CHAPTER V.

Dame M'Carthy and Louis the Fourteenth-Old Irish Castles and Graveyards-The Annals of the Four Masters-Repudiation of Holy Water-O'Connell's Illness in 1798-Arthur O'Connor-Who was the Greatest Irishman?-Interview with Owen, the Socialist.

SPEAKING of Some imposing cavalcade that had escorted one of his political progresses, he said,

"Those things are all comparative. When a lady of the M'Carthy family was sitting in her hotel at Paris, working embroidery, she heard shouts of triumph in the streets for Louis the Fourteenth's grand entry after his successes in Flanders. But the lady stirred not from her task.

"What!' said her companion, 'will you not come to the window to look at the king's triumphant entry?'

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No,' replied the lady; 'I have seen M'Carthy More's triumphant entry into Blarney, and what can Paris furnish to excel that ?'"

The mention of M'Carthy More led him to talk of ancient times, ancient chiefs, and of the Desmond Castles in Kerry. "What an undigested mass of buildings are the relics of the Earl of Desmond's court at Castle Island! And how much the difference between our habits and those of our forefathers is marked by the architecture of their dwellings and of ours. The old castles, or rather the old towers, of Ireland, were manifestly constructed for inhabitants who only stayed within when the severity of the weather would not allow them to go out. There seems to have been little or no provision in the greater number of them for internal comfort. And what a state of social insecurity they indicate! Small loop-holes for defence; low, small entrance doors for the same purpose; evidently, it was a more important object to keep out the enemy, than to ventilate the house."

Speaking of the elder days of Ireland, he said, "I never can pass the old burial-grounds of Kilpeacon and Killogroin, among the hills, without thinking how strange it is that they should be totally deserted by the present generation. Nobody ever is buried in either of them now, and they have been disused so long ago, that not even a tradition exists among the peasantry of the time when, or

* I believe between Cahirsiveen and Darrymore.

the cause wherefore, interments were discontinued in them."

He spoke with contempt of the "Annals of the Four Masters."

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They are little more than a bare record of faction or clan fights. On such a day the chief of such a place burned the castle of the chief of so-and-so;' there's a tiresome sameness of this sort of uninteresting narrative."

The "Annals" are, indeed, a bald record of facts. But the same objection would equally apply to the early history of every country.

O'Connell constantly reverted to his juvenile recollections of Darrynane. I cannot tell what led to the following anecdote, nor, indeed, to half the anecdotes he incessantly "welled forth" in exhaustless profusion.

"There were," said he, "two Protestant gentlemen on a visit with my uncle during one of my sojourns at Darrynane. On Sunday, as there was no Protestant place of worship near, they were reduced to the alternative of going to mass, or doing without public worship. They chose to go to mass; and on entering the chapel they fastidiously kept clear of the holy water which the clerk was sprinkling copiously on all sides. The clerk observed this, and feeling his own dignity and that of the holy water compromised by their Protestant squeamish

ness, he quietly watched them after service, and planting himself behind the sanctuary-door through which they had to pass, he suddenly slashed the entire contents of his full-charged brush into their faces! I thought I should have been choked with laughing. You can't conceive any thing more ludicrous than the discomfited look the fellows had!" And his fancy was so tickled with the recollection, that he chuckled heartily over it.

He spoke of his illness-a severe typhus fever— which had nearly proved fatal to him at Darrynane in 1798.

"It was occasioned," said he, " by sleeping in wet clothes. I had dried them upon me at a peasant's fire, and drank three glasses of whiskey, after which I fell asleep. The next day I hunted, was soon weary, and fell asleep in a ditch under sunshine. I became much worse; I spent a fortnight in great discomfort, wandering about and unable to eat. At last when I could no longer battle it out, I gave up and went to bed. Old Doctor Moriarty was sent for He pronounced me in a high fever. I was in such pain that I wished to die. In my ravings I fancied that I was in the middle of a wood, and that the branches were on fire around me. I felt my backbone stiffening for death, and I positively declare that I think what saved me was the effort I made to

rise up,
and show my father, who was at my bedside,
that I knew im. I verily believe that effort of
nature averted death. During my illness I used to
quote from the tragedy of Douglas these lines:

'Unknown I die; no tongue shall speak of me;
Some noble spirits, judging by themselves,
May yet conjecture what I might have proved;
And think life only wanting to my fame.'

I used to quote those lines under the full belief that my illness would end fatally. Indeed, long before that period when I was seven years old—yes, indeed, as long as ever I can recollect, I always felt a presentiment that I should write my name on the page of history. I hated Saxon domination. I detested the tyrants of Ireland. During the latter part of my illness, Doctor Moriarty told me that Buonaparte had got his whole army to Alexandria, across the desert. That is impossible,' said I, 'he cannot have done so; they would have starved.' 'Oh, no,' replied the doctor, 'they had a quantity of portable soup with them, sufficient to feed the whole army for four days.' 'Ay,' rejoined I; 'but had they portable water? For their portable soup would have been but of little use if they had not water to dissolve it in. My father looked at the attendants with an air of hope. Doctor Moriarty said to my mother,' His intellect, at any rate, is untouched.' I remember the doctor's mentioning the rumour of an engagement