn the “ sarvint bov,” and Ouny the “ girl,” including blind Maurice, were collected in a smiling group around the immense turf fire. In that day teetotalism had made little progress in Ireland ; a huge copper kettle was therefore soon hissing on the fire ; a large grey-beard of mountain- dew stood on the huge oak-table ; tumblers and glasses glit- tered in their respective places : and, in a few minutes we were all engaged in discussing the merits of a large jug of potteen punch. All were happy ; Garret talked, his wife smiled ; told all the “ new news” of the Queen’s county ; whilst the spaces were filled up by blind Maurice, who played several of his most delightful national airs on his antique-looking pipes, whilst invariably as he concluded each successive lay, he would enrich the treat by some tradition connected with the piece he had been playing, and which threw an inde- scribable charm not only around the performance, but the per- former. “ That’s a curious thing,” remarked Garret, as the piper con- cluded one particular rant ; “ it’s a quare medley, sometimes gay and sometimes sad, and sometimes like the snarlin’ of a growlin’ dog, and again exactly like the mewing of a cat.” The piper smiled. “ And have you,” he asked, “ never heard me play that tune before ? — and did I never tell you the strange story connected with it ?” “ Never,” was the reply. “ Well, that is strange enough ; that tune is an old favourite in Munster, and I thought the whole world had heard of it.” “ It never Kem to Glen-Mac-Tir, anyhow,” replied the far- mer, “ or I’d surely have heard of it. How d’ye call the name of it ?” “ Caith-na-brogueen — that is in English, Puss in Brogues,” said the piper. “ Well,” said Garret, “ it’s often I heard of Puss in Boots, but I never heard of Puss in Brogues afore.” “ Well, I’ll tell you and this good company all about it,” said Maurice, laying down his pipes and wiping his forehead. “ Ay, but afore you begin,” said Garret, “ take another dhrop to wet your whistle, and you’ll get on the betther with your story.” The piper seized the flowing tumbler again, and raising it to his lips, gaily exclaimed, whilst his attenuated hand shook nervously beneath the weight of the smoking goblet, “ Sho-dhurtlh, your healths, my friends, glory to our noble selves ; and if this be war, may we never have more peaceable times.” “ Amen,” was the fervent response of every one present. “ Now for the Caitli-na-brogueen” said Garret. “ Ay, and a wild and strange tale it is,” said Maurice. “ However, it is a popular tradition in South Munster, and often when a boy have I listened to it, whilst my eyes, now dark for ever, would glisten with delight, and 1 would even fear to breathe lest one syllable of the legend might escape me.” Then emitting a deep-drawn sigh, and again wiping his polished brow, he thus began. ‘ At the foot of a hill in a lonely district of the county of Cork, about a dozen miles from my native village, there lived in old times a poor man named Larry Roche. He was, they say, descended from that family of the Roches once so mighty in the south of Ireland, and some branches of which still re- tain a considerable degree of their former consequence and respectability. Poor Larry, however, although the blood of kings might flow through his veins, was neither rich nor re- spectable ; and his only means of support was a patch of barren land, which he held from that celebrated sportsman Squire B , in consideration of his services as care-keeper of a vast extent of bog and heath, the property of the squire, and which extended far westward of poor Larry Roche’s cabin. Yet Larry was not discontented with his situation. His father and grandfather had lived and died in the same cabin ; and although sometimes he might feel disposed to envy the fine times which the sporting squire enjoyed, yet on cool reflection he would console himself with the consideration that “ it was not every one that was born with a silver spoon in his mouth,” and that even squire B himself, as grand as he was, was on the “ look down,” or he would not spend so much of his time wading through fens and bogs at home, but like his ancestors be lavishing his thousands amongst the Sassenaghs at the other side of the lough, or driving about on the continent. Thus rolled away poor Larry’s days in poverty and contentment. In the shooting season his time was occupied in following his master oyer heath and hillock with his game-bag on his shoulder, and his “ dhudeen” in his teeth, whilst the rest of the year was spent in lounging about the ditches of the neighbourhood, chatting with the crones of the vicinity about his family con- nexions, or the fairies of Glendharig, or squabbling with his good woman and his young ones : for Larry was married ; and as his wife was exactly a counterpart of himself, every how THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 347 of course gave fresh cause for that bickering and disagreement so often the result of untimely and ill-assorted marriages. The only domestic animal in or about Larry Roche’s cabin was a ferocious-looking old black tom-cat, far bigger and stronger than any cat ever seen in that part of the country. His fur was black, he had strong whiskers, his nails were like a tiger’s, and at the end of his tail was fixed a claw or “ gaff” as sharp and hooked as a falcon’s beak ; his eyes also flashed by night with an appalling glare, and his cry was a savage howl, baffling all description, and unlike any sound ever heard from any other animal. He was as singular in his habits, too, as in his appearance. He was never known to demand a mor- sel of food ; and if offered any, he would reject it with indig- nation. Every evening at twilight he left the fireside, and spent the night scouring over moor and heather, and at day- break would return from his foray, gaining access through the low chimney of the cabin, and be found in the morning in his usual position on the hob-stone. There he would sit from morning till night ; and when Larry and Betty and the “ childre” were chatting in a group around the fire, the cat would watch them intently, and if the nature of their conver- sation was such as to excite laughter or merriment, he would growl in a low tone, evidently dissatisfied ; but if their dialogues were held in a jarring, angry strain, as sometimes happened, he would purr hoarsely and loudly, whilst the wagging of his tail testified the pleasure he felt in their feuds and dissensions. The family had often been advised to make away with him, but superstitious awe or family prejudice prevented them; and although the whole neighbourhood averred that “he was no right thing:,” yet for the reasons I have stated his owners never could be induced to make any attempt to banish or destroy him. One dreary evening in October, Larry returned from his day’s wandering with the squire over the bleak bogs, and although it rained, and the wind blew bitterly, he appeared in much better spirits than was usual with him on similar oc- casions. His wife wondered, and made more than usual prepara- tions to please him. She trimmed the fire, and assisted him in taking off his dripping clothes, and then commenced pour- ing out her sympathy for his sufferings. “ Oh, never mind,” said Larry ; “ I have good new r s.” “ Arrah, sit down,” said Betty, “ and tell us what it is.” Larry sat dowm, and putting his hand in his pocket, pulled out a glittering gold coin. “ Arrah, Larry, avourneen, what’s' that ?” asked the woman. “ Faith, it’s a rale yellow boy, a good goold guinea,” re- plied Larry. “ The squire gev it to me, and tould me to buy apair of brogues with it, and drink his health with the balance.” “ Och, musha ! then, long life to him,” vociferated Betty ; “ and, Larry, a-hagur, will you buy the brogues ?” “ Faix and I will,” said Larry, “and another rattling pair for yourself, a-chorra.” “ Ay, daddy, and another pair for me,” shouted young Larry. “ And another for me,” cried Thady. “ And another for me,” chuckled Charley. “ Ay, and two pair for me,” cried the black cat, speaking in a wild unearthly tone from the hob-stone, and breaking forth into a horrible laugh. “ Devil knock the day-lights out of yez all,” cried Larry, without seeming to take any notice of the strange circum- stance, though his heart died within him with terror and sur- prise. “ Lord have mercy on us !” faintly ejaculated Betty, sign- ing her brow, whilst all the children started up in terror, and ran behind their parents in the chimney-corner. All this time the cat remained silent on the hob ; but his aspect, at all times terrible, now seemed perfectly monstrous and hideous. For some time a death-like silence was preser- ved, but at last Larry plucked up courage to address the speaking animal. “ And, in the name of God,” he began, “ what business have you with brogues ?” “ Ask me no questions,” replied the cat, “ but get me the brogues as soon as possible.” “ Oh, by all means,” replied Larry, quite gently, “ you must have them ; and why did you not ask them long ago, and you should have got them ?” “ My time was not come,” replied Puss, briefly. “ Well,” resumed Larry, “to-morrow is Sunday, and at day- break I will start off to my gossip Phadruig Donovan’s, in Mill-street, to engage the brogues ; he is the best brogue- maker in the county, and he is my first gossip besides.” “ I know all that,” said the cat, as he leaped up the chim- ney, on his departure to the scene of his midnight wander- ings. “ Good night, Larry, and don’t forget your engage- ment and he disappeared through the gathering gloom, to the great relief of poor Larry and his terrified family. That was a sad and uneasy night with poor Larry and his wife and children. They did not go to bed at all, but sat trembling at the fire, expecting every moment that the black imp would return with legions of fiends to carry them away, body and bones, to the regions below. Numerous were the plans proposed for getting rid of their old companion, but all were rejected— some as inefficient, others as impracticable ; and the only point on which they could finally agree, Avas, that their days were numbered, and that perhaps before morning their blood would be streaming on the hearth-stone, and their souls Avandering through mire and morass, the prey of troops of fiends. At last the morning daAvned, and as Larry disconsolately enough w r as preparing to set for Avar d on his journey to Mill- street, the cat jumped doAvn the chimney, and took his usual place on the hob. “ Well, I am going now,” said Larry ; “ have you any di- rections to give about the brogues ?” The cat did not reply, but uttered a hideous groAvl, which fell heavily on the poor fellow’s heart ; so kissing his wife and children, and commending them to the protection of God, he set out on his sorrowful journey. He had not gone far Avhen he perceived through the dim grey of the morning a human figure approaching ; and on advancing a little nearer, he found that it was a very old man, of extremely diminutive stature and forbidding aspect. He wore an old grey coat and an equally old Avoollen cap, and his thin Avhite hair descended to his knees ; he Avas bare- foot, and carried a Avalking-stick in his hand. “ Good morrow, and God save you, Larry Roche,” said the old man as he came up. “ A bright morning to you,” answered Larry. “ Hoav is every rope’s length of you, Larry, and how is the woman and the childre at home ?” demanded the stranger. “ Faix, purty well, considherin,” replied Larry. “ But you have a great advantage of me.” “ Hoav’s that?” said the old man. “ Why,' because you knoAv me so well, while I have no more knoAvledge of you than of the man in the moon.” “ Och, Fd knoAv your skin in a tan-yard,” said the old chap, laughing. “ But is it possible you don’t know me ?” “ Faix if God Almighty knoAvs no more about you than I do, the devil will have a prey of you one of those days,” re- plied Larry. “ Well, say no more about that,” said the old fellow, rather angrily. “ But where are you going this blessed Sunday morn- ing, Larry ?” “To Mill-street,” said Larry. “ All the ways — musha! what’s taking you to Mill-street, Larry ?” “ My feet and my business,” said Larry, something piqued at the old fellow’s inquisitive importunity. “ You are very stiff this morning, Larry,” said the stranger with a grin. “ I am worse than that,” said the poor fellow; “the heart within me is sick and sore.” “ And Avkat troubles you noAv, Larry ?” Larry hereupon told the Avhole of his strange misfortunes to the stranger, ending with a deep “ ochone,” and wishing, if it Avas the will of God, that “ his four bones were stretched in the church-yard of Kilebawn.” “ You’ll be there time enough for your AA’elcome, may be,” said the old chap, “ but that’s neither here nor there. What Avill you do with the black cat?” “ Och, sw r eet bad luck to all the cats alive, both black and white,” imprecated Larry. “ That cat’s a devil — a fiend,” said the stranger ; “ and more than that, he intends to murder you and your family this A r ery night.” Larry groaned and crossed his forehead, Avhilst the stran- ger’s hideous countenance was convulsed with half-suppressed laughter, “ Well, Larry,” said he again, “ I am your friend, and I have poAver to save you and yours, on one condition; and that is, that you Avill stop up the windoAV in the back Avail of your cabin.” 348 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. “ Faith ancl I’ll do that with a heart and a half,” said Larry. “ But what do you want that for ?” “ I’ll tell you that another time,” said the little man. “ Go home now, and say you can’t proceed to Mill-street without taking the wife and children with you, to leave the measure of their feet for the brogues. Tell the cat also that he must come too, to have his fit taken ; then tie him up in a bag, and bring him with you ; fasten this hair around your neck,” added the old roan, at the same time extracting a sin- gle white hair from his head, “ and all the imps of hell cannot hurt you. But mind and don’t open your lips from the time you leave home till you come to this spot ; and when you arrive here with the cat, sit down and wait the event.” A thick fog now suddenly rose, and the old man was hidden from the sight of Larry, who, greatly overjoyed, returned to his cabin to execute the orders he had got, and w r as met by his wife, who was trembling for his safe return, but did not expect him sooner than night. “Musha! Larry agragal, you’re welcome,” she exclaimed; “ and what in the name of God turned you back ?” “ I am coming for you and the gorsoons ; you must all come to Mill-street to have your measure taken for the brogues.” “ And must I go too ?” asked the cat. “ Faix you must,” said Larry ; “ if natural Christians could’nt be fitted without bein’ on the spot, it’s hard to expect that you could.” “ And how am I to travel ?” he asked. “ In a bag on my back,” replied Larry. “I’ll whip you through the country like a dinner to a hog, and man or mor- tal shall never be the wiser, if the brogue-maker keeps his tongue quiet.” “ I’ll go bail he will,” said Puss, “ for I’ll kill him the very night the brogues is brought home.” “ Lord have mercy on him !” ejaculated Larry, his heart sinking within him. “ Pray for yourself— may be you want mercy as well as him,” said the cat. The preparations were soon completed, and the cat being put into the bag, Larry tied the mouth of it firmly with a piece of cord, and then slung it on his shoulder ; and after ac- quainting his wife with his adventure with the old man on “Moin-more,” he departed, whistling the air of “ Thamama Thulla.” He soon gained the spot where he had parted with the old man, and looking round and perceiving nobody, he sat down on the green fern, still holding the bag which contained his terrible fellow-traveller. “ What stops you Larry ?” asked the cat. Larry, recollecting the old man’s injunction, spoke not, but continued whistling. “ Does anything ail you, Larry?” “ Whoo, hoo, phoo, hoo — Thamemo Chodladh.” “ Is Betty and the childre to the fore?” “ Thamemo Chodladh.” “ Bad luck to you and your ‘ Thamemo Chodladh,’ ” cried the cat. “ That the prayers may fall on the preacher,” said Larry to himself. The cat now began to make desperate efforts to escape from the bag, whilst Larry redoubled his exertions to detain him. His attention, however, was soon arrested by the cry of hounds, and on looking westward, he perceived, rapidly ap- proaching over the morass, a big black man mounted on a black horse, and accompanied by a numerous pack of black dogs. “ Ochone,” thought Larry, “now I am coached of all ever happened me. Here is the chap’s black friends coming to rescue him, and they wont leave a toothful a-piece in my carcass.” “ Let me go, Larry,” said the cat, “ let me go, and I'll show you where there’s a cart-load of gold buried in the ground.” But Larry remained silent, and meantime the horse- man and hounds came up. “ Good morrow and good luck, Larry Roche,” said the black equestrian, with a grim smile. “ Good morrow, kindly, your worship,” said Larry. “ Is that a fox you have in the bag, Larry?” “ No, in troth,” said Larry, “though I believe he is not much honester than a fox.” “ I must see what it is, any how,” said the sable horseman, with a gesticulation which convinced Larry at once that he was the fellow whom he had seen before. So Larry opened the bag, and out jumped Puss, and away with him over the bog like a flash of lightning. The wild huntsman hallooed his dogs, and the pursuit commenced, but the cat was soon surrounded and torn to pieces. “ Now,” said the horseman, “ I must bid you farewell and off he went ; and then Larry returned home with the happy tidings, and the squire’s guinea was spent in the purchase of sundry bottles of “ Tom Corcoran’s” best potteen ; but we must do Larry the justice to say that his agreement with the old man was punctually performed, and the back window stopped as effectually as mud and stones could do it. A few nights after, Larry was aroused from his sleep by the merry tones of bagpipes at his fire-side, and getting up, he perceived the kitchen illuminated with a bright, reddish glare, whilst on the hob-stone he saw, snugly seated, the ever re- membered little old man playing a set of bagpipes, to the delightful tones of which hundreds of little fellows with red caps and red small-clothes were capering about the floor. “ God bless the man and the work” said Larry, “ and warm work yez have ov it this hour ov the night.” The little fellow hereupon set up a shout, and rushing to the door, flew through it, one of them striking poor Larry a box on the right eye, which blinded it. “Goodnight, Misthur Larry,” said the piper; “and how is your four bones ? and how is the good woman that owns you ?” «/ “ Och, no fear at all ov the woman,” replied Larry ; “ and as for my bones, they are well enough ; but, faith, my right eye, I believe, is in whey in my head.” “ Well, it will teach you how to speak to your betters in future,” said the little piper ; “never mintion the holy name again, when talking to the ‘good people.’ “ But, Larry, listen : I’ll now tell you why I wanted you to stop up your back window. “ You must know that this cabin of yours stands on the mid- dle of a fairy pass. We often come this way in our wan- derings through the air in cold nights, and often we wished to warm ourselves at your fire-side; but as there was a win- dow in the back of your cabin, we had not power to stop, but were compelled to pursue our journey. Now that the win- dow is stopped, we can come in and remain as long as we wish, and resume our journey through the door by which we enter. We pass this way almost every night, and you need never feel in the least apprehensive of injury so long as you let us pursue our pastimes undisturbed.” “ I’ll be bound me or mine shall never annoy one of yez,” said Larry, “ That’s a good fellow, Larry,” said the little chap ; “ and now r take those pipes and play us a tune.” “ Och, the devil a chanter I ever fingered,” said Larry, “since I was christened.” “ No matter,” said the little fellow ; “ I’ll go bail you’ll play out of the soot.” Larry “yoked” on the pipes, and lilted up in darling style a merry tune, whilst the old chap was ready to split with laughing. “ What’s the name of that tchune ?” said Larry. “ Caith-na-brogueen,” replied the fairy piper ; “ a tune I com- posed in memory of your escape from the cat ; a tune that will soon become a favourite all over Munster.” Larry handed back the pipes ; the little man placed them in a red bag, and, bidding his host “ good night,” dashed up the chimney. The next night, and almost every following night, the din of fairy revels might be heard at Larry Roche’s fire-side, and Larry himself was their constant companion in their midnight frolics. He soon became the best performer on the bagpipes in the south of Ireland, and after some time surrendered his cabin to the sole occupation of the “ good people,” and wan- dered with his family through all the Munster counties, and was welcome and kindly treated wherever he came. After some time, the cabin from neglect fell, and offered no further impediment to the fairy host in their midnight wanderings, whilst Larry followed a life of pleasure and peace, far from the scene of his former perils and privations. The cat, of course, was never seen after ; but the peasantry of the neighbourhood say that the screams of the infernal fiend, mingled with the deep howlings of hell-hounds and the savage yellings of the sable hunter, may be distinctly heard in horrid chorus amongst the fens and morasses of the broad Moin-more.’ Thus ended the strange tale of Maurice O’Sullivan, who THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. in addition to the unanimous applause of the company present, was treated to another flowing tumbler of the barley bree, which he tossed off to the health of those who, to use his own words, were “ good people” in earnest — not fays or fairies, ho-wever, but the hospitable folks of Glen-Mac-Tir ; adding at the same time that he was resolved to gratify the lovers of legendary lore with another of his wild Munster tales on the following night. J. K. ITINERANT GOLDSMITHS OF INDIA AND SUMATRA. In the production of beautiful specimens of mechanical art, much more depends upon the natural taste and ingenuity of the -workman than upon the completeness and perfection of his tools. To those who are not much acquainted -with the mechanical arts, this may sound somewhat like a self-evident proposition; yet it is far, very far indeed, from being consi- dered such by European mechanics in general, and by our own in particular. So commonly is the blame of clumsy workmanship laid upon the badness or the want of tools, that an anecdote is related of a man, -who, upon being spoken to by a friend for having committed numerous grammatical errors in a letter which he had just written, cursed his pen, and asked his friend how he could be so excessively unreason- able as to expect him or any man to write good English with such a wretched implement ! To such a degree of excellence has the manufacture of mechanical tools and instruments arrived in these countries, that a British mechanic would be utterly astonished could he but behold the process of manufacturing various articles in the East ; such for example as the shawls of Persia and Cashmere, the carvings in wood and ivory of China, the extraction of metal from the ore in the same country, by which malleable !iron is produced fit for immediate use, and of the finest quality, by a single process ; and, not to tire by enume- ration, the productions of the itinerant goldsmiths of India and the island of Sumatra. These last excel in filagree work, for which they are celebrated, far exceeding even the Chinese in its extraordinary delicacy ; yet their tools are ruder than those of the Indian goldsmith of the continent. When a Sumatran goldsmith is engaged to manufacture some piece of gold or silver work, he firsts asks for any little piece of thin iron — a bit of an iron hoop will answer his purpose — and with this he makes an instrument for drawing his wire. The head of an old hammer stuck in a block of wood serves for an anvil ; and for a pair of compasses he is contented with two old nails tied together at the heads. If he has a crucible, good ; if not, a piece of a broken rice-pot or a china tea-cup answers his purpose. His furnace is an old broken quallee or iron pot, and his bellows a joint of bamboo, through which he blows wdth his mouth. If the work be heavy, and the quan- tity of metal to be melted considerable, three or four sit round the furnace, each with his bamboo, and blow together. It is only at Padang, where the manufacture is carried on exten- sively, that the Chinese bellows has been introduced. The art of wire-drawing not having been considerably improved upon since the time of Tubalcain, the Sumatran method differs little from the European. When drawn sufficiently fine, the wire is flattened by beat- ing it upon the anvil, and when flattened, it is twisted by rubbing it upon a block of wood with a flat stick. Having twisted it, the goldsmith again flattens it upon the anvil, and it is then a flat wire wdth serrated or indented edges, suitable for forming leaves or portions of flowers ; these he makes by turning down the end of the wire with a rude pincers, and then cutting it off ; this process is repeated until he has a sufficient number prepared for his work. The pattern he has drawn on a piece of paper or card, to the size and shape of which the intended piece of workmanship must correspond. If the work is to be formed upon a plate of gold, he cuts the plate to the shape of his pattern, and proceeds to dispose the various bits of foliage, assorted according to size, and adjusts wire of various thickness for the stems, tendrils, &c., fastening them temporarily together, and upon the plate, with the sago berry, called boca sago, which they reduce to a pulp by grind- ing upon a rough stone; and a young cocoa nut, about the size of a walnut, forms the ointment-box for this gelatinous pre- paration. When the work has been all placed in order, the operator prepares his solder, which consists of gold filings and borax mingled with water; this he strews upon the plate and applies to the several points of contact of the finer por- 349 tions of his work; and then, exposing the whole to the action of the fire, in a few moments the soldering is completed. But if it is open work, he lays out the foliage and other parts upon a card or thin bit of soft wood, and attaches them together, as before described, with the pulp of the sago berry, applies the solder to the points of junction, and puts his work into the fire as before ; the card or wood burns away, the solder unites the parts, and the work is completed ; but if the piece be very large, the soldering is done at several times. When the work is finished as to the manufacturing part, it is clean- sed and brightened by boiling it in water with common salt and alum, or lime juice ; and when the goldsmith wishes to give it a fine purple colour, he boils it in water with sulphur. The beautiful little balls with which the Sumatran filagroo work is sometimes ornamented, are very simply made. Tho maker merely drills a small hole in a piece of charcoal, into which he puts some grains of gold dust, and upon exposing it to the fire, it runs into a perfect ball. At finishing plain work, however, it must be confessed that the Sumatran and Indian goldsmiths fall short of the Euro- pean ; but if the latter excel in this, which may be considered the lowest department of the art, they are, despite their im- provements and the superiority of their instruments, vastly inferior in the elegance and delicacy of the finer parts. The Sonah Wallah (which signifies in Hindoostanee “ the gold fellow”), or itinerant goldsmith of India, is far better supplied with tools and implements of his trade than the Su- matran; and being thus a step higher in the grade of civiliza- tion, he exhibits evidences of his advance in refinement by being such a confounded rogue, that it is almost impossible for even his European employer to detect him, or prevent him from pilfering some portion of the metal consigned to his ingenuity. The Sonah Wallah may be hired for half a rupee (a little over a shilling) a-day, and, like the tinkers in these countries, he brings his implements with him. These consist of a small forge, to the edge of which are attached several iron rings, which may be turned up over the charcoal to receive his cru- cibles ; a tin tube to blow through, a pair of slight iron tongs, a pair of small pliers, a hammer, a couple of earthen saucers, and a rude anvil consisting of a piece of flint se- cured in a rough iron frame. The gold usually presented to him for working is the gold mohur, a coin worth about 32s. ster- ling ; this coin he places in a crucible with a little borax, to make it fuse the more readily ; and having fixed the crucible in one of the rings, and lighted the charcoal under and around it, he blows with his tin tube until the metal is melted, when he practises a trick of his trade by throwing in a small quan- tity of nitro-muriatic acid, which causes a sudden expansion, or slight explosion, by which a portion of the metal is thrown out of the crucible into the fire, from the extinguished embers of which the rogue separates it at a convenient opportunity ; and lest his employer should try to detect him by weighing the material both before and after working, he uses a copper- rod for stirring the contents of the crucible, a portion of which rod melts and mingles with the gold, and so compen- sates for the deficiency in weight, or at least so nearly as in- variably to escape detection, although it is more than" proba- ble that an instance seldom or never occurs in which they do not defraud their employers of a portion of the gold put into their hands. The fact is, that their admirable skill so com- pletely compensates for their knavery, that few would think of questioning too closely, for, rude and simple as are their tools, they far exceed European workmen in the production of delicate and intricately formed trinkets ; their small, taper, and flexible fingers more than supplying the place of the nu- merous varieties of implements which the mechanic of Bir- mingham or Sheffield finds indispensably necessary. Indian chains of gold and silver have been ever celebrated for the beauty and complication of their structure ; and although the Sonah Wallah may be considered to excel particularly in this branch of his art, yet he still must be admitted to surpass, or at least equal, the European even in the manufacture of finger rings, bracelets, and armlets. Much of the superior ingenuity of the Indian goldsmith may be attributable to the division of the people into castes or sections, by which fundamental law the same profession is carried on by the same people or family through countless ge- nerations ; the Shastra, or code of Hindoo laws, forbidding the mixture of the castes, or interference with any business or profession not carried on by their progenitors. There are four integral divisions of the people. The first caste, the Brahmins, are said by the Hindoo scriptures to 350 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. have issued, at the creation, from Brahma’s mouth ; and being thus the most excellent and dignified, are set apart for the priesthood and legislative departments of the state. The se- cond, the Cshatryas, are said to have issued from Brahma’s arms, and to them is committed the executive— these con- sequently form the armies. The third caste, the Vaisyas, are said to have proceeded from Brahma’s thighs ; they are the merchants, and consequently amongst them are to be found some of the wealthiest men of Hindostan. The fourth caste, called Soodras, being said to have issued from the feet of Brahma, are considered the most ignoble and degraded, and to them are left all mechanical arts and servile employ- ments, as being beneath the dignity of the superior castes. Amongst the Soodras, consequently, are the goldsmiths ; and as the different professions form a sort of minor castes amongst the greater ones, the same business is transferred from father to son ; and all the powers of the mind being directed undis- tractedly to the single object, pre-eminence in that line is na- turally to be expected. N. BARNY O’GRADY. Behold me safely landed at Philadelphia, with one hundred pounds in my pocket — a small sum of money ; but many, from yet more trifling beginnings, have grown rich in America. Many passengers who came over in the same ship with me had not half so much. Several of them were indeed wretch- edly poor. Among others there was an Irishman, who was known by the name of Barny — a contraction, I believe, for Barnaby. As to his surname, he could not undertake to spell it, but he assured me there was no better. This man, with many of his relatives, had come to England, according to their custom, during harvest time, to assist in reaping, be- cause they gain higher wages than in their own country. Barny had heard that he should get still higher wages for labour in America, and accordingly he and his two sons, lads of eighteen and twenty, took their passage for Philadelphia. A merrier mortal I never saw. We used to hear him upon deck, continually singing or whistling his Irish tunes ; and I should never have guessed that this man’s life had been a series of hardships and misfortunes. When we were leaving the ship, I saw him, to my great sur- prise, crying bitterly ; and upon inquiring what was the mat- ter, he answered that it was not for himself, but for his two sons, he was grieving ; because they were to be made re- demption men ; that is, they were to be bound to work, during a certain time, for the captain, or for whomsoever he pleased, till the money due for their passage should be paid. Although I was somewhat surprised at any one’s thinking of coming on board a vessel without having one farthing in his pocket, yet I could not forbear paying the money for this poor fellow. He dropped down on the deck upon both his knees, as suddenly as if he had been shot, and holding up his hands to heaven, prayed, first in Irish, and then in English, withfervent fluency, that “ I and mine might never want ; that I might live long to reign over him ; that success might attend my honour wherever I went ; and that I might enjoy for evermore all sorts of blessings and crowns of glory.” As I had an English preju- dice in favour of silent gratitude, I was rather disgusted by all this eloquence ; I turned away abruptly, and got into the boat which waited to carry me to shore. * * * * * I had now passed three years in Philadelphia, and was not a farthing the richer, but, alas, a great deal poorer. My inve- terate habit of procrastination — of delaying every thing till to-morrow, always stood betwixt me and prosperity. I at last resolved upon leaving the land of the star-spangled ban- ner ; but when I came to reckon up my resources, I found that I could not do so, unless I disposed of my watch and my wife’s trinkets. I was not accustomed to such things, and I was ashamed to go to the pawnbroker’s, lest I should be met and recognised by some of my friends. I wrapped myself up in an old surtout, and slouched my hat over my face. As I was crossing the quay, I met a party of gentlemen walking arm in arm. I squeezed past them, but one stopped and looked after me ; and though I turned down another street to escape him, he dodged me unperceived. Just as I came out of the pawnbroker’s shop, I saw him posted opposite me; I brushed by; I could with pleasure have knocked him down for his im- pertinence. By the time that I had reached the corner of the street, I heard a child calling after me ; I stopped, and a little boy put into my hand my watch, saying, “ Sir, the gentleman says you left your watch and these thingumbobs by mistake.” “ What gentleman ?” “ I don’t know, but he was one that said I looked like an honest chap, and he’d trust me to run and give you the watch. He is dressed in a blue coat, and went towards the quay. That’s all I know.” On opening the paper of trinkets, I found a card with these words : — “ Barny — with kind thanks.” “Barny! poor Barny! An Irishman whose passage I paid coming to America three years ago. Is it possible?” I ran after him the way which the child directed, and was so fortunate as just to catch a glimpse of the skirt of his coat as he went into a neat, good-looking house. I walked up and down for some time, expecting him to come out again ; for I could not suppose that it belonged to Barny. I asked a gro- cer who was leaning over his hatch-door, if he knew who lived in the next house ? “ An Irish gentleman of the name of O’Grady.” “ And his Christian name?” “ Here it is in my books, sir — Barnaby O’Grady.” I knocked at Mr O’Grady ’s door, and made my way into the parlour, where I found him, his two sons, and his wife, sitting very sociably at tea. He and the two young men rose immediately, to set me a chair. “ You are welcome, kindly welcome, sir,” said he. “ This is an honour I never expected, any way. Be pleased to take the seat next the fire. ’T would be hard indeed if you should not have the best seat’s that to be had in this house, where we none of us ever should have sat, nor had seats to sit upon, but for you.” The sons pulled off my shabby greatcoat, and took away my hat, and Mrs O’Grady made up the fire. There was something in their manner, altogether, which touched me so much that it was with difficulty I could keep myself from bursting into tears. They saw this, and Barny (for I shall never call him any thing else), as he thought that I should like better to hear of public affairs than to speak of my own, began to ask his sons if they had seen the day’s paper, and what news there were. As soon as I could command my voice, I congratulated this family upon the happy situation in which I found them, and asked by what lucky accident they had succeeded so well. “ The luckiest accident ever happened me before or since T came to America,” said Barny, “ was being onboard the same vessel with such a man as you. If you had not given me the first lift, I had been down for good and all, and trampled under foot, long and long ago. But after that first lift, all was as easy as life. My two sons here were not taken from me — God bless you ; for I never can bless you enough for that. The lads were left to work for me and with me ; and we never parted, hand or heart, but just kept working on together, and put all our earnings, as fast as we got them, into the hands of that good woman, and lived hard at first, as we were born and bred to do, thanks be to heaven ! Then we swore against all sorts of drink entirely. And as I had occasionally served the masons when I lived a labouring man in the county of Dub- lin, and knew something of that business, why, whatever I knew, I made the most of, and a trowel felt noways strange to me, so I went to work, and had higher wages at first than I deserved. The same with the two boys : one was as much of a blacksmith as would shoe a horse, and the other a bit of a carpenter ; so the one got plenty of work in the forges, and the other in the dockyards as a ship-carpenter. So, early and late, morning and evening, we were all at the work, and just went this way struggling on even for a twelvemonth, and found, with the high wages and constant employ we had met, that we were getting greatly better in the world. Besides, the wife was not idle. When a girl, she had seen baking, and had always a good notion of it, and just tried her hand upon it now, and found the loaves went down with the customers, who came faster and faster for them ; and this was a great help. Then I turned master mason, and had my men under me, and took a house to build by the job, and that did ; and then on to another ; and after building many for the neighbours, ’twas fit and my turn, I thought, to build one for myself, which I did out of theirs, without wronging them of a, penny. In short,” continued Barny, “ if you were to question me how I have got on so well in the world, upon my conscience I should answer, we never made Saint Monday, and never put off till to-morrow what we could do to-day. THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 351 I believe I sighed deeply at this observation of Barry’s no withstanding the comic phraseology in which it was ex- pressed. “ And would it be too much liberty to ask you,” said Barny, “ to drink a cup of tea, and to taste a slice of my good wo- man’s bread and butter ? And happy the day we see you eating it, and only wish we could serve you in any way what- soever.” I verily believe the generous fellow forgot at this instant that he had redeemed my watch and wife’s trinkets. He would not let me thank him as much as I wished, but kept pressing upon me fresh offers of service. When he found I was going to leave America, he asked what vessel we should go in. I was really afraid to tell him, lest he should attempt to pay for my passage But for this he had, as I afterwards found, too much delicacy of sentiment. He discovered, by questioning the captains, in what ship we were to sail ; and when we went on board, we found him and his sons there to take leave of us, which they did in the most affectionate man- ner ; and after they were gone, we found in the state cabin, directed to me, every thing that could be useful or agreeable to us, as sea stores for a long voyage . — Incident in a Tale en- titled “ To-morrow,” by Miss Edgeworth. Decision of Character: Howard the Philanthro- pist In decision of character no man ever exceeded, or ever will exceed, the late illustrious Howard. The energy of his determination was so great, that if, instead of being habitual, it had been shown only for a short time on particu- lar occasions, it would have appeared a vehement impetu- osity ; but by being unintermitted it had an equability of manner which scarcely appeared to exceed the tone of a calm constancy, it was so totally the reverse of any thing like turbu- lence or agitation. It was the calmness of an intensity kept uniform by the nature of the human mind forbidding it to be more, and by the character of the individual forbidding it to be less. The habitual passion of his mind was a measure of feeling almost equal to the temporary extremes and parox- ysms of common minds ; as a great river, in its customary state, is equal to a small or moderate one when swollen to a tor- rent. The moment of finishing his plans in deliberation, and commencing them in action, was the same. I wonder w r hat must have been the amount of that bribe in emolument or pleasure that would have detained him a week inactive after their final adjustment. The law which carries water down a declivity was not more unconquerable and invariable than the determination of his feelings towards the main object. The importance of this object Yield his faculties in a state of excitement which was too rigid to be affected by lighter in- terests, and on which therefore the beauties of nature and of art had no power. He had no leisure feeling which he could spare to be diverted among the innumerable varieties of the extensive scenes which he traversed: all his subordinate feel- ings lost their separate existence and operation by falling into the grand one. There have not been wanting trivial minds to mark this as a fault in his character. But the mere men of taste ought to be silent respecting such a man as Howard : he is above their sphere of judgment. The invi- sible spirits who fulfil their commission of philanthropy among mortals do not care about pictures, statues, and sump- tuous buildings ; and no more did he, when the time in which he must have inspected and admired them would have been taken from the work to which he had consecrated his life. His labours implied an inconceivable severity of conviction that he had one thing to do, and that he who would do some great thing in this short life must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as, to idle spectators who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity. His at- tention was so strongly and tenaciously fixed on his object, that even at the greatest distance, as the Egyptian pyramids to travellers, it appeared to him with a luminous distinct- ness as if it had been nigh, and beguiled the toilsome length of labour and enterprise by which he was to reach it. It was so conspicuous before him that not a step deviated from the direction, and every movement and every day was an approximation. As his method referred every thing he did and thought to the end, and as his exertions did not relax for a moment, he made the trial, so seldom made, what the utmost effect is, which may be granted to the last possible efforts of a human agent ; and, therefore, what he did not accomplish he might conclude to be placed beyond the sphere of mortal activity, and calmly leave to the immediate disposal of Omnipotence. — Foster’s Essays. KISSING OFF SAILORS. An Irish Guineaman had been fallen in with by one of our cruisers, and the commander of his majesty’s sloop the Hum- mingbird made a selection of thirty or forty stout Hibernians to fill up his own complement, and hand over the surplus to the admiral. Short-sighted mortals we all are, and captains of men-of-war are not exempted from human imperfection. How much also drops between the cup and the lip ! There chanced to be on board of the same trader two very pretty Irish girls, of the better sort of bourgeoise, who were going to join their friends at Philadelphia. The name of the one was Judy, and of the other Maria. No sooner were the poor Irishmen informed of their change of destination, than they set up a howl loud enough to make the scaly monsters of the deep seek their dark caverns. They rent the hearts of the poor-hearted girls ; and when the thorough-bass of the males was joined by the sopranos and trebles of the women and chil- dren, it would have made Orpheus himself turn round and gaze. “ Oh, Miss Judy ! oh, Miss Maria ! would you be so cruel as to see us poor crathurs dragged away to a man-of-war, and not for to go and spake a word for us ? A word to the captain from your own purty mouths, and no doubt he would let us off.” The young ladies, though doubting the powers of their own fascinations, resolved to make the experiment. So, begging the lieutenant of the sloop to give them a passage on board to speak with his captain, they added a small matter of finery to their dress, and skipped into the boat like a couple of moun- tain kids, caring neither for the exposure of ancles nor the spray of the salt water, which, though it took the curls out of their hair, added a bloom to their cheeks, which perhaps con- tributed in no small degree to the success of their project. There is something in the sight of a petticoat at sea that never fails to put a man into a good humour, provided he be rightly constructed. When they got on board the man-of-war, they were received by the captain. “ And pray, young ladies,” said he, “ what may have pro- cured me the honour of this visit ?” “ It was to beg a favour of your honour,” said Judy. “ And his honour will grant it too,” said Maria, “ for I like the look of him.” Flattered by this shot of Maria’s, the captain said that nothing ever gave him more pleasure than to oblige the ladies ; and if the favour they intended to ask was not utterly incom- patible with his duty, that he would grant it. “ Well, then,” said Judy, “ will your honour give me back Pat Flannagan, that you have pressed just now ?” The captain shook his head. “ He’s no sailor, your honour, but a poor bog-trotter ; and he Avill never do you any good.” The captain again shook his head. “ Ask me anything else,” said he, “ and I will give it you.” “ Well, then,” said Maria, “give us Phelim O’Shaughnessy.” The captain was equally inflexible. “Come, come, your honour,” said Judy, “we must not stand upon trifles now-a-days. I’ll give you a kiss if you give me back Pat Flannagan.” “ And I another,” said Maria, “ for Phelim.” The captain had one seated on each side of him ; his head turned like a dog-vane in a gale of wind. He did not know which to begin with ; the most ineffable good humour danced in his eyes ; and the ladies saw at once the day was their own. Such is the power of beauty, that this lord of the ocean was fain to strike to it. Judy laid a kiss on his right cheek ; Maria matched it on his left; and the captain was the happiest of mortals. “ Well, then,” said he, “ you have your wish; take your two men, for I am in a hurry to make sail.” “ Is it sail ye are after makin’ ? and do ye mane to take all these poor crathurs away wid you ? No, faith ; another kiss and another man.” I am not going to relate how many kisses these lovely girls bestowed on the envied captain. If such are captains’ per- quisites, who would not be a captain? Suffice it to say, they got the whole of their countrymen released, and returned on board in triumph. Lord Brougham used to say that he always laughed at 352 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. the settlement of pin-money, as ladies were generally either kicked out of it, or kissed out of it ; but his lordship, in the whole course of his legal practice, never saw a captain of a man- of-war kissed out of forty men by two pretty Irish girls. After this, who would not shout “ Erin go bragh !” ANCIENT IRISH LITERATURE. Number 5. The specimen of our ancient Irish Literature which we now present to our readers, is one of the most popular songs of the peasantry of the counties of Mayo and Galway, and is evi- dently a composition of that most unhappy period of Irish history, the seventeenth century. The original Irish which is the composition of one Thomas Lavelle, has been pub- lished without a translation, by Mr Hardiman, in his Irish Minstrelsy ; but a very able translation of it was published in a review of that work in the University Magazine for June 1834. From that translation the version which we now give has been but slightly altered so as to adapt it to the original melody, which is of very great beauty and pathos, and one which it is desirable to preserve with English words of appro- priate simplicity of character : — THE COUNTY OF MAYO. I. On the deck of Patrick Lynch's boat I sit in woful plight, Through my sighing all the weary day, and weeping all the night. Were it not that full of sorrow from my people forth I go, By the blessed sun, ’tis royally I’d sing thy praise, Mayo ! II. When I dwelt at home in plenty, and my gold did much abound, In the company of fair young maids the Spanish ale went round — ’Tis a bitter change from those gay days that now I'm forced to go. And must leave my bones in Santa Cruz, far from my own Mayo ! III. They are altered girls in Irrul now ; 'tis proud they’re grown and high, With their hair-bags and their top-knots, for I pass their buckles by — But it’s little now I heed their airs, for God will have it so, That I must depart for foreign lands, and leave my sweet Mayo ; mi. ’Tis my grief that Patrick Loughlin is not Earl in Irrul still, And that Brian Duff no longer rules as Lord upon the hill : And that Colonel Hugh Mac Grady should be lying dead and low, And I sailing, sailing swiftly from the county of Mayo ! For the satisfaction of our Gaelic readers, we annex the original Irish words : Con-DAe 2t)4)5eo. )r An lopisre- 0 lorosris vo 'DtlbjlO!) 2 I 5 opi) 4'6 4 i) rj F 4 i) oybdje IT nojtjol p4r, Id 2t)ub4tt)ber0 5U]tT;4U4t> nj)i}i)Dle4cl)D n*it)e4 by4 bfios •1)4 n)4)|rpe4'6 '0411)1*4 4i) J4]t-tin)4)ll 'co 'Dg4i) , pu)i)i) 'Cjobl) C)41)4Cl) 21)111)4 n) be)u> 511 ft £ 454)11 td)4 * 411 ) bl )e)£ 4 5C)4i)- n J' r r- t Vv '•.I III! llUl 1 ; 1 I A ■ lifJ JIMMY DELANY, OR THE ASCENDANT IDEA. “ A merry morning 1 to Father Connellan ! Well, I dare north, south, east, and west, of our sweet county of Wexford, to produce such another comfortable domicile as this of your reverence ; and the proof that it is so in every respect, is, that master, man, dog, cat, cow, and horse, have the same sleek sides and sleek looks. I wish I could say as much for some of the poor parsons.” “Alack! alack!” sighed Father Connellan in a lachrymose tone, “ you speak of what we were rather than what we are. Poor things ! neither biped nor quadruped here carries the same port as formerly. Now, how can you speak of sleek sides and sleek cheeks to me ? — to me ? Take another glance at me : fancy me with a pink jacket and black cap, and am I not just the cut, weight, and girth for a jockey ? ‘ Ah ! what a falling off is here,' ” pointing to a paunch that he asserted, with serio-comic phiz, was lament- ably diminished. “ Oh, most lamentably !” cried I, entering into his humour. “ Bless me ! what is the matter ? Oh, thou poor, poor dis- ciple of holy mother church ! black was the fast indeed that hath reduced thee to this pickle !” “ Black it has been more than once, sure enough,” returned the priest, laughing ; “ and as I am a christianable man, this strict Lent has been for the sins and follies of others, and not for my own. But you shall know all.” Then raising his voice, he called, “Jimmy! Jimmy Delany !” Thrice he shouted, and was still unanswered. “ Ay,” con- tinued his reverence, shaking his head and turning up his eyes, “this is the cut ! Job’s boils and blisters were nothing to this ! I may call and call, and have nothing but the echo of my own voice for my pains. Once more I’ll try, and if he does’nt come then” and, placing his mouth close to the wall, he sang out, “Jimmy Delany !” so tremendously loud, that the delinquent must have heard it at half a mile’s dis- tance. At this fourth summons, shuffling, lagging steps faltered up the hall, the parlour door opened, and the anatomy of a man presented itself — So faint, so spiritless, So dull, so dead in look, so woe begone. While gazing on him, I thought that if such a man were to “ draw my curtains in the dead of night,” he need not cry out “ fire !” to appal me. “ Well, Misther Delany,” began Father Connellan, “since you have condescended to appear — (why don’t you make your obeisance, sirrah ? — draw back vour shovel foot, bob 370 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. forward your great mop-head, and bow to the lady — soh, that will do) — be plaised to explain how and why I, your spiritual pastor and lawful master, am reduced to half my natural di- mensions, ‘ dipt of my fair proportions.’ As some one says” But ere the priest could proceed with his quotation, I broke in with an exclamation of amazement. “ That spectre — plump, grinning, mutton-headed Jimmy Delany ! who used to wish for a gold chain but long enough to encircle the disc of his face twice, and it would be as long as the chain of my lord mayor of Dublin ? Impossible ! No, no ! Reverend father, you may make me believe much ; you are a man of mystery and mirth, potent and pleasant ; but you will hardly bring me to believe that that shadow repre- sents my plump and good-humoured old acquaintance Jimmy Delany.” “ I have my doubts too,” said his reverence. All this time the ghost-like subject of our observations stood mute and motionless, gazing at me with lack-lustre eyes, in which there was no beam of recognition. Indeed, he seemed dubious of his own identity ; for when I refused to acknowledge him, he passed his hand deliberately and cau- tiously over his face and person, much in the way a blind man would do ; and it was a considerable time before he ventured to assert “ that he was Jimmy Delany still — if not in flesh and blood, at laist in skin and bone.” “ Alas ! and has it come to this with thee, Jimmy ? I re- cognise thy voice, though somewhat tremulous and less sten- torian than of old, and I would fain inquire for what unheard of crime has this severe penance been imposed upon thee ? — the direst that the dire church can inflict, it must have been ! Hast thou made a pilgrimage with unboiled peas in your shoes, my poor, poor Jimmy ?” “ Speak, sirrah !” cried the priest. “ Must I tell the thruth, sur ?” asked the spectre, redden- ing, and scratching his head in a dilemma. At this juncture I perceived that the person appealed to could hardly command gravity to answer the important query addressed to him, and, but that a fit of coughing came to his aid, alas for the decorum of Father Connellan! “ You are a good boy, Jimmy,” said his reverence with be- coming sedateness, when the teasing cough had subsided ; “ a very good boy to apply to me ere you answered a ques- tion under circumstances which induce you to conceal the truth if you could. But, my poor, poor fellow, as I have said and thundered forth a hundred times from the pulpit, Truth should be spoken at all times, however painful to us ; and it is especially necessary on this occasion, as I perceive a some- thing like a fling at the discipline of our church ; because, forsooth, you have dwindled from a mould four to a farthing candle! Tell the truth and shame the devil." Thus admonished, with a desperate effort poor Jimmy pro- ceeded to inform me that the cause of all his woe and waste of flesh was “Betsy Kelly, an’ the urchint” . Here he stuck fast, and I waited in vain for the finishing of the sen- tence. I next looked to the merry priest for an explanation, but I found that it was equally fruitless to expect one from him then. He had fallen back in his chair, in a fit of (to me inexplicable) laughter ; and the confused Delany, still more confounded, took the opportunity to escape from the room, saying, as he retreated, “ I’ll lave it all to his rivirince! — let him tell what he will— I won’t deny it.” “ A fair stage for a fertile imagination, Father Connellan?” said I. “ Egad, there is no occasion for a fertile imagination in this case,” he replied. “ Too true it is that the drama of every-day life surpasses that exhibited on the stage. Now, here is my poor Jimmy— -fiddle-string , I may call him, because I play upon him daily, and he is almost reduced to one. If an actor ever so clever were to show off his blunders and ab- surdities on the stage, he’d be pelted to a mummy, or hooted into a coal-hole for the rest of his days, for attempting (mind) to impose on a discerning public with an outrageous carica- ture of nature. Baithershin ! let them come to Father Connellan’s cabin for a week, and I’ll promise them more amusement for no- thing than they could get at the theatre in a year, and pay dearly for it. But the farce is drawing to a conclusion now.” “ Farce, call you it ? My good sir, to look at poor Jimmy, I should suppose he has been enacting a very deep tragedy indeed, and that the bond or dagger must end it.” “ Or a marl-hole, or his garters,” said his reverence laugh- ng ! “ But is it possible,” continued he, “ that you have not dived into the mystery yet? Is it possible that I, a poor se- cluded priest, dead to the world these twenty years, minding nothing but my breviary, the souls of my flock, the Pope’s bulls, and — and an occasional beaf-steak and glass of punch, was up to the secret in a trice, while you, a gay member of society, are still in the dark ? What direful, by me unmen- tionable disease, doth these four ugly, sinful capitals spell, L, O, Y, E ?” “Love! — Ha! ha! ha! So Jimmy, poor Jimmy, is a lover ! ‘ Oh, Cupid, thou urchint,’ as thy woe-begone disciple calls thee, thou wert not blind, but blind-folded ; thou stolest a peep, and the barbed dart that rankles in the heart of poor Jimmy was directed with laughter-loving malice !” “ Pray tell me, reverend Father, was the heroine — for heroine she must have been, to have achieved such a victory over dullness— a living woman ? or did she smite him through the pages of a book ? for I recollect his reading mania at one time.” “ Arm yourself with the seven-fold fence of patience for half an hour, and I shall tell you all I know of the matter. But I must begin with the beginning, according to the method of all story-tellers. Now, a pinch of Lundy, a preliminary hem ! and here goes : — “ About five years come Michaelmas, I buried my old house- keeper Nell Gray — I was going to say with military honours, for she was quite a trooper of a woman — but with the honours due to a faithful deserving servant which she was, and a treasure in a family, especially for dressing beef-steaks. But as I saw even in her a good deal of the tricks of the sex (ex- cuse me), I was determined to have no more womenkind about me. I therefore set about searching for a good, quiet lad, who would be tractable enough to learn to do all the ordinary work of the house ; and my washes being made known to my flock, boys of all ages and sizes soon clustered about me like sparrows round a wheat stack. Out of twenty- five ’cute-looking chaps, I chose our friend Jimmy Delany, to the rapturous delight of his mother, a widow, who, as she brought her precious son to me, with a shining Sunday face, and a clean shirt — or at least a collar — assured me that though ‘ her Jimmy w as the laist taste slow at talcin’ up the lamin’, yit wanst he got a hoult ov it, it wms he that would take the hoult in airnest !’ ‘ Very well,’ said I, ‘he is slow, but sure ; the very sort I want. Your quick people forget as soon as they learn.’ Well, Jimmy entered on his service, and, egad, ere the first day closed, I found that his mother had told truth to the letter ! He was ‘ slow,’ sure enough, and it was equally true that the hoult he took was a ‘ hoult in airnest ;’ but the per- tinacious ‘ hoult’ was a hold of any eatable that fell in his way, for he wms a furious eater— God bless us ! By and bye, I found out more of Jimmy’s perfections, and I lauded my sagacity in having discovered and appropriated such a treasure. ‘ Happy old parish priest!’ ejaculated I in an ec- stacy, ‘ thou hast but one servitor in this teeming world, and the head of that chosen attendant admits but of one isolated idea for a time, which ‘ idea,’ be it never so extravagant, rules his orains, words, and actions, as certainly and despotically as the moon rules the tides !’ Into that head, by dint of hammering at it day and night, his mother had instilled the ‘ idea’ that he was to renounce his old habits, playmates, and plays, as surely as he was to fling away his old clothes, and henceforth to think of nothing but of being a faithful diligent man-of-all-works to his rever- ence the priest. In fine, in words suited to his capacity, he was told that he was to forget the idle gorsoon, and to put on the sarvint boy. For a week this song was sung to him in a variety of tones, without producing any other effect on Jimmy than causing a grin. At last, ‘ Ov all works, mother ?’ quoth he. ‘ Bedad I thinks I’ll have somethin’ to do. Howsom- dever, since I must be a sarvint, why it’s best to begin.’ And thenceforward he laid his whole soul to the task ; and so earnest and anxious was he, that in little more than three months he could do a few things decently without having me perpetually pinned to his tail, and in a year he went through the routine of household affairs without a blunder, not one thought or wish interfering with his business. Like the churning-horse of my neighbour Giles, he plodded over the dull ground al- lotted for him without grumbling, and without being conscious that any other mode of life might produce equal happiness. Happy being! contented,, stolid Jimmy Delany ! Things were going on thus smoothly with master and man, while the mother was inwardly and outwardly fretting. She expected by this time that her boy was taking a short cut THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. .171 towards being a learned man, if not a janius all out ; and great was her dismay when she heard the truth ! So she comes to me with her humble petition ‘ that I would be plaised to en- lighten her gorsoon’s brains.’ * I fear that is what no mortal can do,’ said I, ‘but I will do my best for him.’ Indeed, I was attached to the creature, and I thought it my duty to en- deavour to stretch his capacity if I could ; and, accordingly, I bought a Primer, and set him to learn his letters. Oh ! it was the unfortunate moment that I did so ! From that hour the man has never been himself ; the four walls of my quiet house have been eternally frightened with strange sounds ; and I have never had a comfortable meal since. A new ‘idea’ displaced the old one: — ‘he was no longer a sarvint, but a schollard business was nearly suspended; and when strong custom, or my stronger reproofs, so far prevailed that he could not help going over the most urgent of the household employments, it was not with even-handed justice ; for, let the left hand be occupied as it might, the right was sure to clutch the hook ; so that every day and every hour he might be taken for a clumsy leaden personification of’ Knowledge extending the volume to the uninitiated, till the strange sounds issuing from the blubber lips destroyed the illusion. These strange sounds were first heard when he had sur- mounted the Alps of the alphabet, and attacked the A, B, abs ; and from morning till night I could obtain no reply to any question I asked him, without having a string of abs and obs tacked to it, till my brains and patience could scarce bear the repetition. Soon after, still sailing away on the stream of learning, that notable piece of literature the ‘ Read- a-made-aisy’ got into his hands, of winch he made such ex- cellent use, that in a few days he could append a sort of poeti- cal illustration to his replies, according as my queries were shaped, and sometimes he let fly a squib at me through their medium. I'll give you a sample of our colloquies : — ‘ Ah, then, Jimmy, did you shoot any birds this morning ?’ 4 One big fella, sur, choke-full ov the currans,’ quoth Jimmy, bringing in as chorus, ‘ A was an archer that shot at a frog.’ ‘ Well, what shall we have for dinner to-dav, Jimmy ?’ ‘ Mait to be sure, sur — B was a butcher that kept a big dog.’ ‘ Right, Jimmy, well thought of 1 Down with you as fast as you can to Doyle the butcher’s, and see what meat he has got. I think our friend the constable will dine with me to-day.’ ‘ I will, sur,’ said Jimmy. ‘ C was a captain all covered with lace.’ ‘And,’ continued I, ‘as my dinner wont be very splendid, and I’m sure to have it very vilely cooked, I’ll bring forth a bottle or two of my supernaculum — the rale mountain dew.’ ‘ Ay, ay, sur,’ responds Jimmy. ‘ D was a drunkard that had a red face.’ There was a good hit of stupidity ! By the staff of St Pa- trick, the patron of drunkards, it was the keenest cut I ever received in my life, and the innocence with which it was spo- ken gave it double effect. I fairly blushed, and dropped my face over my breast like a great bursting peony whose stalk is too Aveak to support it. Ah ! my friend, happy would I have been to endure those little embarrassments — however unbecoming for me to blush — did I foresee the losses, crosses, confusions and contusions which followed in the train of this comet, and which I might have expected, for I partly concur in the old opinion that the fiery prodigies of the heavens prog- nosticate dire disasters to man ; and the eccentric course of this ‘ hairy star’ in this little world of mine called Ballygrish was equally portentous. But hitherto he had kept within bounds. So long as he believed himself the schollard and I the schoolmaster , he conducted himself according to the be- lief ; and the most fault-finding teacher could not complain of Jimmy’s want of diligence. Indeed, he rehearsed his lesson much oftener than necessary, in season and out of season, in bed and out of bed, and that in such a thundering tone, that I told him his constant petition to ‘ hear him his task’ was unnecessary, as I always ‘ heard’ him sufficiently well, though stone Avails were betwixt us. But once he became indepen- dent of an instructor, once he was quit of my assistance, I do assure you severe chastisement was frequently necessary to restrain his lunacies, and I much Avonder how his skull bore the thumps and cracks which from day to day I Avas obliged to inflict, in lieu of shaving and blistering, to moderate the brair. fever of the imagination — of ‘ the ascendant idea.’ I pvt up with various annoyances and inconveniences Avith admirable patience and temper, and which I shall not noiv stop to particulai ize ; but one affair I cannot pass over, as it made a haul on my purse, and I’ll relate it. Just about the time that he set up to study for himself, I was much in want of a pair of new inexpressibles. My vel- veteens were much the worse for wear, and I was determined to have a bran-new pair for the ensuing Sunday. So I sent, very thoughtlessly indeed, the said student Jimmy Delany with an order to Bryan the tailor to get the requisite stuff at a certain shop. Unfortunately I did not specify any particu- lar colour or material, thinking naturally that all the Avorld kneAv the colours and materials fitting for clergymen ; but the shopkeeper and tailor — neither very much wiser than my messenger, I fancy — were quite, astray, and in their dilemma they applied to my man-of-all-Avorks for information. Alas ! they knew little of poor Jimmy. They knew not that he was then under the dominion of ‘ one idea’ — that he was a learned schollard, and not a sarvint. Noav be it known to you that his then study was the Uni- versal Spelling Book (I believe he had it in his pocket at the time), in which is the story of the town in danger of being besieged. The mason, the currier, and the carpenter, give their opinion as to the best method of fortifying it, and each, of course, with an eye to self-interest. The mason recom- mends stone, the carpenter oak, and the currier leather. Well, at the instant of the shopkeeper’s and tailor’s de- liberations on my Avearables, Jimmy stood at the shop-door, staring up and down the street, as far as it was in his ken ; and when the tailor appealed to him to know ‘ what sort of inexpressibles did his masther ordher,’ honest Jimmy, thinking but of the ‘town in danger of being besieged,’ answered in the words of the currier, ‘ take my word for it, there is no- thing like leather.' ‘ Leather !’ echoed the shopkeeper. ‘ Leather !’ screamed the tailor. ‘ Ay,’ repeated Jimmy decidedly, ‘there is nothing like leather !’ Well! patience is a virtue. Were it not that the gentle spirit, had made my half-starved frame her tabernacle, I should have been a tenant for Bedlam on the succeeding Sa- turday night, when the rascal Bryan brought himself and his green bag, with a sort of grin, into my parlour, and untying it, shook out before my amazed eyes a dashing pair of you shall hear what, presently. ‘ They’re a very neat piece of work, Bryan,’ said I, ex- amining them without much interest, thinking they could not possibly be for me ; ‘ they seem to be Avell seamed and stitched for aught I know, and I only hope for your sake that they will fit him for whom you have made them,’ ‘ I hope so too, sur,’ quoth the tailor, smirking complacently. ‘ Be plaised to thry them on sur, an’ I’ll engage they’ll fit to the peelin’ ov an ingin.’ ‘ Pooh, pooh,’ returned I, good humouredly, still in the dark, ‘ what use in my trying them on ? Indeed, if they had come in my way thirty years ago, and the red rogue in full chase, I Avould’nt say but I’d pop them on, priest or no priest ; but now there’s no use in talking about them. Hand me out the velvets, and let me try them on.’ ‘ The velvets, yer rmrince ?’ ‘ Ay, the velvets, Sir Tailor; and I hope those you bring me now are roomier than the last pair.’ ‘ Oh, faix, sur,’ cried the fellow, still shaking the unmen- tioned unmentionables at me, ‘ those are roomy enough in all conscience, for I thought as how you Avould’nt like them quite to the skin.’ And there he stood, holding forth his wear- ables, and expatiating in their praise ; and there I stood ex- pecting my velvets — but in vain ! I caught up the bag, and turning it inside out, I found I had nothing more to expect — . those forbidden ones Avere for me ! ‘ What colour are these in day-light ?’ asked I, in that still calm that precedes the tempest. ‘ An iligant yelloAV, sur !’ responded the stitcher with alacrity, his countenance brightening with hope. ‘ And thou vile fraction of a man!’ thundered I in full storm, and darting a Avithering scowl that almost put the little animal into the earth, ‘ hast thou no more reverence for thy church than that, to suit, thy petty interests, thou wouldst see thy venerable parish priest, of seventy-six, figure in a pair of yellow buckskin breeches, like a huntsman or postilion ? Away with them, sirrah, or by the soul of your grandmother in purgatory — AA r here she shall stay those hundred years for your assurance — these same breeches shall case your oavu di- minutive limbs to-morroAv, and you placed upon the altar as an exhibition, with Tally-ho! in capitals upon your back. What a beautiful spectacle for the congregation !’ 3T2 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Soon I had the dismayed stitcher upon his knees, deprecat- ing my wrath, and recounting the particulars I have already related in explanation ; ending with ‘ my backward blessing on Jimmy Delany !’ intending of course that all my ire should fall upon the real delinquent. And so it would, but that there is something in the very name * Jimmy Delany’ that invaria- bly mollifies me. I knew he did nothing out of malice or mis- chief, but from the greatest simplicity ; and when I demanded to see the book he was then busy with, and his thumb-marks ointing to the ‘ town in danger of being besieged,’ I was at ome in the matter at once. But I had to pay for the leather, and the tailor for making the breeches, which 1 lost afterwards at a game of backgammon with Squire Hooligan. About a month afterwards, a nephew* of mine, a midship- man, came on a visit to me, bringiug with him some volumes of Cook’s Voyages. These books seemed to have a fascinating charm for him, but it was nothing to the charm they had for Misther Delany. It was downright idolatry — he knelt to them, I believe — I know-* he slept with them, ate with them, and drank with them, and finally became so incorporated with the woi’k — he was its hero ! Yes! all the old ‘ruling passions’ were clean forgotten, and Captain Cook was lord of the as- cendant. Oh ! how the young seaman laughed, and roared, and flung himself on the ground again and again, in ecstacies of mirth, when he discovered what a jewel of a shipmate Providence had provided for him in an old priest’s house in the country, where he had expected little but long faces and long fasts ! — how he kicked up his heels in all the obstrepe- rousness of a sailor’s joy ! Still the ludicrous perfections of my poor Jimmy unfolded themselves — still his matchless sim- plicity, his inconceivable infatuation under the dominion of the new ‘ idea,’ became apparent ! And no wonder ; for surely his wholesale assumption of the renowned navigator, his pompous action, and conversations in character, and the total and absolute oblivion of all former ties and duties, altogether were enough to raise laughter under the ribs of Death, and was almost too much for the living. If I asked him, after several hours’ daily absences, where he had been, his prompt reply would be, ‘at New Zealand,' or ‘ Otaheite.’ And if I begged to know what he had been doing in these favoured places, I was instantly told, ‘ getting in a supply of fresh water and provisions for the ship’s company,’ and this with an . earnestness of look and manner absolutely irresistible. ‘ So, ' so,’ I would then say, convinced of the infatuation, and letting things take their course, * I perceive I have got the illustrious Captain Cook in my house. I thought the great man had disappeared from earth long ago ; but in this age of miracles, either through the power of steam, or a galvanic battery, here he is again, and I must make his stay as agreeable as pos- sible. Pray be seated, captain; and if not too much trouble, I would be delighted to hear some of your adventures.’ Down would Jimmy seat himself, and out would come a fluent description of the different places he had ‘ touched at,’ the customs and manners of the different islands, the ferocious looks of some savages, and the gentle countenances of others ; the birds, beasts, fruits, flowers, &c. &e. ; and I do declare to you I desired no higher entertainment. For whole hours would I sit listening to him ; and the captain, gratified by my attention, and utterly unconscious of anything ludicrous, con- tinued from day to day to pour forth his wonderful discoveries for my amusement. Meanwhile I missed a fine bathing-tub, a fine spacious fel- low, in which I could float as comfortably as in a little lake. I made various inquiries about it, but could hear nothing of it. I even spoke of it in the chapel, but all to no purpose. How- ever, one day as I was returning from seeing a sick person, I came upon an unfrequented path that led by the side of a large and deep marl-hole, about half a mile from my house ; and as I got on a height over it, what should I see but my bathing-tub floating majestically on the water, a pole stuck up in the middle, with a red handkerchief by way of a flag, and a erson seated at one end with another pole for steering ! With alf an eye I saw who it was, and I took measures accordingly. I alighted from my horse, and, getting behind a clump of ash- trees, quite unnoticed by the navigator, who was enjoying the fineness of the day, I gathered up all the large stones I could find into a heap beside me, and, taking deliberate aim, I let fly two or three huge ones at the stern, in which the captain was seated. At the first assault he started, and looked about in every direction, quite thunderstricken and alarmed ; at the second volley, as none of them had hit himself as yet, he shouted in character, ‘ The natives ! the natives are upon us!’ and began to paddle with might and main for shore ; but as the stones flew thicker and faster, hopping off his head and shoulders, whacking, banging, cracking at all sides of him, he lost all self-command, dropped his oar, and finally, in floundering about, and starting from one end to the other, in his confusion to avoid the stones, the boat turned keel up- wards, and the captain disappeared to the bottom, yelling all sorts of ‘ murdher !’ And I can assure you, my gentleman forgot all ideas but that plain Jimmy Delany was on the point of being smothered, and no sailor with a shark in his wake ever showed more dexterity. Nobly did he buffet and plunge, and kick and puff for his life, till he got to dry land, where I was ready to receive him. 4 Are you safe, captain ?’ inquired I in a tone of much com- miseration. 4 Och, masther jewel !’ quoth Jimmy ruefully, his teeth chattering between fright and cold, 4 I never was so near death in my life ! I was well-nigh smothered between the eels and the mud at the bottom of that curst marl-hole !’ 4 Ah ! my flimmy,’ observed I pathetically, 4 we should never meddle with unknown elements. See how uncertain is the life of a sailor ! — one moment floating majestically on the bosom of the ocean, and the next at the bottom with the fishes,’ 4 Thrue for ye, masthur darlint !’ replied my man, once more my man ; and home I drove my man before me, covered with mud, as if he was preparing a cast of his beautiful per- son; and so efficacious were the stoning, the ducking, my lecture, and the shouts of laughter his appearance raised amongst the workmen and neighbours, that I had soon the plea- sure to see him return to his original 4 idea’ that he was 4 sar- vint. man to the priest,’ and become undividedly attentive. But I believe this life is to be one of change and crosses. No sooner had I sat myself down with the hope of peace and ease for the rest of my days, than there comes another, and the greatest of all annoyances, the more so that it was totally unexpected. No ! I never dreamt that Jimmy Delany would become a lover ! and when I did become aware of the state of affairs, I was as much a stricken deer as himself— paralyzed, bewildered what to do or say under the circumstances. I will not trouble you with a detail of the first symptoms I observed, nor a description of the many outrageous blunders he committed under the influence of this worst of all 4 ideas’ but one — and here it is ; — It was on a Thursday : I had ordered a beef-steak for din- ner. You know it is my favourite dish, and that I am parti- cular to have it dressed to a turn. I had taught Jimmy the art ; but warned by late failures and mistakes, I called in one of the neighbours’ wives to have an eye to Jimmy while dressing dinner. Well, at the hour appointed the dinner smoked on the table sure enough, and, tucking a napkin under my chin, I sat down 4 richly to enjoy ;’ when lo ! a loud scream, or rather yell, from the kitchen, startled me, and the next instant in rushed Mrs Flanagan, with outstretched arms, apparently panic-stricken. 4 Oh, holy Mary ! did you ait any ov it yet, sir ?’ she asked in breathless haste. 4 Eat what ?’ demanded I, surprised. 4 That thing in the dish,’ screamed she. 4 No,’ said I gruffly, and angry at the unseasonable inter- ruption. 4 Nor never shall, plaise God,’ exclaimed she, striding over, and advancing her profane hands to seize the dish, whilst I, holding it with one hand, motioned her off with the other, as I angrily desired her to leave the room, and leave me to my meal in peace. 4 Never, by the hob !’ exclaimed the determined vixen ; 4 I’ll never quit till I get that thing in the dish ; and here I’ll stay’ — and there she staid in audacious determination. My mind began to misgive me that there was something the matter with what I was so pertinaciously defending ; so I raised the cover of the dish. There lay a substance black as the ace of spades. 4 So, so !’ I began, ‘here is a fine morsel for a hungry man! — here’s frying with a vengeance! Woman, woman!’ cried I solemnly, and turning to my obtrusive companion with the dignity of a man who had received a mortal affront, but who yet had some feeling of God-like charity — 4 Woman, woman! is there never to be any dependence on your sex ? I am wasted to a thread ; I am worked to a skeleton ; and I think this carcase hath need of a little indulgence on one day out of seven. I pay sixpence a pound for a tender, delicate rump- steak, and I call you in to superintend the dressing of it, deci- dedly telling you to have it done the colour of your own skin, 373 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. and no darker (dark enough in all conscience). But here it is now — neither Bedford-brown, Vandyke-brown, Ade- laide-brown, nor Flanagan-brown, but a sapless, fatless, cin- der black! Nevertheless, such is my resignation under all trials, I shall endeavour to make a meal of it, if possible : do you but leave me in peace — vanish !’ and I muttered some words in Latin, and gave two or three figurative flourishes with my hands, by way of letting her think I was performing some important ceremony of the church, at which her absence would be necessary. But she stuck fast. * Why, thin, indeed, sur,’ she persisted, * if you v r ar to praich Latin an’ Greek from this till mornin’, you’ll never convart an ould black wisted stockin’ into a beef-staik !’ ‘ A what, woman, in the name of heaven !’ ‘ I said it, sur — a black wisted stockin’ into a beef-staik.’ I stuck my fork into the black substance plentifully covered with onion and gravy. I held it up : it w’as long, and, like Italy, shaped like a boot ; and however it might appertain to the leg, it had nothing whatever to do with the rump-steak I had bought in the morning. * Ay,’ sighs Mrs Flanagan sentimentally, ‘ sitch things comes ov love an’ lamin’ ! I was mendin’ a pair ov yer reve- rence’s black stockins at the kitchen-table, where Jimmy was dhressin’ the dinner. One of the workmen called me out in a hurry, an’ I threw the stockin’ out of my hands upon the table : it fell upon the dish. Jimmy turned his head about for a minnit, and the dog snapped up the mait, an’ carried it off. When Jimmy looked round agin, he seen a black thing lyin’ on the dish, an’ the crathur’s eyes, bein’ blinded with this same love an’ lamin’, he pours the gravy on the top ov it, an’ carries it off to table So there’s the explanation.’ I still held up the black stocking on the point of my fork : I gazed on it in silence : but the blood was boiling in my veins, and I was on the eve of righteously overwhelming all that had animal life near me with a fearful burst of volcanic passion, when my frenzied eye caught a glimpse of a face at the half- opened door. It was a side-face : the mouth and chin had dropped as if in death, the goggle eyes were fixed and up- turned in all the rigidity of despair— not drops, but streams of perspiration ran down the pallid jaws : motion seemed anni- hilated, the senses defunct ; and one loud, angry word would have been a cannon-ball through the heart of poor Jimmy, had not Mercy or Momus tickled my risibilities at the critical moment, and a long, loud burst of irrepressible laughter closed the scene, and saved his life ! At the first burst the delinquent fell on his knees, clasped his hands together, and looked imploringly at me, and in that humble posture remained till I got breath to say ‘ I forgive you.’ Now, my friend, tell me can flesh and blood, especially de- dicated to the service of the church, put up with such treatment long? Impossible. In addition to my fastings and mortifications on principle, is it not the deuce to be obliged to fast for folly ? I have played many a trick on Jimmy, but he is ever more than even with me. I can get no good of him. But this I am resolved on : come wrnal come woe, Jimmy Delany and Betsy Kelly shall be man and wife on Monday next, and I bespeak your company at the wedding.” “ Agreed ; and I think, reverend Father, this is the very best idea that has been struck out by you, or Jimmy Delany.” M. G. R. THE COMMON BADGER. Of all the animals with which man has become acquainted, and over which he has succeeded in establishing his dominion, none have had greater cause to deprecate his tyranny, and to ex- claim, had they the gift of speech, against his wanton barba- rity, than the unfortunate creature whose simple and unoffend- ing habits I have selected for the subject of the present paper. With the appearance and form of this animal most of my readers are doubtless tolerably acquainted, as it is a pretty common inhabitant of this country, and would be still more abundant, were not its numbers checked by that barbarous and brutal amusement, badger-baiting, to which, despite the in- terference of the laws, hundreds yearly fall victims. In ge- neral appearance as well as internal structure the badger ap- proximates closely to the bear, and may, I think not unaptly, be regarded as the existing representative of that once for- midable denizen of the wilds of our native land. Like the bear, the badger walks upon his heels, and his legs being very short, and his hair remarkably thick and long, his belly ap- pears almost to touch the ground ; a little observation is how- ever sufficient to show that it does not actually do so. He is a nocturnal animal, that is to say, he sleeps during the day, and at the approach of evening leaves his habitation in search of food ; yet nocturnal though his habits, and however closely he may in that respect resemble the predacious tribes, the food of the badger is of such a description that its appropriation injures no one, but is on the contrary productive of great be- nefit to the agriculturist, consisting as it does chiefly, if not solely, of roots and reptiles, as frogs, worms, grubs, beetles, &c. The badger is, as far as I have been able to discover, monogamous, lives affectionately with his mate and little ones in his secluded burrow, and in his deportment to them displays feelings of ardent devotion and disinterested attachment which many of this poor creature’s biped persecutors would do well to imitate. The common badger is about as large as a middle-sized dog, from two feet to two feet and a half in length, exclusive of the tail, and about a foot or fifteen inches high. He weighs from twenty to thirty-five pounds, sometimes even more — I saw a badger in Edinburgh about six years ago which weighed forty-seven pounds ; such a growth is however very rarely at- tained. In coat the badger presents a remarkable peculiarity. Among nearly all mammiferous animals the dorsal region of the body is of a darker or deeper colour than the under parts, or ventral region. The colour of the badger is on the con- trary greyish above and black underneath. The fur of the bad- ger is thick, rough, and by no means glossy ; the skin, with the hair on, is dressed and manufactured into pistol cases. The skin of the head and face may be frequently seen forming the “ sporran” or purse which depends from the girdle of the Scot- tish highlander ; and the hairs of the tail are in great request for the manufacture of paint and lather brushes. The badger is an inhabitant of all the temperate parts of Europe and Asia. In Great Britain and France it is scarcer, from the assiduity ■with which it is hunted and destroyed. Doctor Richardson has identified various new species in his account of the zoo- logy of the arctic regions. As the object of the present paper is however a sketch of the European animal, I shall not notice any other at present, but merely refer such of my friends as may feel curious on the subject, to Doctor Richardson’s splen- did" work entitled “ Fauna Boreali Americana.” In his internal conformation the badger presents two re- markable features, namely, in the first place a peculiar for- mation of jaws, which not merely enables him to retain a firm hold of whatever object he seizes with his teeth, but absolutely lock in such a manner, that he himself does not always pos- sess the power of instantaneously unclosing them ; and, se- condly, a pouch or bag placed just below the tail, whence exudes a thick and fetid substance. It is upon this that the strong smell given forth by this animal depends. I had once a badger in my own possession, and the study of his habits afforded me much interest and gratification. He was more than half grown when I obtained possession of him, and I can assure my readers that the task of taming him was no sinecure. The first agent I employed for effecting his domestication was hunger. I kept him fasting for three whole days, allowing him only a little water in his bowl, which humanity would not suffer me to deny him. Starvation, how- ever, did not produce any immediate good effects, and the ani- mal remained as fierce and irreconcileable as ever. It would but needlessly occupy the readers’ time were I minutely to re- count the process of taming him ; let it suffice to refer them to my late papers in this Journal on the taming of animals. I followed the rules therein laid down, and I had the satis- faction of finding them ultimately successful, after from six to eight months of anxious care, enlivened occasionally by the variety of a severe bite, a casualty for -which every practical zoologist must be prepared, and at which it w’ould be ridicu- lous for him to grumble. I have only to observe, that -were any one to present me with a hundred pounds for the mark of every gash received by its teeth, of which the scars still re- main on my hands and legs, I should be tolerably rich. After about eight months, however, he gave up his practice of constantly biting when attempted to be handled, unless under great provocation or excitement, and was not merely so gentle as to be with safety indulged with partial liberty, but would come and go when I called him or drove him from me, w r ould feed from my hand or mount upon my knee, and was. moreover, soon afterwards entrusted with entire liberty with- out any danger of his running away. He was a very cleanly creature, carefully scraping into one end of his cage whatever unpleasant matters might collect in it, and he always contri- THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 374 ved as much as possible to keep his bed free of soil. Finding him so remarkably cleanly, I used to let him out morning and evening, on such days as my absence from home obliged me to keep him in a state of confinement. I did not of course give him his liberty all at once, but ac- cording as he grew tame I used to let him out in a room or enclosed yard, according to the state of the weather, for an hour or two daily, and did not give him his liberty altogether until his increased tameness gave me confidence in his thorough domestication. This creature’s diet consisted of bread and milk, varied with oatmeal porridge or stirabout, and potatoes boiled soft and bruised down fine with milk, with occasionally a bit of raw butcher’s meat. He was singularly nice respect- ing his meat ; indeed I suspect rather from the effects of good living in his easy state of captivity, than from an impulse of nature ; for had a piece of meat once, and that no matter how slightly, known the fire, he would on no account touch it, unless indeed when very hungry, and no raw flesh to be had. Milk he appeared very fond of, and would drink freely ; pota- toes, especially if mashed up with butter or milk, he would always dine heartily off ; but, which not a little surprised me, I frequently observed him devouring them raw, and that too in the absence of hunger, and while surrounded with what might naturally be supposed to be more palatable food. He had a very strong and by no means very agreeable smell. I had an old terrier named “ Wasp,” who had been a good dog in his day, but, weighed down by a load of years, was fast hur- rying onward toAvards the grave. Wasp’s teeth had failed him, his eyes had become dim, his clogged and tattered ears scarcely informed him when I called his name, yet his fond- ness for sport still remained, and he would lie for hours each day at the door of the little yard in which the badger was confined, as if resolved that, though his powers no longer ad- mitted of his discovering and attacking his enemy, yet he would, while he could, inhale the (to him) delightful odour of his fa- vourite game. My badger passed nearly the whole of his days in sleep, and if I attempted to disturb him, he would be sulky and peevish, and in no humour for play. When evening drew near, however, he might be seen first stirring, then opening his eyes and stretch- ing himself, with many a long and hearty yawn. The process of thoroughly awaking himself usually occupied about twenty minutes, commencing with the decline of day, and terminating with the arrival of darkness. The beginning of night usually found him regularly astir ; he Avas then restless and active, pacing to and fro, examining every nook and cranny, climbing upon everything upon which he was able to mount, and seiz- ing, if out of doors, upon worms, beetles, cockchafers, and snails, and if within, seeking for drowsy flies upon the walls, or for beetles or crickets about the kitchen hearth, or in the cellars when he could obtain access to them. Many naturalists hold the opinion that the badger sleeps during the winter, or at all events hibernates partially, that is to say, sleeps, like the squirrel, for a few weeks, awakes, and takes a hearty meal of the store of food it had sagaciously laid by in its nest ere retiring to winter quarters, and then, coiling itself up in its nest, goes off to sleep again. Whether this be true or not, I cannot with certainty affirm ; but this I can safely declare, that I endeavoured as much as possible to make my badger hibernate, by exposing him to the unmitiga- ted cold of an unusually severe winter, by furnishing him with straw and wool to line his nest, and with a stock of bread, snails, and potatoes, to lay up for winter use. He did not, however, avail himself of my assistance, but remained wake- ful as usual during the entire winter. A remarkable fact worthy of notice here is, that although this badger exhibited no inclination to hibernate or sleep during the winter, he did display considerable disposition to aestivate, or sleep during the hot months of summer, for during that season he became languid and drowsy, lost his appetite and flesh, became ragged and foul in the coat, and in short pined away so rapidly that I feared I should lose him altogether ; he however revived completely as w'inter, and that a cold one, approached. I made diligent inquiry of those who w'ere in the habit of keeping badgers for baiting them, and also of the proprietors of several menageries, and learned from them that this dispo- sition on the part of the badger to become weak and lose its condition in summer, is not confined to isolated individual cases, but is common to the entire tribe. It is truly astonishing to observe with what quickness and dispatch the badger forms a burrow, for which task indeed he is admirably adapted by nature, in the construction of his anterior extremities. To give my readers some idea of these powers, I shall conclude the present sketch with the follow- ing anecdote of an individual in my possession : — Wishing to increase the happiness of my pet, I procured a female of his own species to keep him company, and while pre- paring a large enclosure for their reception, I shut them both up in an outhouse : I do not think I was half an hour absent, when on my return I found my new badger gone. A moment’s investigation discovered the place of her conceal- ment : the animal had during my short absence formed a considerable burrow under the wall of the outhouse, which, I must observe, was built against a bank forming the side of a road. It was into that bank that the creature had worked its way, and on listening I could hear it delving and scraping at a great rate, about a yard from the back of the wall. I hastily procured the assistance of a mason, who pulled down part of the wall, and by working rapidly, succeeded in overtaking the badger just as she had worked her way across the road to within a foot of the Edinburgh Botanic Garden Avail, beside which I lived. I may observe that the ground Avas by no means soft, the burroAV being formed under a hard macadam- ized road. H. D.R. EXTRAORDINARY DETECTION OF MURDER. NO. III. Some fourteen years ago there was living in the city of Gal- Avay a victualler named Hughes: he was not a Galwaygian by birth, nor originally a victualler by trade ; but having settled there some years previously, and married a butcher’s daughter, he entered into the business, and throve apace. At the time Ave are noAv speaking of, there were few gentlemen in the county of Galway wit li Avhom his word would not be sufficient for a hundred pounds’ worth of cattle, and upwards ; and the man Avho Avas the envy of all his brother victuallers bore strongly the apparent marks of prosperity, and a contented mind in his florid, good-humoured, open countenance. So little do appearances consort with character and circumstances at times ! He Avas a kind husband and father, and reared his family well and religiously ; attending himself regularly to his de- votions. He Avas also a hospitable, off-handed fellow, that would not higgle for a trifle, either in buying or selling ; was equally ready to take or “ stand a treat” at fairs and markets where his business frequently brought him, and Avas in conse- quence a general favourite Avith high and low. In short, every one said he Avas in the Avay of making a larger fortune than had been made in his business for many a year in the city ; and every one said he deserved it, as he was an honest, a hard- working, and a worthy man. There were apparently but tAvo drawbacks on his character, namely, a violent temper, which at times hurried him on with irresistible impetuosity, particularly when under the influence of liquor, and a habit of jeering and jibing in season and out of season. These de- fects, however, as they never led to anything serious, Avere rather pitied than censured, as being the only blemishes on an otherwise excellent disposition. Hughes Avas standing one day at his stall, tapping his highly polished boots with his whip, and feeling his well-filled pocket, as he was preparing to set out on a journey for the purchase of cattle. He Avas in high spirits, and Avas liberally scattering about his jibing witticisms among his admiring brethren, when a travelling basket-maker entered the shambles. Instantly Hughes directed the current of his jeering towards the humble neAvcomer. “ You look as if a good beef steak would lie in your way this morning, friend.” “ Be goxty ye might sing that, sir, if ye had an air to it.” “ Well, it’s lucky there’s so many about you, any hovv, as, to tell you the thruth, I don’t much like your looks, and wouldn’t thrust you with your own brogues to the brogue-maker’s.” “ Faix, may beyou’dbe right too, sir,” rejoined the stranger slowly, as he surveyed, with an eager and a half bewildered gaze, the jiber’s face, like one striving to recall portions of a half-forgotten dream, “ though it isn’t every one that’s to be taken by his looks.” “ I wish, anyway, Iliad as good ft house as you’d rob. But hoAv come you to be trading in twigs ? You mistook your tlirade surely ; it’s in hemp you ought to be dealing.” “ Faix, if every man got his due,” said the basket-maker in a decided tone, “more nor me would be flailin’ in himp. But ye needn’t be so hard intirely on us, Mr M l Cann.” 375 ■THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. On hearing this name, which had not met his ears for many a year, the victualler gave a convulsive start as if he had received a shot, while a tierce blaze deepened the hue of his cheek, flitted across his brow, and the next moment subsided into monumental paleness. He recovered himself, however, immediately ; and, remarking laughingly how curiously people were often mistaken for others, took an opportunity of follow- ing the basket-maker, who had advanced into the shambles, and invited him to breakfast the next morning. Accordingly, punctual to the hour, the rambling mechanic made his appearance at Hughes’s house, situated in one of those archways characteristic of the Spanish built city, and which strike the stranger so much in wandering through it for the first time. The breakfast was excellent and ample ; and the basket-maker was received with great apparent cor- diality and welcome, and pressed immoderately to consider himself at home, and partake plentifully of such fare as he w T as seldom regaled with — a request with which he complied to the utmost of his ability, notwithstanding that he discovered his entertainer several times scanning him with an expression of countenance he by no means liked. The breakfast over, Hughes invited his guest to take a walk, stating that he would sIioav him part of the city ; and accordingly they sallied forth from the archway, which was off Shop-street, immediately contiguous to the fine old church of St Nicholas, and within pistol shot of the house over the door of which is inserted the slab containing the far-famed death’s head and cross-bones. “ The Queen of Connaught” has been so often and so well described, particularly by her own gifted son James Hardi- man, the distinguished antiquary, of whom she has such just reason to be proud ; and has, these late years, been so much visited by tourists on their route to the wild territory of mountain, bog, and lake, Connemara, during the touring season, that her localities are generally known. Many of our readers will then, at once, understand the direction taken by the pair, and conceive Hughes’s probable motive for taking that, when we state that he led his guest to the eminence on the south-east side of the city, designated Fort-hill, which terminates in a precipice lashed by the waves when the tide is in, while scattered over its surface are several deep wells. The victualler had made no allusion whatever, during the breakfast, to the basket-maker’s having called him M‘Cann, nor to the county they both came from. As they went along, however, he began to make some inquiries as if to sound his companion. But the latter had become wary. In fact, as they left the crowded parts of the town behind, fear began to grow on him, on finding himself alone even in the daylight, and adjoining a bustling city, with one whom he knew to be a murderer ; and that fear was strengthened by the manner of Hughes, who sometimes strode on a few steps rapidly, as if labouring under some excitement, and then halted to stammer out some observation to his companion, while he occasionally flung searching glances around, as if to ascertain who might be in view. So, after having twice or thrice expressed his wish to return to the city, on reaching the first of the wells, the basket-maker refused to proceed any farther, and turned to retrace his steps at an increased pace, though he did not venture to run. Calling on him in vain to return, Hughes now darted furiously after him with the intention of forcing him back ; but he was restrained by the sight of approaching persons, and the basket-maker pursued his way back into the city with a step quickened by fear, though he still durst not run. On regaining his humble lodgings the stranger lost no time in repairing to the abode of the mayor, Mr Hardiman Burke we think, an active, intelligent magistrate, to whom he ac- cused Hughes, or M‘Cann as his real name was, of having per- petrated a murder in the county of Down, eighteen years pre- viously. The charge was so extraordinary and so utterly at variance with the peaceable, prosperous, and even humorous habits of the accused, that the mayor at first utterly scouted the tale, saying that the accuser must be completely mistaken as to the identity of M'Cann. But the basket-maker was so clear in his statement, recollected M‘Cann so well while a journeyman baker (his original trade) before the commission of the murder, or his arrival in Galway, and was so intimately acquainted with everything connected with him, that, in a short time, after having detailed the morning’s proceedings, lie satisfied the mayor of the well-groundedness of the charge, terrible as it was, and reluctant as he naturally was to be- lieve it ; and the magistrate proceeded fortuwith to act on the information. At that period the city of Galway containing probably nearly forty thousand inhabitants, some of them certainly not among the most peaceable in Ireland, did not possess even a single town constable for the protection of its peace. Indeed, some years subsequently, when we first visited it, it had no constabulary, though that force had been for years appointed in every other portion of the province, and was in consequence a peculiarly lawless place ; so much so, that it was quite a risk for strangers or natives to venture abroad at all al ter dark, unless in numbers, as, were you foolhardy enough to do so, some of a gang of desperate and daring ruffians that infested the streets by night, and traversed them openly in the day-light, though branded with a hundred crimes, were sure to assault you, and take your money, if you carried any, and if you did not, to give you still worse usage for not having it. We learned one night while passing the West Bridge, a favourite haunt of those desperadoes, that the brother of a priest had been just flung into the river there. Galway is now, however, as efficiently protected and as well ordered as any town in her majesty’s dominions, west of the Shannon at least. The mayor’s first step, then, was to obtain a file of soldiers whom he placed in his own house ; after which he proceeded at once to the shambles, where he found M‘Cann after having returned, not deeming, probably, that the basket-maker’s informations w'ould be so rapidly given. The victualler was apparently engaged in his usual avocations, but as the mayor watched him attentively for a few moments, his motions were so irregular and so unlike his usual active, bustling habits, as if he was labouring under some spell, that they utterly put to flight any slight doubts the magistrate was still inclined to entertain of his being the guilty person. Accordingly, he pro- ceeded to purchase a quarter of beef from M'Cann, whom he begged to come at once to his house and cut it up there. T’o this request M‘Cann made some objections, stating that he could not then conveniently spare time, but would send an assistant ; his reluctance arising probably from the connection in his mind between the terrors of discovered guilt and the mayor’s legal functions— of the latter’s having been made ac- quainted with his secret crime he hadnot then the least concep- tion. After much persuasion, however, he assented, chiefly through the clever cajolery of the mayor, who stated that he never could get one to please him in cutting up beef but M‘Cann himself and he accordingly accompanied Mr Burke entering which he was instantly delivered to the military to his house, on stationed there. lie was forthwith transmitted to Downpatrick, and at the ensuing assizes there, convicted of the murder of another journeyman baker with a peel ( an instrument used for placing bread in the oven and drawing it when baked), eighteen years previously. His death, it would appear, was a torturing one, as the rope broke, and, previous to the consummation of his terrible fate he was obliged to be strengthened with a draught whilst seated on his coffin — this last receptacle of humanity be- ing frequently placed at the gallows foot during an execution. The singular detection of M‘Cann created a great sensation from the extremity of the Claddagh to that of Boliermore. Yet was it not more extraordinary than the blameless and perseveringly industrious tenor of his life, and the appa- rently utter want of all compunction after the perpetration of the fearful deed ; though these have been paralleled in nu- merous instances, as well as in the celebrated one of Eugene Aram ; we allude to the real case, not to Bulwer’s magnifi- cent fiction. His striking and sudden abstraction from among them, as if a thunderbolt had cleft him — thoughevery thing connected with him and his family has long since disappeared from the city, forms still a frequent and exciting theme among the Galwaygians, who invariably seem to be of opinion that M‘Cann’s object in leading the basket-maker to Fort-hill was for the purpose of adding another murder to his crimes, by pitching the stranger into a well, or hurling him over a preci- pice into the sea. In this opinion we also fully coincide, as we have little doubt that the murderer, but for the approach of the chance visitors, would have attempted, at all risks, to precipitate his companion into a well, where, entire stran- ger as he was, he might have remained long undiscovered ; or to consign himself and his fearful secret for ever to those faithful preservers of innumerable dark secrets, the waves. A. To produce as much happiness as we can, and to prevent as much misery, is the proper aim and end of all true morality and all true religion, 376 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. THE GEOLOGY OF KILLINEY. Few cities can boast of such a variety of beautiful scenery in its immediate vicinity as occurs within a short distance from Dublin. We need not allude to the objects of deep historical interest with w’hich the natural beauties of Dublin are associa- ted, as they have often been illustrated in these pages. The f iicturesque beauties of Dublin Bay and the county of Wick- ow are known to all ; but it is less generally knowrn that the same localities abound in matters w'cll calculated to excite the curiosity of the naturalist. From the great variety of rocks, and consequently of soil, around Dublin, we find a cor- responding variety in its vegetable productions ; and we believe we are pretty correct when we state that the botanist may collect specimens of nearly two-thirds of the indigenous plants of Ireland within the distance of a few miles from the capital. As regards Zoology, or the study of animals, our position is equally fortunate. The shores near Malahide are uncom- monly rich in marine productions, especially shells ; and the Bay of Dublin is not inferior to the coasts of Devonshire for the variety of its zoophytes and corallines. In the work of Ellis on British Oorallines, we find that, although that admir- able naturalist resided in London, he obtained many of his finest specimens from Dublin. In respect to mineralogical and geological pursuits, we are equally well situated. At Killiney and in the mines of Wicklow several interesting and some very rare minerals may be collected. In geology, in the strict sense of the word, there are many curious pheno- mena which should be repeatedly examined by the student, and he will find such a mode of proceeding infinitely more profitable than the more indolent method of confining his re- searches to such instruction as can be found in books and sections. At Howth, or the promontory of Bray, he may examine every diversity of stratification, and may observe all the upheavings and contortions to which rocks have been ex- posed, displayed as in a model, open to the contemplation of the man of science, and to the instruction of all. The granite veins of Killiney are also extremely curious, and well deserve to be repeatedly visited by the beginner in geological pursuits. It is true that the questions to which such phenomena gave rise have been long since set at rest ; but it is also true that the questions must be mastered by every student, and we know of no place where this can be done to more advantage than at Killiney. Every one is aware that rocks are formed in two very dif- ferent ways . they may be produced either from the decayed materials of older rocks, carried down to the sea or lakes by the rivers, and subsequently consolidated by various processes, which geologists have explained, or they may be formed by the solidifying of liquid matter poured forth through some volcanic aperture from the deeper parts of the earth. The first kind of rocks are disposed in layers, beds, or strata, by the return of water, and hence are called stratified, and also aqueous or water-formed ; the second, being liquid matters which have become hard from cooling, are called igneous, or fire-produced rocks. As volcanoes ai’e at present confined to particular regions of the earth, some may imagine that such igneous rocks should only be found in volcanic regions. This, however, is a mistaken supposition, for geology assures us that igneous rocks are to be found in every mountain range. The mode of reasoning which they follow is equally simple and convincing. If we visit Howth, for example, we find many of the strata resting on their edges, or variously twisted. At the Killerys in the west of Ireland we find strata composed of rolled pebbles, elevated to a very consider- able angle. It is impossible that strata of loose sand or gravel would have been originally deposited in such inclined positions, and we know of no natural power which would elevate them but that of the igneous agency, producing either a violent earthquake, or a long-continued upward pressure. This opinion is much strengthened, when we find in every country, whether volcanic or not, a series of rocks which appear to have been violently inserted among the strata, and which we can prove were once in a state of intense heat and fusion, like the lavas from a modern volcano. The granite of Killiney is one of those igneous rocks, and the appearances which we detect in that interesting locality afford satisfactory evidence of its mode of formation. When we descend to the shore by the stairs, a little to the east ot the Obelisk, we find ourselves in a little way bounded by per- pendicular rocks. These rocks are of two kinds — granite, and a schistose or slaty rock, of a bluish colour, which we — ■■ — - - • may term mica-schist. We then observe that the mica-schist rests on its edges, on a pavement of granite, and also reclines against that rock. The junction of the two rocks may be seen with the utmost perspicuity ; and there is no blending of their characters, even where they are in absolute contact. We may next observe a ledge of rock partly covered by the waves, and extending in nearly a north and south course along the shore. This is a granite vein of many feet in breadth, and several hundred yards in length, and may easily be traced for a considerable distance. This granite vein is bounded on both sides by mica-schist ; and, what is still more important, we may follow' the vein till it is lost in the general mass of granite of the hill. When we now remember that the water-formed rock (the mica- schist) is standing on edge, a suspicion arises that the granite is a fire-produced rock, and has been the agent of this elevation, and the large wall of granite may have been intruded in a molten state between the beds of mica-schist. If it be objected that the granite vein is merely a portion of the strata of mica-schist, and w r as like them deposited from water, an inspection will dissipate this illusion; for we observe that the great vein running pa- rallel to the strata gives off a smaller vein at right angles to the direction of the strata. On examining this smaller vein, which may be seen a little to the north of the stairs, all doubts respecting its nature or origin are very soon removed. We are surprised to find that this vein contains fragments of the mica-schist. W r e may therefore conclude from this that originally fissures were produced in the schist, and these fissures were filled up by molten granite, which entangled fragments of the mica-schist which fell from the sides of the fissure. It is scarcely necessary to add, that w e know of no agent capable of melting granite but heat. When we examine this interesting spot a little more mi- nutely, w'e detect many other granite veins, each affording some curious and minute fact in harmony w'ith the preceding re- marks. Every one knows that it is easier to split a piece ot wood in the direction of the grain, than transversely to that direction. In the same way we may infer that it is easier for a liquid granite to insinuate itself between the strata than to force its way across them, and on examination we find this to have been the case. In the first place, the large vein first mentioned running in the course of the strata is broader than all the transverse veins put together. Secondly, when we examine the cross veins, we find they have had more difficulty in forcing their way : hence they frequently contain fragments. Perhaps, however, an examination at another point near the entrance of the abandoned lead-mine affords the most curious evidence of these remarks, for there we perceive that the vein does not hold a straight course, nor is it of equal thickness throughout, but, on the contrary, is of unequal breadth, and serpentine, as if the strata had been violently lacerated instead of being split. In this case the vein has cut across the strata, and includes fragments of the mica-schist. But the most curious circumstance in this example is, that the vein itself has been broken, and its fractured extremities a little dis- placed and detached, thus proving that the strata had been exposed to concussion and displacement at a period posterior to that when the vein "was formed. If this very brief description will induce any of our readers to visit the granite veins of Killiney, we are sure he will find that his excursion will not be an unimproving one, and he will perhaps be convinced that he has only to look about him to find sources of enjoyment which so many are ignorant of. but which are within the command of all. S. Domestic Discipline of the Dutch. — There are two things of a peculiar character in Holland, which deserve to be noticed. One is the enactment authorising husbands, wives, and children to be imprisoned in a house of correction set apart for the chastisement of offences against the laws by which the relations of social life are governed — the other, a contrivance for compelling the incorrigibly idle to work. In one of the rooms is a pump, and a stream of water runs in from the ceiling ; so that unless the prisoner labours continual- ly, he must be inevitably drowned. — Printed and published very Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin.— Agents It. Groombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster How, London ; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester ; C. Davies, Nortn John Street, Liverpool; John Menzies, Prince’s Street, Edinburgh ; and David Kobrison, Trongate, Glasgow. r-HCES- Number 48. SATURDAY, MAY 29, 1841. Volume I. ORMEAU, COUNTY OF DOWN, THE SEJ In the selection of subjects for illustration in our Journal, there are none which we deem more worthy of attention, or which give us greater pleasure to notice, than the mansions of our resident nobility and gentry ; and it is from this feel- ing chiefly that we have made choice of Ormeau, the fine seat of the Marquess of Donegal, as eminently deserving an early place among our topographical notices. Many finer places may indeed be seen in Ireland, belonging to noblemen, of equal or even inferior rank ; but there are, unfortunately, few of these in which the presence of their lordly owners is so permanently to be found cementing the various classes of society together by the legitimate bond of a common interest, and attracting the respectful attachment of the occupiers and workers of the soil by the cheering parental encouragement which it is the duty of a proprietor to bestow. Ormeau is situated on the east side of the river Lagan, above a mile south of Belfast. The mansion, which, as our view of it will show, is an ex- tensive pile of buildings in the Tudor style of architecture, was originally built as a cottage residence in the last century, and has 5 since gradually approximated to its present extent and importance, befitting the rank of its noble proprietor, by subsequent additions and improvements. _ It has now seve- ral very noble apartments, and an extensive suite of offices and bed-rooms ; but as an architectural composition, it is de- fective as a whole, from the want of some grand and elevated feature to give variety of xovro to its general outline, and re- YT OF THE MARQUESS OF DONEGAL. iieve the monotonous effect of so extensive a line of buildings of equal or nearly equal height. Tne original residence of the family was situated in the town of Belfast, which may be said to have grown around it, and was a very magnificent castellated house, erected in the reign of James I. Its site was that now occupied by the fruit and vegetable markets, and it w'as surrounded by extensive gardens which covered the whole of the ground on which Donegal-place and the Linen Hall now stand. Of this noble mansion, however, there are no vestiges now remaining. It was burnt in the year 1708, by an accidental fire, caused by the carelessness of a female servant, on which occasion three daughters of Arthur, the third Earl of Donegal, perished in the flames ; and though a portion of the building which es- caped destruction was afterwards occupied for some years, the family finally removing to their present residence, its preservation was no longer necessary. The demesne surrounding Ormeau is not of great extent, but the grounds are naturally of great pastoral beauty, com- manding the most charming views of Belfast Lough and ad- jacent mountains, and have received all the improvements that could be effected by art, guided by the refined taste of its ac- complished proprietress. We have only to add, that ready access to this beautiful demesne is freely given to all respectable strangers — a privi- lege of which visitors to the Athens of the North should not fail to avail themselves, P. 378 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. THE IRISH SHAN A II US, BY WILLIAM CARLETON. The state of Irish society has changed so rapidly within the last thirty or forty years, that scarcely any one could believe it possible for the present generation to be looked upon in many things as the descendants of that which has immediately gone before them. The old armorial bearings of society which were empanelled upon the ancient manners of our country, now hang like tattered scutcheons over the tombs of customs and usages which sleep beneath them ; and unless rescued from the obliterating hand of time, scarcely a vestige of them will be left even to tradition itself. That many gross absurdities have been superseded by a social condition more enlightened and healthy, is a fact which must gratify every one who wishes to see the general masses actuated by those prin- ciples which follow in the train of knowledge and civilization. But at the same time it is undeniable that the simplicity which accompanied those old vestiges of harmless ignorance has de- parted along with them ; and in spite of education and science, we miss the old familiar individuals who stood forth as the representatives of manners, whose very memory touches the heart and affections more strongly than the hard creations of sterner but more salutary truths. For our own part, we have always loved the rich and ruddy twilight of the rustic hearth, where the capricious tongues of blazing light shoot out from between the kindling turf, and dance in vivid reflection in the well-scoured pewter and delft as they stand neatly arranged on the kitchen-dresser — loved, did we say ? ay, and ever preferred it to philosophy, with all her lights and fashion, with all her heartlessness and hypocrisy. For this reason it is, that whilst retracing as it were the steps of our early life, and bringing back to our memory the acquaintances of our youthful days, we feel our hearts touched with melancholy and sorrow, be- cause we know that it is like taking our last farewell of old friends whom we shall never see again, from whom we never experienced any thing but kindness, and whose time-touched faces were never turned upon us but with pleasure, and amuse- ment, and affection. In this paper it is not with the Shanahus whose name and avocations are associated with high and historical dignity, that we have any thing to do. Our sketches do not go very far beyond the manners of our own times ; by which we mean that w'e paint or record nothing that is not remembered and known by those who are now living. The Shanahus we speak of is the dim and diminished reflection of him who filled a distinct calling in a period that has long gone by. The regular Sha- nahus — the herald and historian of individual families, the faithful genealogist of his long-descended patron — has not been in existence for at least a century and a half, perhaps two. He with whom we have to do is the humble old man vv r ho, feeling himself gifted with a strong memory for genea- logical history, old family anecdotes, and legendary lore in general, passes a happy life in going from family to family, comfortably dressed and much respected — dropping in of a Saturday night without any previous notice, bringing eager curiosity and delight to the youngsters of the house he visits, and filling the sedate ears of the old with tales and legends, in which, perhaps, individuals of their own name and blood have in former ages been known to take a remarkable and con- spicuous part. Indeed, there is no country in the world where, from the peculiar features of its social and political changes, the chro- nicles of the Shanahus would be more likely to produce such a powerful effect as in Ireland. When we consider that it was once a country of princes and chiefs, each of whom was followed and looked up to with such a spirit of feudal enthu- siasm and devoted attachment as might naturally be expected from a people remarkable for the force of their affection and the power of imagination, it is not surprising that the man who, in a state of society which presented to the minds of so many nothing but the records of fallen greatness or the decay of powerful names, and the downfall of rude barbaric grandeur, together with the ruin of fanes and the prostration of religious institutions, each invested with some local or na- tional interest — it is not surprising, we say, that such a man should be welcomed, and listened to, and honoured, with a feel- ing far surpassing that which was awakened by the idle jingle of a Provenfal Troubadour, or the gorgeous dreams begotten by Arabian fiction. Neither the transition state of society, however, nor the scanty diffusion of knowledge among the Irish, allowed the Shanahus to produce any permanent im- pression upon the people ; and the consequence was, that as the changes of society hurried on, he and his audience were carried along with them ; his traditionary lore was lost in the ignorance which ever arises when a ban has been placed upon education ; and from the recital of the high deeds and heroic feats of by-gone days, he sank down into the humble chro- nicler of hoary legends and dim traditions, for such only has he been within the memory of the oldest man living, and as such only do we intend to present him to our readers. The most accomplished Shanahus of this kind that ever came within our observation, was a man called Tom Grassiey, or Tom the Shoemaker. He was a very stout well-built man, about fifty years of age, with a round head somewhat bald, and an expansive forehead that argued a considerable reach of natural intellect. His knowing organs were large, and projected over a pair of deep-set lively eyes, that scin- tillated with strong twinklings of humour. His voice was loud, his enunciation rapid, but distinct ; and such was the force and buoyancy of his spirits, added to the vehemence of his manner, that altogether it was impossible to resist him. His laughter was infectious, and so loud that it might be heard of a calm summer evening at an incredible distance. Indeed, Tom possessed many qualities that rendered him a most agreeable companion : he could sing a good song for in- stance, dance a hornpipe as well as any dancing-master, and we need not say that he could tell a good story. He could also imitate a Jew’s harp or trump upon his lips with his mere fingers in such a manner that the deception was complete ; and it was well known that flocks of the country people used to crowd about him for the purpose of hearing his performance upon the ivy leaf, which he played upon by putting it in his mouth, and uttering a most melodious whistle. Altogether, he was a man of great natural powers, and possessed such a me- mory as the writer of this never knew any human being to be gifted with. He not only remembered everything he saw or was concerned in, but everything he heard also. His language, when he spoke Irish, was fluent, clear, and sometimes elo- quent ; but when he had recourse to the English, although his fluency remained, yet it was the fluency of a man who made an indiscriminate use of a vocabulary which he did not understand. His pedantry on this account was highly ludicrous and amusing, and his wit and humour surpri- singly original and pointed. He had never received any education, and was consequently completely illiterate, yet he could repeat every word of Gallagher’s Irish Ser- mons, Donlevy’s Catechism, Think Well On’t, the Seven Champions of Christendom, and the substance of Pastorini’s and Kolumb Kill’s Prophecies, all by heart. Many a time I have seen him read, as he used to call it, one of Dr Gallagher’s Sermons out of the skirt of his big-coat ; a feat which was looked upon with twice the wonder it would have produced had he merely said that he repeated it. But to read it out of the skirt of his coat ! Heavens, how we used to look on with awe and veneration, as Tom, in a loud rapid voice, “ rhymed it out of him,” for such was the term we gave to his recital of it ! His learning, however, was not confined to mere Eng- lish and Irish, for Tom was also classical in his way, and for want of a better substitute it was said could serve mass, which must always be done in Latin. Certain it was that he could repeat the Deprofundis, and the Seven Penitential Psalms, and the Dies Irce, in that language. We need scarcely add, that in these learned exhibitions he dealt largely in false quantities, and took a course for himself altogether indepen- dent of syntax and prosody ; this, however, was no argument against his natural talents, or the surprising force of his memory. Tom was also an easy and happy Improviser both in prose and poetry ; his invention was indeed remarkably fertile, but his genius knew no medium between encomium and satire. He either lashed his friends, for the deuce an enemy he had, with rude and fearful attacks of the latter, or gave them, as Pope did to Berkley, every virtue under heaven, and indeed a good many more than ever were heard of beyond his own sys- tem of philosophy and morals. Tom was a great person for attending wakes and funerals, where he was always a busy man, comforting the afflicted re- latives with many learned quotations, repeating ranns, or spi- ritual songs, together with the Deprofundis or Dies Irse, over the corpse, directing even the domestic concerns, paying at- tention to strangers, looking after the pipes and tobacco, and in fact making himself not only generally useful, but essea- THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL/ 379 tially necessary to them, by his happiness of manner, the cor- diality of his sympathy, and his unextinguishable humour. At one time you might see him engaged in leading a Rosary for the repose of the soul of the departed, or singing the Hermit of Killarney, a religious song, to edify the company ; and this duty being over, he would commence a series of comic tales and humorous anecdotes, which he narrated with an ease and spirit that the best of us all might envy. The Irish heart passes rapidly from the depths of pathos to the extremes of humour ; and as a proof of this, we can assure our readers that we have seen the nearest and most afflicted relatives of the deceased carried away by uncontrollable laughter at the broad, grotesque, and ludicrous force of his narratives. It was here also that he shone in a character of which he was very proud, and for the possession of which he was looked up to with great respect by the people ; we mean that of a polemic, or, as it is termed/ 4 anarguer of Script ure,” for when a man in the country parts of Ireland wins local fame as a controversialist, he is seldom mentioned in any other way than as a great arguer of Scripture. To argue scripture well, therefore, means the power of subduing one’s antagonist in a religious contest. Many challenges of this kind passed between Tom and his polemical opponents, in most or all of which he was successful. His memory was infallible, his wit prompt and dexterous, and his humour either broad or sarcastic, as he found it convenient to apply it. In these dialectic displays he spared neither logic nor learning : where an English quotation failed, he threw' in one of Irish ; and where that, was understood, he posed them with a Latin one, closing the quotation by desiring them to give a translation of it ; if this too w r ere accomplished, he rattled out the five or six first verses of John in Greek, which some one had taught him ; and as this w'as generally beyond their reading, it usually closed the discussion in his favour. With- out doubt he possessed a mind of great natural versatility and pow'er ; and as these polemical exercitations w r ere princi- pally conducted in wake-houses, it is almost needless to say that the w r ake at which they expected him was uniformly a crowded one. Tom was very punctual in attending fairs and markets, which he did for the purpose of bringing to the neighbouring farmers a correct account of the state of cattle and produce ; for such w r as the honour in which his knowdedge and talents were held, that it w'as expected he should know thoroughly every topic that might happen to be discussed. During the peninsular war he was a perfect oracle, but always maintained that Bonaparte never wmuld prosper, in consequence of his having imprisoned the Pope. He said emphatically, that he could not be shot unless by a consecrated bullet, and that the said bullet would be consecrated by an Irish friar. It w'as not Bonaparte, he insisted, w'ho was destined to liberate Ire- land : that could never be effected until the Mill of Louth should be turned three times with human blood, and that could not happen until a miller with twm thumbs on each hand came to be owner of the mill. So it w'as prophesied by Beal Dearg , or the man with the red mouth, that Ireland would ne ver be free until we first had the Black Militia in our own country, and that no rebellion ever was or could be of any use that did not commence in the Valley of the Black Pig, and move up- wards from the tail to the head. These were axioms which he laid down wdth great and grave authority ; but on none of his authentic speculations into futurity did he rely with more implicit confidence than the prophecy he generously ascribed to St Bridget, that George the Fourth would never fill the throne of England. Tom had a good flexible voice, and used to sing the old Irish songs of our country with singular pathos and effect. He sang Peggy Slevin, the Red-haired Man’s Wife, and Shula Na Guira, with a feeling that early impressed itself upon my heart. Indeed we think that his sweet but artless voice still rings in our ears ; and whilst we remember the tears which the enthusiasm of sorrow brought down his cheeks, and the quivering pause in the fine old melody which marked what he felt, we cannot help acknowledgingthat the memory of these things is mourn- ful, and that the hearts of many, in spite of new systems of education and incarcerating poor-houses, will yearn after the homely but touching traits which marked the harmless Sfra- nahus, and the times in which he lived. Many a tear has he beguiled us of in our youth when we knew not why we shed them. One of these sacred old airs, especially, we could never resist, 44 the Trougha,”or “ the Green Woods of Trough;” and to this day we remember with a true and melancholy recollec- tion that whenever Tom happened to be asked for it, we used to slink over to his side and whisper, “ Tom, don’t sing that ; it makes me sorrowful and Tom, who had great goodness of heart, had consideration for the feelings of the boy, and sang some other. But now all these innocent fireside enjoy- ments are gone, and we will never more have our hearts made glad by the sprightly mirth and rich good humour of the Sha- nahus, nor ever again pay the artless tribute of our tears to his old pathetic songs of sorrow, nor feel our hearts softened at the ideal miseries of tale or legend as they proceeded in mournful recitative from his lips. Alas 1 alas ! knowledge may be power, but it is not happiness. Such is, we fear, an imperfect outline of Tom’s life. It was one of ease and comfort, without a care to disturb him, or a passion that w r as not calmed by the simple but virtuous in- tegrity of his life. His wishes were few, and innocently and easily gratified. The great delight of his soul was not that he should experience kindness at the hands of others, but that he should communicate to them, in the simple vanity of his heart, that degree of amusement and instruction and know- ledge which made them look upon him as a wonderful man, gifted with rare endowments ; for in what light was not that man to be looked upon who could trace the old names up to times when they were great, who could climb a genealo- gical tree to the top branch, w'ho could repeat the Seven Penitential Psalms in Latin, tell all the old Irish tales and legends of the country, and beat Paddy Crudden the metho- dist horse-jockey, who had the whole Bible by heart, at arguing Scripture ? Harmless ambition ! humble as it v'as, and limi- ted in compass, to thee it was all in all ; and yet thou w'ert happy in feeling that it was gratified. This little boon was all thou didst ask of life, and it was kindly granted thee. The last night we ever had the pleasure of being amused by Tom was at a wake in the neighbourhood, for it somehow hap- pened that there was seldom either a w'ake or a dance within two or three miles of us that we did not attend; and God for- give us, when old Poll Doolin was on her death-bed, the only care that troubled us was an apprehension that she might re- cover, and thus defraud us of a right merry w'ake ! Upon the occasion we allude to, it being known that Tom Grassiey would be present, of course the house was crowded. And when he did come, and his loud good-humoured voice was heard at the door, heavens ! how every young heart bounded with glee and delight ! The first thing he did on entering was to go where the corpse w T as laid out, and in a loud rapid voice repeat the De- profundis for the repose of her soul, after which he sat dowm and smoked a pipe. Oh, well do I remember how the whole house was hushed, for all w'as expectation and interest as to what he would do or say. At length he spoke — “IsFi-ank Magaveen there ?” “ All’s that left o’ me’s here, Tom.” 44 An’ if the sweep-chimly-general had his due, Frank, that wouldn’t be much ; and so the longer you can keep him out of that same, the betther for yourself.” 44 Folly on Tom! you know there’s none of us all able to spake up to you , say what you will.” 44 It’s not so when you’re beside a purty girl, Frank. But sure that’s not surprisin’ ; you were born wid butther in your mouth, an’ that’s what makes your orations to the fair sect be so soft an’ meltin’, ha, ha, ha! Well, Frank, never mind ; there’s worse where you’ll go to: keep your own counsel fast : let’s salt your gums, an’ you’ll do yet. Whisht, boys ; I’m goin’ to sing a rann, an’ afther that Frank an’ I will pick a couple o’ dozen out o’ yez 4 to box the Connaughtman.’ ” Box- ing the Connaughtman is a play or diversion peculiar to wakes; it is grotesquely athletic in its character, but full, besides, of comic sentiment and farcical humour. He then commenced an Irish rann or song, the substance of w'hich w'as as follows, according to his own translation 44 St Patrick, it seems, was one Sunday morning crossing a mountain on his way to a chapel to say mass, and as he was an humble man (coaches wern’t then invented, at any rate) an’ a great pedesti’ium (pedestrian), he took the shortest cut across the mountain. In one of the lonely glens he met a herd-caudy, who spent his time in eulogizin’ his masther’s cattle, according to the precepts of them times, which was not by any means so larned an’ primogenitive as now'. The countenance of the dog w'as clear an’ extremely sab- bathical ; every thing w'as at rest barring the little river before him, an’ indeed one w'ould think that it flowed on with more decency an’ betther behaviour than upon other sym- pathising occasions. The birds, to be sure, were singin’, but FHE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. it was aisy to see that they chirped out their best notes in ho- nour of the day. ‘ Good morrow on you,’ said St Patrick ; ‘ what’s the raison you’re not goin’ to prayers, my fine little fellow ?’ ‘ What’s prayers ?’ axed the boy. St Patrick looked at him with a very pitiful and calamitous expression in his face. ‘Can you bless yourself?’ says he. ‘No,’ said the boy, ‘I don’t know what it means ?’ ‘ Worse and worse,’ thought St Patrick. ‘ Poor bouchal,’it isn’t your fault. An how do you pass your time here?’ ‘ Why, my mate (food) ’s brought to me, an’ I do be rnakin’ kings’ crowns out of my rushes, whin I ’m not watching the cows an’ sheep.’ St Patrick sleeked down bis head wid great dereliction, an’ said, ‘ Well, acushla, you do be operatin’ kings’ crowns, but 3 tell you you’re born to wear a greater one than a king’s, an’ that is a crown of glory. Come along wid me.’ * I can’t lave my cattle,’ said the other, ‘for fraid they might go astray.’ ‘ Right enough,’ replied St Patrick, ‘ but I’ll let you see that they won’t.’ Now, any how St Patrick undherstood cat- tle irresistibly himself, havin’ been a herd-caudy (boy) in his youth ; so he clapped his thumb to his thrapple, an’ gave the Soy-a-loa to the sheep, an’ behould you they came about him wid great relaxation an’ respect. ‘ Keep yourselves sober an’ fictitious,’ says he, addressin’ them, ‘till this boy comes back, an’ don’t go beyant your owner’s property ; or if you do, it’ll be worse for yez. If you regard your health durin’ the approxi- matin’ season, mind an’ attend to my words.’ Now, you see, every sheep, while he was spakin’, lifted the right fore leg, an’ raised the head a little, an’ behould when he finished, they kissed their foot, an’ made him a low bow as a mark of their estimation an’ superfluity. He thin clap- ped his finger an’ thumb in his mouth, gave a loud whistle, an’ in a periodical time he had all the other cattle on the hill about him, to which he addressed the same ondeniable ora- tion, an’ they bowed to him wid the same polite gentility. He then brought the lad along wid him, an’ as they made progress in the journey, the little fellow says, ‘ You seem frustrated by the walk, an’ if you’ll let me carry your bundle, I’ll feel obliged to you.’ ‘ Do so,’ said the saint ; ‘ an’ as it’s rather long, throw the | bag that the things are in over your shoulder ; you’ll find it the aisiestway to carry it.’ Well, the boy adopted this insinuation, an’ they went ambiguously along till they reached the chapel. ‘ Do you see that house ?’ said St Patrick. ‘ I do,’ said the other ; ‘ it has no chimley on it. * No,’ said the saint ; ‘ it has not ; but in that house, Christ, he that saved you, will be present to-day.’ An’ the boy thin shed tears, when he thought of the goodness of Christ in saving one that was a stranger to him. So they entered the chapel, an’ the first thing the lad was struck with was, the beams of the sun that came in through the windy shinin’ be- side the altar. Now, he had never seen the like of it in a house before, an’ thinkin’ it was put, there for some use or other in the intarior, he threw the wallet, which was like a saddle- bag, across the sunbeams, an’ lo an’ behould you the sun- beams supported them, an’ at the same time a loud sweet voice was heard, sayin’, ‘ This is my servant St Kieran, an’ he’s wel- come to the house o’ God !’ St Patrick then tuck him an’ in- structed him in the various edifications of the larned languages until he became one of the greatest saints that ever Ireland saw, with the exception an’ liquidation of St Patrick himself. ’ Such is a faint outline of the style and manner peculiar to the narratives of Tom Grassiev. Indeed, it has frequently surprised not only us, but all who knew him, to think how and where and when he got together such an incredible number of hard and difficult words. Be this as it may, one thing was per- fectly clear, that they cost him little trouble and no study in their application. His pride was to speak as learnedly as possi- ble, and of course he imagined that the most successful method of doing this was to use as many sesquipidalian expressions as he could crowd into his language, without any regard what- soever as to their propriety. Immediately after the relation of this legend, he passed at once into a different spirit. He and Frank Magaveen mar- shalled their forces, and in a few minutes two or three dozen young fellows were hotly engaged in the humorous game of “ Boxing the Connaughtman.” Boxing the Connaughtman was followed by “ the Standing Brogue” and “ the Sitting Brogue,” two other sports practised only at wakes. And here we may observe generally, that the amusements resorted to on such occasions are never to be found elsewhere, but are exclusively peculiar to the house of mourning, where they are benevolently introduced for the purpose of alleviating sor- row. Having gone through a few more such sports, Tom took a seat and~addressed a neighbouring farmer, named Gor- don, as follows : — “ Jack Gordon, do you know the history of vour own name and its original fluency ? “ Indeed no, Tom, I cannot say I do.” “ Well, boys, if you derogate your noise a little. I’ll tell you the origin of the name of Gordon ; it’s a story about ould Oliver Crummle, whose tongue is on the look-out for a drop of wather ever since he went to the lower story. Phis legend, however, is too long and interesting to be related here : we are therefore forced to defer it until another opportunity. SEALS OF IRISH CHIEFS. By George Petrie, R.H.A., M.R.I.A. (Concluded from No. 45.) The next seal which I have to exhibit, belongs to a chief of another and nobler family of Thomond, the O’Briens, kings of the country, and descendants of the celebrated monarch Brian Boru. " This seal is also from the collection of the Dean of St Patrick’s, and was purchased a few years since in Roscrea. Its type is unlike the preceding, as, instead of the armed war- rior/it presents in the field the figure of a griffin. The inscription reads, Sigillum : Brian : I Brian. Tn the genealogies of this illustrious family, which are remarka- ble for their minuteness and historical truth, two or three chiefs bearing the Christi an name of Brian occur. But from the character of the letters on this seal, I have little hesitation in assigning it to Brian O’Brian, who, according to the Annals of the Four Masters, succeeded to the lordship of Thomond in 1343, and was killed in 1350. The next seal which I have to exhibit is also from the Dean’s collection, and, though of later date, is on many ac- counts of still higher interest than perhaps either of the pre- ceding. It is the seal of a chief- of the O’Neills, whose familv were for seven hundred years the hereditary monarchs of Ireland. This seal was found about ten years since in the vicinity of Magherafelt, in the county of Derry, and was purchased by the Dean from a shopkeeper in that town some years after. The arms of O’Neill, the bloody hand, appear on a shield, and the legend reads, Sigillum. Maurisius [Maurisii] ui Neill. The name Mauritius, which occurs in this inscription, does not occur in the genealogies of the O’Neill family, and is ob- viously but a latinised form of the name Murtogh or Muir- cneartach, which was that of two or three chiefs of the family ; and of these I am inclined to ascribe this seal to Murtogh Roe, or the Red O’Neill, lord of Clanaboy, who, according to the Annals of the Four Masters, died in 1471. These are all the seals of Irish princes which have fallen under my observation. But there remain two of equal an- tiquity, but which belonged to persons of inferior rank, which 381 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. it may interest the Academy to see. The first, which is in my own collection, exhibits the figure of an animal, which I must leave to the zoologists of the Academy to describe, with the legend Sigittvm Mac Craith Mac I Dafid. The O’Dafys were an ancient family in Thomond, and are still very numerous in the county of Clare. The next and last is from the cabinet of the Dean, and is very remarkable in having the head of a helmeted warrior cut on a cornelian within the legend, which reads, Sigillum Brian : O'Harny. The O’Harnys are a very ancient and still numerous family in Kerry, descendants of the ancient lords of that country, and remarkable in history as poets and musicians. I have only to add, that it will be observed that these seals are all of a round form, which characterises the seals of se- cular persons, while those belonging to ecclesiastics were usually oval. ORIGIN AND MEANINGS OF IRISH FAMILY NAMES. BY JOIIN o’DONOVAN. Fourth Article. Having in the last article spoken of the origin of surnames in Ireland, and of the popular errors now prevailing respecting them, I shall next proceed to notice certain epithets, sobri- quets, &c, by which the Irish chieftains and others of inferior rank were distinguished. Besides the surnames, or hereditary family names, which the Irish people assumed from their ancestors, it appears from the authentic annals that most, if not all, of their chieftains had attached to their Christian names, and sometimes to their sur- names, certain cognomens by which they were distinguished from each other. These cognomens, or, as they may in many instances be called, sobriquets, were given them from some perfection or imperfection of the body, or some d.sposition or quality of the mind, from the place of birth, or the place of fosterage, and very frequently from the place of their deaths. Of the greater number of these cognomens, the pedigree of the regal family of O’Neill furnishes examples, as Niall Roe, i. e. Niall the Red, who flourished about the year 1225, so called from his having red hair; Hugh Toinleasc (a name which re- quires no explanation), who died in 1230; Niall More, i. e. Niall the Great, who died in 1397 ; Con Bacach, i. e. Con the Lame, who was created Earl of Tyrone in 1542. Among the same family we meet Henry Avrey, i. e. Henry the Conten- tious, Shane an Dimais, i. e. John the Proud. Of the cogno- mens derived from the places in which and the families by whom they were fostered, the pedigree of the sama family af- fords several instances, as Turlogh Luineach, so called from his having been fostered by O’Luney, chief of Munterluney in Tyrone ; Niall Conailach, so called from his having been fos- tered bv O’Donnell, chief of Tirconnell ; Shane Donnellach, so called from his having been fostered by O’Donnelly (An Four Masters, 1531 and 1567); and Felim Devlinach, so called from his foster-father O’Devlin, chief of Munter- Devlin, near Lough Neagh, in the present county of Lon- donderry. Various examples of cognomens given to chief- tains from the place or territory in which they, were fos- tered, are to be met with in other families, as, in that of O’Brien, Donogh Cair-breach, who w r as so called from his having been fostered by O’Donovan, chief of Carbery Aeva, the ancient name of the plains of the county of Limerick. In the regal family of Mac Murrough of Leinster, Donnell Ca- vanagh was so called from having been fostered by the Coarb of St Cavan, at Kilcavan, near Gorey, in Hy-Dea, in the pre- sent county of Wexford. This cognomen of Donnell has been adopted for the last two centuries as a surname by his descendants, a thing very unusual among Irish families. In the family of Mac Donnell of Scotland, John Cahanach was so called from his having been fostered by O’Cahan or O’Kane, in the present county of Londonderry. In the pedigrees of other families, various instances are on record of cognomens having been applied by posterity to chief- tains from the place of their deaths ; in the family of O’Neill, for example, Brian Chatha an Duin, or “ of the battle of Down,” was so called by posterity from his having been killed in a battle fought, at Downpatrick in the year 1280 ; in the family of O’Brien, Conor na Siudaine, from the wood of Siudain in Burren, in which he was killed in the year 1267 ; and in the | family of Mac Carthy, the celebrated Fineen Reanna Roin, from his having been" killed at the castle of Rinn Roin in the year 1261, after a brilliant career of victory over the English. On this subject of cognomens and sobriquets among the Irish, Sir Henry Piers wrote as follows in the year 1682, in a description of the county of Westmeath, written in the form of a letter to Anthony Lord Bishop of Meath, and published in the first volume of Vallancey’s Collectanea : — “ Every Irish surname or family name hath either O or Mae prefixed, concerning which I have found some make this observation, but 1 dare not undertake that it shall hold uni- versally true, that such as have O prefixed were of old supe- rior lords or princes, as O’Neal, O’Donnell, O’Melaghlin, &c, and such as have Mac were only great men, viz, lords, thanes, as Mac Gennis, Mac Loghlin, Mac Doncho, &c. But however this observation [may] hold, it is certain they take much liberty, and seem to do it with delight, in giving of nicknames ; and if a man have any imperfection or evil habit, he shall be sure to hear of it in the nickname. Thus, if he be blind, lame, squint-eyed, grey-eyed, be a stammerer in speech, be left- handed, to be sure he shall have one of these added to his name; so also from his colour of hair, as black, red, yellow, j brown, &c ;'and from his age, as young, old ; or from what he j addicts himself to, or much delights in, as in draining, build- ing, fencing, or the like ; so that no man whatever can escape a nickname who lives among them, or converseth with them ; and sometimes so libidinous are they in this kind of raillery, they will give nicknames per antiphrasim, or contrariety of speech. Thus a man of excellent parts, and beloved of all men, shall be called grana, that is, naughty or fit to be com- plained of ; if a man have a beautiful countenance or lovely eyes, they will call him Cueegh, that is, squint-eyed ; if a great housekeeper, he shall be called Ackerisagh, that is, greedy.” ( Collectanea , vol. I. p. 113.) In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, ivhen the Irish fa- milies increased, and their territories w T ere divided into two and three parts among rival chieftains of the same family, each of the chieftains adopted some addition to the family sur- name for the sake of distinction, thus, among the O’Co- nors of Connaught we find O’Conor Don, i. e. O’Conor the brown-haired, and O’Conor Roe, or the red-haired. This distinction was first made in the year 1384, when Torlogh Don and Torlogh Roe, who had been for some time in emulation for the chieftainship of the territory of Shilmurry, agreed to have it divided equally between them ; on which occasion the former was to be called O’Conor Don, and the latter O’Conor Roe. (See Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Charles O’Conor). It is now supposed by many of the Irish that the epithet Don postfixed to the name of the chief of the O’Co- nors is a Spanish title ! while those who are acquainted with the history of the name think that he should reject it as being a useless sobriquet, and more particularly now, as there is no O’Conor Roe from whom he needs to be distinguished. It is true that the O’Conor Don might now very lawfully be called the O’Conor, as there is no O’Conor Roe or O’Conor Sligo, at least none who take the name ; but as he had borne it before O’Conor Roe disappeared, we would not advise it to be re- jected for another generation, as ive think that an O’Conor Roe will in the meantime make his appearance, for we are ac- quainted with an individual of that name who knows his pe- 382 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. digree well, but is not sufficiently wealthy to put himself for- ward as an Irish chieftain. In the same province we find the Mac Dermots of Aloylurg divided into three distinct families, the head of whom was, par excellence, styled the Mac Dermot, and the other two who were tributary to him called, the one Mac Dermot Roe, i. e. the Red, and the other Mac Dermot Gall, or the Anglicised. In Thomond we find the Mac Namaras split into two distinct families, distinguished by the names of Mac Namara Fin, i. e. the Fair, and Mac Namara Reagh, or the Swarthy. In Des- mond the family of Mac Carthy split into three powerful branches, known by the names of Mac Carthy More or the Great, Mac Carthy Reagh or the Swarthy, and Mac Car- thy Muscryagh, i. e. of Muskerry. Beauford asserts with his usual confidence that Mac Carthy Reagh signifies Mac Carthy the King, but this is utterly fallacious, for the epithet, which is anglicised Reagh, is written riach and j^iabhach, in the original annals of Inisfallen and of the Four Masters, and translated fuscus by Philip O’Sullivan Beare (who knew the import of it far better than Beauford) in his History of the Irish Catholics published at Lisbon in 1C21. The O’Sullivans split into the families of O’Sullivan More and O’Sullivan Beare ; the O’Donovans into those of O’Donovan More, O’Donovan Locha Crot, and O’Hea O’Donovan; the O’ Ken- nedy s of Ormond into those of O’Kennedy Finn, O’Kennedy Roe, and O’Kennedy Don ; the O’Farrells of Annally into those of O’Farrell Bane, i. e. the White, and O’Farrell Boy, or the Yellow, &c, &c. The foregoing notices are sufficient to show the nature of the surnames in use among the ancient Scotic or Milesian Irish families. It will be now expected that I should say a few words on the effect which the Anglo-Norman invasion and the introduction of English laws, language, and names, have had in changing or modifying them, and on the other hand the influence which the Irish may have had in changing or modifying the English names. After the murder, in 1333, of William de Burgo, third Earl of Ulster of that name, and the lessening of the English power which resulted from it, many if not all of the distin- guished Anglo-Norman families located in Connaught and Munster became hibernicised — Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores— spoke the Irish language, and assumed surnames in imitation of the Irish by prefixing Mac (but never O in any instance) to the Christian names of their ancesters. Thus the De Burgos in Connaught took the name of Mac William from their ancestor William de Burgo, and were divided into two great branches, called Mac William Oughter and Mac Wil- liam Eighter, i. e. Mac William Upper and Mac William Lower, the former located in the county of Galway, and the latter in that of Mayo ; and from these sprang many off- shoots who took other surnames from their respective ances- tors, as the Mac Davids of Glinsk, the Mac Philbins of Dun Mugdord in Mayo, the Mac Shoneens, now Jennings, and the Alac Gibbons, now Fitzgibbons. The Berminghams of Dun- more and Athenry in Connaught, and of Offaly in Leinster, took the name of Mac Feoiris, from Pierce, the son of Meyler Bermingham, who was one of the principal heads of that family in Ireland, The head of the Stauntons in Carra took the name of Mac Aveely. The chief of the Barretts of Tiraw- ley took the name of Mac Wattin, and a minor branch of the same family, located in the territory of the Two Backs, lying between Lough Con and the river Moy, assumed that of Mac Andrew, while the Barretts of Munster took the now very plebeian name of Mac Phaudeen, from an ancestor called Paudeen, or Little Patrick. The De Exeters of Gallen, in Connaught, assumed the surname of Mac Jordan from Jordan De Exeter, the founder of that family; and the Nangles of the same neighbourhood took that of Mac Costello. €>f the Kildare and Desmond branches of the Fitzgeralds there were two Mac Thomases, one in Leinster, and the other in the Desies, in the now county of AVaterford, in Munster. A branch of the Butlers took the name of Mac Pierce, and the Poers, or Powers, that of Mac Shere. The Freynes of Os- sory took the name of Mac Rinki, and the Rarrys that of Alac Adam. In the present county of Kilkenny were located two families, originally of great distinction, who took the strange name of Gaul, which then signified Englishman, though at an earlier period it had been a term applied by the Irish to all foreigners ; the one was Stapleton, who was loca- ted at Gaulstown, in the parish of Rilcolumb, barony of Ida, and county of Kilkenny ; the other a branch of the Burkes, who obtained extensive estates in that part of Ireland, and dwelt at Gaulstown, in the barony of Igrine. The writer, who is the sixth in descent from the last head of this family, has many of his family deeds, in which he styles himself sometimes Galle and sometimes Galle alias Borke ; on his tomb, however, in his family chapel at Gaulskill, he is called Walterus De Burgo without the addition of Galle, and is there said to be de- scended from the Red Earl of Ulster. His descendants now all retain the name of Gaul, as do those of his neighbour Sta- pleton. The Fitzsimons, in Westmeath, took the name of Mac Ruddery, and the Wesleys that of Alac Falrene, &c. &c. Edmund Spenser, secretary to the Lord Arthur Grey (deputy of Ireland under Queen Elizabeth in the year 1580), attempted to prove that many distinguished families then bearing Irish surnames, and accounted of Irish origin, were really English. This, however, is undoubtedly false, and is a mere invention of the creative fancy of that great poet and politician : but as it has been received as truth by Sir Charles Coote and other English writers, we shall show how Spenser deceived himself or was deceived on this point. He instances the following families : 1, The Mac Alahons of Oriel in Ulster, who, as he states on the authority of the report of some Irishmen, came first to Ireland with Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, under the name of Fitz-Ursula : 2, The Alac Alahons of the South : 3, The Mac Sweenys of Munster : 4, The Mac Sheehys of Alunster ; 5, The O’Brins or O’Byrnes of Lein- ster : 6, The O’Tooles of the same province : 7, The Cavan- aghs : 8, The Mac Namaras of Thomond. But he gives no proof for his assertions but the report of some Irishmen, cor- roborated by etymological speculations of his own ; and as the report of some unnamed persons can have no weight with us when in direct contradiction of the authentic annals of the country, I shall slightly glance at some of the most impor- tant of his etymological evidences, and then give my own proofs of the contrary. To prove that the Mac Mahons of Oriel are the Fitz- Ursulas, he says that Mahon signifies bear in Irish, and hence that Alac Mahon is a translation of Fitz- Ursula; but granting that Mahon does mean a bear , it does not follow that Alac Alahon is a translation of Fitz-Ursula. But we have stronger reasons to urge than to prove that this is a non sequitur, for we have the testimony of the authentic pedigree of the Mac Alahons of Oriel, and of the annals of Ulster, that the Alac Alahons had been located in Oriel and had borne that name long before the English invasion. The Alac Alahons and Alac Namaras of the south are a branch of the Dal-Cais, a great tribe located in Thomond, whose history is as certain from the ninth century as that of any people in Europe. The Alac Sweenys and Alac Sheehys of Alunster are of Irish origin, but their ancestors removed to Scotland in the tenth century, or beginning of the eleventh, and some of their descendants returned to Ireland in the beginning of the fourteenth century, and were hereditary leaders of Gal- lowglasses to many Irish chieftains. To prove that the Byrnes, Tooles, anct Cavanaghs, are of British origin, he has recourse also to etymology, which is a great lever in the hand of a historical charlatan, and says, in the first place, that Brin in the Welsh language means woody, and that hence the O’Brins or O’Bvrnes must be of AVelsh origin. But admitting that Brin does in the Welsh language mean woody, what has that to do with O’Brain, the original Irish name of O’Byrne, especially when it can be proved that that surname was called after Bran, king of Leinster, who was usually styled Bran Duv, i. e. the Black Raven, from the colour of his hair, and his thirst for prey. Secondly, to prove that O’Toole is a Welsh name, he says that tol means hilly in the AVelsh lan- guage ! and so does tol in Irish bear this meaning. But what, I would ask, has that to do with O’Tuathail, or descendants of Tuathal, the son of Ugaire, from whom this family have taken their surname? The name Tuathal, signifying the lordly, has no more to do with tol, a hill, than it has with the English word tool, to which it has been anglicised for the last two centuries. Thirdly, to prove that the name Cavanagh is of AVelsh origin, he asserts that Kaevan in AVelsh signifies strong in English. This may be true ; but what has the sig- nification of the AVelsh word Kaevan to do with the name of the Alac Murroghs of Leinster, who assumed the cognomen of Cavanagh from Donnell Cavanagh, the son of Dermot Alac Murrogh, who had himself received this name from his having been fostered at Kilcavan in the north-east of the present county of Wexford ? Spectatum admissi risum teneatis amici ? Those errors of Spenser have been already exposed by Dr Jeffry Keating, a man of learning and undoubted honesty, but of great simplicity, which is characteristic of the age in which THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 383 lie lived, also by Gratianus Lucius, and by the learned Roderic O’Flaherty, who has devoted a chapter of his Ogygia to prove that Spenser, though a distinguished poet, can have no claim to credit as a historian. Spenser’s purpose in fabri- cating this story about the Mac Mahons was to hold them up as objects of hatred to the Irish and English people, as being descended from the murderer of Thomas a Becket. He never succeeded, however, in convincing Ever Mac Cooley, or any other of the rebels of the Farnev, that they were descended from the Beares of England ! Spenser also asserts that it vias said that most of the surnames ending in an, though then considered Irish, were in reality English, such as Hernan, Shinan, Mungan, &c. I do not, however, believe a word of this latter assertion of the great English poet, but conclude, with the simple and honest Keating, that, “ as being a poet, he gave himself, as was usual with the profession, licence to revel in poetic fictions, which he dressed in flowery language to decoy his reader.” For we know that there is not a single instance on record of any Anglo-Norman family having taken any Irish names except such as they formed from the names or titles of their own ancestors by prefixing Mac, which they considered equivalent to the Norman Fitz, as Mac Maurice, Mac Gibbon, Mac Gerald, Mac William, which are equivalent to Fitz-Mauriee, Fitz-Gibbon, Fitz-Gerald, Fitz- William. In this manner, however, the great Anglo-Norman families of the south and west of Ireland, who were after all more French and Irish than they were English (their ancestors having dwelt scarcely a cehtury in England), nearly all hiber- nicised their names. It seems rather curious that Spenser has not furnished any list of those Anglo-Norman families who really hibernicised their names, while he was so minute in naming those who were not English, but whom he wished to make appear as such, in order to be enabled to censure them the more harshly for their treasons and rebellions. He con- tents himself by stating that there were great English fami- lies in Ireland who, he regretted to say, had become Irish in name and feeling. The manner in which he states this fact is worthy of consideration, and I shall therefore insert his very words here as they appear in the Dublin edition : — “ Other great houses there bee of the English in Ireland, which thorough licentious conversing with the Irish or marrying or fostering with them, or lacke of meet nurture [i. e. education or rearing], or such other unhappy occasions, have degendred from their auncient dignities, and are now growne ‘ as Irish as O’ Hanlon s breech,' as the proverbe there is. ” Sir Henry Piers of Tristernagh, in the county of West- meath, complains of the same custom among the families of English descent, in about a century after Spenser’s period. “ In the next place, I rank the degeneracy of many English families as a great hindrance of the reducing this people to civility, occasioned not only by fostering, that is, having their children nursed and bred during their tender years by the Irish, but much more by marriages with them, by means whereof our English in too many great families became in a few generations one both in manners and interest with the Irish, insomuch as many of them have not doubted [7 e. he- sitated] to assume even Irish names and appellations : instan- ces whereof are but too many even to this day : thus a Ber- mingham is called by them Mac Yoris, Fitz- Simmons, Mac Kuddery [recte Mac-Ruddery], Wesley [i. e. Wellesley], Mac Falrene, &c, and from men thus metamorphosed what could be expected?” — Collectanea, vol. I. p. 105. On the other hand, the Irish families who lived within the English pale and in its vicinity gradually conformed to the English customs, and assumed English surnames ; and their doing so was deemed to be of such political importance that it was thought worthy the consideration of parliament : accord- ingly it was enacted by the statute of 5 Edward IV (1465), that every Irishman dwelling within the English pale, then comprising the counties of Dublin, Meath, Louth, and Kil- dare, should take an English surname. This act is so curious as illustrating the history of Irish family names, that it de- mands insertion in this place. “ An act, that the Irish men dwelling in the counties of Dublin, Myeth, Uriell, and Kildare, shall goe apparelled like English men, and weare theire beards after the English maner, sweare allegeance, and take English surname.” — Rot. Pari, ca. 16. “ At the request of the Commons it is ordeyned and esta- blished by authority of the said parliament, that every Irish man that dwells betwixt or amongst Englishmen in the county of Dublin, Myeth, Uriell, and Kildare, shall goe like to one Englishman in apparell, and shaveing off his beard above the mouth, and shal be within one yearesworne the liege man of the king in the hands of the lieutenant or deputy, or such as he will assigne to receive this oath for the multitude that is to be sworne, and shall take to him an English surname of one towne, as Sutton, Chester, Trym, Skryne, Corke, Kinsale ; or colour, as white, blacke, browne ; or arte or science, as smith or carpenter ; or office, as cooke, butler ; and that he and his issue shall use this name under payne of for- feyting of his goods yearely till the premises be done, to be levied two times by the yeare to the king’s warres, according to the discretion of the lieutenant of the king or his deputy.” — 5 Edtvard IV. cap. 3. “ In obedience to this law,” observes Harris, in his additions to Ware, the Shanachs took the name of Foxes, the Mac Gab- hans of Smiths, Geals of Whites, the Branachs ofWalshes, and many others ; the said words being only literal transla- tions from the Irish into the English language.” Harris, how- ever, I may remark, is very much mistaken when he supposes that the Branachs (B}tC4.'CV)A)3, i- e. Britones ) of the English pale in Ireland are an Irish family, or that any ancient Irish family had borne that name before the Anglo-Norman and Welsh families settled in Ireland towards the latter end of the twelfth century ; and he is also wrong in assuming that the Irish word for Geal, white, was by itself ever used as the name of any family in Ireland. In the other two instances he is correct ; for the head of the O’Caharnys of Teffia, who was usually styled the Shinnagh, translated his name into Fox, and the Mac-an-Gowans and O’Gowans translated their name into Smith. The importance thus attached by this act to the bearing of an ‘English surname soon induced many of the less distin- guished Irish families of the English pale and its vicinity to translate or disguise their Irish names, so as to make them appear English ones, as Mac Intire to Carpenter, Mac Spal- lane to Spenser, Mac Cogry to L’Estrange, &c. ; but the more distinguished families of the pale and its vicinity, as Mac Mur- rogh, O’Brennan, O’Kayly, and others, retained with pride their original Irish names unaltered; for while they could look back with pride on a long line of ancestors, they could not bear the idea of being considered as the descendants of trades- men and petty artizans, a feeling which prevails at the present day, and will prevail for ever ; for though a man has himself sunk into poverty, he still feels a pride in believing that he is of respectable origin. It is certain, however, that the trans- lation and assimilation of Irish surnames to English ones was carried to a great extent in the vicinity of Dublin and through- out Leinster ; and hence it may at this day be safely conclu- ded that many families bearing English surnames throughout the English pale are undoubtedly of Milesian or Danish origin. It appears, however that this statute had not the intended effect; for, about a century after its having passed, we find Spenser recommending a renewal of it, inasmuch as the Irish had then become as Irish as ever. His words on this point are highly interesting, as throwing great light on the history of Irish surnames towards the close of the sixteenth century, and we shall therefore lay them before the reader : — “ Moreover, for the better breaking of these heads and [of?] septs which (I told you) w'as one of the greatest strengthes of the Irish, methinkes it should be very well to renewe that ould statute which was made in the reigne of Edward the Fourth in Ireland, by which it was commanded, that whereas all men used to be called by the name of their septs, accord- ing to the severall nations, and had no surnames at all, that from henceforth each one should take upon himself a severall surname, either of his trade and faculty, or of some quality of his body or minde, or of the place where be dwels, so as every one should be distinguished from the other, or from the most part, wdiereby they shall not only not depend upon the head of their sept, as now they do, but also in time learne quite to forget his [their] Irish nation. And herewithal w'ould I also wish all the O’s and the Mac’s which the heads of septs have taken to their names, to be utterly forbidden and extin- guished. For, that the same being an ordinance (as some say) first made by O’Brien for the strengthening of the Irish, the abrogating thereof will as much enfeeble them.” Towards the close of the next century we find Sir Henry Piers of Tristernagh, in his account of the county of West- meath, rejoicing that the less distinguished Irish families were beginning to take English surnames : — •* These, I suppose, may be reckoned among the causes of the slow progress this nation hath made towards civility and 384 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. accommodation to our English laws and customs ; yet these notwithstanding, this people, especially in this and the adjoin- ing counties, are in our days become more polite and civil [civilized] than in former ages, and some very forward to ac- commodate themselves to the English modes, particularly in their habit, language, and surnames, which by all manner of ways they strive to make English or English like ; this I speak of the inferior rank of them. Thus you have Mac Gowan sur- name himself Smith ; Mac Killy, Cock ; Mac Spallane, Spen- ser ; Mac Kegry, L’Estrange, &c, herein making small amends for our degenerate English before spoken of.” But I have exceeded the space which the Journal allows for this article, and I must defer the remainder to a future num- ber, promising the reader that I shall make every effort to bring the subject of Irish surnames to a conclusion in two ad- ditional articles. Aristocratic Travelling Mr Theobald was at that instant speaking to Lord Bolsover. “ Listen,” said the Earl of Rochdale to Arlington, “and you will hear some of the uses and advantages of travel.” Arlington accordingly di- rected his attention to the speakers. “ I will just tell you what I did,” said Mr Theobald. “ Brussels, Frankfort, Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Milan, Naples, and Paris, and all that in two months. Noman has everdoneitinless.” “That’s a fast thing ; but I think I could have done it,” said Lord Bolsover, “ with a good courier. I had a fellow once who could ride a hundred miles a-day for a fortnight.” “ I came from Vienna to Calais,” said young Leighton, “ in less time than the government courier. No other Englishman ever did that.” “ Hem ! I am not sure of that,” said Lord Bol- sover. “But I’ll just tell you what I have done : from Rome to Naples in nineteen hours; a fact, upon my honour ; and from Naples to Paris in six days.” “Partly by sea?” in- terrogated Leighton. “No! all by land,” _ replied Lord Bolsover, with a look of proud satisfaction. “ I’ll just tell you what 1 did,” Mr Leighton chimed in again, “and 1 think it is a good plan — it shows what one can do. 1 went straight on end, as fast as I could, to what was to be the end of my journey. This was Sicily. So straight away I went there at the devil’s own rate, and never stopped anywhere by the way ; changed horses at Rome and all those places, and landed in safety in I furget exactly how long from the time of starting, but I have got it down to an odd minute. As for the places I left behind, I saw them all on my way back, ex- cept the Rhine, and I steamed down that in the night-time.” “ I have travelled a good deal by night,” said. Theobald. “ With a dor7neu.se and travelling lamp 1 think it is pleasant, and a good plan of getting on.” “ And you can honestly say, I suppose,” said Denbigh, “ that you have slept successfully through as much fine country as any man living?” “ Oh, I did see the country,” replied Theobald, “that is, all that was worth seeing. My courier knew all about that, and used to stop and waken me whenever we came to anything remarkable. Gad ! I have reason to remember it, too, for I caught an in- fernal bad cold one night when I turned out by kmp-light to look at a waterfall. 1 never looked at another. I here was a pause in the conversation, and the group moved onwards to another room. — Arlington, a Tale, by the Hon. Mr Lister . Truth will never be palatable to those who arp determined not to relinquish error, but can never give offence to the ho- nest and well-meaning ; for the plain-dealing remonstrances of a friend differ as widely from the rancour of an enemy as the friendly probe of a physician from the dagger of an assassin. E. W. Montague. Parental Duties. — Bring thy children up in learning and obedience, yet without outward austerity. Praise them openly reprehend them secretly. Give them good countenance and convenient maintenance, otherwise thy life will seem their bondage, and what portion thou shaltleave them at thy death they will thank death for it, and not thee. And I am per- suaded that the foolish cockering of some parents, and the overstern carriage of others, cause more men and women to take ill courses than their own vicious inclinations. Marry thy daughters in time, lest they marry themselves ; and train not up thy sons in the wars, for he that sets up his rest to live by that profession can hardly be an honest man or a good Christian ; besides, it is a science no longer in request than use, for soldiers in peace are like chimneys m summer — Lord Eur- kigh's Maxims. HALF AN HOUR IN IRELAND. ( From Charles O'Malley.) When the Bermuda transport sailed from Portsmouth for Lisbon, I happened to make one of some four hundred inter- esting individuals, who, before they became food for powder, were destined to try their constitutions on pickled pork. The sgcond day after our sailing, the winds became adverse ; it blew a hun’icane from every corner of the compass but the one it ought ; and the good ship, that should have been stand- ing straight for the Bay of Biscay, was scudding away with a double-reefed topsail towards the coast of Labrador. For six days we experienced every sea-manoeuvre that usually preludes a shipwreck ; and at length, when, what from sea sickness and fear, we had become utterly indifferent to the result, the storm abated, the sea went down, and we found ourselves lying com- fortably in the harbour of Cork, we had a strange suspicion on our minds that the frightful scenes of the past week had been nothing but a dream. “ Come, Mr Mediicot,” said the skipper to me, “ we shall be here for a couple of days to refit ; had you not better go ashore and see the country ?” I sprung to my legs with delight ; visions of cowslips, larks, daisies, anil mutton chops, floated before my excited imagination, and in ten minutes I found myself standing at that pleasant little inn at Cove, which, opposite Spike Island, rejoices in the name of the Goat and Garters. “ Breakfast, waiter,” said 1 ; “ a beefsteak — fresh beef, mark ye ; fresh eggs, bread, milk, and butter, all fresh.” No more hard tack, thought I, no salt butter, but a genuine land breakfast. “ lip stairs, No. 4, sir,” said the waiter, as he flourished a dirty napkin, indicating the way. Up stairs I went, and in due time the appetizing little dejeune made its appearance. Never did a miser’s eye revel over his broad acres with more complacent enjoyment than did mine skim over the mutton and the muffin, the teapot, the trout, and the devilled kidney, so invitingly spread out before me. Yes, thought I, as I smacked my lips, this is the reward of virtue ; pickled pork is a probationary state that admirably fits us for future enjoyments. I arranged my napkin upon my knee, 1 seized my knife and fork, and proceeded with most critical acumen to bisect a beefsteak. Scarcely, however, had I touched it, when with a loud crash the plate smashed beneath it, and the gravy ran piteously across the cloth. Before I had time to account for the phenomenon, the door opened hastily, and the waiter rushed into the room, his face redolent with smiles, while he rubbed his hands in an ecstacv of delight. “ It’s all over, sir ; ’ said he, “ glory be to God, its’ all done.” “ What’s over ? what’s done?” said 1 with impatience. “ M‘Mahon is satisfied,” replied he, “ and so is the other gentleman.” “ Who and what the devil do you mean ?” “ It’s over, sir, I say,” replied the waiter again; “he fired in the air.” “ Fired in the air,” said I. “ Did they fight in the room be- low stairs ?” “ Yes, sir,” said the waiter with a benign smile. “ That will do.” said I, as seizing my hat 1 rushed out of the house, and hurrying (o the beach took a boat for the ship. Exactly half an hour had elapsed since my landing, but even those short thirty minutes had fully as many reasons, that although there may be few more amusing, there are some safer places to live in than the green island.’ All men are masked ; the world is one universal disguise, each individual endeavouring to fathom his neighbour’s in- tentions, at the same time wishing to hide his own, and, above all, striving to secure a reputable character rather by words than deeds. Persons who are always innocently cheerful and good- humoured are very useful in the world ; they maintain peace and happiness, and spread a thankful temper amongst all who live around them.— Miss Talbot. Printed and published very Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Gieen, Dublin. — • Agents : — It. Guoombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London ; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool; Jony Menzies, Prince's Street, Edinburgh i and Davis Ropkrtson, Trongate, Glasgow. JO URNAL. VICTORIA CASTLE, KILL Our metropolitan readers, at least, and many others besides, are aware of the magnificent but not easily to be realised project, recently propounded, of erecting a town on the east side of Malpas’s or Killiney Hill — a situation certainly of unrivalled beauty and grandeur. Plans, most satisfactory, and views prospective as well as perspective of this as yet non-existent Brighton or Clifton, have been laid before the public, with a view to obtain the necessary ways and means to give it a more substantial reality ; but alas ! for the uncer- tainty of human wishes ! Queenstown, despite the popular- ity of our sovereign, is not likely, for some time at least, to present a rivalry, in any thing but its romantic and com- manding site, to the busy, bustling, and not very symmetri- cally built town which has been erected in honour of Her august eldest uncle. The good people of Kingstown may therefore rejoice ; their glory will not for some time at least be eclipsed ; and the lovers of natural romantic scenery who have not money — they seldom have — to employ in promising speculations, may also rejoice, for the wild and precipitous cliffs of Killiney are likely to retain for some years longer a portion of their romantic beauty ; therocks will not be shaped into well-dressed forms of prim gentility ; the purple heather and blossomy furze, unprofitably gay,” may give nature’s brilliant colouring to the scenery, and the wild sea-birds may sport around : the time has not arrived when they will be destroyed or banished from their ancient haunt by the encroachment of man. But however this may be, the first stone of the new town INEY, COUNTY OF DUBLIN. has been laid; nay, the first building — no less a building than “ Victoria Castle”. — has been actually erected; and, as a me- morial of one of the gigantic projects of this speculating nine- teenth century of ours, we have felt it incumbent on us to give its fair proportions a place in our immortal and univer- sally read miscellany, in order to hand down its pristine form to posterity in ages when it shall have been shaped by time into a genuine antique ruin. Of the architectural style and general appearance of Vic- toria Castle, our engraving gives a good idea. Like most modern would-be castles, it has towers and crenellated bat- tlements and large windows in abundance, and is upon the whole as unlike a real old castle as such structures usually are. It is, however, a picturesque and imposing structure of its kind, and, what is of more consequence to its future occu- pants, a cheerful and commodious habitation, ■which is more than can be said of most genuine castles, or of many more classical imitations of them ; and its situation, on aterraceon the south side of Killiney Hill, is one as commanding and beautiful as could possibly be imagined. Nothing in nature can indeed surpass the beauty, variety, and extent of the prospects which may be enjoyed from this spot or its immediate vicinity, and we might fill a whole number of our Journal in describing their principal features. To most of our readers, however, they must be already fa- miliar, and to those who have not had the pleasure of enjoying | a sight of them, it will convey a sufficient general idea of what 386 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. they must be, to acquaint them that Killiney Hill from the same point commands, towards the w r est, views of the far- famed Bay of Dublin, the city, and the richly-cultivated and villa-studded plains by which it is surrounded, towards the north, the bold, rugged promontory of Howth, with the islands of Dalkey, Ireland’s- eye, Lambay, and the peaked mountain-ranges of Down and Lowth in the extreme distance ; and lastly, towards the east and south, the sea, and the lovely Bay of Killiney, with its shining yellow strand, curved into the form of a spacious and magnificent amphitheatre, from which, as in seats above each other, ascend the richly- wooded hills, backed by the mountains of Dublin and Wicklow, with all their exquisite variety of forms and fitful changes of colour. In short, it may truly be said of this delightful situation, that though other localities may possess some individual character of scenery of greater beauty or grandeur, there are few if any in the British empire that could fairly be compared with it for its variety and general interest. Of the great interest of Killiney to the naturalist, and the geologist more particularly, we have already endeavoured to give our readers some notion in a paper, in a recent number, from the pen of our able and accomplished friend Dr Sehouler ; and Killiney is scarcely less interesting to the antiquary than to the man of science. Though till a recent period its now cultivated and thickly inhabited hills and shores presented the virgin appearance of a country nearly in the state which nature left it, the numerous monuments of antiquity scattered about them clearly evinced that man had been a wanderer if not an inhabitant here in the most remote times. Numerous kistvaens containing human skeletons have been found be- tween the road and the sea, undoubtedly of pagan times ; and we have ourselves seen in our young days six very lai’ge urns of baked clay, containing burned bones, which were discovered in sinking the foundations for a cottage, near the road between the Killiney and Rochestown hills. We have also seen several sepulchral stone circles, now no longer remaining; and there is yet to be seen of the same period, a fine cromleac, situated near Shanganagh, and that most re- markable and interesting pagan temple, near the Martello tower, with its judgment chair, and the figures of the sun and moon sculptured on one of the stones within its enclosure. Nor is Killiney without its monument of Christian piety of as early date as any to be found in Ireland. In the beautiful ivied ruin of its parish church, the antiquary may enjoy a sight of one of the most characteristic examples of the temples erected by the Irish immediately after their conversion to Christianity, and make himself intimate with a style of archi- tecture not now to be found in other portions of the British empire. P THE CASTLE OF AUGHENTAIN, OR A LEGEND OF THE BROWN GOAT, A TALE OF TOM GRASSIEY, THE SHANAHUS. BY WILLIAM CARLETON. When Tom had expressed an intention of relating an old story, the hum of general conversation gradually subsided into silence, and every face assumed an expression of curiosity and interest, with the exception of Jemsy Baccagh, who was rather deaf, and blind George M‘Givor, so called because he wanted an eye ; both of whom, in high and piercing tones, carried on an angry discussion touching a small law-suit that had gone against Jemsy in the Court Leet, of which George was a kind of rustic attorney. An outburst of impatient re- buke was immediately poured upon them from fifty voices. “ Whisht with yez, ye pair of devils’ limbs, an’ Tom goin’ to tell us a story. Jemsy, your sowl’s as crooked as your lame leg, you sinner ; an’ as for blind George, if roguery would save a man, he’d escape the devil yet. Tarenation to yez, an’ be quiet till we hear the story !” “ Ay,” said Tom, “ Scripthur says that when the blind leads the blind, both will fall into the ditch ; but God help the lame that have blind George to lead them ; ive might aisily guess where he’d guide them to, especially such a poor innocent as Jemsy there.” This banter, as it was not intended to give offence, so was it received by the parties to whom it was ad- dressed with laughter and good humour. “ Silence, boys,” said Tom ; “ I’ll jist take a draw of the pipe till I put my mind in a proper state of transmigration for what I’m goin’ to narrate.” He then smoked on for a few minutes, his eyes complacently but meditatively closed, and his whole face composed into the philosophic spirit of a man who knew and felt his own supe- riority/as well as what was expected from him. When he had sufficiently arranged the materials in his mind, he took the pipe out of his mouth, rubbed the shank-end of it against the cuff of his coat, then handed it to his next neighbour, and having given a short preparatory cough, thus commenced his legend: — • “ You must know that afther Charles the First happened to miss his head one day, havin’ lost it while playin’ a game of ‘ Heads an’ Points’ with the Scotch, that a man called Nolly Rednose, or Oliver Crummle, was sent over to Ireland with a parcel of breekless Highlanders an’ English Bodaghs to sub- duvate the Irish, an’ as many of the Prodestans as had been friends to the late king, who were called Royalists. Now, it appears by many larned transfigurations that Nolly Red- nose had in his army a man named Balgruntie, or the Hog of Cupar ; a fellow who was as coorse as sackin’, as cunnin’ as a fox, an’ as gross as the swine he was named afther. Red- nose, there is no doubt of it, was as nate a hand at takin’ a town or castle as ever went about it ; but then, any town that didn’t surrendher at discretion was sure to experience little mitigation at his hands; an’ whenever he was -bent on wicked- ness, he was sure to say his prayers at the commencement of every siege or battle ; that is, he intended to show no marcy in, for he’d get a book, an’ openin’ it at the head of his army, he’d cry, ‘ Ahem, my brethren, let us praise God by endea- vourin’ till sing sich or sich a psalm ;’ an’ God help the man, woman, or child, that came before him after that. Well an’ good : it so happened that a squadron of his psalm-singers were dispatched by him from Enniskillen, where he stopped to rendher assistance to a part of his army that O’Neill was leatherin’ down near Dungannon, an’ on their way they hap- pened to take up their quarthers for the night at the Mill of Aughentain. Now, above all men in the creation, who should be anpointed to lead this same squadron but the Hog of Cupar. ‘Balgruntie, gooff wid you,’ said Crummle, when administer- ing’ his instructions to him; ‘but be sure that wherever von meet a fat royalist on the way, to pay your respects to him as a Christian ought,’ says he ; ‘ an’, above all things, my dear brother Balgruntie, don't neglect your devotions, otherwise our arms can't prosper ; and be sure,’ says he, with a pious smile, ‘ that if they promulgate opposition, you will make them bleed anyhow, either in purse or person ; or if they provoke the grace o’ "God, take a little from them in both ; an’ so the Lord’s name be praised, yeamen !’ Balgruntie sang a psalm of thanksgiyin’ for bein’ elected by his commander to sich a holy office, set out on his march, an’ the next night he an’ his choir slep in the mill of Aughentain, as I said. Now, Balgruntie had in this same congregation of his a long-legged Scotchman named Sandy Saveall, which name he got by way of etymology, for his charity ; for it appears by the historical elucidations that Sandy was perpetually ran- tinizin’ about sistherly affection an’ brotherly love : an’ what showed more taciturnity than any thing else was, that while this same Sandy had the persuasion to make every one believe that he thought of nothing else, he shot more people than any ten men in the squadron. He was indeed what they call a dead shot, for no one ever knew him to miss any thing he fired at. He had a musket that could throw point blank an Eng- lish mile, an’ if he only saw a man’s nose at that distance, he used to say that with aid from above he could blow it for him with a leaden handkerchy, meaning that he could blow it off his face with a musket bullet ; and so by all associations he could, for indeed the faits he performed were very insiniva- ting an’ problematical. Now, it so happened that at this period there lived in the castle a fine wealthy ould royalist, named Graham or Grimes, as they are often denominated, who had but one child, a daughter, whose beauty an’ perfections were mellifluous far an’ near over the country, an’ who had her health drunk, as the toast of Ireland, by the Lord Lieutenant in the Castle of Dublin, undher the sympathetic appellation of ‘ the Rose of Aughentain.’ It was her son that afterwards ran through the estate, and was forced to part wid the castle ; an’ it’s to him the proverb colludes, which mentions ‘ ould John Grame, that swallowed the castle of Aughentain.’ Howsomever, that bears no prodigality to the story I’m narratin’. So what would you have of it, but Balgruntie, who had heard of the father’s wealth and the daughter’s beauty, took a holy hankerin’ afther both : an’ havin’ as usual said his prayers an’ sung a psalm, he determined for to clap his thumb upon, the father’s money, thinkin’ that the daughter THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 387 would be the more aisily superinduced to folly it. In other words, he made up his mind to sack the castle, carry off the daughter and marry her righteously, rather, he said, through a sincere wish to bring her into a state of grace, by a union With a God-fearin’ man, whose walk he trusted was Zionward, than from any cardinal detachment for her wealth or beauty. He accordingly sent up a file of the most pious men he had, picked fellows, with good psalm-singin’ voices and strongnoses, to request that John Graham would give them possession of the castle for a time, an’ afterwards join them at prayers, as a proof that he was no royalist, but a friend to Crummle an’ the Commonwealth. Now, you see, the best of it was, that the very man they demanded this from was commonly deno- minated by the people as ‘Gunpowdher Jack,’ in consequence of the great signification of his courage ; an’, besides, he was known to be a member of the Hell-fire Club, that no per- son could join that hadn’t fought three duels, and killed at least one man ; and in ordher to show that they regarded neither God nor hell, they were obligated to dip one hand in blood an’ the other in fh’e, before they could be made members Of the club. It’s aisy to see, then, that Graham -was not likely to quail before a handful of the very men he hated wid all the vociferation in his power, an’ he accordingly put his head out of the windy, an’ axed them their tergiversation for bein’ there. ‘ Begone about your business,’ he said ; ‘ I owe you no re- gard. What brings you before the castle of a man who de- spises you ? Don’t think to determinate me, you canting ras- cals, for you can’t. My castle’s well provided wid men, an’ ammunition, an’ food ; an’ if you don’t be off, I’ll make you sing a different tune from a psalm one.’ Begad he did, plump to them, out of the windy. When Crummle’s men returned to Balgruntie in the mill, they related what had tuck place, an’ he said that afther prayers he’d send a second message in writin’, an’ if it wasn’t attended to, they’d put their trust in God an’ storm the castle. The squadron he commanded was not a numerous one ; an’ as they had no artillery, an’ were surrounded by ene- mies, the takin’ of the castle, which was a strong one, might Cost them some snufflication. At all events, Balgruntie was bent on makin’ the attempt, especially afther he heard that the castle was wellvittled, an’ indeed he was meritoriously joined by his men, who piously licked their lips on hearin’ of such glad tidings. Graham was a hot-headed man, without much ambidexterity or deliberation, otherwise he might have known that the bare mintion of the beef an’ mutton in his castle was only fit to make such a hungry pack desperate. But be that as it may, in a short time Balgruntie w r rote him a letter, de- mandin’ of him, in the name of Nolly Rednose an’ the Com- monwealth, to surrendher the castle, or if not, that, ould as he was, he would make him as soople as a two-year-ould. Gra- ham, afther readin’ it, threw the letther back to the messen- gers wid a certain recommendation to Balgruntie regardin’ it ; but whether the same recommendation was followed up an’ acted on so soon as he wished, historical retaliations do not inform. On their return the military narrated to their commander the reception they resaved a second time from Graham, an’ he then resolved to lay regular siege to the castle ; but as he knew he could not readily take it by violence, he determined, as they say, to starve the garrison leisurely an’ by degrees. But, first an’ foremost, a thought struck him, an’ he imme- diently called Sandy Saveall behind the mill-hopper, which he had now turned into a pidplt for the purpose of expoundin’ the word, an’ givin’ exhortations to bis men. ‘ Sandy,’ said he, ‘ are you in a state of justification to- day ?’ ‘ Towards noon,’ replied Sandy, ‘ I had some strong wrist- lings with the enemy ; but I am able, undher praise, to say that I defated him in three attacks, and I consequently feel my righteousness much recruited. I had some wholesome com- munings with the miller’s daughter, a comely lass, who may yet be recovered from the world, an’ led out of the darkness of Aigyp, by a word in saison.’ ‘ Well, Sandy,’ replied the other, * I lave her to your own instructions ; there is another poor benighted maiden, who is also comely, up in the castle of that godless sinner, who belong- eth to the Perdition Club ; an’, indeed, Sandy, until he is some- how removed, I think there is little hope of plucking her like a brand out of the burning.’ He serenaded Sandy in the face as he spoke, an’ then cast an extemporary glance at the musket, which was as much as to say ‘ can you translate an insinivation ?’ Sandy concocted a smilin’ reply ; an’ takin’ up the gun, rubbed the barrel, an’ pattin’ it as a sportsman w r oidd pat the neck of his horse or dog, wid reverence for comparin’ the villain to either one or the other. ‘ If it was knowm, Sandy,’ said Balgruntie, ‘ it would harden her heart against me ; an’ as he is hopeless at all events, bein’ a member of that Perdition Club’ ‘ True,’ said Sandy, ‘but you lave the miller’s daughter to me ?’ ‘ I said so.’ ‘ Well, if his removal will give you any consolidation in the matther, you may say no more.’ 4 1 could not, Sandy, justify it to myself to take him away by open violence, for you know that I bear a conscience if any thing too tendher and dissolute. Also I wish, Sandy, to pre- sarve anondeniable reputation for humanity ; an’, besides, the daughter might become as reprobate as the father if she sus- pected me to be personally concarned in it. I have heard a good deal about him, an’ am sensibly informed that he has been shot at twice before, by the sons, it is thought, of an enemy that he himself killed rather significantly in a duel.’ ‘ Very well,’ replied Sandy ; 4 1 would myself feel sci’uples ; but as both our consciences is touched in the business, I think I am justified. Indeed, captain, it is very likely afther all that we are but the mere instruments in it, an’ that fit is through us that this ould unrighteous sinner is to be removed by a more transplendant judgment.’ Begad, neighbours, when a rascal is bent on wickedness, it is afisy to find cogitations enough to back him in his villany. And so was it with Sandy Saveall and Balgruntie. That evenin’ oidd Graham was shot through the head stand- in’ in the wdndy of his own castle, an’ to extenuate the suspicion of sich an act from Crummle’s men, Balgruntie himself went up the next day, beggin’ very politely to have a friendly ex- planation with Squire Graham, sayin’ that he had harsh ordhers, but that if the castle was peaceably delivered to him, he would, for the sake of the young lady, see that no injury should be offered either to her or her father. The young lady, however, had the high drop in her, and becoorse the only answer he got was a flag of defiance. This nettled the villain, an’ he found there was nothin’ else for it but to plant a strong guard about the castle to keep all that was in, in — and all that was out, out. . . In the mean time, the very appearance of the Crumwellians in the neighbourhood struck such terror into the people, that the country, which was then only very thinly inhabited, became quite desarted, an’ for miles about the face of a human bein’ could not be seen, barrin’ their own, sich as they were. Crum- mle’s track was always a bloody one, an’ the people knew that they were wise in puttin’ the hills an’ mountain passes between him an’ them. The miller an’ his daughter bein’ en- couraged by Sandy, staid principally for the sake of Miss Graham ; but except them, there was not a man or woman in the barony to bid good-morrow to, or say Salvey Dominey. On the beginnin’ of the third day, Balgruntie, who knew his officialities extremely well, an’ had sent down a messenger to Dungannon to see whether matters were so bad as they had been reported, was delighted to hear that O’Neill had dis- appeared from the neighbourhood. He immediately informed Crummle of this, and tould him that he had laid siege to one of the leadin’ passes of the north, an’ that, by gettin’ posses- sion of the two castles of Aughentain and Augher, he could keep O’Neill in check, and command that part of the country. Nolly approved of this, an’ ordheredhim to proceed, but was sorry that he could send him no assistance at present ; 4 however,’ said he, ‘with a good cause, sharp swords, an’ aid from above, thgre is no fear of us.’ They now set themselves to take the castle in airnest. Balgruntie an’ Sandy undherstood one another, an’ not a day passed that some one wasn’t dropped in it. As soon as ever a face appeared, p6p went the deadly musket, an’ down fell the corpse of whoever it was aimed at. Miss Graham herself was spared for good reasons, but in the coorse of ten or twelve days she was nearly alone. Ould Graham, though a man that feared nothing, was only guilty of a profound swag- ger when he reported the strength of the castle and the state of the provisions to Balgruntie an’ his crew. But above all things, that which eclipsed their distresses was the want of wather. There was none in the castle, an’ although there is a beautiful well beside it, yet, fareer gair, it was of small re- sponsibility to them. Here, then, was the poor young lady- placed at the marcy of her father’s murdherer ; for however 388 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. she might have doubted in the beginnin’ that he Avas shot by the CrumAvellians, yet the death of nearly all the servants of the house in the same Avay Avas a sufficient proof that it Avas like masther like man in this case. What, hoAvever, Avas to be done ? The Avhole garrison noAv consisted only of Miss Gra- ham herself, a fat man cook advanced in years, Avho danced in his distress in ordher that he might suck his OAvn perspira- tion, and a little orphan boy that she tuck undher her purtec- tion. It Avas a hard case, an’ yet, God bless her, she held out like a man. It’s an ould sayin’ that there’s no tyin’ up the tongue of Fame, an’ it’s also a true one. The account of the siege had gone far an’ near in the counthry, an’ none of the Irish, no matter what they were Avho ever heard it, but Avor sorry. Sandy Saveall was noAv the devil an’ all. As there Avas no more in the castle to shoot, he should find something to rege- nerate his hand upon : for instance, he practised upon three or four of Graham’s friends, Avho undher one pretence or other were seen skulkin’ about the castle, an’ none of their relations durst come to take away their bodies in ordher to bury them. At length things came to that pass, that poor Miss Graham was at the last gasp for something to drink ; she had fer- reted out as well as she could a drop of moisture here an’ there in the damp corners of the castle, but now all that Avas gone ; the fat cook had sucked himself to death, and the little orphan boy died calmly away a few hours afther him, lavin’ the helpless lady with a tongue swelled an’ furred, and a mouth parched and burned, for Avant of drink. Still the blood of the Grahams was in her, and yield she Avoukl not to the villain that left her as she Avas. Sich then was the transpa- rency of her situation, when, happening to be on the battle- ments to catch, if possible, a*little of the deAv of heaven, she was surprised to see something flung up, which rolled doAvn towards her feet : she lifted it, an’ on examinin’ the con- tents, found it to be a stone covered with a piece of brown paper, inside Avhich Avas a slip of white, containing the words, ‘ Endure — relief is near you !’ But, poor young lady, of what retrospection could these tidings be to one in her si- tuation ? — she could scarcely see to read them ; her brain Avas dizxy, her mouth like a cindher, her tongue SAvelled an’ black, an’ her breath felt as hot as a furnace. She could barely breathe, an’ was in the very act of lyin’ down undher the tri- umphant air of heaven to die, when she heard the shrill voice of a young kid in the castle yard, and immediently remembered that a brown goat which her lover, a gentleman named Simp- son, had, Avhen it Avas a kid, made her a present of, remained in the castle about the stable during the Avhole siege. She instantly made her way sloAvly down stairs, got a bowl, and havin’ milked the goat, she took a little of the milk, Avhich I need not asseverate at once relieved her. By this means she recovered, an’ findin’ no further anticipation from druth, she resolved like a hairo to keep the Crumwellians out, an’ to wait till either God or man might lend her a helpin’ hand. Now, you must know that tha miller’s purty daughter had also a SAveetheart called Suil Gair Maguire, or sharp-eye’d Maguire, an humble branch of the great Maguires of Ennis- killen ; an’ this same Suil Gair was servant an’ foster-brother to Simpson, who was the intended husband of Miss Graham. Simpson, who lived some miles off, on hearin’ the condition of the castle, gathered together all the royalists far an’ near ; an’ as Crummle was honestly hated by both Romans an’ Prodestans, faith, you see, Maguire himself promised to send a few of his followers to the rescue. In the mean time, Suil Gair dressed himself up like a fool or idiot, an’ undher the purtection of the miller’s daughter, who blarnied Saveall in great style, was allowed to Avandher about an' joke Avid the sogers ; but especially he took a fancy to Sandy, and chal- lenged him to put one stone out of five in one of the port-holes of the castle, at a match of finger-stone. Sandy, who was nearly as famous at that as the musket, Avas rather relaxed when he saw that Suil Gair could at least put in every second stone, an’ that he himself could hardly put one in out of twenty. Well, at all events it Avas durin’ their sport that fool Paddy, as they called him, contrived to fling the scrap of writin’ I spoke of across the battlements at all chances ; for when he undhertook to go to the castle, he gave up his life as lost; but he did’nt care about that, set in case he Avas able to save either his foster-brother or Miss Graham. But this is not at all indispensable, for it is well known that many a fos- ter-brother sacrificed his life the same Avay, and in cases of great danger, when the real brother Avould beg to decline the compliment. Things were now in a very connubial state entirely. Bal- gruntie heard that relief Avas cornin’ to the castle, an’ what to do he did not know ; there Avas little time to be lost, how- ever, an’ something must be done. He praiched flowery dis- courses twice a-day from the mill-hopper, an’ sang psalms for grace to be directed in his righteous intentions ; but as yet he derived no particular predilection from either. Sandy ap- eared to have got a more bountiful modelum of grace than is captain, for he succeeded at last in bringin’ the miller’s daughter to sit undher the Avord at her father’s hopper. Fool Paddy, as they called Maguire, had noAv become a great fa- vourite Avid the sogers, an’ as he proved to be quite harmless and inoffensive, they let him run about the place widout oppo- sition. The castle, to be sure, was still guarded, but Miss Graham kept her heart up in consequence of the note, for she hoped every day to get relief from her friends Balgruntie, now seein’ that the miller’s daughter Avas becomin’ more serious undher the taichin’ of Saveall, formed a plan that he thought might enable him to penethrate the castle, an’ bear off the lady an’ the money. This was to strive Avid very de- licate meditation to prevail on the miller’s daughter, through the renown that he thought Sandy had over her, to open a correspondency wicl Miss Graham ; for he knew that if one of the gates Avas unlocked, and the unsuspectin’ girl let in, the whole squadron would soon be in afther her. Now, this^lan was the more dangerous to Miss Graham, because the miller’s daughter had intended to bring about the very same de- nouncement for a different purpose. Between her friend an’ her enemies it Avas clear the poor lady had little chance ; an’ it Avas Balgruntie’s intention, the moment he had sequestrated her and the money, to make his escape, an’ lave the castle to whosomever might choose to take it. Things, however, Avere ordhered to take a different bereavement : the Hog of Cupar Avas to be trapped in the hydrostatics of his own hypocrisy, an’ Saveall to be overmatched in his own premises. Well, the plot was mentioned to Sandy, who was promised a good sketch of the prog ; an’ as it Avas jist the very thing he dreamt about night an’ day, he snapped at it as a hungry dog would at a sheep’s trotter. That night the miller’s daughter — Avhose name I may as Avell say Avas Nannie Duffy, the purtiest girl an’ the SAveetest singer that ever was in the counthry— was to go to the castle an’ tell Miss Graham that the sogers wor all gone, Crummle killed, an’ his Avhole army massacrayed to atoms. This was a different plan from poor Nannie’s, who now suav clearly what they were at. But never heed a Avoman for bein’ witty when hard pushed. ‘ I don’t like to do it,’ said she, ‘for it looks like thrachery, espishilly as my father has left the neighbourhood, and I don’t knoAV where he is gone to ; an’ you knoAv thrachery ’s onda- cent in either man or woman. Still, Sandy, it goes hard for me to refuse one that I — I well, I wish I kneAv where my father is — I Avould like to know what he’d think of it.’ ‘ Hut,’ said Sandy, ‘ where’s the use of such scruples in a good cause ? — when Ave get the money, we’ll fly. It is princi- pally for the sake of Avaining you an’ her from the darkness of idolatry that Ave do it. Indeed, my conscience would not rest well if I let a soul an’ body like vours remain a prey to Sathan, my darlin’.’ ‘ Well,’ said she, ‘ does’nt the captain exhort this evenin’?’ ‘ He does, my beloved, an’ with a blessin’ will expound a few verses from the Song of Solomon.’ ‘ It’s betther then,’ said she, ‘ to sit under the Avord, an’ perhaps some light may be given to us.’ This delighted Saveall’s heart, who now looked upon pretty Nannie as his own ; indeed, he was obliged to go gradually and cautiously to work, for cruel though Nolly Rednose was, Sandy kneAv that if any violent act of that kind should raich him, the guilty party would sup sorrow. Well, accordin’ to this pious arrangement, Balgruntie assembled all his men Avho were not on duty about the hopper, in Avhich he stood as usual, an’ had commenced a poAverful exhortation, the sub- stratum of which was devoted to Nannie ; he dwelt upon the happiness of religious love ; said that scruples were often sug- gested by Satan, an’ that a heavenly duty was but terrestrial Avhen put in comparishment Avid an earthly one. He also made collusion to the old Squire that was popped by Sandy ; said it was often a judgment for the wicked man to die in his sins ; an’ Avas gettin’ on wid great eloquence an’ emulation, Avhen a Ioav rumblin’ noise Avas heard, an’ Balgruntie, throwin’ up his clenched hands an’ grindin’ his teeth, shouted out, ‘ Hell and d- — j — ii) I’ll be ground to death ! The mill’s goin’ on ! Murdher ! murdher ! I’m gone !’ Faith, it was true enough THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 389 — she had been wickedly set a-goin’ by some one ; an’ before they had time to stop her, the Hog of Cupar had the feet and legs twisted off him before their eyes — a fair illustration of his own doctrine, that it is often a judgment for the wicked man to die in his sins. When the mill was stopped, he was pulled out, but didn’t live twenty minutes, in consequence of the loss of blood. Time was pressin’, so they ran up a shell of a eoffin, and tumbled it into a pit that was hastily dug for it on the mill-common. This, however, by no manner of manes relieved poor Nan- nie from her difficulty, for Saveall, finding himself now first in command, determined not to lose a moment in tolerating his plan upon the castle. ‘ You see,’ said he, e that a way is opened for us that we didn’t expect ; an’ let us not close our eyes to the light that has been given, lest it might be suddenly taken from us again. In this instance I suspect that fool Paddy has been made the chosen instrument ; for it appears upon inquiry that he too has disappeared. However, heaven’s will be done ! we will have the more to ourselves, my beloved — ehem ! It is now dark,’ he proceeded, ‘ so I shall go an’ take my usual smoke at the mill window, an’ in about a quarther of an hour I’ll be ready.’ ‘ But I’m all in a tremor after sich a frightful accident,’ replied Nannie : ‘ an’ I want to get a few minutes’ quiet before we engage upon our undhertakin.’ This was very natural, and Saveall accordingly took his usual seat at a little windy in the gable of the mill, that faced the miller’s house ; an’ from the way the bench was fixed, he was obliged to sit with his face exactly towards the same di- rection. There we leave him meditatin’ upon his own right- eous approximations, till w r e folly Suil Gair Maguire, or fool Paddy, as they called him, who practicated all that was done. Maguire and Nannie, findin’ that no time was to be lost, gave all over as ruined, unless somethin’ could be acted on quickly. Suil Gair at once thought of settin' the mill a-goin’, but kept the plan to himself, any further than tellin’ her not to be sur- rised at any thing she might see. He then told her to steal im a gun, but if possible to let it be Saveall’s, as he knew it could be depended on. ‘ But I hope you won’t shed any blood if you can avoid it,’ said she ; ‘ that I don’t like.’ ‘Tut,’ replied Suil Gair, makin’ evasion to the question, ‘ it’s good to have it about me for my own defence.’ He could often have shot either Balgruntie or Saveall in daylight, but not without certain death to himself, as he knew that escape was impossible. Besides, time was not before so pressin’ upon them, an’ every day relief was expected. Now, however, that relief was so near — for Simpson with a party of royalists an’ Maguire’s men must be within a couple of hours’ journey it would be too intrinsic entirely to see the castle plundhered, and the lady carried off by such a long-legged skyhill as Saveall. Nannie consequentially, at great risk, took an opportunity of slipping his gun to Suil Gair, who was the best shot of the day in that or any other part of the coun- try ; and it was in consequence of this that he was called Suil Gair, or Sharp Eye. But, indeed, all the Maguires were fa- mous shots ; an’ I’m tould there’s one of them now in Dublin that could hit a pigeon’s egg or a silver sixpence at the dis- tance of a hundred yards.* Suil Gair did not merely raise the sluice when he set the mill a-goin’, but he whipped it out alto- gether an’ threw it into the dam, so that the possibility of saving the Hog of Cupar was irretrievable. He made off, however, an’ threw himself among the tall ragweeds that grew upon the common, till it got dark, when Saveall, as was his custom, should take his evenin’ smoke at the windy. Here he sat for some period, thinkin’ over many ruminations, before he lit his cutty pipe, as he called it. ‘ Now,’ said he to himself, ‘ what is there to hindher me from takin’ away, or rather from makin’ sure of the grand las- sie, instead of the miller’s daughter ? If I get intil the castle, it can be soon effected ; for if she has any regard for her re- putation, she will be quiet. I’m abraw handsome lad enough, a wee thought high in the cheek bones, scaly in the skin, an’ knock-knee’d a trifle, but stout an’ lathy, an’ tough as a withy. But, again, what is to be done wi Nannie? Hut, she’s but a miller’s daughter, an’ may be disposed of if she gets troublesome. I know she’s fond of me, but I dinna blame her for that. However, it wadna become me now to en- tertain scruples, seem’ that the way is made so plain for me. But, save us ! eh, sirs, that was an awful death, an’ very like * The celebrated Brian Maguire, the first shot of his day, was at this time living in Dublin. a judgment on the Hog of Cupar ! It is often a judgment tor the wicked to die in their sins ! Balgruntie wasna that Whatever he intended to say further, cannot be analogized by man , for, just as he had uttered the last word, which he did while holding the candle to his pipe, the bullet of his own gun entered between his eyes, and the next moment he was a corpse. Suil Gair desarved the name he got, for truer did never bullet go to the mark from Saveall’s own aim than it did from his. There is now little more to be superadded to my story. Before daybreak the next mornin’, Simpson came to the relief of his intended wife ; Crummle’s party war surprised, taken, an’ cut to pieces ; an’ it so happened that from that day to this the face of a soger belongin’ to him was never seen near the mill or castle of Aughentain, with one exception only, and that was this : — You all know that the mill is often heard to go at night when nobody sets her a-goin’, an’ that the most seven- dable scrames of torture come out of the hopper, an’ that when any one has the courage to look in, they’re sure to see a man dressed like a soger, with a white mealy face, in the act, so to say, of havin’ his legs ground off him. Many a guess was made about who the spirit could be, but all to no purpose. There, however, is the truth for yez ; the ( spirit that shrieks in the hopper is Balgruntie’s ghost, an he s to be ground that way till the day of judgment. Be coorse, Simpson and Miss Graham were married, as war Nannie Duffy an’ Suil Gair ; an’ if they all lived long an happy, I wish we may all live ten times longer an happier ; an so we will, but in a betther world than this, plaise God.” “ Well, but, Tom,” said Gordon, “ how does that account for my name, which you said you’d tell me ? “ Right,” said Tom ; “ begad I was near forgettin’ it. Why, you see, sich was their veneration for the goat that was tho manes, undher God, of savin’ Miss Graham s life, that they changed the name of Simpson to Gordon, which signifies in Irish gor dhun, or a brown goat, that all their posterity might know the great obligations they lay undher to that reverend animal.” “ An’ do you mane to tell me,” said Gordon, _ “ that my nams was never heard of until Oliver Crummle’s time ?” “ I do. Never in the wide an’ subterraneous earth was sich. a name known till afther the prognostication I tould you ; an’ it never would either, only for the goat, sure. I can prove it by the pathepathetics. Denny Mullin, will you give us another draw o’ the pipe ?” Tom’s authority in these matters was unquestionable, and, besides, there was no one present learned enough to contradict him, with any chance of success, before such an audience. The argument was consequently, without further discussion, decided in his favour, and* Gordon was silenced touching the origin and etymology of his own name. This legend we have related as nearly as we can remember in Tom’sAvords. We may as well, however, state at once that many of his legends were wofully deficient in authenticity, as indeed those of most countries are. Nearly half the Irish legends are ex post facto or postliminious. '1 here is no record, for instance, that Oliver Cromwell ever saw the castle of Aughentain, or that any such event as that narrated by Tom ever happened in or about it. It is much more likely that the story, if ever there was any truth in it, is of Scotch origin, as indeed the names would seem to import. There is no doubt, however, that the castle of Aughentain, which is now in the possession of a gentleman named Browme we think, was once the property of a family called Graham. In our boyhood there was a respectable family of that name living in its immediate vicinity, but we know not whether they are the descendants of those who owned the castle or not. THE HERRING Second Article. THE FISHERY. Having given in a former number some account of the natural history of this valuable little creature, we now proceed, in accordance with our promise, to give a description of the various modes of taking and curing it ; and as the Dutch were the first to see the importance, and devote themselves to the improvement, of the herring fishery, we shall commence with them. So early as the year 1307, the Dutch had turned their at- tention to this subject; and lest any of our more thoughtless or less informed readers should deem the matter one of secondary consideration, or probably of even less, we shall lay before them some statistical accounts of the Dutch fisher- 300 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. ies, extracted from returns of the census of the States-Gene- ral, taken in the year 1669. In that year the total amount of population was 2.400,000. Of whom were employed as fishermen, and in equipping fishermen with their boats, tackle, con- veying of salt, &c. ... ... ... 450,000 Employed in the navigation of ships in foreign trade, 250,000 Shipwrights, handicraftsmen, and manufacturers, 650,000 Inland fishermen, agriculturists, and labourers, ... 200,000 Gentry, statesmen, soldiers, and inhabitants in general, ... ... ... ... ... 850,000 Total, 2,400,000 Thus nearly a fifth of the population of Holland was en- tirely engaged in and supported by the herring and deep-sea fishery, and thus arose the saying that “ the foundations of Amsterdam were laid on herring bones and hence did De "Witt assert that “ Holland derived her main support from the herring fishery, and that it ought to be considered as the right arm of the republic.” Before Holland was humbled upon the seas, and whilst she was at the pinnacle of her prosperity, she had ten thousand sail of shipping, with 168,000 mariners, afloat. Of these no less than 6400 vessels, with 1 12,000 mariners, were employed in and connected with the herring fishery alone, “ although the country itself affords them neither materials, nor victual, nor merchandise, to be accounted of, towards their setting forth.” When we come to the subject of curing, we shall take occasion to point out the modes by which the Dutch attained their excellence, and established this surprising trade ; but at present we have but to describe their manner of fishing. The Great Fishery commences on the 24th of June, and terminates on the 31st of December, and is carried on in the latitudes of Shetland and Edinburgh, and on the coast of Great Britain, with strong-decked vessels called busses, manned by fourteen or fifteen men, and well supplied with casks, salt, nets, and every material requisite for catching and curing at sea. Each buss has generally fifty, and must not have less than forty nets of 32 fathoms in length each, 8 fa- thoms in depth, and a buoy-rope of 8 fathoms ; an empty barrel less than a herring barrel is attached to each buoy-rope. This fleet of nets, as it is called, is divided by buoys into four parts, by which their position is marked and their taking in facilitated ; the buoys at the extreme ends are painted white, with the owners’ and vessels’ names upon them. By the Dutch fishery laws it is provided that the yarn of the nets must be of good unmixed Dutch or Baltic hemp, which must be inspected before use by sworn surveyors ; the yarn must be well spun ; and each full net, or fourth part of a fleet, must be 740 meshes in length and 68 in depth, and the nets must be inspected and marked before they can be used. The Dutch always shoot their nets, that is, cast them into the sea, at sunset, and take them in before sunrise. In shoot- ing them they cast them to windward, so that the wind may prevent the vessel from coming upon them. The whole of the nets are attached to four strong ropes joined to each other, and are taken in by means of the capstan, to which four or five men attend, whilst four more shake out the fish. The Small Fishery, or fresh-herring fishery, is carried on to the east of Yarmouth in deep water, with flat-bottomed vessels without keels, so formed for the purpose of being run ashore in any convenient place. It is forbidden by the 15th and 16th articles of the Dutch fishery laws to gut the herrings taken by the small fishery either at sea or ashore, under pain of one month’s imprison- ment, and a fine of five guilders for every hundred herrings, as well as the confiscation of the herrings, unless special per- mission has been obtained from the king, at the request of the States. . The Pan Fishery is carried on in the rivers, inland seas, and on the coast of Holland, within three miles of the shore. The same prohibition, under similar penalties, that exists against curing fish taken in the small fishery, extends to this. We have given the first place to the Dutch in this account, in consequence of their having been the first to see the impor- tance of the fishery, but they take the lead no longer ; the English and Scotch have successfully rivalled them in curing, and for the quantity taken during the season the Norwegians surpass all others. The Norwegian is a wholesale fishery, every description of ship and boat being in demand. They have curing stations on shore, to which the boats bring the fish as fast as they are caught ; and there are large vessels with barrels and salt lying out amongst the fishers, buying from those who do not wish to lose time by going ashore. Every description of net, as well as every sort of vessel, is in requi- sition ; some fishing at anchor, some sailing, and others haul- ing their seines on shore, but the grand method is as fol- lows An immense range of nets with very small meshes, so small as to prevent the herrings from fastening in them, is extended round a shoal of fish, and gradually moved towards some creek or narrow inlet of the sea. The nets are drawn close and made fast across the entrance, and the enormous body of herrings thus crowded up into a narrow space is taken out and cured at leisure. This mode of fishing is called a “lock.” The following passage from a letter written by a gentle- man who witnessed the fishery near Ilitteroe, to Mr Mitchell of Leith, will give our readers some idea of its extent : — “ On the other side of the Sound we saw what is termed a lock, that is, several nets joined together, forming a bar before a small bay, into which the herrings were crowded. In this place there were several thousand barrels of herrings, so com- pactly confined together that an oar could stand up in the mass. There were in the neighbourhood of Hitteroe alto- gether about four or five thousand nets, and about two thou- sand boats and vessels ; and there were caught, according to the opinion of several intelligent persons, this day (24th Janu- ary 1833), not less than ten thousand barrels.” The entire quantity taken on the coast of Norway during the fall of 1832 and the spring of 1833 was estimated at 680,000 barrels, which was considered to be a fair average take. We come now to the home fishery, in which Yarmouth takes the lead in the size of vessels and magnitude of tackle em- ployed. The fishing is carried on by the Yarmouth men in decked vessels called “ luggers,” from 20 to 50 tons burthen, having three masts, and rigged with three lugsails, topsails, mizen, foresail, and jib : the crew of the largest consisting of twelve men and a boy, who are paid according to the quantity offish caught. Each ordinary vessel carries two hundred nets of 48 feet in length and 30 in depth, each having meshes of 1 inch or 14 inch, as usual in herring nets. Of these nets they shoot one hundred at a time, reserving the other hundred for cases of accident or mishap. When launched, each net is attached by two seizings of H inch rope, having a depth of 18 feet, to a four-stranded (generally 4 inch) warp of 3600 feet in length ; this warp is made fast to a rope from the bow of the vessel, which in stormy weather can be let out to ease the strain, to the extent of 100 fathoms, or 600 feet. For each net there are two buoys (4-gallon barrels) made fast to the warp, and there are four buoys besides, to mark the distances, two for the quarter and three-quarter stations, painted red and white quarterly, one for the half distance or middle of the fleet, painted half red and half white, and one for the extremity, painted all white ; each of them has painted on it the names of the ship, master, owner, and port, in order that they may be restored in case of breaking away during bad weather ; and so good an understanding exists upon this subject amongst the fishermen, that the nets are always restored by the finder to the owner upon payment of only Is. for each net ; and no one must suffer a stray net to drift away ; if seen, it must be taken in. This fishery commences in the beginning of October, and lasts little more than two months. The nets are shot after the Dutch fashion, at sunset ; but if the appearances are fa- vourable, they are taken in once or twice during the night, and again at sun-rise. 100 barrels of herrings are frequently taken by these nets at a single haul, and 600 barrels may be considered as a fair average fishing for one vessel during the season. The number of decked vessels employed at Yarmouth alone in the fishery is about 500. Next, and likely from its steady increase soon to become the first, is the Scotch fishery. Like the Norwegian, every description of boat and net is to be found employed amongst the Scottish islands, but the most regularly employed vessels are open undecked boats, of 28 to 32 feet in length, or thereabouts, and 9 to 1 1 feet in breadth, usually rigged with two masts and two sails. They have on board from twelve to thirty nets of from 150 to 186 feet in length each, and from 20 to 31 feet in depth. From the Report by the Commissioners of the British Herring Fishery, of the fishery of 1838, year ending 5th April 1839, it appears that there were then engaged in the fishery 11,357 boats, decked and undecked, throughout England and THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 391 Scotland, manned by 50,238 men and boys, and employing 85,573 persons in all, including coopers, packers, curers, and labourers. Of the entire number of vessels, about 9000 belonged to Scottish ports. The entire quantity of herrings exported amounted to 239,730:j barrels, of which 195,301 barrels were Scotch ; and of those exported, 149,926 barrels were sent to and disposed of in Ireland. The entire quantity of herrings taken by Scottish boats, and cured both for home use and exportation, was 495,589 barrels ; the total by English and Scotch 555,559| barrels ; but this return does not include the Yarmouth fishery, the herrings there being always smoked, or made into what are called red herrings. We need not describe the Prussian and other methods, as they resemble some one or other of those already mentioned. Come we now to our own, which we have purposely reserved to the last. Amongst the fishermen of Ireland, the men of Kinsale have long been the admitted leaders ; and the Kinsale hookers are celebrated throughout the nautical world as among the best sea-boats that ever weathered a gale. They are half-decked vessels, with one mast, carrying a fore and aft mainsail, fore- sail, and jib, and are usually manned by four men and a boy. They are seldom used in the herring fishery, being for the most part confined to the deep-sea line fishery upon the Nymph bank, where cod, ling, hake, haddock, turbot, plaice, &c, abound in such quantity that many persons affirm it to be second only to the banks of Newfoundland. But the usual mode of fishing for herrings, and which is adopted all along the south, south-west, and west coast of Ireland, especially at Valencia and Kenmare, is with the deep-sea seine. This is formed sometimes for the express purpose, but frequently by a subscription of nets. Fifteen men bring a drift-net each, 20 fathoms or 120 feet in length, and 5 fathoms or 30 feet in depth ; these are all joined together, five nets in length, and three in depth, so that the whole seine is 600 feet in length and 90 feet in depth, with a cork-rope (that is, a rope having large pieces of cork attached to it at intervals) at the top, and leaden sinkers attached to the foot-rope, which unites all the nets at the bottom. Two warps of 60 fathoms each are requisite, and there are brails (small half-inch ropes) attached to the foot-rope, which are of use to haul upon, in order to purse up the net and prevent the fish from escaping. The seine is shot from a boat whilst it is being pulled round the shoal of fish. All having been thrown over, the warp is hauled upon until the net is brought into ten fathoms’ depth of water, when the brails and foot-rope are hauled in, and the fish is tucked into the largest boat. In this manner 80,000 to 100,000 herrings (about 100 barrels) may be taken at a haul. But where the people are too poor to supply themselves with nets or boats, many contrivances are made use of. For boats, the curraglu made of wicker and covered with a horse’s skin, or canvass pitched, is used, and often even this cannot be had ; sometimes the people load a horse Avith the nets, mount him and swim him out, shooting the nets from his back ; and for nets, in many places, the people use their sheets, blankets, and quilts, which they subscribe and sew together, often to the number of sixty, and the fish thus taken are divided in due proportion amongst the subscribers. After the foreign statistics which Ave have laid before our readers, they will doubtless expect us to inform them hoAv many vessels and what number of hands are now employed in the Irish fishery. This, however, Ave are unable to do. The Commissioners of the Herring Fishery have their jurisdiction confined to Scotland and England, almost exclusively to Scot- land, the fishery of which is thriving under their fostering care hi a most surprising manner. By their judicious atten- tion to the encouragement of careful curing, and the distribu- tion of small aids in money to poor fishermen, the number of boats employed in 1839 exceeded that of the former year by J8 ; and the progressive increase in the fishery is fully exem- plified by the following table, shoiving the quantity of herrings cured during the five years preceding the return iioav before us : — Year 1835 ... 1836 ... 1837 ... 1838 ... 1839 ... 277,317 barrels. 497,614f ... 397,829 f ... 507,7743 ... •«» £ and wits, was quite evident from the startling travesties of the text which had been put into his mouth, and which, having been once put there, his tenacious memory never forgot. The fact of Barney’s arrival in the neighbourhood soon went abroad, and the natural consequence was, that the house in which he thought proper to reside for the time be- came crowded every night as soon as the hours oi labour had passed, and the people got leisure to hear him. Having thus procured him an audience, it is full time that we should allow the fat old Prophet to speak lor himself, and give us all an insight into futurity. “ Barney, ahagur,” the good man his host would say, “ here’s a lot o’ the neighbours come to hear a whirranguo from you on the Prophecies ; and, sure, if you can t give it to them, who is there to be found that can ?” “ Thi'oth, Paddy Traynor, although I say it that should not say it, there’s truth in that, at all evints. The same know- ledge has cost me many a weary blisthur an sore heel in huntin’ it up an’ down, through mountain an’ glen, in U1- sther, Munsther, Leinsther, an’ Connaught — not forgettin the Highlands of Scotland, where there’s what they call the ‘ short prophecy,’ or second sight, but wherein there’s afther all but little of the Irish or long prophecy, that regards what’s to befall the winged woman that Hewn into the wilder- ness. Ho, no — their second sight isn’t thrue prophecy at all. If a man goes out to fish, or steal a cow, an’ that he happens to be drowned or shot, another man that has the second sight will see this in his mind about or afther the time it happens. Why, that’s little. Many a time our own Irish drarnes are aiqual to it ; an’ indeed 1 have it from a know- ledgeable man, that the gift they boast of has four parents— an empty stomach, thin air, a weak head, an’ strong whisky, an’ that ‘a man must have all these, espishilly the last, before he can have the second sight properly ; an’ it’s my own opinion. Now, I have a little book (indeed 1 left my books with a friend down at Errigle) that contains a prophecy of the milk-white hind an’ the bloody panther, an’ a forebodin’ of the slaughter there’s to be in the Valley of the Black Pig, as foretould by Beal Derg, or the prophet wid the red mouth, who never Was known to speak but when he prophesied, or to prophesy but when he spoke.” “ r Ihe Lord bless an’ keep us ! — an’ why was he called the Man wid the Red Mouth, Barney ?” “ I’ll tell you that : first, bekase he always prophesied about the slaughter an’ fightin’ that was to take place in the time to come ; an’, .secondly, bekase, while he spoke, the red blood always trickled out of his mouth, as a proof that what he foretould was true.” “ Glory be to God! but that’s wondherful all out. Well, well!” “ Ay, an’ Beal Derg, or the Red Mouth, is still livin’.” “ Livin’ ! why, is he a man of our own time?” “ Our own time ! The Lord help you ! It’s more than a thousand years since he made the prophecy. The case you see is this : he an’ the ten thousand witnesses are lyin’ in an enchanted sleep in one of the Montherlony mountains.” “ An’ how is that known, Barney ?” “ It’s known. Every night at a certain hour one of the witnesses — an’ they’re all sogers, by the way — must come out to look for the sign that’s to come.” “ An’ what is that, Barney ?” “ It’s the fiery cross ; an’ when he sees one on aich of the four mountains of the north, he’s to know that the same sign’s abroad in all the other parts of the kingdom. Beal Derg an’ his men are then to waken up, an’ by their aid the Valley of the Black Pig is to be set free for ever.” “ An’ what is the Black Pig, Barney?” “ The Prospitarian church, that stretch from Enniskillen to Darry, an’ back again from Darry to Enniskillen.” “ Well, well, Barney, but prophecy is a strange thing to be sure ! Only think of men livin’ a thousand years !” “ Every night one of Beal Derg’s men must go to the mouth of the cave, which opens of itself, an’ then look out fo# the gigd that’s expected. He walks up to the top of the mpun* TI-IE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 395 tain, an’ turns tx the four corners of the heavens, to thry if he can see it ; an’ when he finds that he can not, he goes back to Beal Derg, who, afther the other touches him, starts up, an’ axis him, ‘ Is the time come ?’ He replies, 4 No ; the man is, but the hour is not !’ an’ that instant they’re both asleep again. Now, you see, while the soger is on the moun- tain top, the mouth of tire cave is open, an’ any one may go in that might happen to see it. One man it appears did, an’ wishin’ to know from curiosity whether the sogers were dead or livin’, he touched one of them wid his hand, who started up an’ axed him the same question, 4 Is the time come?’ Very fortunately he said ( No an’ that minute the soger was as sound in his trance as before.” 44 An’, Barney, what did the soger mane when he said, 4 The man is, but the hour is not ?’ ” 44 What did he mane? I’ll tell you that. The man is Bo- nyparty ; which manes, when put into proper explanation, the right side ; that is, the true cause. Larned men have found that out.” 44 Barney, wasn’t Columkill a great prophet?” 44 He was a great man entirely at prophecy, and so was St Bridget. He prophesied 4 that the cock wid the purple comb is to have both his wings clipped by one of his ow n breed be- fore the struggle comes.’ Before that time, too, we’re to have the Black Militia, an’ afther that it is time for every man to be prepared.” 44 An’, Barney, who is the cock wid the purple comb ?” 44 Why, the Orangemen to be sure. Isn't purple their co- lour, the dirty thieves ?” 44 An’ the Black Militia, Barney, wdio are they ?” 44 I have gone far an’ near, through north an’ through south, up an’ down, by hill an’ hollow, till my toes were corned an’ my heels in griskins, but could find no one able to resolve that, or bring it clear out o’ the prophecy. They’re to be sogers in black, an’ all their arms an’ ’eoutrements is to be the same colour ; an’ farther than that is not known as , * > yet. 44 It’s a wondher you don’t know it, Barney, for there s little about prophecy that you haven’t at your finger ends.” 44 Three birds is to meet (Barney proceeded in a kind of recitative enthusiasm) upon the saes — two ravens an’ a dove — the two ravens is to attack the dove until she’s at the point of death ; but before they take her life, an eagle comes and tears the two ravens to pieces, an’ the dove recovers. There’s to be two cries in the kingdom ; one of them is to rache from the Giants’ Causeway to the centre house of the town of Sligo ; the other is to rache from the Falls of Beleek to the Mill of Louth, which is to be turned three times with human blood ; but this is not to happen until a man with two thumbs an’ six fingers upon his right hand happens to be the miller.” 44 Who’s to give the sign of freedom to Ireland ?” 44 The little boy wid the red coat that’s born a dwarf, lives a giant, and dies a dwarf again ! He’s lightest of foot, but leaves the heaviest foot-mark behind him. An’ it’s he that is to give the sign of freedom to Ireland !” 44 There’s a period to come when Antichrist is to be upon the earth, attended by his tw.o body servants Gog and Magog. Who are they, Barney ?” 44 They are the sons of Hegog an’ Shegog, or in other words, of Death an’ Damnation, and cousin-jarmins to the Devil himself, which of coorse is the raison why he promotes them.” 44 Lord save us ! But I hope that won’t be in our time, Barney !” 44 Antichrist is to come from the land of Crame o’ Tarthar (Grim Tartary, according to Pastorini), which will account for himself an’ his army breathin’ fire an’ brimstone out of their mouths, according to the glorious Revelation of St John the Divine, an’ the great prophecy of Pastorini, both of which beautifully compromise upon the subject. The prophet of the Black Stone is to come, who was born never to prognosticate a lie. He is to be a mighty hunter, an’ instead of riding to his fetlocks in blood, he is to ride upon it, to the admiration of his times. It’s of him it is said 4 that he is to be the only prophet that ever went on horseback!’ Then there’s Bardolphus, who, as there was a prophet wid the red mouth, is called 4 the prophet wid the red nose.’ Ire- land was, it appears from ancient books, undher wather for many hundred years before her discovery ; but bein’ allowed t<#become visible one day in every year, the enchantment was broken by a sword that was thrown upon the earth, an’ from that out she remained dry, an’ became inhabited. 4 Woe, woe; woe,’ says Bardolphus, 4 the time is to come when we’ll have a second deluge, an’ Ireland is to be undher wather once more. A well is to open at Cork that will cover the whole island from the Giants’ Causeway to Cape Clear. In them days St Patrick will be despised, an’ will stand over the pleasant houses wid his pasthoral crook in his hand, crying out Cea'd millefailtlia in vain! Woe, w T oe, woe,’ savs Bardolphus, 4 for in them days there will be a great confusion of colours among the people ; there will be neither red noses nor pale cheeks, ail’ the divine face of man, alas! will put forth blossoms no more. The heart of the times will become changed ; an’ when thev rise up in the morning, it will come to pass that there will bb no longer light heads or shaking hands among Irishmen ! Woe, woe, woe, men, women, and children will then die, an’ their only complaint, like all those who perished in the flood of ould, will be wather on the brain — wather on the brain! Woe, woe, woe,’ says Bardolphus, 4 for the changes that is to come, an’ the misfortunes that’s to befall the many for the noddification of the few r ! an’ yet such things must be, for I, in virtue of the red spirit that dwells in me, must prophesy them. In those times men will be shod in liquid fire an’ not be burned ; their breeches shall be made of fire, an’ will not burn them'; their bread shall be made of fire, an’ will not burn them ; their meat shall be made of fire, an’ will not burn them ; an’ why ? — Oh, woe. woe, wather shall so prevail that the coolness of their bodies will keep them safe ; yea, they shall even get fat, fair, an’ be full of health an’ strength, by wearing garments wrought out of liquid fire, by eating liquid fire, an’ all because they do not drink liquid fire — an’ this calamity shall come to pass,’ says Bardolphus, the pro- phet of the red nose. Two widows shall be grinding at the Mill of Louth (so saith the prophecy) ; one shall be taken and the other left.” Thus would Barney proceed, repeating such ludicrous and heterogeneous mixtures of old traditionary prophecies and spurious quotations from Scripture as were concocted for him by those who took delight in amusing themselves and others at the expense of his inordinate love for prophecy. 44 But, Barney, touching the Mill o’ Louth, of the two widows grindin’ there, whether will the one that is taken or the one that is left be the best off ?” 44 The prophecy doesn’t say,” replied Barney, 44 an’ that’s a matther that larned men are very much divided about. My own opinion is, that the one that is taken will be the best off ; for St Bridget says 4 that betune wars an’ pes- tilences an’ famine, the men are to be so scarce that se- veral of them are to be torn to pieces by the women in their struggles to see who will get them for husbands.’* That time they say is to come.” 44 But, Barney, isn’t there many ould prophecies about particular families in Ireland ?” 44 Ay, several : an’ I’ll tell you one of them, about a family that’s not far from us this minute. You all know the hangin’ wall of the ould Church of Ballynassagart, in Errigle Keeran parish ?” 44 We do, to be sure ; an’ we know the prophecy too.” 44 Ox coorse you do, bein’ in the neighbourhood. Well, what is it in the mean time ?” 44 Why, that it’s never to fall till it comes down upon an’ takes the life of a M‘Mahon.” 44 Right enough ; but do you know the raison of it ?” 44 W e can’t say that, Barney ; but, however, we’re at home when you’re here.” 4 Well, I’ll tell you. St Keeran was, may be, next to St Patrick himself, one of the greatest saints fn Ireland, but any rate we may put him next to St Columkill. Now, you see, when he was building the church of Ballynasaggart, it came to pass that there arose a great famine in the land, an’ the saint found it hard to feed the workmen where there was no vittles. What to do, he knew not, an’ by coorse he was at a sad amplush, no doubt of it. At length says he, 4 Boys, we’re ail hard set at present, an’ w idout food bedad we can’t work ; but if you observe my directions, we'll contrive to have a bit o’ mate in the mean time, an’, among ourselves, it was seldom more wanted, for, to tell you the thruth, I never thought my back an’ belly would become so well acquainted. For the last three days they haven’t been asunder, an’ I find they are perfectly willing to part as soon as possible, an’ would be glad of any thing that ’ud put betune them.’ Now, the fact was, that, for drawin’ timber an’ stones, an * There certainly is such a prophecy. 396 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. all the necessary matayrials for the church, they had but one bullock, an’ him St Keeran resolved to kill in the evening, an’ to give them a fog meal of him. He accordingly slaughtered him with his own hands, ‘ but,’ said he to the workmen, ‘ mind ■what I say, boys : if any one of you breaks a single bone, even the smallest, or injures the hide in the laste, you’ll destroy all ; an’ my sowl to glory but it’ll be worse for you besides.’ He then took all the flesh off the bones, but not till he had boiled them, of coorse ; afther which he sewed them up again in the skin, an’ put them in the shed, wid a good wisp o’ straw before them ; an’ glory be to God, what do you think, but the next mornin’ the bullock was alive, an’ in as good condition as ever he was in during his life ! Betther fed woi'kmen you couldn’t see, an’, bedad, the saint himself got so fat an’ rosy that you’d scarcely know him to be the same man afther it. Now, this went on for some time : whenever they wanted mate, the bullock was killed, an’ the bones an’ skin kept safe as before. At last it happened that a long-sided fellow among them named M‘Mahon, not satisfied wid his allowance of the mate, took a fancy to have a lick at the marrow, an’ accord- ingly, in spite of all the saint said, he broke one of the legs an’ sucked the marrow out of it. But behold you! — the next day when they went to yoke the bullock, they found that he was useless, for the leg was broken an’ he couldn’t work. This, to be sure, was a sad misfortune to them all, but it couldn’t be helped, an’ they had to wait till betther times came ; for the truth is, that afther the marrow is broken, no power of man could make the leg as it was before until the cure is brought about by time. However, the saint was very much vexed, an’ good right he had. ‘ Now, M'Mahon,’ says he to the guilty man, ‘ I ordher it, an’ prophesy that the church we’re building will never fall till it falls upon the head of some one of your name, if it was to stand a thousand years. Mark my words, for they must come to pass.’ An’ sure enough you know as well as I do that it’s all down long ago wid the exception of a piece of the wall, that’s not standin’ but hangin’, widout any visible support in life, an’ only propped up by the prophecy. It can’t fall till a M‘Mahon comes undher it ; but although there’s plenty of the name in the neighbourhood, ten o’ the strongest horses in the kingdom ■wouldn’t drag one of them widin half a mile of it. There, now, is the prophecy that belongs to the hangin’ wall of Ballynasaggart church.” “But, Barney, didn’t you say something about the winged woman thatflewn to the wildherness ?” “ I did ; that’s a deep point, an’ it’s few that undherstands it. The baste wid seven heads an’ ten horns is to come ; an’ when he was to make his appearance, it -was said to be time for them that might be alive then to go to their padareens.” “ What does the seven heads and ten horns mane, Barney ?” “ Why, you see, as I am informed from good authority, the baste has come, an’ it’s clear from the ten horns that he could be no other than Harry the Eighth, who was married to five wives, an’ by all accounts they strengthened an’ ornamented him sore against his will. Now, set in case that each o’ them — five times two is ten — hut ! the thing’s as clear as crystal. But I’ll prove it betther. You see the woman wad the two wings is the church, an’ she flew into the wildherness at the very time Harry the Eighth wid his ten horns on him was in his greatest power.” “ Bedad that’s puttin’ the explanations to it in great style.” “ But the woman wid the wings is only tobe in the wildher- ness for a time, times, an’ half a time, that’s exactly three hundred an’ fifty years, an’ afther that there’s to be no more Prodestans.” “ Faith that’s great !” ’ “ Sure Columkill prophesied that until H E M E I A M should come, the church would be in no danger, but that afther that she must be undher a cloud for a time, times, an’ half a time, jist in the same way.” “ Well, but how do you explain that, Barney ?” “ An’ St Bridget prophesied that when D 0 C is upper- most, the church will be hard set in Ireland. But, indeed, there’s no end to the prophecies that there is concerning Ire- land an’ the church. However, neighbours, do you know that I feel the heat o’ the fire has made me rather drowsy, an’ if you have no objection, I’ll take a bit of a nap. There’s great things near us, any how. An’ talkin’ about DOC brings to my mind another ould prophecy made up, they say, betune Columkill and St Bridget ; an’ it is this, that the triumph of the counthrv will never be at hand till the DOC flourishes in Ireland.” Such were the speculations upon which the harmless mind of Barney MTIaighrey ever dwelt. From house to house, from parish to parish, and from province to province, did he thus trudge, never in a hurry, but always steady and constant in his motions. He might be not inaptly termed the Old Mortality of traditionary prophecy, which he often chiselled anew, added to, and improved, in a manner that generally g ra- tified himself and his hearers. He was a harmless kind man, and never known to stand in need of either clothes or money. He paid little attention to the silent business of ongoing life, and was consequently very nearly an abstraction. He was always on the alert, however, for the result of a battle ; and after having heard it, he would give no opinion whatsoever until he had first silently compared it with his own private theory in prophecy. If it agreed with this, he immediately published it in connection with his established text ; but if it did not, he never opened his lips on the subject. His class has nearly disappeared, and indeed it is so much the better, for the minds of the people were thus filled with an- tiquated nonsense that did them no good. Poor Barney, to his great mortification, lived to see with his own eyes the failure of his most favourite prophecies, but he was not to be disheartened even by this ; though some might fail, all could not; and his stock was too varied and extensive not to fur- nish him with a sufficient number of others over which to cherish his imagination and expatiate during the remainder of his inoffensive life. ORIGIN AND MEANINGS OF IRISH FAMILY NAMES. BY JOHN O’DONOVAN. Fifth Article. According to Mabillon, hereditary surnames were first es- tablished in Italy in the tenth and eleventh centuries; but Muratori shows that this statement cannot be correct, as in the MSS. of the tenth century in the Ambrosian Library of Milan, no trace can be found of surnames. In the ninth and tenth centuries, to distinguish persons, their profession or country is added to the Christian name, as Johannes Scotus Erigena, Dungallus Scotus, Johannes Presbyter, Jo- hannes Clericus ;the dignity is also sometimes added, as Comes Marchio, without stating of what place. In the tenth century, “ A, the son of B, the son of C,” was another mode of desig- nation. It is said that the Venetians in the beginning of the eleventh century adopted hereditary surnames, a custom which they borrowed from the Greeks, with whom they car- ried on a great trade. The Lombards adopted the same prac- tice after the fashion of the Venetians, and accordingly the great family of Monticuli took that name from their castle in Lombardy called Montecuculi, it being on the top of a hill. The great house of Colonna took its name from the town and castle of Columna about the year 1156; and about the same time the noble family of Ursini derived its name from an an- cestor nicknamed Ursus, or Orso, on account of his ferocity. Other noble families adopted names from the nickname given to an ancestor, as the illustrious family of Malaspina (the bad thorn) of Pavia, and the family of Malatesta (the bad head). The family of Frangipani, so formidable to the Popes, took that name in the twelfth century. The Rangones of Rome took their name from an estate of theirs in Germany. The Viscontes of Milan were so called from their title of Viscount, which was borne by one of the family. These names appear for the first time in the latter end of the twelfth century. I con- sider it but proper to observe, that for this information on the subject of Italian surnames we are indebted to the antiquary whose name I have already mentioned, the accurate and labo- rious Muratori. To resume the history of surnames in Ireland. We have seen in the last article that in the year 1682 the inferior classes in Ireland, especially in Westmeath and the adjoining counties, were very forward in accommodating themselves to the English usages, particularly in their surnames, “ which by all manner of ways they strove to make English or English- like.” This was more particularly the case after the defeat of the Irish at the Boyne and Aughrim, when the Irish chief- tains were conquered, and the pride of the Irish people was humbled. At this period, the Irish people, finding that their ancient surnames sounded harshly in the ears of their con- querors and new English masters, found it convenient to re- duce them as much as possible to the level of English pronun- ciation : and they accordingly rejected in almost every in* 397 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. stance the O’ and Mac, and made various other changes in their names, so as to give them an English appearance. Thus a gentleman of the O’Neills in Tyrone changed his old name of Felim O’Neill to Felix Neele, as we learn from an epigram ■written in Latin on the subject by a witty scholar of the name of Conway or Mac Conwy, whose Irish feeling had not been blunted bv the misfortunes of the times. The following trans- lation of this epigram is perhaps worth preserving : — All things has Felix changed , he has changed his name ; Yea, in himself he is no more the same. Scorning to spend his days where he was reared, To drag out life among the vulgar herd, Or trudge his way through bogs in bracks and brogues. He changed his creed and joined the Saxon rogues By whom his sires were robbed ; he laid aside The arms they bore for centuries with pride, The Ship, the Salmon, and the famed Red Hand, And blushed when called O’Neill in his own land 1 Poor, paltry skulker from thy noble race, Injenx Feiix, weep for thy disgrace ! Many others even of the most distinguished family names were anglicised in a similar manner, as O’Conor to Conors and Co- mers, O’Brien to Brine, Mac Carthy to Carty, &c. The re- spectability of the O’s and Macs, however, was kept up on the Continent by the warriors of the Irish Brigade, who preserved every mark that would prove them to be of Irish origin ; the Irish having at this period become so illustrious for their military skill, valour, and politeness, that they were sought after by all the powers on the Continent of Europe. Thus we find O’Don- nell made Field Marshal, Chief General of Cavalry, Governor- General of Transylvania, and Grand Croix of the Military Order of St Theresa. The O’Flanigan of Tuaraah (John), in the county of Fermanagh, became Colonel in the imperial service ; and his brother James O’Flanigan was Lieutenant- General of Dillon’s regiment in France. O’Mahony became a Count and Lieutenant-General of his Catholic Majesty’s forces, and his Ambassador Plenipotentiary at the Court of Vienna ; Mac Gawley of the county cf Cork became Colonel of a re- giment in Spain; O’Neny of Tyrone settled at Brussels, and became Count of the Roman Empire, Councillor of State to her Imperial Majesty, and Chief President of the Privy Council at Brussels. A branch ot the family of O’Callaghan, who followed the fortunes of King James II, became Baron O’Callaghan, and Grand Veneur (chasseur) to his Serene Highness the Prince Margrave of Baden- Baden. The head of the O’Mullallys, or O’Lallys of Tu- lach-na dala, two miles to the west of Tuam, in the county of Galway, settled in France and became Count Lally-Tol- lendal and a General in the French service. O’Conor Roe became Governor of Civita Vecchia, a sea-port of great trust in the Pope’s dominions, &c, &c. The lustre derived from the renown of these w arriors kept up the respectability of the O’s and Macs on the Continent, and induced many of the Irish at home to resume these prefixes, especially the O’. Thus in our own time the name O’Conor Don was assumed by Owen O’Conor, Esq. of Belanagare, whose line was seven generations removed from the last an- cestor who had borne the name ; and the name of the O Grady has also been assumed by Mr O’Grady of Kilballyowen, in our own time, though none of his ancestors had borne it since the removal of that family from Tomgraney, in the county of Clare. Myles John O’Reilly, late of the Heath House, Queen’s County, was at one timedisposed to style himself the O Reilly, but I regret to say that his circumstances prevented hiim Dan- iel O’Connell, Esq. of Derrynane Abbey, prefixed theO , after it had been dropped for several generations ; and I have heard it constantly asserted that he has no title to the O’, because his father, who did not know his pedigree, never prefixed it ; but such assertions have no weight with us, for we know that O’Connell’s father never mentioned his own name in the ori- ginal Irish without prefixing O’, because it would be im- perfect without it. And whether O Connell can trace his pe- digree -with certainty up to Conall, chief of the tribe in the tenth century, we know not, but we know that he ought to be able to do so. In like manner, Morgan William O’Donovan, ot Mountpe- lier, near Cork, has not only re-assumed the O’ which his an- cestors had rejected for eight generations, but also has styled himself the O’Donovan, chief of his name, being thenext of kin to the last acknowledged head ot that family, the late Geneial Richard O’Donovan of Bawnlahan, whose family became ex- tinct in the year 1829. His example has been followed by Timothy O’Donovan, of 0 Donovan s Cove, head of a respect- able branch of the family. We like this Irish pride of ances- try, and we hope that it will become general before many years shall have passed. There are other heads of families who retain their Irish names with pride, as Sir Lucius O’Brien of Dromoland, in Clare ; Mac Dermot Roe of Alderford, in the county of Ros- common ; Mac Dermot of Coolavin, who is the lineal descen- dant of the chief of Moylurg, and whose pedigree is as well known as that of any royal family in Europe ; O’Hara of Leyny, in the county of Sligo ; O’Dowhaof Bunvconnellan, near Balli- na, in the county of Mayo ; O’Loughlin of Burren, in the north of the county of Clare ; Mac Carthy of Carrignavar, near Cork, who represents one of the noblest families in Ireland; Mac Gillicuddy of the Reeks, in the county of Kerry, a col- lateral branch of the same great family ; O’Kelly of Ticooly, in the county of Galway ; O’Moore of Clough Castle, in the King’s County ; More O’Ferrall, M.P. O’Fflahertie, of Lemon- field, in the same county ; and John Augustus Mageoghegan O’Neill, of Bunowen Castle, in the west of Connamara, in the same county. We are not aware that any of the old fa- milies of Leinster have preserved their ancient names unadul- terated. Of these, the Cavanaghs of Borris, in the county of Carlow, are the most distinguished ; and we indulge a hope that the rising generation will soon resume the name of Mac Murrogh Cavanagh, a name celebrated in Irish history for great virtues as well as great vices. Among the less distinguished families, how'ever, the trans- lation and anglicising of names have gone on to so great a de- gree as to leave no doubt that in the course of half a century it will be difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish many fami- lies of Irish name and origin from those of English name and origin, unless, indeed, inquirers shall be enabled to do so by the assistance of history and physiognomical characteristics. The principal cause of the change of these names w-as the difficulty which the magistrates and lawyers, who did not un- derstand the Irish language, found in pronouncing them, and in consequence their constant habit of ridiculing them. This made the Irish feel ashamed of all such names as were diffi- cult of pronunciation to English organs, and they were thus led to change them by degrees, either by translating them into what they conceived to be their meanings in English, by assimilating them to local English surnames of respectable families, or by paring them in such a manner as to make them easy of pronunciation to English organs. The families among the lower ranks who have translated, anglicised, or totally changed their ancient surnames, ai'e very numerous, and are daily becoming more and more so. Besides the cause already mentioned, we can assign two reasons for this rage which prevails at present among the lower classes for the continued adoption of English surnames. First, the English language is becoming that universally spo- ken among these classes, and there are many Irish surnames which do not seem to sound very euphoniously in that modern language ; and, secondly, the names translated or totally changed are, with very few exceptions, of no celebrity in Irish history ; and when they do not sound well in English, the bearers naturally wish to getrid of them, in order that they should not be considered of Atticotic or plebeian Irish origin. As this change is going on rapidly in every part of Ireland, I shall here, for the information, if not for the amusement, of the reader, give some account of the Milesian or Scotic names that have thus become metamorphosed. And first, of names which have been translated correctly or incorrectly. In the county of Sligo the ancient name of O’Mulclohv has been metamorphosed into Stone, from an idea that clohy, the latter part of it, signifies a stone, but it is a mere guess translation ; so that in this instance this people may be said to have taken a new name. In the county of Leitrim, the ancient and by no means obscure name of Mac Connava has been rendered Forde, from an erroneous notion that ava, the last part of it, is a corruption of atlia, of a ford. This is also an instance of false translation, for we know that Mac Connava, chief of Munter Kenny, in the county of Leitrim, took his name from his ancestor Cus- nava, who flourished in the tenth century. In Thomond the ancient name of O’Knavin is now often anglicised Bowen, because Knavin signifies a small bone. This change was first made by a butcher in Dublin, who should perhaps be excused, as he conformed so well to the act of 5 Edward IV. In Tirconnell the ancient name of O’Mulmoghery is now always rendered Early, because moch-eirghe signifies early rising. This version, however, is excusable, though not altogether correct. In Thomond, O’Marcachain is translated Ryder by 398 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. some, but anglicised Markham by others ; and in the same territory O’Lahiff is made Guthrie, which is altogether in- correct. In Tyrone the ancient name of Mac Rory is now invariably made Rogers, because Roger is assumed to be the English Christian name corresponding to the Irish Ruaidhri or Rory. In Connamara, in the west of the county of Galway, the ancient name of Mac Conry is now always made King, be- cause it is assumed that ry, the last syllable of it, is from righ , a king; but this is a gross error, for this family, who are of Dalcassian origin, took their surname from their ancestor Ouroi, a name which forms Conroi in the genitive case, and has nothing to do with righ, a king ; and the Kings of Connamara would therefore do well to drop their false name, a name to which they have no right, and i'e-assume their proper ancient and excellent name of Mac Conry, through which alone their pedigree and their history can be traced. These examples, selected out of a long list of Irish sur- names, erroneously translated, are sufficient to show the false process by which the Irish are getting rid of their ancient surnames. I shall next exhibit a few specimens of Irish sur- names which have been assimilated to English or Scotch ones, from a fancied resemblance in the sounds of both. In Ulster, Mac Mahon, the name of the celebrated chiefs of Oriel, a name which, as we have already seen, the poet Spenser attempted to prove to be an Irish form of Fitzursula, is now very frequently anglicised Matthews ; and Mac Cawell, the name of the ancient chiefs of Kinel Ferady, is anglicised Camphill, Campbell, Howell, and even Cauldfield. In Tho- mond, the name O’Hiomhair is anglicised Howard among the peasantry, and Ivers among the gentry, which looks strange indeed ! And in the same county, the ancient Irish name of O’Eeirne is metamorphosed to Byron ; while in the original locality of the name, in Tir-Briuin na Sinna, in the east of the county of Roscommon, it is anglicised Bruin among the peasantry ; but among the gentry, who know the historical respectability of the name, the original form O’Beirne is re- tained. In the province of Connaught we have met a family of the name of O’Heraghty, who anglicised their old Scotic name to Harrington, an innovation which we consider almost unpardonable. In the city of Limerick, the illustrious name of O’Shaughnessv is metamorphosed to Sandys, by a family who know their pedigree well ; for no other reason, perhaps, than to disguise the Irish origin of the family; but we are glad to find it retained by the Roman Catholic Dean of Ennis, and also by Mr O’Shaughnessy of Galway, who, though now re- duced to the capacity of a barber in the town of Galway, is the chief of his name, and now the senior representative of Guaire Aidhne, king of Connaught, who is celebrated in Irish history as the personification of hospitality. Strange turn of affairs ! In the county of Londonderry, the celebrated old name O’Brollaghan is made to look English by being trans- muted to Bradley, an English name of no lustre, at least in Ireland. In the county of Fermanagh, the O’Creighans have changed their name to Creighton, for no other reason than because a Colonel Creighton lives in their vicinity ; and in the county of Leitrim, O’Fergus, the descendant of the ancient Erenachs of Rossinver, has, we are sorry to say, lately changed his name to Ferguson. Throughout the province of Ulster generally, very extraordinary changes have been made in the names of the aborigines ; as. Mac Teige, to Montague ; 0’Mul!igan, toMolyneaux; Mac-Gillycuskly, to Cosgrove; Mac Gillvglass, to Greene ; O’Tuathalain, to Toland and Thulis ; O’Hay to Hughes ; O’Carellan to Carleton, as, for in- stance, our own William Carleton, the depicter of the manners, customs, and superstitions of the Irish, who is of the old Mile- sian race of the O’Ca.irellans, the ancient chiefs of Clander- mot, in the present county of Londonderry ; O’Howen, to Owens ; Mac Gillyfinen, to Leonard ; Mac Shane, to Johnson, and even Johnston ; O’Gneeve, to Agnew; Q’Ciery, to Clarke ; Mac Lave, toHande; Mac Guiggin, to Goodwin ; O’Hir, to Hare ; O’Luane, to Lamb ; Mac Conin, to Canning ; ‘O’Haughey, to Howe ; O’Conwy, to Conway ; O’Loingsy, to Lynch; Mac Namee, to Meath, &c, &c. In Connaught, O’Greighan is changed to Graham ; O’Clu- man, to Coalman ; O’JS’aghton, to Morton; Mac Rannal, to Reynolds ; O’Heosa, to Hussey ; Mac Firbis, to Forbes ; O’Hargadon, to Hardiman (the learned author of the History of Galway, and compiler of the Irish Minstrelsy, is of this name, and not of English origin, as the present form of his name would seem to indicate) ; O’Mulfover, to Milford ; O’Tiompain, to Tenpenny ; O’Conagan, to Convngham ; O’Heyne, to Hindes and Hynes ; O’Mulvihil, to Melville ; O’Rourke, to Rooke ; Mac Gillakilly, to Cox and Woods. In Munster, O’Sesnan is changed to Sexton ; O’Shanahan, to Fox; O’Turran, to Troy ; O’Mulligan, to Baldwin ; OTIis- keen, to Hastings ; O’Nia, to Neville (in every instance !) ; O’Corey, to Curry ; O’Sheedy, to Silke ; O’Mulfaver, to Palmer; O’Trehy to Foote ; OTIoneen, to Greene; O’Con* naing, to Gunning; O’Murgaly, to Morley ; Q’Kinsellagh, to Kingsley and Tinsly ; Mac Giliymire, to Merryman ; O’Hehir, to Hare; O’Faelchon, to Wolfe; O’Barran, to Barrington ; O’Keatey, to Keating; O’Connowe, to Comvay ; O’Credan, to Creed ; O’Feehily, to Pickley; O’Ahern, to Heron, &c, &c. Scores of similar instances might be given, but the number exhibited is sufficient to show the manner in which the Irish are assimilating their names with those of their conquerors. SCRAP FROM THE NORTHERN SCRIP. Translated for the Irish Penny Journal, from the publications of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, Copenhagen.] NO. II AN IRISH HERDSMAN’S DOG. After King Olave had married his Irish spouse Gyda, he dwelt partly in England, partly in Ireland. While King Olave wms in Ireland, it so happened that he was engaged in a certain expedition attended by a great naval force. When they were short of plunder, they went ashore, and drove off a great multitude of cattle. Then a certain peasant followed them, begging that they would return him the cows which be- longed to him in the herd they ivere driving away. King Olave answered, “ Drive off your cows, if you know them, and can separate them from the herd of oxen, so as not to delay our journey ; but I believe that neither you nor any one else can do this, from among so many hundreds of oxen as we ;me driving.” The peasant had a large herdsman’s dog, which he ordered to sort the herds of oxen that were collected. The dog ran about through all the herds of oxen, and drove off as many oxen as the peasant had said he wanted ; all these oxen were marked in the same manner, from which they inferred that the dog had rightly distinguished them. Then the king says, “Your dog is very sagacious, peasant ! will you give me the dog ?” He answered, “ I will, with pleasure.” 'I he king immediately gave him a large gold ring, and promised him his friendship. This dog was named Vigins, and he was of ail dogs the most sagacious and tho best ; that dog was long in King Olave’s possession. G. D. ANIMAL HEAT. First Article. A few years ago a conjuror made his appearance in London, whose performances were so wonderful that his audience, in- stead of being confined to the foolish and thoughtless people who usually encourage such exhibitions, included many of the most eminent philosophers and scientific men of the day. It may naturally be supposed that his feats must have been more than usually ingenious, to attract persons of such consequence; and indeed many of them were so wonderful, (hat, had he ven- tured to exhibit them a century or two ago, they would inevi- tably have led him to the stake or the scaffold, for having too intimate an acquaintance with a certain disreputable person- age whom it is not necessary to particularize by name. This great conjuror defied all the ordinary laws of nature. He would not condescend to exhibit such vulgar mountebank tricks as crunching red-hot coals in his mouth, and dining on tenpenny nails ; but he struck the faculty with the greatest horror, by making poison of all kinds his common food ; breakfasting on a strong solution of arsenic, and taking a short drachm of prussic acid before dinner, as a whet for his appetite. More wonderful still was his manner of preparing tills dinner : he used to have an oven heated intensely, every day, into which he walked, or crawled, with the greatest com- posure, taking with him a raw beef-steak, which in the course of seven or eight minutes was well cooked by the intense heat of the place, whilst the only effect of its high temperature on him was to quicken his pulse a little, and produce a gentle perspi- ration. Fire, indeed, appeared his element, and so perfectly could he control and master it, that he received almost by acclamation the title of “ the Fire King.” Human greatness, however is but transitory, and even the laurels of the Fire King were wrested from him by the envious doctors of the metropolis, who wished him to drink prussic acid of their own manufacture, an invitation which he very po- litely and prudently declined. But though on this account THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. suspicion was cast on his pretensions as a poison-drinker, vet his reputation as a “ Fire King” remained untarnished. He could continue in an oven heated above the temperature at which water boils, and he did so daily. There was no trick in this performance, for he used to take raw eggs into the oven with him, and send them out to the company, well done by the heat of the place alone. It was thought no man could imitate his example. But however wonderful the feats of this conjuror may appear to persons unacquainted with science, and while it must be confessed they were performed with an appearance of daring and temerity which certainly entitled the exhibitor to some degree of praise, yet his performances were merely a striking illustration of the power which every individual possesses of regulating the temperature of his own body ; and there was scarcely one person of his audience but might himself have been the exhibitor, with very little train- ing and with very little courage. Of all the functions of the human body one of the most wonderful is that by which it maintains in every climate, and in every variety of season, an almost equal temperature. It would appear to be necessary for the due perforin ance of the vital functions that this temperature should never suffer any great degree of variation, and nature has accordingly provi- ded the means by which, when exposed to cold, the body can generate heat; and when exposed to heat, so reduce its tem- perature that no inconvenience shall result. Before consider- ing the manner in which these very different though equally necessary results are produced, it will not be uninteresting to notice a few examples of the power of endurance shown by human beings and the lower animals in regard to extremes of temperature. In another paper we will endeavour to ex- plain the cause. One of the most striking and familiar of the laws of heat is what is termed by philosophers “ its tendency to an equili- brium.” For instance, if a heated iron ball is suspended nearly in contact with one quite cold, the former in a short time will have imparted so much of its heat to the latter that they will soon become almost of equal temperature. If a penny piece is thrown into a kettle of boiling water it will soon become as hot as the boiling water itself. If a cup of water is exposed to a temperature below 32 degrees, it parts with so much of its natural heat, to come into a state of equi- librium with the medium in which it is placed, that it is con- verted into ice. These and many more familiar instances might be mentioned as illustrating the law of heat above alluded to. In short, it may be received as one of the best es- tablished facts in philosophy, that any substance, no matter what may be its texture or natural qualities, provided it does not possess life, will soon acquire and maintain the same tem- perature as that of the medium in which it is placed, so long as it continues in that medium. A piece of the metal platinum in the furnace of a glass-house may be kept at a white heat for years ; a similar piece of metal, in an ice-house, will re- main below 32 degrees so long as it is kept there. It would be unnecessary to notice so particularly these well-known facts, but that they will tend to render more strik- ing the power which living bodies possess of resisting the law to which all unorganized bodies are subject. Any thing pos- sessing life can maintain a different temperature to the medium in which it lives. The natural heat of fishes is two or three degrees above that of the water in which they live; the natu- ral heat of creatures which live within the bowels of the earth, like the earth-worm for example, is as much above the usual temperature of the earth ; while man himself maintains the heat of his body, as shown by the thermometer placed under the tongue or armpits, at about 98 degrees, under every variety of season, and in every climate under the sun. W ere a human being to be kept imprisoned in an ice-house, the heat of his body could never sink to 32 degrees (the freezing point) while life remained. In these mighty reservoirs of ice and cold, the arctic regions, the blood of the rude creatures who exist there is as warm as that of ourselves ; and at the torrid zone, where the heat of the sun is almost insupportable, the animal heat of the human frame is only one or two degrees higher than it is at the frozen poles. The power of the superior animals, and especially of man, to resist high degrees of temperature, is very extraordinary. The account of the performances of the “ Fire King” already noticed, is a sufficient proof of this. Dr Southwood Smith, in his excellent treatise on “ Animal Physiology,” gives a far more interesting description, however, of the accidental dis- covery of this property of life, from which we quote the fol- 399 lowing particulars: — ''in the year 17bU, at, iiochetoucault, Messrs Du Hamel and Tibet, having occasion to use a large public oven on the same day in which bread had been baked in it, wished to ascertain with precision its degree of temper- ature. This they endeavoured to accomplish bv introducing a thermometer into the oven at the end of a shovel. On being withdrawn, the thermometer indicated a degree of heat considerably above that of boiling water; but M. 'Fillet, con- vinced that the thermometer had fallen several degrees on approaching the mouth of the oven, and appearing to be at a loss how to rectify this error, a girl, one of the attendants on the oven, offered to enter and mark with a pencil the height at which the thermometer stood within the oven. The girl smiled at M. Tibet’s appearing to hesitate at this strange proposition, and entering the oven, marked with a pencil the thermometer as standing at 2G0 degrees of Fahrenheit’s scale. M. Tibet began to express his anxiety for the welfare of his female assistant, and to press her return. This female sala- mander, however, assuring him that she felt no inconvenience from her situation, remained there ten minutes longer, when at length, the thermometer standing at that Troe at 988 de- grees, or 76 degrees above that of boiling w ater, she came out of the oven, her complexion indeed considerably heightened, but her respiration by no means quick or laborious. The pub- lication of this transaction exciting a great degree of atten- tion, several philosophers repeated similar experiments, amongst which the most accurate and decisive were those per- formed by Doctors Fordyee and Blagden. The rooms in which these celebrated experimenters conducted their re- searches were heated by flues in the floor. There was neither any chimney in them, nor any vent for the air, excepting through the crevice at the door. Having taken off his coat, waistcoat, and shirt, and being furnished with wooden shoes tied on with lint, Dr Blagden went into one of the rooms as soon as the thermometer indicated a degree of heat above that of boiling water. The first impression of this heated air upon his body was exceedingly disagreeable, but in a few minutes his uneasiness was removed by a profuse perspiration. At the end of twelve minutes he left the room, very much fatigued, but no otherwise disordered. The thermometer had risen to 220 degrees ; the boiling point is 212 degrees. In other experiments it was found that a heat even of 260 degrees could be borne with tolerable ease. At these high temperatures every piece of metal about the body of the ex- perimenters became intolerably hot ; small quantities of water placed in metallic vessels quickly boiled. Though the air of this room, which at one period indicated a heat of 264 degrees, could be breathed with impunity, yet of course the finger could not be put into the boiling water, which indicated only a heat of 212 degrees ; nor could it bear the touch of quick- silver heated only to 120 degrees, nor scarcely that of spirits of wine at 1 10 degrees. But in a physiological view, the most curious and important point to be noticed is, that while the body was thus exposed to a temperature of 264 degrees, the heat of the body itself never rose above 101 degrees, or at most 102 degrees. In one experiment, while the heat of the room was 202 degrees, the heat of the body was only 994 degrees ; its natural temperature in a state of health being- 98 degrees. A similar power of withstanding extreme degrees of tem- perature is one of the peculiar properties of every thing pos- sessing life. It is well known that an egg containing the liv- ing principle possesses the power of self-preservation for seve- ral weeks, although exposed to a degree of heat which would occasion the putrifaction of dead animal matter. During the period of incubation (hatching) the egg is kept at a heat of 103 degrees, the hen's egg for three, that of the duck for four weeks ; yet when the chick is hatched, the entire yolk is found perfectly sweet, and that part of the white which has not been expended in the nourishment of the young bird is also quite fresh. It is found that if the living principle be destroyed, as it may be instantaneously, by passing the elec- tric fluid through the egg, it becomes putrid in the same time as other dead animal matter. The power of the egg in re- sisting cold is proved to be equally great by several curious experiments of Hunter, the celebrated physiologist, which were so managed as to show at the same time both the power of the vital principle in resisting the physical agent, and the influence of the physical agent in diminishing the energy of the vital principle. “ Thus he exposed an egg to the tem- perature of 17 degrees of Fahrenheit’s thermometer, he found that it took about half an hour to freeze it. When thawed, 400 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. and again exposed to a cold atmosphere, it was frozen in one half the time, and w T hon only at the temperature of 25 de- grees. He then put a fresh egg, and one that had previously been frozen and again thawed, into a cold mixture at 15 de- grees : the dead egg w as frozen twenty-five minutes sooner than the fresh one. It is obvious that in the one case the un- diminished vitality of the fresh egg enabled it to resist the low temperature for so long a period ; in the other case the di- minished or destroyed vitality of the frozen egg occasioned it speedily to yield to the influence of the physical agent. Animals can withstand the effects of heat far better than the severity of cold. The human frame suffers comparatively little even in the burning deserts of Arabia, compared with what it endures in those v r astes of ice and snow which form the polar regions. Here the body is stunted in its growth ; there is no energy of mind or character ; and life itself is only preserved by extraordinary care and attention. When a person is exposed to intense cold, it produces partial imbeci- lity ; he neglects even those precautions which may enable him to withstand its severity. He refuses to exercise his limbs, without which they become torpid ; and, unable to resist the drowsiness that seizes on his frame, he resigns himself to its influence, becomes insensible, and dies. Even in our own climate this is not an unfrequent occurrence ; and we cannot conclude this paper better than by quoting the expressive lines of Thomson, describing the death of an unhappy peasant from the severity of a winter storm: — As thus the snows arise ; and foul, and fierce. All winter drives along the darkened air ; In his own loose revolving fields, the swain Disaster’d stands ; sees other hills ascend, Of unknown joyless brow ; and other scenes. Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain : Nor finds the river nor the forest, hid Beneath the formless wild ; but wanders on From hill to dale, still more and more astray, Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps. Stung with the thoughts of home ; the thoughts of home Rush on his nerves, and call their vigour forth In many a vain attempt. How sinks his soul ! What black despair, what horror fills his breast I When for the dusky spot, which fancy feign’d His tufted cottage rising through the snow, He meets the roughness of the middle waste Far from the track and blest abode of man , While round him night resistless closes fast, And every tempest, howling o’er his head. Renders the savage wildness more wild. Then throng the busy shapes into his mind. Of covered pits unfathomably deep, A dire descent ! beyond the power of frost ; Of faithless bogs : Of precipices huge Smoothed up with snow ; and what is land, unknown. What water of the still unfrozen spring. In the loose marsh or solitary lake. Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils. These check his fearful steps ; and down he sinks Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift. Thinking o’er all the bitterness of death, Mix’d with the tender anguish nature shoots Through the wrung bosom of the dying man — His wife — his children — and his friends unseen. In vain for him the officious wife prepares The fire, fair, blazing, and the vestment warm. In vain his little children, peeping out Into the miauling storm, demand their sire With tears of artless innocence. Alas! Nor wife, nor children more shall he behold— Nor friends, nor sacred home. On everv nerve The deadly winter seizes ; shuts up sense, And, o’er his inmost vitals creeping cold, Lays him along the snows, a stiffened corse. Stretch’d out, and bleaching in the northern blast. J. S. D. Gravity. — Gravity is an arrant scoundrel, and one of the most dangerous kind too, because a sly one ; and we verily be- lieve that more honest, well-meaning people are bubbled out of their goods and money by it in one twelvemonth, than by pocket-picking and shop-lifting in seven. The very essence of gravity is design, and consequently deceit ; it is in fact a taught trick to gain credit with he world for more sense and knowledge than a man is really worth. WAR. War, it is said, kindles patriotism ; by fighting for our country we learn to love it. But the patriotism which is cherished by war, is ordinarily false and spurious, a vice and not a virtue, a scourge to the world, a narrow unjust passion, which aims to exalt a particular state on the humiliation and destruction of other nations. A genuine enlightened patriot discerns that the welfare of his own country is involved in the general pro- gress of society ; and in the character of a patriot, as well as of a Christian, he rejoices in the liberty and prosperity of other communities, and is anxious to maintain with them the relations of peace and amity. It is said that a military spirit is the defence of a country. But it more frequently endangers the vital interests of a na- tion, by embroiling it with other states. This spirit, like every other passion, is impatient for gratification, and often preci- pitates a country into unnecessary war. A people have no need of a military spirit. Let them be attached to their go- vernment and institutions by habit, by early associations, and especially by experimental conviction of their excellence, and they will never want means or spirit to defend them. War is recommended as a method of redressing national grievances. But unhappily the weapons of war, from their very nature, are often wielded most successfully by the un- principled. Justice and force have little congeniality. Should not Christians everywhere strive to promote the reference of national as well as of individual disputes to an impartial um- pire ? Is a project of this nature more extravagant than the idea of reducing savage hordes to a state of regular society ? The last has been accomplished. Is the first to be abandoned in despair ? It is said that w r ar sweeps off the idle, dissolute, and vicious members of the community. Monstrous argument ! If a government may for this end plunge a nation into war, it may with equal justice consign to the executioner any number of its subjects whom it may deem a burden on the state. The fact is, that war commonly generates as many profligates as it destroys. A disbanded army fills the community with at least as many abandoned members as at first it absorbed. It is sometimes said that a military spirit favours liberty. But how is it, that nations, after fighting for ages, are so ge- nerally enslaved ? The truth is, that liberty has no founda- tion but in private and public virtue ; and virtue, as we have seen, is not the common growth of war. But the great argument remains to be discussed. It is said that without war to excite and invigorate the human mind, some of its noblest energies will slumber, and its highest qua- lities, courage, magnanimity, fortitude, will perish. To this I answer, that if war is to be encouraged among nations because it nourishes energy and heroism, on the same prin- ciple war in our families, and war between neighbourhoods, villages, and cities, ought to be encouraged ; for such contests would equally tend to promote heroic daring and contempt of death. Why shall not different provinces of the same empire annually meet with the weapons of death, to keep alive tneir courage ? We shrink at this suggestion with horror ; but why shall contests of nations, rather than of provinces or families, find shelter under this barbarous argument ? I observe again : if war be a blessing, because it awakens ener- gy and courage, then the savage state is peculiarly privileged ; for every savage is a soldier, and his whole modes of life tend to form him to invincible resolution. On the same principle, those early periods of society Avere happy, when men were called to contend, not only with one another, but with beasts of prey ; for to these excitements we owe the heroism of Her- cules and Theseus. On the same principle, the feudal ages i were more favoured than the present ; for then every baron was a military chief, every castle frowned defiance, and every ] vassal was trained to arms. And do we really wish that the I earth should again be overrun with monsters, or abandoned to savage or feudal violence, in order that heroes may be mul- tiplied ? If not, let us cease to vindicate war as affording excitement to energy and courage Charming. Suffer not your spirit to be subdued by misfortunes, bat, on the contrary, steer right onward, -with a courage greater than your fate seems to allow. ^ I — .-M L— — " I Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameuon, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin. — Agents R. Guoombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London ; Simms and Dinham, Excnange Street, Manchester ; C. Davies, North • John Street, Liverpool ; John Menzies, Prince’s Street, Edinburgh; t and David Robertson, Trongate, Glasgow. SAINT SENAN’S WELL, COUNTY OF CLARE. There are perhaps no objects in our own dear Ogygia, or Sacred Island, as it was also anciently called, which strike the minds of strangers with greater surprise, and excite them to more meditative reflection, than the holy wells which are so numerous in it, and the religious observances — to them so strange — which they see practised at them. By the devout of the reformed creeds, among such observers, these sacred fountains, with their adjacent and almost equally sacred trees, covered with bits of rag and other votive offerings of propi- tiation or gratitude to the presiding spirit of the spot, who is generally the patron saint of the district, are usually regarded with horror, as objects closely allied to pagan idolatry ; and the religious devotions which they see practised at them excite only feelings of pity or contempt for what they consider the debased intellect of the votaries who frequent them. By the painter, poet, and the mere man of taste, however, they are viewed in a spirit of greater toleration, and with a more pleas- ing interest, particularly in the western portions of our island, where the wild scenery amid which they are generally to be met with, the symmetrical forms and often beautiful faces of the devotees, and the brilliant colours of their ancient national costumes, impart that interest and picturesqueness to the spectacle of which our own great national painter Burton has so admirably availed himself, and made familiar to the world, in his picture of the Blind Girl at the Holy Well. It is, however, by the antiquary and the philosopher that the are viewed with the deepest interest, for to the one they pre- sent in all their vividness the still existing images of customs which originated in the earliest period of the history of our race, while to the other they supply the most touching evi- dences of the strength of that devotional instinct, however blind and misapplied, that humble faith in the existence and omnipotence of a Divine Intelligence, which are among the loftiest feelings of our nature, and which, when properly di- rected, must lead to the noblest results. In the minds of such philosophers, a contemplation of the usages to which we have referred will be apt to excite, not feelings of depression and despondency, but rather cheering anticipations of hope for the future prospects and ultimate happiness of the human race ; and they who practise those usages will be regarded, even in their present meanness of garb, and concomitant vul- garity of habits, not as degraded outcasts from society, gro- velling in the mire of ignorance and superstition, but as members of the universal human family, to be tolerated and cherished in all kindliness ; while, with respect to their pecu- liar devotion, for which so many censure them, it can still bo said, “ This may be superstition, weak or wild. But even the faintest relicts of a shrine Of any worship, wake some thoughts divine." 402 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. The Pagan origin of well-worship is now established be- vond the possibility of contradiction, and its extreme anti- quity is lost in the night of time. This has been satisfactorily shown in a very interesting essay, written with a view to the annihilation of its remains in Ireland, by a Roman Catho- lic clergyman of distinguished abilities and learning, the late Dr Charles O’ Conor. This learned writer attributes its in- troduction into the British islands, and Ireland in particular, to the Phoenicians, and quotes several authorities to show that if it had not its origin with the Chaldeans, it can at least be traced as far back as to them, and that from Chaldea and Persia it passed into Arabia, thence into Egypt and Lybia, and lastly into Greece, Italy, Spain, and Ireland. In all these countries its vestiges are still to be found, but in none of them at this day so numerous as in Ireland ; and it is remarkable that its usages are still identical in the far distant regions of the east with those in our own Ultima Thule of the west. This identity is clearly evidenced by Ilanway, in his “ Travels in Persia,” in which he says, “ We arrived at a desolate cara- vanserai, where we found nothing but water. I observed a tree with a number of rags to the branches. These were so many charms which passengers coming from Ghilan, a pro- vince remarkable for agues, had left there in a fond expecta- tion of leaving their disease also in the same spot.” Similar instances have been adduced by later travellers in the east, in reading whose descriptions we might almost sup- pose that they were depicting scenes in Ireland ; and if all other evidences were wanting, these facts alone would be suf- ficient to establish the conclusion that the worship of foun- tains in Ireland was of Pagan origin. But we have in our ancient manuscripts the most satisfactory historical evidences to establish the fact. Thus, in Tirechan’s Life of St Patrick, preserved in the Book of Armagh, and St Evin’s Life as pub- lished by Colgan, it is stated, in detailing the progress of the Irish Apostle through Ireland, that he came to the fountain called Sian [that is, health], “ because it was indicated to him that the Magi honoured this fountain, and made donations to it as gifts to God.” This fountain was square, and there was a square stone in the mouth of it, and the water came over the stone, that is, through the interstices ; and the Pa- gans told him that a certain Magus, who worshipped water as a divinity, and considered fire as a destroyer, when dying, made a shrine for his bones in the water beneath the stone, in order that they might be preserved. Patrick told the as- sembled congregation that it was not true that the king of the waters was in the fountain, and bade them raise up the stone, remarking that the bones of a man were not beneath it, but that he thought there was some gold and silver appearing through the joinings from their impious offerings ; no such valuable offerings were, however, found ; and Patrick conse- crated the stone so raised to the true Divinity. It may not be unworthy of remark, that the w'ell of Finnmagh is still, as in the time of St Patrick, equally reverenced, though under a different name and with a different faith. It is now called Tober Brighde, or Bride’sWell, having been subsequently de- dicated to that saint as well as all the churches in the plain of Finnmagh, and under this name the Druidical well of Sian is one of the most frequented and honoured in the whole of the county of Roscommon. Several authorities of the same character as that now ad- duced may be found in the lives of other early Irish saints, but it is not necessary to our purpose to quote them. Dr O’ Conor shows from various evidences that on the firm establishment of Christianity in various parts of Europe the most severe ordinances of the church were promulgated against the continuance of well-worship in any form. “ I have already stated,” he observes, “ that well-worshipping has been utterly abolished by the Catholic religion in Italy. The Fontinalia exist no longer ; the fountain of Egeria, which I have seen near Rome, is known only to the learned ; and I have seen the common peasantry of Castel Gandolfo and Ma- rino washing their linen in the sacred waters of the Ferentine Assemblies of Latium and of Rome !” In reference to its abolition in England, he adduces a canon made in the reign of Edgar, A.D. 9G0, by which it was or- dained “ that every priest do forbid the worship of fountains, and necromancy, and auguries, and enchantments, and sooth- sayings, and false worship, and legerdemain, which carry men into various impostures, and to groves and Ellens, and also many trees of divers sorts, and stones .” He also shows that similar ordinances appear in the Capi- tularies of Charlemagne, and that amongst the laws of the re ; gn of Ecgbright, A.D. 740, the 148th canon is “ If any man, following the custom of the Pagans, introduce^ diviners or sorcerers into his house, or attend the lustrations of Pagans, let him do penance for five years.” It may be asked, then, hoAv has it happened that the venera- tion paid to wells lias continued in Ireland even to the present day, and to this question it is not very easy to give a satisfac- tory answer. It may be remarked, however, that no evi- dences have yet been discovered to show that similar local ordinances were made to destroy their continuance in Ireland, and that it may hence be inferred that the attachment ol the Irish people generally to their ancient usages in this instance, as well as in their funeral lamentations, May-fires, and many other ceremonies of a religious character derived from the same eastern and Pagan origin, was too strong even for the power of the clergy to eradicate or greatly diminish. Certain it is, that the pilgrimages to Lough Derg, which, there is every reason to believe, derive their origin from the same source, were abolished by an order of Pope Alexander ~V 1, in 14C/, and yet the people returned to them again, and they are at the present moment as numerously made, if not more so than ever. And, in like manner, the pilgrimages to wells, even where discountenanced and punished by the Roman Catholic clergy, as they are now in almost every part ot Ireland, are still continued in secrecy, with a tenacity to ancient usages singularly characteristic of the Irish race, and which will en- sure their existeuce for a considerable time longer St Senan’s Well, which we have selected as a characteris- tic example of the holy wells of Ireland, is situated near the west bank of the Shannon, near Dunass, in the county ot Clare. There is nothing very peculiar to distinguish this well from a thousand other fountains of the same kind, but the unusual character of the votive offerings made at it, which, as our engraving exhibits, consist chiefly of wooden bowls, tea- cups whole and broken, blacking-pots, and similar odd offerings of gratitude to St Seanan Liath, or S <3 an an the Hoary, the patron saint of the parish. P . A FAIR-DAY IN NORMANDY, BY MARTIN DOYLE. Having a strong desire to procure some of the small compact Norman draught horses for my farm-work, I ven- tured last year to visit Normandy, for the purpose of making the desired selections. I took with me a young friend, who had been partly educated in France, as my interpreter with the French horse-dealers, and to arrange every particular for me during my intended hasty intercourse with the foreigners. But previously we went for passports to the office in Poland- street, where the Consul filled up the documents without ever looking at our faces, and I believe very incorrectly as to por- traiture. “ Your profession?” inquiredhein French, as hewas scribbling down the length of my nose, the colour of my hair andeyes, &c. “ Homme de lettres,” responded my companion for me. I nodded my head in acquiescence, without knowing anything about the matter; but 1 was quite satisfied when my friend explained it afterwards to me, and assured me that Lord Brougham, when Lord Chancellor, had from sheer modesty sunk his rank and other artificial honours on going to Paris, and simply designated himself as “ Avocat, et homme de lettre^.” “ Does not all the world,” said my companion, “know perfectly well that you are, in the first place, one of the props of the Irish Penny Journal?” “Enough,” said I, somewhat tickled by the reference to Lord Brougham; “be it as you please— though I think that, as a farmer going to France merely to buy horses, I might as well have been written down under the useful character of ‘agriculturist.’” My passport, however, was by this time in my pocket, and any alteration in it was out of the question. I had ascertained that a fair would be held on a particular day at Falaise, and having time enough to make a long jour- ney by land, and much curiosity to see Calais, I determined to go there : we reached that port early in the day. “ Well, then, I am in France,” said I, as we landed from the steamer on the pier ; “here I am, actually on the Continent, looking at French soldiers, w*ho won’t shoot me, stab me, nor take me prisoner, and on fishwomen, with kerchiefs tastily arranged on their heads, large ear-rings, and brown faces, and hearing a language altogether strange to me.” After staring about me there for half a day, and eating a very nice dinner in a yery grand hotel, fitted up as if there was never THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 403 any winter in that part of France, we moved onwards in a most extraordinary kind of coach: such a lumbering- machine! ■—-less than an entire troop of cavalry appeared to me insuffi- cient to move its prodigious wheels ; yet five miserable-looking horses, with dirty half rotten harness, were compelled to pull it along towards Boulogne at the rate of more than four miles an hour. I know not how it happened — perhaps it was fatigue — possi- bly a dose of claret, which caused me to fall asleep in the cuppy* soon after I had passed the barriers of Calais. Be this as it may, while I was dreaming of home, there was a sudden stop, which aroused me. I could have sworn at the moment that I was upon a dreary part of the road between Wexford and Dungar- van ; for, besides the general features of the locality, I saw on the door of a very Irish-like looking public-house, these words — “ John Cullen sells beer and brandy.” “ Where am I?” said I to myself ; “surely not in France.” The matter was ex- plained to me. There are several hundred families of Eng- lish manufacturers, principally from Nottingham, employed at their trade in Calais and its vicinity ; and John Cullen, who says he is a Yorkshireman, and has certainly been for more than twenty years established where he now is, and has married a Frenchwoman, finds it his interest to brew good beer, and to keep a public-house for the entertainment of his neighbours and the operatives of Calais, although the town is three miles distant. But at the moment I was fully impressed with the notion that John Cullen and his house were in the barony of Bargy, or in that of Forth. As the horses at this place were not disposed to run away with the diligence, and the conductor had no indisposition to a glass of brandy, I contrived to enter John Cullen’s house, which certainly has nothing English about it, and asked for the landlord, who soon appeared— an apparently thorough- bred Irishman, and with a fry of half-bred youngsters at his heels, speaking the oddest jargon that ever man heard. At first I hoped that it might have been the old dialect of the barony of Forth, but I was grievously disappointed. Though John Cullen brews very good beer, which he sends regularly into Calais, and sells very fair brandy, it would be no harm, from what I could learn, if Father Mathew could spare time to make a morning visit to his neighbourhood. The greater part of the way from Calais to Boulogne is bleak, open, and ill drained, and altogether more of a snipe- shooting country than a farmer would desire to see, with a good deal of wheat, however, here and there, but not in the regularly formed ridges which I had seen in England. We reached Boulogne that night, and fixed ourselves quietly in an English kind of hotel, after having been well tormented, before we were fairly housed, by emissaries from half a dozen establishments, pressing us in French, English, and German, to patronise their respective employers. We started at five o’clock the next morning from a coach-office very like one of our own in its arrangement of desks, clerks, way-bills, and weighing machines. On some parts of my journey, as we receded from the coast, the drill husbandry, the garden-like culture, and the open country entirely under tillage, resembled portions of England, especially in those districts where the rural population is con- fined to villages very distant from each other, and concealed from the road. The French peasants are very early risers ; I saw many of them at their vai’ious labours at four o’clock in the morning ; some women at that hour were leading cows by a string— three very frequently connected together — or a few wretched-looking sheep, to pasture on the margin of the road. The dresses of these people, and the appear- ance of the sheep, in those spots, informed me very unmistake- ably that I was no longer in England. Sometimes, however, an entire flock of sheep met our observation. One of these, under the care of a shepherd, and two dogs which showed re- markable sagacity, we particularly noticed. The sheep, when I caught the first view of them, were huddled together in a fallow field, looking wistfully at, but not presuming to touch, a compartment of luxuriant clover within a few feet of them. The shepherd, leaving one of the dogs with the flock, and hav- ing the other at his heels, paced off a square of ten or twelve yards, slightly marking the limits with his foot ; he then made a signal to the sentry dog, which at once allowed the sheep to pass on to the clover, while the other dog perambulated the prescribed limits, and prevented them from encroaching a single foot. As I do not mean to trouble the reader with all the details * Mr Doyle probably means the coupee. — Editor. of my journey. I need only say that I reached in safety the very heart of Normandy ; and on the way, while admiring the woods, rivers, meadows, and undulating scenery through which we passed, I perceived a resemblance to the county of Wicklow, and many other well-wooded and fertile parts of Ireland. I had been unable to reach Falaise the night, before the fair, but I was there in time for an early breakfast; and certainly this breakfast was of an extraordinary kind. We had broth well thickened with vegetables ; the bouilli from which the juices had been extracted made its appearance as a matter of course, and the whole company took a bit of it. Then came the liver of a sheep fried in oil, a dish of white beans well mashed and buttered, cheese, cider, and (though last not least appropriately to the breakfast table) coffee and boiled milk, with eggs and bread and butter. Many of the company, includ- ing some lady-like looking females, dipped their well-buttered bread into their coffee, and swallowed it in this nasty greasy manner with great apparent relish, and several of the party pocketed the lumps of sugar which they did not use with then- coffee. But every country has its own fashions ; and if people are here put upon an allowance in the article of sugar, and pay for a fixed quantity, why should they not take away that for which they pay, if they please ? I hastened away from the breakfast table to the place where the fair was held, and was surprised at the similarity of the scene before me to those which I have so often wit- nessed at home. It had nothing of the English character, ex- cepting some wooden drinking-booths and caravans for show- men ; there were no smart-looking horse-jockeys, no well- dressed grooms, not a white smock-frock, a laced buskin, a well-trimmed bonnet, nor a neatly appointed tax-cart or gig in view ; but a crowd of men generally dressed in blue jac- kets and trousers and glazed hats, among whom were inter- spersed some wearing the blue blouse, and a cloth cap or red worsted nightcap, and a great number of women in their striped woollens, and high white linen or muslin coifs — nay, some of these (on the heads of the rich farmers’ wives) were of lace, and worth scores of pounds sterling. The whole assem- blage (combining with it groups of country fellows mounted on hardy ponies, with here and there a woman en croupe, or independently on a pad, with bags behind and before her, kicking away at the ribs of their horses with their heavy sabots) reminded me of what we see on a market-dav in se- veral parts of Ireland. Then, to render the similitude more striking, there were the clamour and jargon of persons buying and selling ; and now and then a half drunken fellow singing in the lightness of his heart, or very noisy in argu- ment ; but generally courteous, and never daring to strike a blow, and a pedlar selling beads and almanacks amidst a din of oaths and imprecations, and the embarrassments occa- sioned by the movements of a team of four bullocks and three little horses in single file, dragging each other along with a huge tonneau of cider for the refreshment of the thirsty crowd, on a two-wheeled waggon, in the rear. We had passed this rude and very dirty vehicle, when the roll of a drum startled me. Thinks I to myself, “ war is about to com- mence in earnest,” but it was only the preliminary flourish of a drummer, who immediately afterwards read out a notice that a celebrated dentist was about to appear in his voiture, for the purpose of relieving sufferers from those ailments which, alas ! are incidental to us in every stage of life. Hav- ing raised his hat from respect to the majesty of the sovereign people, he moved off to an adjacent street, while the great operator himself appeared at hand in a showy kind of cab drawn by two horses (one in the shafts and the other in the outrigger style), with a tawdrily dressed postilion to guide them. Being in haste to reach the open square where the horse fair was held, I had little time for witnessing the opera- tions of the tooth-drawer, who was flourishing his case of in- struments in a most attractive way. When he had trapped his victim, he blew a long loud blast upon a horn to intimate that he was going to operate before the crowd, and after keeping the sufferer in an agony of suspense and nervousness, he pulled out one or more teeth with a large nail (sometimes a screw) in the twinkling of an eye, and with a degree of dex- terity which I had conceived impossible. I was afterwards told that he had several patients in succession, from whom, as they sat backwards in the cab, within view of hundreds of spectators, he extracted teeth at the rate of sixpence each. This practitioner, however, was not without a rival : another dentist was mounted on a high, raw-boned horse, with his case 404 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. of instruments, and some physic for curing the rheumatism, in a leathern portmanteau strapped upon the pommel of his saddle: his dress was of a military character — his coat being braided like an undress frock ; his bridle and saddle of the cavalry form ; his headpiece, a forage cap ; and his boots and spurs like those of a dragoon in the days of the Duke of Marl- borough ; a coronet hung from his saddle-bow ; and whenever the other dentist sounded his bugle, this man blew from be- neath the overhanging cover of thick hair on his upper lip, a longer and a louder strain. But the peculiarity of his style of operating was really striking : instead of dismounting and removing the tooth, he remained steadily in his saddle, ex- amined the mouths of the patients who presented themselves for relief, and from his vantage ground pulled or rather ushed out the diseased grinder. While I was looking on, e poked out three with a hooked nail for one sous, saying, successively, as he drew them in a few seconds (as my com- anion translated his expressions forme), “ Here’s a long one ; ere’s a longer ; and here’s the longest of all.” A quack doctor in a huge caravan drawn by four horses, appeared next, and apparently with much profitable prac- tice, among the dupes who crowded about him to read his puffs and buy his physic. A pedlar in another part of the place where the crowd was considerable, without coat or waistcoat (the wind was at north-east), and labouring very hard with his hands and lungs, was disposing of coloured cotton handkerchiefs by a sort of auction form. He took a piece from a lot of the same pattern, tied it round his waist or on his head as an indication that the handker- chiefs he was about to put up for sale were of the same sort, and then named a price, lowering the amount, perhaps, from twenty to fourteen sous, until he heard such an amount bid as satisfied him ; then with the rapidity of a conjuror he flung the article to the bidder. Another and another purchaser followed as fast as he could unfold and throw the handkerchiefs at their faces, stopping occasionally for a few seconds to re- ceive payments from many customers ; then he opened a fresh lot, and thus perpetually exhibited varieties, selling all the time at a rate of rapidity which I had never seen equalled, and which could only occur where every individual in the little crowd is strictly honest. Little bags of silver and copper were, in the open booths, carelessly slipped into unlocked boxes, from which any clever rogue might easily have helped himself ; but such an occur- rence is almost unknown in the provincial parts of France. These latter exhibitions were certainly neither English nor Irish. It would afford no interest to any of my readers to inform them of the number of horses which I purchased, nor of the prices which I paid, nor of the arrangements which I made for sending them to Liverpool. It is enough to tell them that out of the many strings of horses which had been con- ducted to the fair in the English way by ropes from the head to the tail, and the tail to the head, in succession, and were now drawn up in rank and file under the shade of a wall for inspection, I bought some of those which were most free from the characteristic defects of the Norman horses, and had them safely stabled. I returned to the scene of gaiety and confusion. There was a young woman there, bare-headed, but decently dressed in the main, playing upon a violin, while her male partner blew a terrible blast upon a bugle at intervals, at the conclu- sion of each, announcing a grand spectacle for the evening. The female had given a finishing scrape, and in a moment was on the ground, flat upon her back, but fortunately without in- jury to herself or her fiddle. I looked about and perceived the cause of the disaster : a horse had been pressed forward very rudely through the crowd, with a calf dangling from each of his sides, and one of these coming into violent contact with the fair musician, had thrown her down. The mode by which those wretched animals had been con- veyed to the fair was truly horrible. The four legs of each being bound, a rope connecting the poor creatures together by their tortured limbs was passed over the back of the horse, keeping them in equilibria, and with the heads hanging downwards in agony, while the ligatures confining the legs by which they were suspended were impressed, by the "weight of the body below, into the very bone ! Oh, for a Humane Society in France to prevent such monstrous cruelty, taking for their motto this sentiment of her own Montaigne : “even theology en- joins kindness to brute animals ; and considering that the same Master has given us our dwelling-place with them, and that they like ourselves are of his family, we should have a fellow feeling for them ! ” Attracted by a concourse of children in another spot, I soon found myself standing close to an old woman who was dealing out small thin cakes in a curious kind of manner. Before her was placed what appeared to be a small round table, but with an index, which, after being set in motion by a boy, stop- ped suddenly, and pointed like the hand of a clock to one of twelve numbers described in a circle. The perpetual in- vitation was, “Play, play ! twelve cakes for a halfpenny;” and the little urchins, preferring the chance of twelve cakes for a halfpenny to the certainty of perhaps only three or four from a regular vender elsewhere, came up in rapid succession and with eager eyes to the game. Joy sparkled in the counte- nance of the juvenile speculator if the hand pointed to a high number; disappointment lowered upon his brow if a unitor two was the number which fortune assigned to him; while the hearty laugh of the spectators increased the acrimony of his temper. I tried my own luck, and had one cake for my share, to the unrestrained delight of the little folk. “ Cakes for a halfpenny !” said I to myself. “ TV 7 hat a good subject for a moral reflection ! ” Here we have the seeds of gambling sown at an eai’ly season in the lively soil, and the systematic culture of this baneful and vivacious principle subsequently ensures its establish- ment in the human heart through the length and breadth of the land ; it finds its congenial bed every where, from the child of the poorest mechanic to the grey-headed gamester in the polished societies of higher life. The avaricious principle thus precociously introduced into the youthful heart among the many natural weeds which are but too ready to spring up there, has its own distinctive fruits ; and though it may be urged by those who think not deeply on the effects of early impressions on the ductile mind of childhood, that the disap- pointment which the little gamester experiences in his play of “twelve cakes for a halfpenny” counterbalances (as atrial of temper) the evils ai’ising on the other hand from success in his object, this defence is really untenable in its general points. In the little party before me I saw the willing and prepared pupils of a higher order of play — of rouge-et-noir, and hazard, and ecarte — -by which so many of our own countrymen aro infatuated, and sometimes ruined, when they take up their residence in France, heedless of the value of that time and those opportunities for the right use of which they are respon- sible to the bountiful Giver of them. We now entered a low kind of cafe, in which the next scene of the serious drama of “ twelve cakes for a sous” was exhibited. In one room was a billiard-table, at which two common-looking fellows were playing, at the rate of three- pence an hour for the tables, for a cup of coffee and a glass of brandy. In a corner sat a bloated, half-drunken looking old man in a blouse and nightcap, wdiile his bustling wile discharged all the labours of the establishment. In walked a burly-looking customer, who ordei*ed a glass of brandy for himself, and another for the landlord Nicole. Immediately afterwards — and this was a daily practice with old Nicole — a game of cards was proposed, which terminated in favour of the customer, who walked off scot free. In several instances the old man played in this way — double or quits with his customers — for the amount of coffee, wine, cider, or brandy, consumed in his company (he himself co- piously partaking of all), and no one seemed without some play for it, to pay for what he had ordered. At several tables there were many parties playing in this wav at differ- ent rates ; and certainly if some of them had seen the contor- tions of their faces in a mirror, they would have been dis- gusted with a vice which so agitates the human frame, and unfits for every wise and rational pursuit. Having only played “ spoil-five” and “ five-and-forty” in my youth, I neither understood nor wished to learn the game which was played around me. My young friend and I went to our hotel, and there found the chambermaid and the waiter, while they were awaiting our arrival, playing ecarte toge- ther on the dinner table for the amount of their morning’s gratuities. “ Twelve cakes for a halfpenny !” said I to myself again. It only remains for me to tell how I got back to England. I had reached Havre, by the beautiful Seine from Rouen, in the evening, without any particular adventure, and gone to an hotel kept by an Englishman, just as a waiter was cursing 405 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. an unlucky boy, who had broken a wine-glass, in true English style. 1 heartily regretted that I had not gone to a French house, in which, if the waiter had cursed for a month in his own language, I should not have understood him. An accident had happened to the regular steamer for Lon- don, and there appeared no chance of my getting off for three days ; I was in despair, especially as my horses had preceded me from another port, and I wished to be in Liverpool con- temporaneously with their arrival there. In the course of the night I was informed that a steam- vessel had just arrived in Havre from Gibraltar, with some of the Braganza family on their way to Paris, and that she was going on to London at day-break. I tucked up my portmanteau under my arm, and my young friend and I sal- lied out to the part of the quay w'here the steamer lay, in profound darkness and the most perfect silence. “ Qui vive?” said a watchman, as he put his lantern to my face and a hand upon my throat, while I was advancing to the gang- board. My companion explained ; and as I had the prudence to give a franc to the watchman, he lighted us carefully to the side of the vessel. Down we groped our way to the cabin ; all was darkness there, and every one on board was asleep. The vessel was so full that the steward and his wife were lying on the floor (in a heavy slumber), and directly in my way. I spoke : no one answered. I caught the stewardess by the nose, and could not conceive what it was that I had in my hand. She screamed, and gave her husband a smart blow on the head, thinking that he was the assailant. “ Pordonnez,” said I, trying to speak civilly in French, and supposing they could not under- stand English. “ Who the deuce is there ?” roared out the steward. “ Oh, English,” said I to myself. I explained, and slipped a five-franc piece into the man’s hand, and apologized at the same time to his wife for having pulled her nose instead of the bell-handle. “ The captain is asleep,” said he, “ but I shall awakebim.” “ Good fellow,” said I. My interpreter and I followed him, and the captain, who had heard the bustle, opened his cabin door. I repeated the purport of my unseasonable visit, telling him, by way of a clincher, that the Irish Penny Journal, to which I contri- buted by far the best articles (“ and which,” said I, “ you of course take for the gratification of your passengers”), could not flourish during my absence from home. “ Come on board, both of you,” said he, “ if you like, but don’t bother me with any more talk at this unseasonable hour of the night.” “ An Irishman !” thought I to myself. He banged the door, and I suppose was instantly asleep again. I was soon in the same condition, and did not awake until we had made considerable progress with the very next tide towards London. ORIGIN AND MEANINGS OF IRISH FAMILY NAMES. BY JOHX o’DONOVAN, Sixth Article. In my last article I gave examples of the process now in progress in the several provinces of Ireland among the people p-enerally in changing their original names into names appa- rently English or Scottish : there are others in Ireland among the genteeler classes who have changed their old Milesian names in such a manner as to give them a French or Spanish appearance ; and the adopters of these names now wish to be deemed as of French or Spanish origin (any thing but Irish !) These, it is true, are few in number, but some of them are re- spectable ; and their effort at concealing their origin is not to be recommended. We shall therefore exhibit a few instances of this mode of rendering Irish names respectable-looking by giving them a foreign aspect, which the bearers cannot by any effort give their own faces. The most remarkable of these changes has been made by the family of O’Dorcy, in the west of the county of Galway, who have assumed not only the name of D’Arcy, but also the arms of the D’Arcys of England. But it is well known that the D’Arcys of Galway are all descen- ded from James Reagh Darcy, of Galway, merchant, whose pedigree I know to be traced by Dualcl Mac Firbis, not to the D’Arcys of Meath, who are of Anglo-Norman origin, but to the Milesian O’Dorcys of West Connaught, who were the ancient chiefs of Partree, a well-known territory extend- ing from the lakes of Lough Mask and Lough Carra, west- wards, in the direction of Croaghpatrick. The next instance of this kind of change which I shall ad- duce, is found in the adjacent county of Mayo, where a gen- tleman of the ancient and celebrated family of O’Malley wishes all his friends to call him not O’Malley, for that is Irish, but De Maillet ; but though his friends condescend sometimes to call him by this name, they can scarcely refrain from laughter while pronouncing it, for they know very well that he descends from Owen O’Malley, the father of the fa- mous heroine Grania Wael, and chief of Umallia or the Owles, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The third instance I have met with of this false Irish va- nity is in the far-famed Thomond, where a gentleman of the O’Malronies has followed the plebeian corruption of that name, by which it is metamorphosed to Moroni, by which he affects to pass as one not of Irish but of Spanish descent ; but he cannot prevent his neighbours from calling him O'Mur- ruana when they speak the native language, for by a strange corruption in that part of Ireland, where the Irish language is in most other instances very correctly pronounced, when the prefix maol is followed by r, the l is itself pronounced r. as in the instance under consideration, and in O’Mulryan, a well- known name in Munster, which they now pronounce O’Mur- ryan. Thus an accidental corruption in the pronunciation of a consonant is taken advantage of to metamorphose a famous old Irish name into a Spanish one. It is indeed most lamen- table to see the native Irish think so little of their names and of their own natural country. I have many other instances of this audacious kind of change of surnames at hand, but I refrain from enlarging on them, from the apprehension of exceeding my limits with- out being enabled to bring this subject to a close in the stipulated space. A few others, however, are necessary to be exhibited to public scorn. The next instance, then, which has come under my notice, is in the province of Connaught, w'here the family of O’Mulaville have all changed their name to Lavelle, and where those who know nothing of the history of that family are beginning to think that they are of French descent. But it is the constant tradition in the county of Mayo that they are of Danish origin, and that they have been located in Iarowle since the ninth century. Of this name was the late Editor of the Freeman’s Journal; a man of great abilities and extensive learning, who aibong other ancient languages had acquired a profound knowledge of his own native dialect. This name is scotticised Mac Paul in the province of Ulster. Another name which some people are apt to take for a French or Anglo-Norman name, is Delany, as if it w r ere Be Lani ; but the Irish origin of this family cannot be questioned, for the name is called O’Dulaine in the original language, and the family were originally located at the foot of Slieve Bloom in Upper Ossory. Another instance is found in the change of O’Dowling to DuLaing, but this is seldom made, and never by any but people of no consequence. Some individuals of the name of Magunshinan, or Magilsi- nan, upon leaving their original localities in Cavan and Meath, have assumed, some the name of Nugent, and others that of Gilson. Of this family was Charles Gilson, the founder and endower of the public school of Old Castle, a man of great benevolence, who found it convenient on his removal to London to shorten his name to Gilson. Other individuals of Irish name and origin, upon settling in London and other parts of England, have changed their surnames altogether, as the ancestor of the present Baron of Lower Tabley, whose name was Sir Peter Byrne, but who was obliged to change his name to Leycester, to conform to the will of his maternal grandfather, who had bequeathed him large estates in England, on condition of his dropping his Irish name and adopting that of the testator. He is the most distinguished man of the O’Byrne race now living, and we regret that his Irish origin is entirely disguised in his present name of Warren. He descends from Daniel, the second son of Loughlin Duff of Ballintlea, in the county of Wicklow, a chief of great distinction, and is related to the Byrnes of Fallvbeg, near Stradbally, in the Queen’s County, who descended from the first son of this Loughlin — a fact with which his lordship is altogether unacquainted ; and the writer of these remarks has often regretted that his lordship has not been made acquainted with this fact, as it might be in his power to serve the sons of the late venerable Laurence Byrne of Fallybeg. 406 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. Other changes have been made in Irish surnames by ab- breviation ; but though we regret this, we are not willing to condemn it altogether, especially when the changes are made for the purpose of rendering such names easy of pro- nunciation in the mouths of magistrates and lawyers, who could not, in many cases, bring their organs of speech to pronounce them in their original Irish form. Of these we could give a long list, but we shall content ourselves with a selection. In the province of Connaught the name Mac Eochy has been shortened to M‘Keogh, and latterly to Keogh ; O’Mul- conry to Conry and Conroy. In Ossory, Mac Gillapatrick has been manufactured into Fitzpatrick. In the county of Galway, and throughout the province of Connaught gene- rally, Mac Gillakelly has been manufactured into Ivilkelly ; O’Mullally to Lally ; Mac Gillakenny, to Kilkenny ; Mac Gillamurry, to Kilmurry ; Mac Gilladuff to Kilduff; Mac Geraghty, to Geraghty and Gearty ; Mac Pliaudeen, to Pat- ten ; O’Houlahan, to Nolan. This last change is not to be excused, for it entirely disguises the origin of the family ; and we would therefore, recommend the Nolans of the county of Galway to reject their false name, and re-assume that of O’ Houlahan. This family were removed from Munster into Connaught by Oliver Cromwell, under the name of O’Houlahan, and they have therefore no just right to assume the name of another Irish family to whom they bear no relation whatsoever. The real Nolans of Ireland are of Leinster origin, and were the ancient chiefs of the barony of Forth, in the now county of Carlow, anciently called Foharta Fea, where they are still numerous ; but the Connaught Nolans are not Nolans at all, but O’Houlahans, and are a family who bore the dignity of chieftains in ancient times, though it happens, that, not knowing their history, or taking a dislike to the sound of the name, they have, with questionable propriety, assumed the name of a Leinster family, which seems to sound somewhat better in modern ears. In the province of Ulster, the name Mac Gillaroe has been shor- tened to Gilroy and Kilroy; Mac Gillabride, to Mac Bride ; Mac Gillacuskly, to Cuskly, and impertinently to Cosgrove and even Costello ! Mac Gilla-Finnen, to Linden and Leonard ; Mac-Gennis, to Ennis and Guinness ; Mac Blosky, to Mac Closky. In Munster the noble name of Mac Carthy (or, as it is pronounced in the original Irish, Maw Caurha) has dwin- dled to Carty (a vile change!); O’Mulryan, to O’ Ryan and Ryan; Mac Gilla-Synan, to Shannon; Mac Gillaboy, to Mac Evoy, Ac. &c. In Leinster, all the O’s and Macs have been rejected; and though a few of them are to he met there now, in consequence of the influx of poor stran- gers of late into that province, it is certain that there is not a single instance in which the O’ or Mac has been re- tained by any of the aboriginal inhabitants of that pro- vince, I mean the ancient Irish Leinster, not including Meath. The most distinguished of these was Mac Murrogh, but there is not a single individual of that name now living in Leinster ; the descendants of Donnell Mac Murrogh Ca- vanagh, who, although illegitimate, became by far the most distinguished branch of that great family, having all changed their surnames to Cavanagh, and the other branches having, as the present writer has strong reasons to believe, changed it to Murphy. The writer has come to this latter conclusion from having ascertained that in the territory of the Murrows, in the county of Wexford, once the country of a great and powerful sept of the Mac Mur- roghs, the greater number of the inhabitants, who are perhaps the finest race of men in Ireland, are now called Murphy. He has therefore come to the conclusion, and he hopes not too hastily, that the Murphys of this territory are all Mac Mur- roghs. At the same time, however, he is well aware that the name generally anglicised Murphy is not Mac Murrogh, but O’Murchoo, which was that of a branch or offshoot of the regal family of Leinster, who became chiefs of the country of Hy-Felimy, and whose chief seat was at Tullow, in the now county of Carlow. The writer is well aware that the Mur- phys of the county of Carlow and Kilkenny are of this latter family, but he cannot get rid of the conviction that the Murphys of the Murrowes, in the east of the county of Wex- ford, are Mac Murroghs. On the subject of the difference between these two families, we find the learned Roderic O’- Flaherty thus criticising Peter Walsh towards the close of the seventeenth century : — “ An O’ or a Mac is prefixed in Irish surnames to the pro- per names of some of their ancestors, intimating that they were the sons, grandsons, or posterity of the person whose name they adopted ; but it was not proper to use one name pro- miscuously in the place of another, as he writes O’Murphy, king of Leinster, instead of Mac Murphy, or rather Mac Mur- chadh ; but the family of O’Murchadha, which in English is Murphy, is very different from and inferior to this family.” — Ogygia, Part III, cap. xxvii. There are also some few instances to be met with, in which the O’ has been changed to Mac, and vice versa , as in the re- mai'kable instance of O’ Melaghlin, chief of the Southern Hy- Niall race, to Mac Loughlin; also in those instances in which O’Duvyerma has been changed to Mac Dermot, O’Donoghy to Mac Donogh, O’Knavin to Mac Nevin, O’Heraghty to Mac Geraghty, and a few others. These latter changes are not calculated to disguise the Irish origin of the families who have made them, but they are still to be regretted, as they tend to disguise the origin, race, and locality of the respective families, and we should there- fore like to see the original names restored. Similar changes have been made in the family names among the Welsh, as Ap-John into Jones, Ap- Richard into Prichard and Richards, Ap-O wen into Owens, Ap-Robert into Probert and Roberts, Ap-Gwillim into Willims, &c. he. Having thus treated of the alterations the Irish have made in their surnames, or family names, for the purpose of making them appear English, I shall next proceed to point out the changes which they have likewise made in their Chris- tian or baptism names, for the same purpose. Many of their original names they have altogether rejected, as not im- mediately reducible to any modern English forms ; but others they have retained, though they have altered them in such a manner as to make them appear English. The writer could furnish from the authentic Irish annals and pedigrees a long list of proper names of men which were in use in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and which have been for a long time laid aside ; but the limits of this Journal would not afford room for such a list : he must therefore content himself by pointing out the original forms of such names as have been retained in an anglicised shape. These changes in the Christian names have been made, not only by those families who have adopted English surnames, but also by those who have retained the Milesian O’s and Macs ; but these families have assumed that the Eng- lish forms which they have given this class of names are per- fectly correct. This was assumed to be true so early as the year 1689, in which we find Sir Richard Cox writing on the subject, as follows : — “ The Christian names of the Irish areas in England; Aodh i. e. Hugh, Mahoone i. e. Matthew, Teige i. e. Timo- thy, Dermond i. e. Jeremy, Cnogher i. e. Cornelius, Cormac i. e. Chai’les, Art i. e. Arthur, Donal i. e. Daniel, Goron i. e. Jeofry, Magheesh i. e. Moses.” Now, I absolutely deny that these names are identical, though I acknowledge that they are at present universally received and used as such. In the first place, the name Aodh, which has been metamorphosed to Hugh, is not synonymous with it, for the name Aodh signifies fire, but Hugh, which has been borrowed from the Saxon, signifies high or lofty. Since, then, they bear not the same meaning, and are not made up of the same letters, in what, may it be asked, does their iden- tity consist ? It is quite obvious that they have nothing in common with each other. In the second place, Mahon, or, as Sir Richard Cox writes it, Mahoone, is not Matthew ; for if we believe Spenser and some Irish glossographists, Mahon signifies a hear ; and if they be correct, it cannot be identical, synonymous, or cognate with the Scriptural name Matthew, which does not signify a bear, but a gift, or a present. In the third instance, the Irish name Teige, which according to all the Irish glossaries signifies a poet, is not synonymous with Timothy, which means the God-fearing, and therefore is not identical or cognate with it ; and I therefore doubt that the Irish people have any right to change Teige into Timothy- It was first anglicised Thady, and the writer is acquainted with individuals who have rendered it Thaddseus, Theophilus, and Theodosius. In the fourth instance, Dermod, or, as Sir Richard Cox writes it, Dei’mond, is not identical with Jeremy, nor is it synonymous or even cognate with it. On this name, which ■was first very incorrectly anglicised Darby, the learned Dr O’Brien writes as follows : — “ Diarmaid, the proper name of several great princes of the old Irish. This name [which had its origin in Pagan times] is a compound of Dia, god, and armaid, the genitive plural of the Irish word arm, Latin arma, THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 40T armorum, so that Dia-armaid literally signifies the same as JDeus armorum, the god of arms. Such is the exalted origin of this Irish name, which does not screen it from being at times a subject of ridicule to some of our pretty gentlemen of the modern English taste.” It must, however, in candour be acknowledged that this is not the meaning of the name Dermod, and that Dr O’Brien invented this explanation to gain what he considered respect- ability for a name common in his own illustrious family, and which was considered vulgar by the fashionable people of the period at which he wrote. We have the authority of the Irish glossaries to show that Diarmaid, which was adopted at a remote period of Irish history, as the proper name of a man, signifies a freeman ; and though this meaning does not sound as lofty as the Deus armorum of Dr O’Brien, still it is suffi- ciently respectable to show that Dermod is not a barbarous name, and that the Irish people need not be ashamed of it ; but they will be ashamed of every Irish name in despite of all that can be said, as the writer has very strong grounds for asserting. The reason is obvious — because they have lost their nationality. In the fifth instance, Concovar, or, as Sir Richard Cox writes it, Cnogher, is not identical, synonymous, or even cog- nate with Cornelius ; for though it has been customary -with some families to latinize it to Cornelius, still we know from the radices of both names that they bear not the slightest analogy to each other, for the Irish name is compounded of Conn, strength, and Cobhair, aid, assistance; while the Latin Cornelius is differently compounded. It is, then, evident that there is no reason for changing the Irish Concovar or Conor to Cornelius, except a fancied resemblance between the sounds of both ; but this resemblance is very remote indeed. In the sixth instance, the name Cormac has nothing what- soever to do with Charles (which means noble-spirited ), for it is explained by all the giossographers as signifying “ Son of the Chariot,” and it is added, “that it was first given as a sobriquet, in the first century, to a Lagenian prince who hap- pened to be born in a chariot while his mother was going on a journey, but that it afterwards became honourable as the name of many great personages in Ireland.” After the ac- cession of Charles the First, however, to the throne, many Irish families of distinction changed Cormac to Charles, in order to add dignity to the name by making it the same with that of the sovereign — a practice which has been very gene- rally followed ever since. In the seventh instance, Sir Richard is probably correct. I do not deny that Art may be synonymous with Arthur ; indeed I am of opinion that they are both words of the same origi- nal family of language, for the Irish word Art signifies noble, and if we can rely on the British etymologists, Arthur bears much of a similar meaning in the Gomraegor Old British. With respect to the eighth instance given by Sir Richard Cox, I have no hesitation in asserting that the Irish proper name Domhnall, which was originally anglicised Donnell and Donald, is not the same with the Scriptural name Daniel, which means God is judge. I am at least certain that the ancient Irish giossographers never viewed it as such, for they always wrote it Domhnall, and understood it to mean a great or proud chieftain. This explanation may, however, be pos- sibly incorrect ; but the m in the first syllable shows that the name is formed from a root very different from that from which the Scriptural name Daniel is derived. With respect to the names Goron (which is but a mistake for Searoon), Jeofry, and Magheesh, Moses, the two last in- stances furnished by Sir Richard Cox, they were never borne by the ancient Irish, but were borrowed from the Anglo- Normans, and therefore I have nothing to do with them in this place. What I have said is sufficient to show that the Christian names borne by the ancient Irish are not identical, synonymous, or even cognate with those substituted for them in the time of Sir Richard Cox. The most valuable part of every man’s education is that wffiich he receives from himself, especially when the active energy of his character makes ample amends for the want of a more finished course of study. “ Would you know this boy to be my son from his resem- blance to me ?” asked a gentleman. Mr Curran replied, “ Yes, sir; the maker’s name is stamped upon the blade." ELEGIAC STANZAS ON A SON AND DAUGHTER. In Merrion, by Eblana’s bay, They sleep beneath a spreading tree ; No voices from the public way Shall break their deep tranquillity. Clontarf may bloom, and gloomy Howth Behold the white sail passing by, But never shall the spring-time growth Or stately bark delight their eye. Clontarf may live, a magic name. To call up recollections dear — But never shall great Brian's fame Delight the sleeper's heedless ear. They fell, ere reason’s dawn arose— They, sinless, felt affliction’s rod; Oh, who can tell their wordless woes Before they reached the throne of God ? What being o'er the cradle leans, Where innocence in anguish lies ; Writhing in its untold pains— That feels not awful thoughts arise ! 'Tis dreadful eloquence to all Whose hearts are net of marble stone — Such eloquence as could not fall E’en from the tongue of Massillon. Their ills are o’er — a father’s cares— A mother's throes — a mother’s fears — A wily world with all its snares, Shall ne’er begloom their joyless years. They sleep in Merrion by the bay, From passions, care, and sorrow free ; No voices from the public way Shall break their deep tranquillity. T. TESTIMONIALS. Every one who has had any thing to do with the filling up of appointments for which there has been any competition, must have been struck — taking the testimonials of candidates as criteria to judge by — with the immense amount of talent and integrity that is in the market, and available often for the merest trifle in the shape of annual salary. In truth, judging by such documents as those just alluded to, one would think that it is the able and deserving alone that are exposed to the necessity of seeking for employment. At any rate, it is certain that all who do apply for vacant situations are with- out exception persons of surpassing ability and incorruptible integrity — flowers of the flock, pinks of talent, and para- gons of virtue. How such exemplary persons come to be out of employment, we cannot tell ; but there they are. The number of testimonials which one of these worthies will produce when he has once made a dead set at an appoint- ment, is no less remarkable than the warmth of the strain in which they are written. Heaven knows where they get them all ! but the number is sometimes really amazing, a hatful, for instance, being a very ordinary quantity. M 7 e once saw a candidate for an appointment followed by a porter who car- ried his testimonials, and a pretty smart load for the man they seemed to be. The weight, we may add, of this gentle- man’s recommendations, as well it might carried the day. In the case of regular situation-hunters of a certain class, gentlemen who are constantly on the look-out for openings, who make a point of trying for every thing of the kind that offers, and who yet, somehow or other, never succeed, it may be observed that their testimonials have for the most part an air of considerable antiquity about them, that they are in general a good deal soiled, and have the appearance of having been much handled, and long in the possession of the very deserving persons to whose character and abilities they bear reference. This seems rather a marked feature in the case of such documents as those alluded to. How it should happen, we do not know ; but you seldom see a fresh, clean, newly written testimonial in the possession of a professed situation- hunter. They are all venerable-looking documents, with something of a musty smell aboirt them, as if they had long been associated in the pocket with cheese crumbs and half- burnt cigars. A gentleman of the class to which we just now particularly refer, generally carries his budget of testimonials about with him, and is ready to produce them at a moment’s notice. Not knowing how soon or suddenly he may hear of some- thing eligible, he is thus always in a state of preparation for such chances as fortune may throw in his way. It is com- mendable foresight. 408 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL, - r _„ „ , , - As regards the general style of testimonials, meaning par- ticularly that extreme warmth of eulogium for which these documents are for the most part remarkable, it is perhaps in the case of aspirants for literary situations that we find it in its greatest intensity. It is in these cases we make the astounding discovery that the amount of literary talent known is really nothing to that which is unknown ; that in fact the brightest of those geniuses who are basking in the sunshine of popular favour, and reaping fame and fortune from a world’s applause, is a mere rushlight compared to hundreds whom an adverse fate has doomed to obscurity, of whose merits the same untoward destiny has kept the world in utter ignorance. As proof of this, we submit to the reader the testimonials of a couple of candidates for the editorship of a certain provincial paper, with which, along with two or three others, we had a proprietary connexion. There were in all one hundred and twenty applicants, and each had somewhere about a score of different testimonials, bearing witness to the bril- liancy of his t alents and the immaculateness of his character. "VVe, the proprietors, had thus, as the reader will readily be- lieve, a pretty job of it. One hundred and twenty candidates, with each, taking an average, 20 letters of recommendation ; 20 times 120 — 2,400 letters to read ! In the present case we confine ourselves merely to one or two of the most remarkable, although we cannot say that the difference between any of them was very material. They were all in nearly one strain of unqualified, and, as regarded their subjects, no doubt deserved laudation. The testimonials were for the most part addressed to the applicants themselves, as in the following case : “ Dear Sir — In reply to your letter stating that you meant to apply for the editorship of a provincial paper, and request- ing my testimony to your competency for such an appoint- ment, I have sincere pleasure in saying that you possess, in an eminent degree, every qualification for it. Your style of writing is singularly elegant, combining energy with ease, and copiousness with concentration ; nor is the delicacy and correctness of your taste less remarkable than the force and beauty of your language. But your literary achievements, my dear sir — achievements which, although they have not yet, will certainly one day raise you to eminence — bear much stronger testimony to your merits than any thing I can pos- siblv say in your behalf ; and to these I would refer all who are interested in ascertaining what your attainments are. As an editor of a paper, you would be invaluable ; and I assure you, they will not be little to be envied who shall be so fortu- nate as to secure the aid of your able services,” &c. &c. &c. Well, this was one of the very first testimonials we hap- pened to open, and we thought we had found our man at the very outset, that it would be unnecessary to go farther, and we congratulated ourselves accordingly. We were delighted with our luck in having thus stumbled on such a genius at the first move. It is true, we did not know exactly what to make of the reference to the candidate’s literary achievements, what they were, or where to look for them ; for neither of these achievements, nor of the candidate himself, had we ever heard before ; but as the writer of the letter was not unknown to us, we took it for granted that all was right. What, however, was our surprise, what our perplexity, when, on proceeding to the testimonials of the next candidate, w r e found that he was a gentleman of still more splendid ta- lents than the first ; that, in short, the light of the latter’s genius, compared to that of the former’s, was but as the light of a lucifer match to the blaze of Mount Etna. “ Gentlemen,” said the first testimonial of this person’s we took up (we, the proprietors, being addressed in this case), “ Gentlemen, having learnt that you are on the look-out for an editor for your paper, and learning from Mr Josephus Julius Augustus Bridgeworth that he intends becoming a candidate for that appointment, I at his request most cheer- fully bear testimony to his competency, I might say pre-emi- nent fitness, for the situation in question. Mr Bridgeworth is a young man of the highest literary attainments ; indeed, I should not be going too far were I to say that I know of no writer, ancient or modern, who at all approaches him in force and beauty of style, or who surpasses him in originality of thought and brilliancy of imagination : qualities which he has beautifully and strikingly exhibited in his inimitable Essay on Bugs, which obtained for him the gold prize-medal of the Royal Society of Entomologists, and admission to that Society as an honorary member, with the right of assuming the title of E. R. S. In fine, gentlemen, I would entreat of you, as much for your own sakes as for that of ray illustrious young friend Mr Bridgeworth, not to let slip this opportunity L-one that may never occur again — of securing the services of one of the most talented gentlemen of the day ; one who, I feel well assured, will one day prove not only an honour to his country, but an ornament to the age in which he lives. With regard to Mr B.’s moral character, I have only to say that, it is every thing that is upright and honourable ; that he is, in truth, not more distinguished for the qualities of his head than of his heart.” We have already said that the circumstance of finding in the bug essayist a greater genius than in the candidate who preceded him, most grievously perplexed us. It did. But what was this perplexity compared with that by which we were confounded, when, on proceeding to look over the testi- monials of the other candidates, w'e found that the merits of every new one we came to surpassed those of him who had gone before, and this so invariably, that it became evident that we had drawn around us all the talent and character of the country ; that in fact all the talent and character of the country was striving for the editorship of our paper. Thus placed as it were in the midst of a perfect galaxy of genius, thus surrounded by the best and brightest men of the age, we had, as will readily be believed, great difficulty in making a choice. A choice, however, we did at length make ; fixing on the brightest of the brilliant host by which we were mobbed. Need I tell the result ? Need I say that this luminary turned out, after all, but a farthing candle ! — a very ordinary sort of person. He did, indeed, well enough, but not better than a thousand others could have done. While on this subject of testimonials, let us add that we had once, with one or two others, the bestowal of an appoint- ment to a situation of trust, and for which integrity was the chief requisite. We had in this, as in the former case, an im- mense number of applicants, and, as in the former case, each of these produced the most satisfactory testimonials. We chose the most immaculate of these honest men — we appointed him. In three weeks after, he decamped with £500 of his employer’s cash ! C. Friendship Friendship derives all its beauty and strength from the qualities of the heart, or from a virtuous or lovely disposition ; or should these be wanting, some sha- dow of them must be present ; it can never dwell long in a bad heart or mean disposition. It is a passion limited to the nobler part of the species, for it can never co-exist with vice or dissimulation. Without virtue, or the supposition of it, friendship is only a mercenary league, or a tie of interest, which must of course dissolve when that interest decays, or subsists no longer. It is a composition of the noblest passions of the mind. A just taste and love of virtue, good sense, a thorough candour and benignity of heart, and a generous sympathy of sentiment and affections, are the essential ingre- dients of this nobler passion. When it originates from love, and esteem is strengthened by habit, and mellowed by time, it yields infinite pleasure, ever new and ever growing. It is the best support amongst the numerous trials and vicissitudes of life, and gives a relish to most of our engagements. What can be imagined more comfortable than to have a friend to console us in afflictions, to advise with in doubtful oases, and share our felicity ? What firmer anchor is there for the mind, tossed like a vessql on the tumultuous waves of contingencies, than this ? It exalts our nobler passions, and weakens our evil inclinations ; it assists us to run the race of virtue with a steady and undeviating course. From loving, esteeming, and endeavouring to felicitate particular people, a more general passion will arise for the whole of mankind. Confined to the society of a few, we look upon them as the representatives of the many, and from friendship learn to cultivate philanthropy. — Sir li. Davy. Humility An humble man is like a good tree ; the more full of fruit the branches are, the lower they bend themselves. No dust affects the eyes so much as gold dust. Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin. Agents: — R. Groombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster Row, London; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool ; John Menzies, Prince’s Street, Edinburgh; and David Robertson, Trongate, Glasgow. THE JOURNAL. Number 52. SATURDAY. JUNE 26, 1841 Volume I. TOMB OF CURRAN. Twenty years had nearly elapsed, and no stone marked the grave where Curran was interred : still Ireland continued unpossessed of the remains of one of the ablest of her orators and purest of her patriots, and seemed, in this instance espe- cially, to justify the reproach of her habitual neglect towards the posthumous reputation of her great men. To the managing committee of the cemetery at Glasnevin belongs the merit, in this eminent instance, of setting an exam- ple which may remove or mitigate the humiliating truth of that too just reproach.* They reclaimed for Ireland the bones of Curran, which were transferred from England to the ceme- tery over which they preside. To Lord Cloncurry, ever foremost or forward in aught affect- ing the public weal, and through life distinguished as the muni- ficent supporter of all the elegant and useful arts — of every ob- ject proposing to advance the interests of his country or honour of her name — to him belongs the merit of originating a sub- scription from which has resulted the monument at Glasnevin, and the other now in progress at the church of St Patrick. f Thus at the northern extremity of Dublin the tomb of Cur- * This monument, if not influencing, has certainly been followed by monuments now in progress of erection to the late Chief Baron Joy, Mr Drummond, the Dean of St Patrick's, Lord Clements, and others. t The contract has been made with Mr Christopher Moore, sn Irish sculp- tor of much celebrity. The foundation is laid in granite, the structure will be marble, and the situation fronts the monument of the late Serjeant Ball. ran stands over his remains; and at the southern extremity, in our metropolitan Cathedral Church, which may be called our little Westminster, a cenotaph, now begun, will soon bear witness that after a lapse of 23 years, new recorded honours gather round his monument, and his glory still freshens in the memory of posterity. A senior fellow of our University, who had no other share in his subsequent elevation to a mitre than the circumstance of having rendered himself worthy of it, observes on the sub- ject of this commemoration as follows : — “ It (a letter) shows me, however, that you intended to apply to me on a subject well calculated to excite my sympathy ; and it gives me an opportunity of indulging my own feelings, and of promoting my own honour, in avowing my admiration and respect for splendid talents and disinterested patriotism. I shall there- fore be flattered by the insertion of my name in your list, though I do not entertain the ambitious thought of my doing honour to the memory of a man who has erected for himself a monument greater and more lasting than can be contained in anvcemetery.” The wood-cut engraving prefixed to this article is descrip- tive of Curran’s tomb at. Glasnevin, of which Mr J. T. Pap- worth, A.R.ll.A., architect of the Royal Dublin Society, was the architect, and conductor of its construction and successful : execution. It is a fae simile of the celebrated chef-d’oeuvre : of the antique knots" as the tomb of Scipio Barbatieus, 410 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. exemplars of which are favourite objects of purchase to the visiters of Rome, and lovers of virtu. It is a magnificent specimen of that simple, durable, massive grandeur, which the early artists of the mistress of the world deemed suit- able to the character of a great man’s sepulchre ; fit to out- live, like its great Roman prototype, numerous generations of men, and bear down the name of its honoured object to the admiration of a most distant posterity. Napoleon’s tomb at St Helena was of course the suggestion of the best taste of France and Italy combined. It bears a close resemblance to that of Scipio. The material of the latter is of an inferior de- scription of stone, greatly surpassed by that of Curran's tomb, which is composed of the best specimen, perhaps, extant, of our finest Irish granite, and sparkles like silver in the sun. The application of this product to sepulchral purposes is re- cent and appropriate. The late palace of our dukes, the late halls of our parliament, the testimonials commemorating the victors who most exalted the glory of Britain on the ocean and by land, our custom-house and post-office, our courts of jus- tice, the harbours of Wicklow, Howth, and Dunleary, the spire of St Patrick’s, the grandest of our bridges, with most other of our magnificent public edifices, have long displayed and will long display the value of our granite for beauty and soli- dity. It has superseded the use of Portland stone, for, capa- ble of being cut into the finer figures of architecture, it admits of any shape, it withstands any weather; and harder than free- stone, and hardening in the air, and susceptible of every forma- tion from the chisel, the mallet, and the hammer, it stands of all the mineral kingdom most faithful to the trust of monu- mental fame. But it is not by such memorials, as was justly observed by the eminent prelate already referred to ; it is not by such memorials as art may construct from marble or brass, or our own enduring granite, that the immortality of Curran’s fame can be achieved, it is in the great efforts of his transcendant genius we best can contemplate his deathless monument, and in that respect it may be said of lum. as John- son said on a like occasion, “ A mortal born, he met a mortal's doom," But left, like Egypt’s kings, a lasting tomb. The tomb is in the form of a Sarcophagus, of the Doric order of architecture, richly sculptured. The triglvphs are most delicately wrought, and the metopes are ornamented with pateras. It is erected so as to appear upon a tumulus, which has a good effect. The dimensions are as follow : — The plinth 11 feet 2_f inches by 5 feet 6^ inches. The dado 8 feet 1 1 inches by 3 feet 84 inches. Height 8 feet 2 inches. The blocks of granite of which the tomb has been formed are perhaps the largest made use of in Ireland, each weighing from 4 to 5 tons. The joints between the blocks have been so managed as to be imperceptible, and the tomb thus appears to be one entire mass of granite. F. THE MARKET-WOMAN. BY M. G. R. Sojie of the pleasantest of the many pleasant reminiscences of my childhood are associated with the recollection of a very ugly uncouth woman, with a very ugly uncouth name, “ Moil Miskellagh,” our market-woman. If the cognomen “ Moll” was intolerable to “ ears polite,” what was it to the euphonious appellation of her better half, “ Mogue Miskellagh ?” 'J he Eng- lish groom of an Irish gentleman once overheard some person calling “ Mogue Miskellagh !” “ Mogue Miskellagh !” “ Mogue Miskellagh !” he thrice exclaimed, voice, eyes, and hands in their various ways expressing astonishment, “ does that ’ere name belong to a Christian ?” The home of my early days was situated five miles from the nearest market-town ; and as it was not always convenient to send a servant and horse for the various commodities necessary for a tolerably large family, a regular drudging market man or woman was deemed indispensable. Moll Miskellagh heard of “ the lady’s” wants and wishes, and believing her own limbs to be stout, and her memory retentive, offered herself as the “ beast of burden.” “ Misthress, jew’l,” pleaded Moll, with the most persuasive brogue imaginable, “sorra sitch a pair ov legs in the whole counthry ; an’ for my back, it bangs Ban agher for the strinth ! As to my karraether, thank God I need say nothin’ about it, as I may safely lave it to mynaiburs for its honesty.” “ And honesty must have its reward," returned the amiable and well-beloved “ Misthress,” whose business it was to engage the market-woman. “ But do you read ?” “ Augh ! sorra bit ov me, yer honour,” quoth Mrs Miskel- lagh, with a groan ; “ lamin’ was’nt the fashin in my young days, or I ’spose I’d have got a lick ov it like the rest. But what ov that, misthress ?” “ Why, it would be better for all parties that you did read, as you will have so many notes to carry to different shops, and you cannot fail to be sadly puzzled.” “ Augh, lave out the notes, ma’am,” interrupted Moll, some- what impatiently, “ an’ give me yer commands by word ov mouth, an’ I’ll engage for it. I’ll go to the four quarthers ov the town, an’ do yer errands widout a single mistake : bekase why, if I wud happen to forget one or two, I have a way ov me own to make me remimber agin. So, for God's an’ me childher’s sakes, yer honour, give me the berth, an’ I’ll sarve ye faithful. Throth I’ll drag as much as an ass !” “ Well, I believe I shall try you, Molly,” said the lady, smil- ing kindly, the appeal of distress never lost upon her. “ Thurs- days and Saturdays are the days we send to town ; be you ready to attend me at ten o’clock next Thursday.” I was present at this engagement, and though I was very young at the time, never shall I forget the frightful grins with which Moll Miskellagh graced her exuberant thanks, nor her extra-extraordinary curtseys ! I have seen an ele- phant attempt such movements since, and I can declare that the quadruped was the more graceful of the two. Thg “ quadruped !” do I say ? I would not vow that our market- woman was not akin to a camel : she was as enduring as one, I am sure, and seldom have I seen her without her burthen behind. Well, on Thursday Moll Miskellagh was punctual ; she came with eyes, ears, and hands all prepared for “ town.” “I am sadly afraid — ” began the lady, pausing, and looking doubtfully at her messenger. “ Of what, yer honour?” inquired Molly briskly. “ That your memory cannot retain all the commissions I must entrust you with, and not only me, but every one in the house.” “ Thry me, madam — go on, jew’l ! Never fear me ! Give me a hundred ov them if you like, for I have a way ov me own to remimber.” “ Well, I wish to serve you at all events. Then you must first carry this post-bag to the post-office.” “ 8o I can, madam ; an’ I need sav nothin’ there, as the baer will tell what it wants ov itself. Go on, darlint !” “ Then you are to go to the baker’s in New-street, to the butcher’s in Market-street, to F-— — .’s for groceries, to Mrs R of Church-street with this note, and to Mrs L of Castle-hill with this other. And here is a list of articles you are to purchase for me at any shop you please. But what operation are you performing on your fingers ?” “ Augh, there’s my saicret !” quoth the market-woman triumphantly. “ \ r e see, misthress, I have three sorts ov thread, black, white, an’ grey ; an’ when I am not sure that I’ll think ov a thing parfectly, I tie one ov those threads on one ov me fingers ; an’ whin I am at a loss, I keep lookin’ at the thread till I remimber what I tied it on for, an’ so at last it comes into my mimory. Go on, misthress, if you plaise ; the day is gettin’late with us.” “ I have no more commissions, Molly ; but here comes your master with his.” “ Well, Mrs Miskellagh, have you got all your command- ments ?” inquired the “ ministhur,” smiling. “ Augh, be lament, yer rivirince ! the mistress has given me a power to do to-day.” ‘• Well, Moll, I will be lenient. I have only two or three trifling commissions to give you. First, you must go to the post-office, and then to B ’s for my boots ; neither parson nor priest can do without them, you know. Did you ever hear of the ‘priest in his boots,’ Moll ?” “ Throth 1 h ave, an’ danced it too, sur. Go on, yer rivir- ince : what next ?” “ Next you are to go to Mr W: — — , the attorney, with this note, and be sure to wait for his answer. I have no more commissions to-day. But now, Moll, take care of the young- sters ; and here they come, ready to overwhelm you !” * “ Ogh ! Lard help me !” ejaculated the poor market-woman, as a troop of laughing, romping children bounded into the room and surrounded her. Now, grandpapa, fora little innocent mischief, privately slid silver to each of the youngsters, to gratify their various THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 411 tastes in toys, purposely to test poor Moll’s system of mnemo- nics, The eldest boy was about to give his orders in a loud key, when Moll Miskellagh, with a proper reverence for her own sex, pushed him aside, and desired the “ young Miss’* to “ spaik up first.” “ A sixpenny doll, and two dishes for my baby-kitchen,” squeaked miss. “ Now, young masther, yours ?” “ A top, Moll — not a pegging-top, but a humming-top I want.” “ A hummin’-top !” cried the market-woman, impatiently; “ arrah, what the dhioul is a hummin’-top ?” “ Why, a humming-top is a-a-a-humming top,” quoth young master, somewhat posed. “ It makes a noise this way — hum, hum, hum — for all the world like a droning beetle.” Poor Moll had no acquaintance with any beetle but a sort of wooden instrument with which peasant maidens pound their coarse clothes when washing them at a stream or river ; and “ a dhronin’ beetle 1” she ejaculated, opening wide her small grey eyes, and looking from one to the other for an ex- planation ; while grandpapa, his face bathed with tears from excessive laughter, prepared to make matters clear, but in reality to make “ confusion worse confounded.” But the hero of the humming-top thought no one knew its peculiarities so well as himself, and he ended the dilemma by describing a humming-top to be “ a great deal larger than a common top, had a square hole in one side, and it was always painted red.” “ That’ll do,” said Moll Miskellagh, trjing to be satisfied. “ I’ll inquire about sitch a thing, any how. An’ now, little masthers, what’s your pleasures?” One chose “ a whip,” and the other “ cakes,” and then we thought poor Moll had her quantum, and that she might pro- ceed on her journey. But so thought not Moll. Confident of her retentive powers and strength of frame, she seemed de- termined to test herself to the utmost : and before she left the house, she descended to the lower regions to offer her services to the dignitaries of the kitchen. She was expected, it seemed, for cook had a lot of “ kitchen stuff” to be disposed of in town, the butler to send for a new razor, the housemaid to have a letter put into the post-office, directed to “ John Fitz-Garald, at Mr Crosbie’s, esquire, Dublin, Great Britain- street, Ireland,” and the kitchen-maid to send for a wire comb to support her redundant tresses. “ Any thing else, now ?” demanded the messenger, her foot on the threshold of the outer door. “ No ! no ! no !” exclaimed all the voices at once; “ away with ve, an’ God speed ye !” “ Amin !” muttered the market-wmman, striding up the steep stone steps, through the yard, and down the avenue, without “ casting a longing, lingering look behind.” I will not say how often we children teased our dear, good, angel- tempered grandmother wdth “ when will Moll Miskel- lagh return ?” Suffice it to sav, we thought of nothing but Moll, looked for no one but Moll ; and until we actually be- held Moll panting up the steep avenue with a prodigious load on her back, a huge basket on one arm, and the post-bag on the other, her two pockets or rather wallets filled to the brim, we never gave ourselves or others rest or peace! But the market-woman was triumphant ! Not one single commission did she forget, and every one was satisfied with her dealings and bargains except the butler, whose razor w r as base metal, instead of steel, or even iron ! But w'ho could blame Moll Miskellagh? Abler persons, and of the sex that used such scrapers, had been imposed on ere then. Witness — Be : ng well lathered from a dish or tub, Hodge now began with grinning face to scrub, Just like a hedger cutting furze ; ’Twas a vile razor ! Then the rest he tried — All were impostors ! “ Ah !*’ Hodge sighed, “ I wish my eighteen-pence within my purse !” Yes ! our market-woman was triumphant ! and for many vears she retained her situation, exhibiting the same strength of memory, fidelity, and honesty, to the last. But I must mention how nicely we nicked our grandpapa for his indiscreet attempt to puzzle our purveyor on her first essay. Ever after, we regularly called upon him for “means to test the market- woman’s memory,” and he good-humouredly always complied with the demand. Then, oh ! what an interesting object Moll became to us ! How we used to watch for the first glimpse of the huge white load resting on her back, and rising consider- ably above her head ! And how often in our eagerness we mistook white cows, ladies dressed in white, and white horses, for our dearly beloved Moll Miskellagh ! One evening we expected some particularly nice things by our market-woman. It was somewhere about Christmas, when our means swelled considerably by the addition of Christmas gifts. Many times during the evening we had seen things very like Moll in the distance, but which turned out most bitter disappointments. All four were stuck in a window that com- manded a full view of the road to E ; and never did the unfortunate lady of Bluebeard put more earnest eager inqui- ries to her sister Anne, “is there any body coming ?” than we did to each other on this momentous occasion. At length, oh, sight of joy ! we beheld a white object descending the opposite hill. “ She is coming ! she is coming !” screamed a quartetto of young voices, and down we flew to the avenue gate. Alas and alack ! it was not Moll, but a gentleman on a white horse ! We gazed on each other in breathless dis- may ; but one of the party, though sadly confounded, resolved to hear of our messenger if possible, since he could not see her. and, boldly advancing, demanded of the traveller “ if he were coming from E ?” The gentleman, for he was a gentleman, appeared some- what surprised at this address, but observing a group of rosy, merry-looking children, he reined in his horse, and smiling good-naturedly, replied that “ he was then returning from that town.” Emboldened by this condescension, the next query was, “ had he seen Moll Miskellagh?” The stranger laughed outright. “ Really, my dear,” said he, “ 1 have not the pleasure to know any one of that name. Pray who and what is Moll Miskellagh ?” “ Our market-woman, sir,” quoth our spokesman. “ Ha ! What sort of person is she, pray ? Perhaps I did see her.” We looked at one another doubtfully, the look plainly ex- pressing “ How shall we describe her ?” when at last the first speaker, with the air of an incipient judge of female beauty, took on himself to reply, “ that Moll Miskellagh was a very ugly woman indeed, that she had a pale yellow face, and a great wart near her nose ; that she wore a dark blue cloak, an old black bonnet, and that she carried a prodigious, oh ! a very big load on her back.” “ Never was description more graphic !” exclaimed the traveller, still laughing. “ I did indeed see your market- woman. I passed her about a quarter of a mile from this ; and if you have patience, my dears, you will soon see her. You expect some nice things by her, 1 am sure — Eh?” “ Oh dear, yes, sir” — and thereupon vre eagerly enumerated all that Moll was charged to purchase. The kind gentleman seemed to enjoy our delightful anticipations, asked us our names, and various other questions, and charitably kept us employed till poor over-laden Moll actually came in sight, and until he witnessed our clamorous welcomes, and saw us in possession of our treasures. Nay, he lingered to laugh at our expedient to facilitate Mrs Miskellagh’s tardy movements up the very steep avenue — one and all of the four juveniles get- ting behind her and pushing her up (much in the way the ve- ritable Captain Kearney’s fair but fat cousin was sent up the companion-ladder, as described in “ Peter Simple”), the boys shouting “ Yo heave ho !” as the good ship Old Moll got into port. Peace to the poor market-woman ! In some lone and hum- ble church-yard she now rests after her life of labour — in the memory of those who knew her, her only epitaph, tj “ Simple, faithful, honest, much-enduring Moll Miskellagh !” ANIMAL HEAT. Second Article. In the last paper on this subject a few instances were quoted, showing the great extremes of temperature which human beings and the lower animals are capable of enduring with- out injury, and in many cases without inconvenience. We propose in the present article to notice briefly the means by which it is believed living creatures are enabled to exhibit this power ; and although physiologists are not unanimous in their opinions on the subject, yet the views we shall endea- vour to explain are those which are held by the majority of scientific men, and which are best supported by experiment, by analogy, and by the authority of illustrious names. For the purpose of making the subject clear to those who may not be acquainted with the principles of physiology, “ the science of life,” as it has been happily termed, it may be 412 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. ■useful to explain the rationale of an operation continually being performed by all of us, and yet very little thought of or under- stood — we mean the process of breathing. It is found that the natural heat of animals depends on the perfection of the apparatus by which respiration is performed ; those animals which have a complicated respiratory organization having a high degree of bodily heat, while those which have more sim- ple and less delicately formed organs have a temperature very little raised above the medium in which they live.* It is ne- cessary, therefore, to have a clear idea of the process of re- spiration before we can understand the connection between it and animal heat. The object of respiration is to purify the blood and render it fit for the various offices it performs in the animal economy. When the blood leaves the heart to be distributed through the body, it is of a very bright red colour, but as it proceeds in its course it gradually loses this and assumes a purple hue ; and when, having completed its circulation through the body, it is returned to the heart again by the veins, it has entirely lost its former bright colour, and is then very dark, and, from the impurities it has acquired in its course, unfit for the pur- poses of life. To restore its former qualities it is necessary that it should be brought into contact with the atmosphere, and this takes place in the lungs. By the action of the mus- cles of the chest and abdomen, the interior of the chest is in- creased in size, an empty space is formed into which the air instantly descends by the mouth or nostrils, constituting what is termed the act of inspiration. At the same moment that the muscles of the chest increase its size and make room for the air to descend, at that very moment the heart contracts, or in popular language pulsates or beats, the effect of which is to force the dark-coloured (venous) blood from the portion of the heart in which it was contained, into the lungs. The lungs are composed almost entirely of an innumerable number of vesicles, or minute air-bladders, into which the air descends, as we have stated. These vesicles are covered with a net- work of extremely fine blood-vessels. When the heart pul- sates, it fills these vessels with the dark-coloured blood; and as the air is capable of passing through both the coats of the vesicle and of the blood-vessels, it of course comes into di rect contact with the blood, and a chemical change imme- diately takes place. This chemical change is necessary for life : the air is changed in its qualities, and the blood is also changed in its qualities. The air is changed by having one of its constituent elements (oxygen) abstracted from it ; and the blood is changed by its being impregnated with this gas, and relieved of another kind called carbonic acid. If from any circum- stance this process is interfered with, the individual dies of suffocation. A person may be suffocated for w-ant of air, or for w'ant of pure air. In the former case his death is caused in this manner : — The wind-pipe being closed, either by pres- sure, as in the case of criminals who die by hanging, or by something entering and obstructing it, it happens that al- though the muscles of the chest enlarge its internal area, as before mentioned, the air cannot descend into it. This does not, however, interfere with the action of the heart, which forces the dark blood into the minute blood-vessels of the chest, as usual ; the blood passes onward unchanged ; it re- ceives no oxygen, nor is its bright red colour restored. In this state it reaches the chamber of the heart, from whence it is to be distributed to the head and body ; a portion of it is forced up the vessels w'hich convey it to the brain, and the moment it reaches this organ, it produces violent convulsions, insensibility, and in a few moments death. A similar result takes place from breathing foul air. In this case, although air may descend into the air-vessels of the lungs, yet, as the grand element, the oxygen, is not present, no change is pro- * Animals are divided by naturalists into two classes, cold-blooded and warm-blooded ; the latter breathe by lungs, through which all the blood of the body is continually passed, and which has direct communication with the air. Cold-blooded creatures, such as fishes, breathe by means of gills, and the air, instead of coming into direct contact with their vital fluid, is ab- sorbed from the water. In the case of reptiles, which are cold-blooded, although the air may come into direct contact with the blood, as in the re- spiration of the frog, yet, by the peculiar structure of his lungs, only half the blood is sent to them to be purified ; and thus bis superiority over the fish in receiving air direct, is balanced by the circumstance that his blood is only half purified, in consequence of being only in part exposed to the ac ion of the air. The temperature of animals is found to have relation to their ac- tivity and vital energy. The follow ng list exhibits the temperature of the animals mentioned . — Birds, .. 108 degrees Fahrenheit. I Frog, .. 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Sheep, .. 100 degrees — | Snail, .. 38 degrees — Worms,.. 53 degrees -- j Fish, .. CO degrees — duceri in the blood ; it pursues the same course as that just pointed out, unchanged in its quality, and the same fatal re- sult is the inevitable consequence. The atmosphere in a state of purity is composed of two gases mixed together ; the one termed oxygen , the other nitrogen. After escaping from the lungs, the air is found to have undergone a remarkable change ; the oxygen has disap- peared, and its place is supplied with an equal volume of ano- ther gas called carbonic acid; while at the same time the air is altogether altered in many of its more important qualities ; it is no longer fit for the purposes of life, nor will a light burn in it. A person shut up in a confined place without a supply of fresh air, very soon expires : and a candle placed under a glass vessel filled with air that has been breathed, immediately goes out. In short, respiration and combustion are similar processes, and the same result is produced by both, namely, carbonic acid gas. This gas is formed by the mixture of oxygen with carbon (charcoal). It is absorbed vei-y readily by water, and is per- haps best known in the form of soda w-ater ; the aerated liquid sold under that name being nothing more than water strongly impregnated with carbonic acid gas. It is formed bj' a variety of processes — by breathing, by combustion, by fermentation, and otherwise. In every case, however, its formation is at- tended with heat. And now, having thus briefly introduced the subject, we may mention, that on this fact is founded the theory which attempts to explain the means by which the animal temperature is produced and maintained. It is founded on the fact, that whenever oxygen enters into combination with carbon, and forms carbonic acid gas, heat is always produced. The most usual manner in which this is effected is by com- bustion ; the substance which burns, such as wood, or tallow, or coal gas, for example, consists principally of carbon, and on being ignited, the oxygen of the atmosphere is made to combine with it, and carbonic acid is the result. Every body knows that heat is produced by this process ; but there are many instances in which the same effect may take place with- out being so readily understood. Heat and light are so con- stantly found united, that we can hardly conceive how so large a substance as the human body can be kept constantly warm w'ithout the aid of fire. It is, how r ever, effected by a chemical process identically the same as combustion, except that light is not produced. The lungs may be regarded as the furnace of the body, from which it derives its supply of heat ; the fuel is the carbon in the blood ; and the wind-pipe is a chimney serving a double purpose : first, to allow- of the passage of fresh air for the process, and then to convey away the vapour which is produced by it ; for the breath which issues from our lungs is just as much deteriorated in quality as that which escapes from the chimney of a large furnace after passing through the fire. This, then, is the process by which the animal heat is main- tained. The blood comes to the lungs loaded with carbon ; the air descends the wind-pipe, consisting of one- third oxygen ; the carbon of the blood and the oxygen of the air unite ; the blood is purified, and carbonic acid gas is produced. This is attended with heat ; the purified blood is capable of absorbing all this heat, and does so. In its progress through the body, as the blood again becomes impure, it gradually parts with the heaFso acquired, and on again being purified, it receives a fresh supply. Nothing can be more simple and beautiful than this process ; it is in accordance with every great operation in nature, which is always effected in the most direct and simple manner ; and the proofs that this is the manner in which na- ture effects her object in this instance, are numerous and unanswerable. There are two circumstances which at first sight may ap- pear to interfere with the explanation above given of this very beautiful phenomenon. First, the lungs are found to be but very little warmer than any other part of the body, al- though, as we have stated, the animal beat is produced in them : and, secondly, the quantity of carbon produced by re- spiration is very small compared with the genial heat produced by its conversion into carbonic acid. With regard to the heat of the lungs, a series of experiments instituted for the purpose of ascertaining how they w-ere kept at so moderate a degree of temperature, led to the discovery of an extraordinary change which takes place in the vital fluid after being purified, which satisfactorily explains the circumstance. The pure I blood is found to have a greater capacit y for heat than impure i blood ; it will absorb more; and in consequence, all the heat 413 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. produced by its purification is immediately absorbed by it, and carried away as last as it is generated, to be distributed over the body As. the blood becomes impure in its progress, it gradually loses its power of retaining the heat it had so imbibed ; and the heat therefore is distributed during the cir- culation of the blood, and every part receives a due supply. 1 his change in the power of the vital fluid to absorb heat, according as it is more or less pure, is a fact that was not es- tablished in the time of Palev, or he would have been able to add another proof of design to his unequalled argument. I he quantity of fuel (if we may use the expression) re- quired for generating the heat of the animal frame, is certainly lfess than we might anticipate. All animal and vegetable food contains a considerable portion of carbon, which of course, after being digested, becomes a part of the vital fluid, and in this way it is supplied for the process. It is well known also that in cold climates, where a greater quantity of animal fuel is required, the inhabitants are extremely fond of fat and oily matters, which contain more carbon than any other kind of food ; yet it would hardly be imagined that so small a quan- tity as the eighth part of an ounce of carbon per hour would be sufficient to maintain the heat of the body at an uniform temperature of 98 degrees. We are assured by the best che- mists, however, that the average quantity of carbonic acid generated by a person in health in twenty-four hours is about 40,000 cubic inches, and this contains only about 1 1 A- ounces of pure carbon. Rather less than half an ounce is therefore used per hour in preserving the body at its usual temperature. The limits of this article prevent our noticing other objec- tions which have been urged against the theory just described, but the facts it rests upon can only be overturned by opposing facts which have never yet been produced. It is certain that carbonic acid is produced during respiration, that its produc- tion is always attended with heat, that pure (arterial) blood is capable of absorbing a greater portion of heat than impure (venous) blood, and that the temperature of any part of the body is according to the supply of blood which it receives ; an inflamed part becoming very hot, and a limb in which the circulation has been stopped by a bandage becoming cold. These facts taken together sufficiently prove the truth of the conclusion that has been drawn from them, and which we have above very briefly illustrated. It remains to say a few words on the manner in which the body is relieved of its superabundant heat, and enabled to bear such high degrees of temperature as mentioned in the former paper. Franklin was the first who gave a rational explanation of the phenomenon. He observed that the eva- poration of a small quantity of a liquid from the surface of anv substance would reduce the temperature of a very large body. If we place a little ether on our hand, and allow it to evaporate, we shall soon become sensible how much cold may be produced in this way. Wine-coolers are formed on this principle ; they are made of porous earth, through which the water they contain oozes very gradually, and is evaporated by the heat of the air : this cools the liquid within, and of course the decanter of wine contained in it. Now, perspira- tion cools the body in a similar manner. If any person looks closely at the fleshy part of his hand, he will observe that the minute ridges which lie nearly parallel to each other are co- vered with an innumerable number of small pores, through which the perspiration may be seen issuing when the hand is w r arm. From microscropic observations it is calculated that the skin is perforated by 1000 of these pores, or holes, in every square inch, and that the whole surface of the body therefore contains not less than 2,304,000 pores ! When the body is heated to a certain degree, the fluid portions are all dire'cted to the skin, and escape gradually through these pores in the form of perspiration, and the cooling power thus pro- duced is capable of immediately removing the superabundant heat. The moment perspiration broke out on the bodies of the experimenters who ventured into the heated oven, all sense of pain was removed ; and in many fatal disorders to which man is subject, the first symptom of returning health is a si- milar occurrence. We may add, that a common cold is the effect of the perspiration being suddenly checked, and that the health of the body depends on the minute pores we have referx*ed to being kept open and in action. J. S. D. Society makes criminals, and then punishes them for their misdeeds. ORIGIN AND MEANINGS OF IRISH FAMILY NAMES. BY JOHN O DONOVAN. The Seventh and Concluding Article. At the present day very few of the original Irish names remain without being translated into or assimilated with those borne by the English. Of this I shall next furnish in- stances, the truth and correctness of which cannot be contro- verted. Among the O’ Conors of Connaught, the name Ca- thal, which is synonymous with the Welsh Cadell, and signifies warlike, was changed to Charles after the accession of Char- les I. to the throne ; for the Irish, who were attached to this monarch, went great lengths to assimilate several of their Christian names to Charles. Thus, while among the O’Co- nors of Connaught, Cathal was manufactured into Charles (with which, it will be readily granted, it has nothing in com- mon, either in meaning or sound), among the O’Conors of Faly in Leinster, Cahir, which signifies warrior, was metamorphosed into the same ; and at the same time the Mac Carthys of Desmond substituted it for their Cormac, and the O ’Hagans and other northern families for their Turlogh. This was paying their court to the king with a vengeance ! In the families of Mac Carthy, O’Sullivan and O’Driscol, Finghin [Fineen], a name very general among them, and which signifies the fair offspring, has been anglicised to Flo- rence. Among the same southern families the name Saer- brethach, which prevails among the Mac Carthys in par- ticular, and which signifies the noble judge, is translated Justin. In the family of O’Donovan, as the writer has had every opportunity of knowing, the name Murrogh has been metamorphosed to Morgan; Dermod, to Jeremiah; Teige, to Timothy ; Conor or Concovar, to Cornelius ; Donogli, to Denis ; and Donnell, to Daniel. In the family of O’Brien, the hereditary name of Turlogh has been changed to Terence ; Mahon, to Matthew ; Murtogh or Moriertagh, to Mortimer (but this very lately) ; and Lachtna and Laoiseach, to Lu- cius. Among the O’Gradys the name Aneslis is rendered Stanislaus and Standish. In the families of O’Donnell, O’Kane, and others, in the province of Ulster, Manus, a name borrowed by those families from the Danes, is now often ren- dered Manasses. In the families of Mac Mahon and Mac Kenna, in Ulster, the name Ardgal or Ardal, signifying of high prow- ess or valour, is always anglicised Arnold. In the family of O’Madden of Shilanamchy, in the south-east of the county of Galway, the hereditary name of Anmcha, which is translated Animosus by Colgan, is now always rendered Ambrose, to which, it will be readily granted, it does not bear the slightest analogy. Among the families of Doyle, Cavanagh, and others, in the province of Leinster, the name Maidoc, or Mogue, which they adopted from St Maidoc, or Aidan, the patron saint of the diocese of Femes, is now always rendered Moses among the Roman Catholics, and Aidan among the Protes- tants ! (any thing to make a difference.) Among the O’Neills in the province of Ulster, the name Felim, or Felimy, explained as meaning the ever good, is now made Felix ; Con, signifying strength, is made Constantine; and Ferdoragh, meaning dark-visaged man, is rendered Ferdinand. Among the O’Conors of Connaught, the name Ruaidhri, or Rory, is anglicised Roderic, but among most other families it is ren- dered Roger. In the same family, Tomaltach is rendered Thomas ; Aodh, Hugh ; and Eoghan, Owen. In the families of Mac Donnell and others in Scotland, and in the north of Ireland, the name Aengus, or Angus, is always rendered Tineas. Among the O’Hanlys of Slieve Bawn, in the east of the county of Roscommon, the name Berach, which they have adopted from their patron saint, and which is translated by Colgan, directe ad scopum collimans, is now always and cor- rectly enough rendered Barry. Throughout Ireland the old name of Brian is now rendered Bernard, and vulgarized to Barney, which is more properly an abbreviation of Barnaby than of Bernard. Among the O’Haras and O’Garas in the county of Sligo, the name Kian, which they have adopted from their great ancestor Kian, the son ofOholl01um,king of Mun- ster, is now rendered Kean ; and I observe that the chief O’Hara has suffered himself to be called Charles King O’Hara in a book lately dedicated to him ! In the family of Maguire, Cuconnaught is rendered Constantine, while in other families Cosnavy undergoes precisely the same change. In the family of O’Kane, the name Cooey, written Cu-maighe in the origi- nal language, and signifying “ dog of the plain,” is now ren- dered Quintin. In the family of O’Dowd, the ancient name 414 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. of Dathi, which they have adopted from their great ancestor of that name, who was the last Pagan king of Ireland, is now rendered David, a name with which it is supposed to be syno- nymous. In the north and west of Ireland the names Duval- tach, Duv-da-lethe, and Duvdara, are all anglicised Dudley. In the family of Mac Sweeny, the very ancient name of Here- mon is anglicised Irwin, but it is now almost obsolete as a. Chris- tian name. In the families of O’Hanlon, O’Haran, and O’Heany, in the province of Ulster, the name Eochy, signifying horse- man, and which was latinized Eochodius, Achaius, Euthichius, and Equitius, is anglicised Auhy and Atty ; but this name is also almost obsolete, the writer having never met more than one person who bore the name, in his travels through Ireland. Among the O’Mulconrys, now Conrys, the names Flann, Fi- thil, and Flaithri, have been anglicised Florence. In the fa- mily of O’Daly, the name Baothghalach, which was formerly latinized Boethius, is now always rendered Bowes ; and in that of O’Clery, the name Lughaidh is anglicised Lewy and Lewis. Among the ( >’Reillys of Cavan, the hereditary name of Mael- mora, which signifies majestic chief, is now invariably rendered Myles, and among the O’ Kellys of Hy-VJ any. the name Fachtna is rendered Festus. In every part of Ireland, Maelseachlainn, or Melaghlin, which signifies servant of St Secundinus, has been changed to Malachy, to which it bears no analogy whatever, excepting some fancied resemblance in sound. In every part of Ireland the name of Gilla-patrick has been changed to Patrick ; and, by the way, it is curious to observe, that common as the name Patrick has now become in Ireland, especially among the lower classes, it was never in use among the an- cient Irish, for they never called their children by the name itself of the Irish apostle, deeming it more humble and more auspicious to call them his servants ; and hence we find the ancient Irish calling their children, not Patrick, but Maelpa- trick, or Gillapatrick ; and these names they latinized Patri- cianus, not Patricius. The name of Patrick is now looked upon as the most vulgar in use among the Irish, which is a very strange and almost unaccountable prejudice, for Patri- cius was one of the most honourable names in all antiquity, as the reader will see if he will take the trouble to read the work on the antiquity of British Churches, by Ussher, pp. 841-1046, in which that learned primate gives the history and derivation of the name. The names of women have been also very much metamor- phosed, and many of the most curious of them entirely re- jected. 1 have now before me a list of the names of women, drawn up from the authentic Irish annals, and from the History of Remarkable Women — a curious tract in the Book of Lecan, fol. 193 ; but as the limits allotted to me in this Journal will not allow me to furnish such a list, I must rest satisfied with giving such names as are still retained, with a selection from the most curious of those which have been rejected, adding their meanings as far as they are cer- tain. The following are the ancient Irish names of women still retained, as the writer has determined by examining the provinces of Ulster, Connaught, Leinster, and the greater part of Munster : — 1. Aine, now Hannah. 2. Briyhid, now anglicised Bridget, from its resemblance to the name of the celebrated Swedish virgin of that name. Brighid is a woman’s name of pagan origin in Ireland; it has been explained fiery dart by the Irish glossographers, espe- cially by Cormac, Archbishop of Cashel, who distinctly states in his glossary that it was the name of the Muse who was believed to preside over poetry in pagan times in Ireland. Briyhid is now very common in Ireland as the name of a wo- man, in consequence of its being that of the most celebrated of the female saints of Ireland — the patroness of Kildare — who is well known all over Europe as the great patroness of Ireland. 3. Finola, though a beautiful name, has nearly become ob- solete since the beginning of the eighteenth century, but some few still retain it in the abbreviated form of Nuala. 4. Graine, now Grace. 5. Lassarina, also, though in use not long since, has lat- terly became obsolete. 6. Meadhbh, pronounced Meave. This is still preserved and anglicised Maud, Mab, and Mabby ; and the writer is ac- quainted with several old women of the Milesian race who still retain it. This was the name of a celebrated queen of Connaught, who flourished in the first century, and who is now known in the legends of the mountainous districts of Ire- land as the queen of the fairies. From this country her spi- rit found way into Scotland, and thence into the north of England, where Shakspeare met with her, but in rather too diminutive a form for the shade of the Irish heroine. 7. Mor, pronounced More. The writer believes that there are a few women of this name still living in Ireland ; but he is confident that there are but very few, though it was the name of many honourable ladies in the reign of Queen Eliza- beth, and for a century later. In our own times, however, it has been almost invariably anglicised Mary, with which it is neither synonymous nor cognate, 8. Sadhbh, pronounced Soyv, is the name of several women of the old Irish race, and who are known to the writer. It is now almost invariably anglicised Sally, to which it bears no analogy. 9. Soicha is still the name of several women in Ireland, especially in the province of Ulster ; but the rising genera- tion are beginning to object to it as being too Irish, and are determined on having it changed to Sarah or Sally. The writer is acquainted with families in whom this name is here- ditary, and among whom the mother is always called Sor- cha, and the daughter Sally ; and though the latter knows that her own and her mother’s name are the same, still would she blush to hear her own name pronounced Sorcha. The name Sorcha signifies clear, bright, and might be well rendered Lucy or Lucinda ; but we should like to see it pre- served in its primitive form, which is not to be despised either for its sound or signification. 10. Una. This name is still in constant use among the women of Ireland, but when speaking English, they invariably anglicise it to Winifred or Winny. The writer is not aware that any other name which was in use in the ancient Irish times is now retained, except the foregoing. The names Catherine, Evlin, Eleanor, Isabella, Mary, Ho- nora, Sheela (Celia), and many others now in use, and sup- posed to be of Irish origin, do not occur in the Account of Remarkable Women above referred to, and there is no reason to believe that they were ever in use in ancient Ireland. The following is a list of curious names of women which occur in the authentic annals and in the History of Remark- able Women. It is highly probable that a few of them are of Danish origin : — 1. Aevin, Le.Amoena; 2, Africa ; 3, Albi and Albin ; 4, Allin ; 5, Alma, all good ; 6, Alphin; 7, Athracta. This name has been restored by the Mac Dermott of Coolavin. 8, Barduv, blackhaired; 9, Bebail, woman of prosperity ; 10, Bebin, me- lodious woman ; 11, Blanaid, Florinda, from blath a blossom ; 12, Brigh, vigour ; 13, Cacht, bondmaid ; 14, Cailleach-De, i. e. female servant of God ; 15, Cailleach- Kevin, the female servant of St Kevin ; 16, Cailleach- Aengus, the female servant of St Aengus ; 17, Caintigern, fair lady ; 18, Keara, the ruddy; 19, Cochrand ; 20, Covtla, i. e. Victoria; 21, Coca; 22, Corcar, the ruddy ; 23, Crea ; 24, Devnet ; 25, Derval, the true re- quest ; 26, Derforgal, the true pledge, latinized Dervorgilla ; 27, Dianiv and Diniv ; 28, Dechter ; 29, Derdre, alarm ; 30, Dorenn, the sullen; 31, Duv-Covfla, victoria nigra; 32, Du- vessa, nigra nutrix ; 33, Dunsa, the brown- haired ; 34, Dun- lah, lady of the fort ; 35, Edwina; 36, Eithne ; 37, Elbrigh ;. 38, Emeria ; 39, Eri ; 40, Essa, nutrix ; 41, Euginia, female of Eogan ; 42, Fedilmi, the ever-good ; 43, Finbil, the white blossom; 44, Findelv, fair countenance ; 45, Finnavor, of the fair eye-lids ; 46, Finni, the comely ; 47, Finscoh, the fair flower ; 48, Findah, the fair colour ; 49, Flanna, the ruddy ; 50, Gelges, swan-white ; 5I,Gemlorg, gem-like; 52, Gnahat ; 53, Gobnet, female of Gobban ; Gormlah, the blue lady ; 55, Ida, the just; 56, Lann ; 57, Lasser, aflame; 58, Lasserina, flame or blush of the wine; 59, Lerthan ; 60, Lithan ; 61, Luanmasi, beautiful as the moon ; 62, Ligach, pearly, or like a precious stone ; 63, Maelmaiden, servant of the morning ; 64, Mongfin, of the fair hair ; 65, Moncha, the same as Moni- ca ; 66, Murgel, the fair one of the sea; 67, Murrin, crini- ta, or of the long hair ; 68, Neave, effulgence ; 69, Orlah, or Orflah, the golden lady ; 70, Ranalt, female of Ran- dal ; 71, Ronat, female of Ronan ; 72, Saraid, the excellent ; quere, the same as Sarah? 73, Selvlah, lady of possessions; 74, Shimah, the good tranquillity ; 75, Sodelva, of the goodly aspect; 76, So-Domina, the good lady ; 77, Temar, the con- spicuous ; 78, Talilah, quere Dalilah ? 79, Tindi, the tender ; 80, Tressi, strength ; 81, Tualah, the noble lady ; 82, Uailsi, the proud ; 83, Uaisli, the gentle ; 84, Uallach, the proud ; 85, Uchdelva, of the fair breast ; 86, LJnchi, the contentious. We have now seen the process by which the Irish people THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. 415 have assimilated their names and surnames to those of' the English, and the reasons which have led them to do so. I would not so much regret their having done so, if I were not aware that some of the families who have thus an- glicised their names wish to conceal their Irish origin, as if they were ashamed of their ancestors and country, and that another result of these changes must soon be, that statistical writers will be apt to infer from the small number of ancient Irish surnames retained in Ireland, that all the old Irish race were supplanted by the English. I shall close these notices of the surnames of the Irish people by a remark which I should wish to be universally believed, namely — That no ancient Irish surname is perfect unless it has either O or Mac prefixed, excepting in those instances where the soubriquet or cognomen of the ancestor is used as the sur- name, as Cavanagh, &c., and, accordingly, that nine-tenths of the surnames at present borne by the Irish people are in- correct, as being mere mutilations of their original forms. “ Per Mac atque O, tu veros cognoscis Hibernos His duobus demptis, nullus Hibernus adest ; By Mac and O You'll surely know True Irishmen alway ; But if they lack Both O and Mac, No Irishmen are they.” The truth of this well-known distich may now be questioned, though it was correct a few centuries since. It is but natural to suppose that a conquered people should look upon themselves as inferior to their conquerors ; and this rage for adopting English surnames which prevails at pre- sent, is, in the opinion of the writer, a clear proof of the pre- valence of this feeling, that the Irish consider themselves inferior to the English. Spenser, while he advises that the Irish be compelled to reject their O’s and Macs, and to adopt English surnames, dissuades his own countrymen from adopt- ing Irish ones, as some of them had done, in the following words, which the writer, being as Irish as Spenser was Eng- lish, now adopts as his own : — “ Is it possible that any should so farre growe out of frame, that they should in so short space, quite forget their countrev and their own names ! that is almost dangerous lethargie, much worse than that of Messala Corvinus, who being a most learned man, thorough sickness forgat his own name.” — State of Ireland, Dub. Ed., p. 107. And again : — “ Could they ever conceive any such dislike of their own natural countreys as that they would be ashamed of their name , and byte at the dugge from which they sucked life ?” — Ibid, p. 108. THE ICHNEUMON. Of this animal many very absurd stories have been told, amongst which not the least ridiculous is, that it watches its opportunity when the huge crocodile of the Nile slumbers upon the river bank, and, artfully inducing the monster to yawn by tickling his nostril with its tail, rushes fearlessly and with won- drous agility between the terrible jaws and their formidable rows of teeth, and, forcing its daring way down its throat, re- tains possession of its strange citadel until it has destroyed its unwieldy victim, when it gnaw's its way out, and leaves the carcaseto wither in the sun. Other travellers have pretended to contradict the above story, but their mode of doing so in- volves a piece of absurdity no less glaring than the equally un- founded legend they assume to themselves the merit of correct- ing ; for by their account the Ichneumon does not enter the throat of the crocodile with a hostile intent at all, neither does it use its tail to cause that creature to open its jaws, for of that is there no need, seeing that the crocodile opens them of his own will, and likewise with pleasure allows the Ichneumon to enter for the purpose of clearing his throat of swarms of tormenting insects w hich lodge therein, and hy their stinging produce intolerable pain. I can however assure my readers that this subject has been, since the above conflicting state- ments reached us, effectually cleared up ; and you may confi- dently rely upon it that the Ichneumon no more enters the crocodile’s mouth whether as a friend or as an enemy, whether to destroy him or destroy his tormentors the flies, than that he attacks him w-hile awake. The Ichneumon is shaped somewhat like a ferret, but is ra- ther more slender in its form, and its head is likewise longer and narrower ; it is also an animal of far greater activity and lightness of movement, being able to clear at one spring a distance of a couple of yards. It is further a most expert climber, and it will be a very high wall indeed that will confine it within an enclosure. The colour of the Ichneumon is a brownish grey, or a light brown barred with white ; the ani- mal indeed appears speckled with ia dirty white, but it is so only in appearance, the fact being, that each several hair has brown and white rings upon it. Upon the back, sides, and tail, these rings are small, and the hair longer than upon the head and extremities of its limbs ; hence these latter parts appear of a darker hue. The hair upon the feet is very short and thin, and they are nearly as naked as those of the common rat. The tail of the Ichneumon is very long, usually one-sixth longer than its body, and upon its extremity is a tuft of very- long black hair. The hair of this creature is drier, thicker, and weaker, than in any other member of the same genus. The length of a full-growm Ichneumon, from the tip of the nose to the end of the tail, is about two feet six inches, of w'hich the tail occupies about sixteen inches, and the body fourteen. The length of the head is about three inches, mea- suring from the back of the ears to the point of the muzzle. The height of the Ichneumon at the most elevated part of the back is about six inches ; but this of course varies accord- ing to the animal’s position at the time of measurement. The habits of the Ichneumon present a sort of admixture of those of the ferret and the cat ; like the former, it delights in blood, and where it has once fastened itself, maintains a te- nacious hold; but like the latter, and unlike the former, it has but little stomach for braving danger, and will rather go without its dinner than run the chance of a battle in obtaining it. He is strictly a nocturnal animal, and usually remains in his co- vert until the shades of evening begin to fall around, when he sallies forth on his career of havoc and blood. Were it not necessary for the satisfying of his appetite, I doubt whether he would leave his haunt at all, so timid is he : he steals along the ground with light and cautious steps, his motions resem- bling the gliding of the snake rather than the progressive steps of the quadruped. His sharp, vigilant, sparkling black eyes are anxiously reconnoitring every side of him, and carefully examining the character and bearings of every object which meets his view ; stealthil y he creeps along until he comes upon the spot where the crocodile has hidden her eggs in the sand ; nimbly and cleverly he pounces upon them, guided to their place of concealment by his exquisite sense of smell, and, biting a hole in their side, banquets on their contents. It is thus that the Ichneumon thins the numbers of that formida- ble reptile the crocodile, not by directing its attacks against that creature himself, but by insidiously searching after and destroying his embryo offspring. The Ichneumon likewise kills and devours with extreme greediness such small snakes and lizards as are common in its native country, many of which are highly dangerous, and all annoying enough to make their destruction desirable, to which the Ichneumon appears guided by a powerful instinct. It is sometimes bitten in these encounters, when it is said immediately to search for and de- vour the root of a certain plant, said to be an antidote against the bite of the most venomous reptile. It is alleged that this little animal will frequently kill even the Cobra di Capello. Lucan in his Pharsalia describes the manner in which it con- trives to destroy the Asp, one of the most poisonous ser- pents in existence. The passage I refer to has been trans- lated thus : — Thus oft the Ichneumon on the banks of Nile Invades the deadly Aspic by a wile ; While artfully his slender tail is play'd. The serpent darts upon the dancing shade. Then turning on the foe with swift surprise, Full on the throat the nimble seizer flies. The gasping snake expires beneath the wound, His gushing jaws with poisonous floods abound. And shed the fruitless mischief on the ground. In consequence of the vigilance and success of this little animal in destroying these noxious creatures, he was held in great veneration by the Egyptians and Hindoos ; but by the former he w r as actually regarded as a disguised divinity, clothed in that form for the purpose of putting his benevolent purposes into practice with the greater readiness ; and we accordingly find him occupying a prominent position in the sacred symbols of that people, who were indeed commonlv in the habit of deifying whatever afforded them peculiar benefit of any kind, as they likewise adored the river Nile, on account of the fertilizing effect produced by its periodical inundations. The Ichneumon is said, if taken young, to be capable of perfect domestication, to form a strong attachment to the person who reared him, as well as to the house he inhabits ; 416 THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. whence from his zeal and activity in the destruction of rats and mice, he forms a valuable substitute for the cat, which indeed he is in Egypt used instead of. He is also said to be very do- mestic in his habits, quite a tarry-at-home kind of gentleman, and, unlike puss, never on any account given to ramble ; when lost, he is said to seek his patron with indefatigable zeal until he finds him, and to express his joy at rejoining him by the most tender and affectionate caresses. When he eats, however, nature asserts her prerogative, and the natural disposition of the animal resumes its place, whence it had for a time been driven by artificial means. Indeed it requires but little to awaken in this creature all its natural fierceness and love of slaughter, notwithstanding that so much has been said and written of its amiability and docility. Mr D’Obsonville, in his “Essay on the Nature of Animals,” gives an account of a domesticated individual which he had in his possession, which places its disposition in a cor- rect point of view. He got the animal very young, and fed it upon milk, and as it grew older, upon baked meat, mixed with rice. He states that it soon became even tamer than a cat, would come to his call, and if at liberty, follow him everywhere, even in his walks. One day Mr D’Obsonville brought him a small living water-serpent, curious to ascertain how far his instinct would carry him against a creature with which he had been hitherto totally unacquainted. “ His emotion,” says Mr D’Obsonville, “ seemed at first to be that of astonishment mixed with anger, for his hair became erect ; but in an instant after, he slipped behind the reptile, and with remarkable swiftness and agility leaped upon its head, seized it, and crushed it be- tween his teeth. This essay and new aliment seemed to have awakened in him his innate and destructive voracity, which till then had given way to the gentleness he had acquired from his education. I had about my house several curious kinds of fowls, among which he had been brought up, and which till then he had suffered to go and come unmolested and unregarded ; but a few days after, when he found himself alone, he strangled them every one, ate a little, and, as it ap- peared, drank the blood of two.” I have already stated that the Ichneumon is said to eat of the leaves or root of a certain plant in the event of his being bitten by a poisonous serpent. I revert to the circumstance, because it is an extraordinary one, inasmuch as the Indians follow the example of the animal, and use the same plant successfully as an antidote when they themselves happen to get a bite, and call the plant after the animal. This is curious, as being pa- rallel with the case of the Guacomithy or Serpent Hawk of South America, mentioned in one of my papers on Serpent Charming ; nor is it upon light authority that I relate this fact of the Ichneumon. Mr Percival, that close and scrupulous observer, saw the experiment tried of presenting a snake to the animal in a closed room, when, instead of attacking, it did all in its power to avoid it. On the snake, however, being car- ried out of the house, and laid near its antagonist in a plan- tation, he immediately darted at and soon destroyed it. The Ichneumon then retired to a wood, and ate a portion of that plant which is said to be an antidote to the serpent’s bite, and no harm came to him, although he had received a bite in the encounter. I for my part can speak but little for the gentleness of the Ichneumon, or the facility with which it may be tamed, having one in my own possession, which has now for a considerable period baffled all my endeavours to domesticate it, and will not even now suffer me to approach the case in which it is kept, without growling fiercely at me, and spitting in the manner of an enraged cat, springing also against the bars of its prison, and using its utmost endeavours to fly in my face. I have tried starvation, high feeding, kindness, chastisement, hard usage, and tenderness, all by turns, and as vet unsuccessfully. I was never so baffled in taming an animal before, though the polecat, weasel, fox, and badger, have with the otter succes- sively owned my mastery, and acknowledged me as their sub- jugator. I have not even handled this animal yet, unless with a thick glove upon my hand, and even with that protection I have received several severe bites. I saw one, however, in the Royal Zoological Gardens some time ago, which was very tame, and would suffer itself to be caressed even by strangers ; so 1 shall persevere ; and should I eventually succeed in taming the little savage, depend upon it the reader shall be advertised of the fact, and of all the circumstances attendant thereupon Until lately the Ichneumon had not a well-determined name in the methodical catalogues. Naturalists have mostly de- scribed l 1, rather by character than figure, figures were i indeed given by Gesner, Aldrovandi, and others, but not suffi- ciently distinct to guard against mistake. Even liuffcn mis- took the Mangouste for it, to which he has applied all the de- scriptions properly belonging to the Ichneumon. The name “ Ichneumon” is Greek, and is indicative of the habits of the animal, and was first applied to it by Herodotus. I trust that the above sketch may serve to point out the animal and its habits to the reader with sufficient distinctness. H. D. II. Modern Education.— “ Earning— laming — laming,” is the cry of father an’ mother — if my boy had the “ laming,” what a janius he’d be ! In coorse, ye old fools, your boucJial would be a swan among the goslins ; but it isn’t “ laming” half the world want : instead of “ laming,” by which they mean cobwebs picked out of dead men’s brains, if they would get some discipline. Discipline— discipline — discipline, that’s the only education I ever saw that brought a boy to any good. What’s the use of battering a man’s brains full of Greek and Latin pothooks, that he forgets befoi’e he doffs his last round jacket, to put on his first long-tailed blue, if ye don’t teach him the old Spartan virtue of obedience, hard living, early rising, and them sort of classics ? Where’s the use of in- structing him in hexameters and pentameters, if you leave him ignorant of the value of a penny piece ? What height of bletherin’ stupidity it is to be fillin’ a boy’s brains with the wisdom of the ancients, and then turn him out like an omadhaun to pick up his victuals among the moderns ! — Blackwood’ s Magazine. TO OUR READERS. It becomes our duty to acquaint our readers that the present Number of the Irish Penny Journal, which will complete a volume, will also be the last presented to them, at least by its original projectors and present pro- prietors. Our readers will hardly deem it necessary that we should trouble them with any detail of the circumstances which have led to this determi- nation , it will be sufficient to state, that while the success of the work has in some respects even exceeded the anticipations of its proprietors, it has disappointed them in others. The sale of the Journal, although great and steadily progressing in those distant localities where any increase of sale was .east to be expected, has been either stationary or diminishing in those por- tions of the kingdom for whose use and advantage it was especially intended, and to which, therefore, the proprietors naturally looked for the greatest degree of encouragement. However humbling it may be to the national feeling of most of our Irish readers, the fact must be acknowledged, that the sale of the Journal in London alone has exceeded that in the four pro- vinces of Ireland, not including Dublin ; and that in other cities at the other side of the Channel it has been nearly equal to half the Irish provin- cial sale. And it may be added that in London, as well as in most other cities in the sister island, the sale has to the present moment continued to increase, while in all parts of Ireland, with the exception of the metropolis, it has gradually declined. In short, nearly two-thirds of the amount of sales of the Irish Penny Journal have been effected out of Ireland. What- ever may be the causes of this result, it is sufficient for the proprietors to have ascertained, that the object which they had originally in view in start- ing this little publication, have not been attained to the extent which they had anticipated, and that, under such circumstances, it would be visionary in them further to indulge hopes which there is so little probability of ever being realised. The proprietors have only therefore to take a respectful leave of their numerous readers and supporters, and return their grateful acknowledg- ments to all who have taken an interest in their publication. To the Press of the British Empire such an expression of gratitude is espe- cially due, for from those influential organs of public opinion it has received during its progress the most cheering encouragement, and this, too, wholly unmingled with even a portion of censure or dispraise. That such commen- dations have not been altogether undeserved, and that the promises made in the original prospectus have not been left unfulfilled, the proprietors fondly anticipate will be the permanent opinion of the public ; and they indulge, moreover, the pleasing conviction, that the volume now brought to a termination will live in the literature of Ireland as one almost ex- clusively Irish, and possessing what may be considered as no trifling distinc- tion for such a work — a spirit throughout its pages wholly national, and un- tinctured by the slightest admixture of prejudices either political or sec- tarian. Printed and published every Saturday by Gunn and Cameron, at the Office of the General Advertiser, No. 6, Church Lane, College Green, Dublin. — Agents: — It. Groombridge, Panyer Alley, Paternoster How, London; Simms and Dinham, Exchange Street, Manchester; C. Davies, North John Street, Liverpool; John Menzies, Prince's Street, Edinburgh; i _ and David Koueutson. Trongate, Glasgow. INDEX Page Absence of Mind 16 Account of an lrLh Dare-Devil — — 358 A cheerful Heart 210 African Administration of Justice 272 Agricultural Education for the Working Classes — — 31 1 Air we breathe — — 15 Air, Good and Bad 30 Alexander and the Tree (poem) 28 Ambitious Horse and accommodating Rider 23 America Letter, the — 179 America, Red Men of (with an engraving) 41, 51 American Nobleman, an — 143 Amusements — Music — 40 Ancient Irish Literature — The Woman of Three Cows (poem) — G9 Elegy on the Tironian and Tirconnellian Princes buried at Rome 123 Bodach an Chota-Lachtna, or the Clown with the Grey Coat, a Fenian Tale 130 Lamentation of Mac Liag for Kincora (poem) 220 The County of Mayo (poem) 352 Ancient Music — — — 291 Ancient Music of Ireland — — 8 Ancient Seal of the Island of St Colmoc (with an engraving) — — — 245 Anecdote of the late Mr Bradbury the Clown 152 Anecdotes of Macklin, the Irish Comedian 30 Animal Heat — — 398,411 Animal Taming 196, 207 Ansaldo and the Cats — — 96 Answer to the Enigma in No 17 256 Antiquity of Railways and Gas — 271 Antrim Castle, description of (with an en- graving) — ~ — ~ 329 Antrim, town of, described (with an engra- ving) . — - — - 89 Apologues and Fables — The Discontented Stones 14 The Three Rings — , - — 28 Story of the Old Wolf - — 76 The Eagle and the Dove (poem) — .144 Tl'.e Old Man and the Youths (poem) 206 The Remorse of a Night 213 Appreciation — — — ~ 296 Ardfinnan Castle, county of Tipperary, de- scribed (with an engraving) 345 Aristocratic Travelling — 384 Ass, musical merits of the — — 160 Atmospheric resistance on Railways 264 Aughnanure, Castle of, county of Galway, described (with an engraving — 1 E Badger, the common — - 373 Bald Barrys, the, or the Blessed Thorn of Kildinan — 334 Barbarity of the Law in Ireland a century ago 5 Bargain, the, a Sketch 133 Barny O’ Grady — — - — - — 350 Barometz, or Tartarian Lamb — . 316 Barrack Bridge and the Military Gate, Dub- lin, description of (with an engraving) — Barret, Dr, Anecdote of Beautiful, the, in Nature and Art Benevolence of Character Bernard Cavanagh, extraordinary case of Bit of Philosophy Black Boys in America and Ireland, compara- tive value of Blind Boy, the (poem) Blowing Men Blushing Bob Pentland, or the Guager outwitted Bocoough Ruadh, the ■- — ~ Bodach an Chota-Lachtna, or the Clown with the grey coat, a Fenian tale Boulders — 262, 300 Boyhood and Manhood (poem) ——332 Bradbury the Clown, Anecdote of the late 152 Bustles, a short Chapter on 140 Cahir Castle, county of Tipperary, description of (with an engraving) — 257 Caislean-na-Circe, or the Hen’s Castle, de- scribed (with an engraving) — ^25 Gameo-Cutting — —— 352 Carleton, William, contributions by, 52, 69, 116. 125, 164, 1 88, 202, 209, 269, 313, 338, 378, 386, 393 265 8 109 10 56 108 181 148 184 248 125 236 130 Carolan the Irish Harper, \necdotes of, 24, Cashel, Rock of, described (with an engrav- ing) — ~ — - Castlecor, a Reverie (poem) — Castle of Aughentain, a Legend (Story by Tom Grassiey, the Shanahus) — Cathal, the Ited-banded O’Conor, death of Cats, anecdotes of — — - — - Caulfield Castle, county of Tyrone, described (with an engraving) — — Cause and Effect — — — — ~ Chase, Poem of the — — 93, 102, Cherub, definition of — — China, current coin of — Childhood • — Children of the poor Churchyards Circassian women Clontarf Castle, county of Dublin, description of (with an engraving) Cloth, manufacture of. Clown \yth the Grey Coat, a tale Coghlan, Thomas, sketch of — - Colgan, Dr, story of Comfortable circumstances favour foresight— Comparative value of black boys in America and Ireland — Connaught, a reminiscence of Consecrated Irish bells Country Dancing-Master, the Critics , — Cruelty to animals Curious coincidences Curran, tomb of at Glasnevin Curran, anecdotes of Curs, Chapter on, by a Man Cutting Old Friends age 232 17 392 386 48 120 217 229 114 264 55 168 292 40 312 81 134 130 147 259 296 181 85 80 69 256 303 255 409 280 90 83 D Dalkev, Sound and Island of. county Dublin, described (with an engraving) ~~ 161 Dalkey, ancient festivities at — 163 Discontented Stones, the — . 14 Dancing — 43 Dandy Keho’s Christening — — — 313 Dangan Castle, county of Meath, described (with an engraving) — — — — 361 Dead alive — — 100 Deaf and Dumb, a Mountain Sketch 94 Decayed Old Gentleman, the — 292 Deceivers — 256 Destitute Poor of Ireland, (with an engraved bird’s-eye view of a workhouse to accom- modate 800 persons) — - 273 Dew, formation of 183 Disagreeable people — - 200 Discretion .. - — . — - 116 Divorced, the, translation from the Moldavian (poem) 84 Domestic Man — 328 Donaghmore, county of Meath, Church and Round Tower of, described (with an en- graving) 169 Donegal Castle, address to the ruins of 618 Donegal, Castle of, described (with an engra- ving) 185 Donnybrook— — 61 Doyle, Dr. monument to the memory of, by Hogan, with an engraving, and memoir of the sculptor — „ 193 Drimnagh Castle, county of Dublin, described (with an engraving) 337 Drunkards, the, a true story 170 Dungarbry Castle, county of Leitrim, de- scribed (with an engraving) 241 Dutch, domestic discipline of the 376 E Eagle and the Dove, a fable 144 Early rising 16 Editorial Squabbles — - 307 Education of Youth 291 Eels — — 48 Egypt and Syria 103 Electrotype, the — — — 157 Elegy on the Tironian and Tirconnellian Princes buried at Rome 123 Elegiac Stanzas — . 407 Elevation of the Labouring Classes — 182 Elevation of the mind— — —.152 Elliot, Commodore, his first prize — . 240 Employment for the unhappy — 168 Enigma Epitaphs Equivocal Gentlemen Page — 135 32 ... 36 Extraordinary anomaly — Bernard Cavanag 1 56 Fair-Day in Normandy, a Fashion a poor vocation Fashion, evil influence of Feeding of White Mice Feline Recollections — Fidelity Field of Kunnersdorf (poem) Fine Lads— — — . Fishes, migration of — _ Flax Seed, on the importance of selecting Fluids, power of Force of Imagination . Foster Brother, the — — , Fossil Remains, singular book on Fourth of July, celebration of in New York Friends and Enemies Friendship Frog, the common Fuller (with G Gaming Gardens for the Labouring Classes Garry Castle, King’s County, described an engraving) Geese, on the feeding of General run of faculties Ghosts everywhere — Gig Race, the Gilding of metals by electro-chemical action Girls of the West (poem) Glimpses in the Mountains Globe of the Earth Gravity — Great lies harmless Grumbling — Guager, the, outwitted Guzzling Pete, anecdote of H Hal!, Mrs S. C., contributions by 2, 94, Handsome KateKavanagh(with an engraving) Harp, the — Heaping up wealth — Hedgehog, the — Hen’s Castle, described Herring, the — Herring Fishery, the Holly brook Hail, county of Wicklow, descrip- tion of (with an engraving) , Holy-cross Abbey, county of Tipperary, de- scribed (with an engraving) .. _ Home Horses’ feet, how to prevent from balling Howard the philanthropist Howth Lighthouse, description of (with an engraving) Humbug Hungarian nobility Hypocrisy — — . I Ichneumon, the Idleness — . Ill Temper Impossibility of forgetting Improper conduct in public places Inchiquin, Castle and Lake of, described (with an engraving) Industry — — . Inquiry, the (poem) — . Inscription on a tombstone (poem) Intellectuality of animals — Interesting trial — , Ireland, ancient music of — — . . Ireland, barbarity of the law in, a century ago Ireland for ever 1 (anecdote of Egan) Ireland, half an hour in Ireland, its scenery and antiquities illustrated Ireland’s Wealth (poem) Irish in England, the Irish, the, in 1644 Irish bravery and honour 112, Irish Bulls Irish Dare-Devil, account of an Irish dramatic talent 402 87 368 222 120 160 159 159 136 325 199 269 338 283 64 360 408 1 HI 24- 56 111 145 2 3 344 36(1 242 264 357 204 127 400 88 235 125 160 149 249 13 184 166 26 247 3»9 97 297 200 272 351 57 67 272 176 415 60 216 3 ;8 95 121 255 260 96 264 38 8 5 31 384 19 367 5 135 23. 24 — 358 - 64 11 INDEX Page Irish Family Names, on the origin and mean- ings of— First article — — — 326 Second article . 330 Third article — 365 Fourth article — — — . 381 Fifth article — — 396 Sixth article — 405 Seventh article — . 413 Irish Fiddler, the 5‘2 Irish Manufactures — — - 221 Irish Matchmaker, the — 1'6 Irish Midwife, the — « — 202 Part Second 209 Part Third — Dandy Keho’s Christening 313 Irish Music— Song by Samuel Lover — - - 66 Irish Musicians of the last century — Story of Dr Colgan 259 Irish Oddities — Snap Rivers — . — - 277 Irish Prophecy Man, the Cwith an engraving) 393 Irish Proverbs (with translations) 37 Irish Superstitions— Singular Story of M‘Kenna — . 164 The Rival Kempers— ~ 188 Force of Imagination — Frank Martin 269 Irish volubility — — - 4 1 Irish Wolf Dog, history of (with an engraving) 353 Isle of Saints (poem) — 317 Italian Organ Boy 293, 298 Itinerant goldsmiths of India and Sumatra— 349 J comedian, biographic Kathaleen Ny- Jack Johnstone the sketch of — Jacobite Relics of Ireland Houlahan Jerome Duigenan, a harper, anecdote of — Jerusalem artichoke, culture of — ~ Jimmy Delanv, or the Ascendant Idea (with an engraving) — ~ — Johnny Halfacre, or the Value of Time K Kate Kavanagh, story of (with an engraving) Kilbarron Castle, county of Donegal, de- scribed (with an engraving) — Killiney, geology of - — - _ KillymoonCastle, county of Tyi one, described (with an engraving) Kish-Corran, Caves of, county of Sligo, de- scribed (with an engraving) „ — Kissing off Sailors — Knowledge and Ignorance — Boulders — First article Second article j — — — L Labour of Study — — — — Labouring classes, elevation of the Labouring classes, gardens for the Lady with the spectac'es Laght-e-Ouria — - Lake of the Lovers, the Larus Minutus, the Little Gull . Lamentation of Mac Liag for Kincora (poem,) Lazy Dog — Legend of Clare, a — - — Leighlin- Bridge and the Black Castle, de- scribed (with an engraving) Leixlip, town and castle of, described (with an engraving) Lethe: an Allegory (poem) • Life and its Illusions (poem) Life, our attachment to — ~ Lighthouse at Howth, described (with an en- graving) — - — - Look before you leap _ — Lough Bi ay, described (with an engraving) Love and Poetry — Love of children — . Lover, Samuel, song by M Macklin. anecdotes of — Magnanimity — .. Magnetic Poles, the — — - Maid servants and their '‘friends'* Malahide Castle, county of Dublin, described (with an engraving) — . — - Malaria — — — — — —— — — March of magniloquence Marriage Martin Doyle, contributions 94^ by, 6, Id, 26, 5»! 91, 223, 254, 266, Mayo, the County of (poem) Mehemet Ali — - Men, chapter on, by a Cur Men of Genius • Men of Genius, early struggles o — Metropolis, the Miltown, county of Dublin, Old Bridge at, described (with an engraving) Minstrel’s Walk (poem) Miravaux and the beggar Misfortunes of Charley Malone — — Modern education — ~ — - Moll Miskellagh, the Market Woman Monasterboice, county Louth, remains at, de- scribed (with an engraving) — ~ — ~ Monea, Castle of, county of Fermanagh, de- scribed (with an engraving) — — 39 2>8 13 78 369 58 249 225 376 321 9 351 262 300 215 182 111 320 11 218 101 220 255 362 65 113 328 60 336 57 32 33 344 136 66 30 104 88 48 153 192 132 320 111 402 352 103 174 151 78 360 281 213 240 229 416 410 49 233 Monument to the memory of Dr Doyle, Hogan — Moral Evil man’s own creation Morning — Mosaic work— Mountain Sketch — Mountain Walk, the (poem) Mouse, biography of a — — - Murder, extraordinary detection of— First article ~ — — Second article — — Third article — — - N Napoleon after death Nature’s wonders — The Gadfly — Necessity of a steadfast character Necessity of a thorough education Nervous complaints, singular mode of relieving New Bridge, county of Kildare, described (with an engraving) Nose, sonnet about a — - — — ~ O O'Donnell, Prince of Tyrconnell in the 16th century, character of — O’Donovan on the Origin and Meanings or " Irish family names 326, 33 >, 365, 396, 405, Old age . — Old Man and the Youths, the Old newspaper, an Old Proverbs Old Times (poem) Old Wolf, Story of the — . Ormeau. seat of the Marquess of Donegal, described (with an engraving) Orohoo, the Fairy Man — Otter, the common — . — Page by — 193 215 64 355 94 14 221 333 367 374 152 276 215 200 24 129 174 13 381 413 332 206 184 22 1 9 76 377 85 141 Paddy Coneely the Galway piper (with an en- graving) — Paddy Corbett’s first smuggling trip Paper Hangings, history or . Parental duties — Passing Bell, the (poem) Patriotism Paying down upon the nail, origin of the term Peace of mind Peggy the Pishogue People with one idea Periodical Literature— the Poor Author Perseverance . — Perverse conduct of man — Philosophy Pilgrim at the Well (poem) — - Planing-machine room in Messrs Fawcett and Co’s Engine Factory, Liverpool - — . Poem of the Chase (introductory) Translation — 1 : 2 , Poetical Lecture on Anatomy Poverty — - — ~ Professions, the Progression — Prophecy of Bishop Berkley — Public places, improper conduct in Puss in Brogues, a Legend — . Pyramid, interior of the Great — ~ R Random Sketches— Feiine Recollections An American nobleman — Blowing men Red ) en of America (with an engraving) 41 Relics (poem) — — — Remonstrance with the Snails (poem) Remorse of a Night, the — Ride with Death (poem) Rinn Duin or Randown, Castle of, described (with an engraving) Rival Kempeis, the — — . — River St John, New Brunswick — Rock of Cashel, desctibed (with an engraving) Romantic marriage — . Rooke the Composer, anecdote of — Rooshkulum, the Wise Simpleton Roots, growth of — — — 231, Rose Moan the midwife 2 n 2, 209, Ross Castle, Kil arney, description of (with an engraving) — Rotation Railway — - Royal Family of Staten Island 105 285 303 384 55 44 88 256 138 296 284 32 360 208 276 272 93 114 292 66 222 88 18 95 348 280 120 143 181 51 198 268 2B1 245 73 183 292 17 4) 78 309 319 313 289 104 147 Sabbath, the — — — — — 2o6 Saint Bridget’s Shawl — 154 Saint Colmoc, ancient Seal of the Island of 245 Saint Seuan’sWell, county of Clare, described (with an engraving) — 401 Santa Crncef poem) — — 342 Sap in Vegetables — — 150, 173 Scene at Sea (poem) — — 168 Scene at the Theatre in Leghorn 56 Scenery and Antiquities of Ireland illustrated 19 Scio, Desolation of (poem) — — 41 Scott, Sir Walter — — . — 3U4 Scraps from the Northern Scrip 392, 398 Seal of William Bishop of Kildare (with an engraving) .. — .. 44 Seals of Irish Chlefs’(with Engravings) 356, 380 34, 261, Seeds — On the folly of sowing those of a bad quality because they are cheap — . on the importance of attending to the qualities of — — ~ Secret of Success in Life Sensations, our — Sensible Advice — Sentiment Serpent- Charming Shanahus, the Irish Sheridan, Anecdote of Simplicity of Character Singular Story ofM’Kenna Slander and Vindication Slave Trade, Horrors of the — Slighted Love (poem) — Sod Party, the — Solvent Bank — Song — “ O’Donoghue’s Mistress” Songs of our Land (poem) — Sonnet — the Departure of Love Sound, Phenomena of — Spanish Mother, the — Speed on Railways Stimulants — Tobacco Street Cigar Smokers Street Tactics Subjugation of animals by means of cnarrm — First Article — — — Second Article — - Third Article — — ~ — - Summer Flowers : a citizen’s lament (poem) Sunrise (poem) — — Suspension Bridges, history and theory of Page 254 266 128 187 342 248 317 378 48 8 164 216 176 303 34, °4 291 284 133 344 322 288 295 146 47 234 261 317 36 21 20.7 Talking and Taciturn Ages Tar, method of making Tea, general use of in China Teetotallers and Topers , *’ rn P erance Cordial, the real Termon M'Grath, Castle of, county of Done- gal, described (with an engraving) — ~ Testimonials — . — Theatre, the. remarks of Channing on — . Thomotid Biidge and the Castle of Limerick described (with an engraving) Three Monks, the (poem) — . — Three Rings, the — Thugs, the, assassins of India — “Thy Kingdom come” (poem) — — Tim Callaghan, the inimitable Piper „ — Time — — Tom Gra^siey the Shanahus. story by ~ — Tomb of Curran at Glzsnev.n — To Katherine (poem) To our Readers Trinity College Library True Charily Truth — — ~ Tully Castle, county of Fermanagh, described (with an engravirg) 8 , 56. 2 2S 316 88 21 i 149 205 407 80 305 181 28 342 136 93 144 386 ■409 78 416 340 163 344 177 U & V Union Workhouse, engraved pi n and de- scription of one to accommodate 800 persons — Value of Time — ~ Venetian Diddler, a — — Venetian Pavements . . Victoria Castle, Killiney, description o (with an engraving) Vulgarity 273 58 75 352 T,5 235 6 W & Y War Washerwoman, the Irish Water, nature and use of Waterproofing of cloth — „ — What are Comforts ? — Whips for a Penny — — Why do Roots grow downwards and Stems towards the Heavens ? - 231, 319 William Bishop of Kildare, Engraving of bis Seal — - Winter comes (poem) Wolf Dog, the Irish Women, influence of Woman of Three Cows, the (poem) Wooden Glass Goblet Woodlands, county 01 Dul lin, described (with an engraving) World’s Changes, the (poem) Young, occupations for the 400 2 79 163 191 6 44 236 353 336 69 83 137 7 26 ESSAYS AND SKETCHES American Nobleman, an 43 Bargain, the — . 133 Benevolence of Character ]f) Bit of Philosophy ... . K'8 Black Boys in America and Ireland 181 Blowing Men — 184 Bustles, a short chapter on — - 140 Country Dancing Master, the - - 69 Curs, chapter on, by a Man . 90 Cutting old Friends _ — . . 83 Dandy Keho’s Christening 313 Deaf and Dumb — - 9 4 Decayed Old Gentleman, the — 292 Editorial Squabbles , — — - TV INDEX. m Page Equivocal Gentlemen 36 Fair-Day in Normandy, a — ~ 402 Feline Recollections — - 120 Fine Eads — ■ — • — — — lo9 Geese, on the feeding of — — 223 Glimpses in the Mountains 204 Grumbling 235 Humbug — — 67 Improper conduct in public places — 95 Irish Family Names, 326, 330, 365, 381, 396, 405, 413 Irish Fiddler, the 52 Irish Matchmaker, the 116 Irish Midwife, the — - ™— 202, 209, 313 Irish Oddities — Snap Rivers 277 Irish Prophecy Man, the — 393 Irish Shanahus, the ™„ 378 Irish Washerwoman, the 2 Johnny Halfacre, or the Value of Time 58 Kissing off Sailors — . 351 Look before you leap — 32 Men, chapter on, by a Cur — - 174 Moll Miskellagh, the Market-woman 410 Mouse, Biography of a - 221 Paddy Coneely, the Galway Piper . 105 Periodical Literature — the Poor Author 284 Professions, the — . 222 Remorse of a Night — — 213 Royal Family of Staten Island — 147 Scenery and Antiquities of Ireland illustrated 19 Seeds, on sowing those of at had quality — 254 on the importance of atending to the 266 187 45 295 246 47 234, 261, 317 228 196, 207 214 149 4o7 98 4u0 191 6 qualities of Sensations, our — — Sod Party, the Stimulants — T obacco Street Cigar Smokers Street Tactics — Subjugation of Animals Talking and Taci! urn Ages Taming of Animals — — Teetotallers and Topers Temperance Cordial, the real Testimonia's Tim Callaghan, the inimitable piper What are Comfoits ? — — Whips for a Penny- 34, 293, LEGENDS AND STORIES. America Letter, the Bal'd Barrys, the — Barny O’Grady — . — Bob Pentland, or the Guager outwitted Boccough Ruadh, the — - Castle of Aughentain — Cause and Effect ™ — Clown with the Grey Coat Colgan, Doctor, Story of Dare-Devil, account of an Irish Discontented Stones, the Donnybrook — — Drunkards, the — . . Foster Brother, the — ~ Frank Martin and the Fairies . — - Gig Race, the Handsome Kate Kavanagh Hughes the butcher, singular story of Italian Organ Boy Jimmy Delany, or the Ascendant Idea Laght-e-Ouria — Lake of the Lovers, the Legend of Clare, a — — . — M‘Gennis, his singular discovery as “ derer M-Kenna, singular story of Murtagh Lavan — — Old Wolf, Story of the Orohoo. the Fairy Man Paddy Corbett’s first Smuggling Trip Peggy the Pishogue Puss in Brogues Rings, the three Rival Kempers, the Rooshkulum, the Wise Simpleton Saint Bridget’s Shawl . Spanish Mother, the — — , POETRY. Alexander and the Tree Answer to the Enigma in No 17. Blind Boy, the ~ Boyhood and Manhrod Castlecor, a Reverie ™ Chase, the County of Mayo, the Departure of Love, the Divorced, the — — Donegal Castle, address to tne ruins of Eagle and Dove, the - Elegiac Stanzas on a son and daughter Elegy on the Tironian and Tirconellian Princes buried at Rome, Field of Kunnersdo-rf Girls of the West — - Inquiry, the Inscription on a tombstone 93, 102, 179 334 350 125 236 386 229 130 259 358 14 61 170 338 269 242 249 374 298 369 . 11 . 218 , 362 333 , 164 . 367 • 76 85 . 285 138 346 28 188 309 154 322 28 256 148 332 392 114 352 133 84 136 144 407 123 159 357 260 96 Ireland’s Wealth Isle of Saints — Kathaleen Ny Houlahan — — Lamentation of Mac Liag for Kincora Lethe : an Allegory Life and its Illusions Minstrel’s Walk Mountain Walk, the . — - — Nose, sonnet about a — — — ~ — O’Donoghoe’s Mistress - — - — Old Man and the Youths , — •> — Old Times ™,» Passing Bell — — Peasant, death of a, from the severity of winter storm — — ~ Pilgrim at the Well — Poetical Lecture on Anatomy Relics Remonstrance with the Snails Ride with Death Santa Croce Scene at Sea— Scio, desolation of Slighted Love Songs of our Land Song, by Samuel Lover Summer Flowers Sunrise — Thy Kingdom Come - To Katherine — Winter comes — Woman of Three Cows World's Changes, the- the Page - 367 - 317 - 228 - 229 - 328 60 ™ 213 „ 14 ~ 174 „ 291 - 206 - 109 - 55 a - 400 276 - 292 - 198 ™ 268 - 245 - 342 ~ 168 ™ 44 ™ 308 284 66 36 21 136 78 236 69 7 ARTICLES. SCIENTIFIC, &c Air we breathe, the . - „ 15 Animal Heat — ™ 398, 41 1 Atmospheric Resistance on Railways 264 Bad air and good air 30 Badger, natural history of the — 373 Barometz, or Tartarian Lamb 316 Boulders -™- 262, 300 Cameo-Cutting 352 Cloth, Manufacture of „ 134 Eel, migration of the — 48 Electrotype, the 157 Fishes, migration of 136 Fluids, power of 199 Fossil Remains, singular book on 283 Frog, natural history of the 110 Gadfly, natural history of the - 276 Gilding of metals by electro-chemical action 261 Globe of the Earth — 127 Hedgehog, natural history of the 166 Herring, natural history of the — 247 Ichneumon, natural history of the 415 Irish Wolf Dog, habits and history of 353 Killiney, geology of 376 Larus Minutus, the Little Gull . . - 101 Magnetic Poles, the - 88 Mosaic Work - . - 355 Roots, growth of — 231, 319 Rotation Railway „ 104 Sap in Vegetables — 150, 173 Sound, phenomena of 314 Speed on Railways — 283 Suspension Bridges, history and theory of 267 Water, nature and use of — 63, 79 Waterproofing of Cloth 168 TOPOGRAPHICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ARTICLES. America, Red Men of 41, 51 Antrim Castle 329 Antrim, town of 89 Ardfinnan Castle, county of Tipperary 345 Augbnanure, Castle of, county of Galway 1 Barrack Bridge and the Military Gate, Dublin 265 Cahir Castle, county of Tipperary— 257 Caislean-na- Circe, or the Hen’s Castle, Conne- mara 25 Cashel, Rock of — - 17 Caulfield Castle, county of Tyrone— 217 Clontarf Castle, county of Dublin — — 81 Curran, Tomb of, at Glasnevin - 409 Dalkey, Sound and Island of, county Dublin 161 Dangan Castle, county of Meath . 361 Destitute Poor of Ireland 273 Donaghmore, county of Meath, Church and Round Tower of — — ] 69 Donegal, Castle of „ ™— 135 Doyle, Doctor, Monument to the memory of, by Hogan - — - 193 Drimnagh Castle, county of Dublin 337 Dungarbry Castle, county of Leitrim 211 Garry Castle, King's County — „ ™ 145 Hollybrook Hall, county of Wicklow 97 Holy-Cross Abbey, county of Tipperary 297 Howth Lighthouse — 57 Inchiquin, Castle and Lake of . 121 Island of Saint Colmoc, Ancient Seal of — ™ 245 Kilbarron Castle, county of Donegal 225 Killymoon Castle, county of Tyrone „™ 321 Kish-Corran, Caves of, county of Sligo 9 Leighlin Bridge and the Black Castle — 65 Leixlip, Town and Castle of 113 Lough Bray, county of Wicklow — . „ 33 Page Malahide Castle, county of Dublin— — — - 153 Miltown, county Dublin, Old Bridge at 281 Monasterboice, county Louth, remains at — — 49 Monea Castle, county of Fermanagh 23 5 Monument to the memory ofDoctor Doyle by Hogan 193 New Bridge, county of Kildare 129 Ormeau, seat of the Marquess of Donegal 377 Rinn Duin or Randown, county of Roscom- mon, Castle of — 73 Ross CaiEle, Killarney™— — 289 Saint Senan’s Well, county of Clare 401 Termon Magrath, Castle of, co of Donegal 201 Thomond Bridge and the Castle of Limerick 305 Trinity College Library 340 Tully Castle, county of Fermanagh 177 Victoria Castle, Killiney 385 William Bishop of Kildare, Seal of— 44 Woodlands, county of Dublin - 137 The above are illustrated by beautiful Engravings on Wood. LIST OF ENGRAVINGS. Antrim, Castle of, the Residence of the Earl of Massarene — 329 Antrim, town of — . 89 Ardfinnan Castle, county of Tipperary 345 Augbnanure, Castle of, county of Galway 1 Barrack Bridge and the Military Gate, Dublin 265 Cahir Castle, county of Tipperary - 257 Caislean-na- Circe, or the Hen’s Castle, Con- nemara - - . 25 Cashel, Rock of, as seen from the south 17 Caulfield Castle, county of Tyrone 217 Clontarf Castle, county of Dublin 81 Curran, Tomb of, at Glasnevin — ™ 409 Dalkey, Sound and Island of, co of Dublin 161 Dandy Kebo’s Christening — 313 Dangan Castle, county of Meath „ ™ 361 Donaghmore, Church and Round Tower of, county of Meath, , 169 Donegal, Castle of . 185 Doyle, Doctor, Monument to the Memory of, by Hogan 193 Drimnagh Castle, county of Dublin 337 Dungarbry Castle, county of Leitrim 211 Garry Castle, King’s County 145 Handsome Kate Kavanagh . 249 Hollybrook Hall, county of Wicklow 97 Holy-Cross Abbey, county of Tipperary 297 Howth Lighthouse, Bay of Dublin — 57 Inchiquin, Castle and Lake of, county of Clare 121 Irish Midwife, night scene at the cottage of the 209 Irish Prophecy Man, the — . 393 Island of Saint Colmoc, Ancient Seal of 245 Jimmy Delany — Father Connellan’s Beef Steak . - , 3 0 Kilbarron Castle, county of Donegal - 225 Killymoon, county of Tyrone, the residence of Lieutenant-Colonel W. Stewart 321 Kish Corran, Caves of, county of Sligo 9 Larus Minutus, the Little Gull - 101 Leighlin Bridge and the Black Castle, county of Carlow 65 Leixlip, county of Kildare, town and castle of 1 13 Lough Bray, county of Wicklow 33 Malahide Castle, county of Dublin 153 Miltown, Old Bridge of, 'county of Dublin 281 Monasterboice, county of Louth, remains at 49 Monea, Castle of, county of Fermanagh — 233 New Bridge, county of Kildare ™— 129 Ormeau, county of Down, the seat of the Mar- quess of Donegal 377 Paddy Coneely, the Galway Piper 105 Red Men of America mourning over the tomb of a deceased warrior — ™ 41 Rinn-Duin,or Randown, Castle of, county of Roscommon - 73 Ross Castle, Killarney 289 Saint Senan’s Well, county of Clare 401 Seals of Irish Chiefs, Families, &c. — • Seal of the Island of St Colmoc 245 of William Bishop of Kildare, impression of the - 44 of Felim O’Conor, King of Connaught in the thirteenth century ™— - 356 of Donald Og, son of Donald Roe Mac Carthy, lord of Desmond in the four- teenth century 357 of Mac Con, chief of Hy-CaLsin in the fourteenth century — 357 of the chief of the O’Briens, descendants of Brian Boru — - 389 of the chief of the O’Neills, for seven hundred years the hereditary monarchs of Ireland - — — - - 389 of the O’Dafys, an ancient family in Thomond — — - 381 of the O’Harnys, an ancient family in Kerry— — - — - — 381 Termon Magrath, Castle of, county of Done- gal — - — ~ 201 Thomond Bridge and the Castle of Limerick 305 Tully Castle, county of Fermanagh — - 177 Union Workhouse, Bird’s-Eye view of a — 273 Victoria Castle, Killiney county of Dublin 385 Wolf- Dog, the Irish — - — — - 353 Woodlands, countv of Dublin, the s-eat of Colonel White — — 137 Date Due i j * PRINTED IN U. 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