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 THE 
 
 O'BRIENS 
 
 AND 
 
 THE OFLAHERTYS. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 The reafler is requested to correct the following more important Errata 
 before commencing the perusal of the Volume. 
 
 Page 1, line 13, et passim, for " Tar,'' read Jar. 
 
 4, line 4, et passim, for " Moy Cullen," read Moycullen. 
 30, line 14, for "girdle,'' read girelle. 
 64, line 17. for " Port royale," read Port Royal. 
 Ill, line 8, dele" and." 
 
 165, line 12, read " Fais ce que doy, arrive que pourra. 
 204, line 4, from the bottom, for " quel-fleur,^' read quelle flevr, 
 
 and dele " le." 
 256, last line, for '* frame workhouses," xg^lA framework houses.
 
 THE 
 
 O'BRIENS 
 
 AND 
 
 THE O'FLAHERTYS 
 
 A NATIONAL TALE. 
 
 BY LADY MORGAN. 
 
 IN FOUR VOLUMES. 
 
 " A Plague o' both your Houses I" 
 
 Shakspkare. 
 
 " Je me snis enquis au mielx que j'ai s^eu et pu ; et je cerfifie a 
 touts que ne I'ay fait ny pour or, ny pour argert, ny pour sallaire, ny 
 pour compte a faire qui soit, ny homme ny •fenime qui vescut : ne 
 Toulant ainai favoriser ny blamer nul a mon pouvoir, fors seulment 
 declarer les choses advenues." 
 
 Du Clercq— Preface des Chronique*. 
 
 VOL. L 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 HENRY COLBURN, NEW BURLINGTON-STREET. 
 
 1827.
 
 SHACKELL AND BAYLIS, JOHNSON 8-COURT.
 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 In again presenting an Irish novel to the 
 public, I hope I am not doing a foolish thing : 
 and yet I feel, that as far as my own interests 
 are concerned, I am not doing a wise one. To 
 live in Ireland and to write for it, is to live and 
 write poigna/rd sur gorge; for there is no country 
 where it is less possible to be useful with im- 
 punity, or where the penalty on patriotism is 
 levied with a more tyrannous exaction. Called, 
 however, to the ground by the sarcasms of 
 A 9.
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 enemies, and by the counsels of friends, I 
 venture forth once, more, with something less 
 perhaps of intrepidity, than when I " fleshed 
 my maiden sword " under the banners of " The 
 Wild Irish Girl ;" but in the full force of that 
 true female quality, over which time holds no 
 j urisdiction — perseverance. 
 
 I anticipate upon this, as upon similar occa- 
 sions, that I shall be accused of unfeminine 
 presumption in " meddling with pohtics ;'* but 
 while so many of my countrywomen " meddle " 
 with subjects of much higher importance; — 
 while missionary misses and proselyting peeresses 
 affect to " stand instead of God, amongst the 
 children of men," may not I be permitted, under 
 the influence of merely human sympathies, to 
 interest myself for human wrongs ; to preach in 
 my way on the " evil that hath come upon my 
 people," and to " fight with gentle words, till 
 time brings friends," in that cause, which made 
 Esther eloquent, and Judith brave ? For love 
 of country is of no sex. It was by female
 
 rUEFACE. Vll 
 
 patriotism that the Jews attacked their tyrants, 
 and " broke down their stateUness by the hands 
 of a woman ;" and who, (said their enemies,) 
 *' would despise a nation, which had amongst 
 them such women ?" 
 
 The epoch I have chosen for illustration, has 
 in the present state of exhausted combinations, 
 one great recommendation to the novelist — it is 
 untouched. It has also a deep interest in a 
 national point of view — it embraces events which 
 prepared the Rebellion, and accomplished the 
 Union. An epoch of transition between the 
 ancient despotism of brute force, and the dawn- 
 ing reign of public opinion, it was characterized 
 by the supremacy of an oligarchy, in whose 
 members the sense of irresponsible power en- 
 gendered a contempt for private morals, as fatal 
 as their pohtical corruption. 
 
 The portraiture of such an epoch is curious 
 from its evanescence, and consolatory by com- 
 parison with the present times, — times the 
 most fatal to faction, and favourable to the
 
 Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 establishment of equal rights, which Ireland 
 has yet witnessed. It may also serve as a 
 warning to a large and influential portion of 
 the public, which has yet to learn, that to advo- 
 cate arbitrary government, is to nourish moral 
 disorder. In the ranks of intolerance, are to be 
 found many, who make the largest pretensions to 
 purity of principle, and to propriety of conduct. 
 Should any such deign to trace, in the following 
 pages, a picture of manners, far below the pre- 
 valent tone of refinement now assumed as the 
 standard of good company, it may diminish 
 their confidence in their favourite political 
 maxims, to remark, that all which has been 
 thus gained for society, has been obtained by a 
 progressive abandonment of the system they 
 advocate. 
 
 The personages introduced on the scene, are 
 those which belong to the times described. 
 They are alike necessary to the vraisemhJance 
 of the story, and to the fidelity of the portrait : 
 ai^d " I beseech, very heartHy, at my desires.
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 my requests, and my petitions," the zealots of 
 party spirit, and the purveyors of private 
 scandal, to refrain from the application of my 
 characters to their own purposes ; and from the 
 fabrication of false " keys," by which their 
 petty larceny has heretofore attempted to rob 
 me of the little merit of that *' fearlessness" 
 with which I have held the mirror up to nature, 
 without subterfuge and without evasion. May 
 I be permitted here to observe, that with the 
 exception of those public characters, whose de- 
 lineation was almost a plagiarism, and whose 
 peculiarities arose out of the political state 
 of Ireland, and were necessary to the dis- 
 play of its story, I have drawn none but such 
 as represent a class, or identify a genus. Even 
 my Ladies Llanberis and Dunore were illustra- 
 tions, not individuals. They were intended to 
 represent the spoiled children of high society 
 in all ages, from the charming Duchesse de 
 Maine, with her inimitable il n'y a que moi 
 qui ai toujours raison, to the modern mistresses
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 of supreme hon ton, — all alike the creatures of 
 circumstances the most unfavourable to moral 
 consistency. However I may have fallen a 
 main basse on popes and potentates, — taken the 
 field against Austria, to '' hang a calf's skin on 
 those recreant limbs,*" and put forth my pro- 
 tocol against the Holy Alliance, I have held 
 private life sacred, and have religiously ab- 
 stained from bringing forward a single anecdote 
 or circumstance incidental to the life of any 
 private individual. The only " key," there- 
 fore, that I acknowledge, is that which is to 
 be found in the great repository of human 
 nature. 
 
 Au reste^ I grieve, that in self-defence, I 
 must wound the self-love of those " walking 
 ladies and gentlemen," who affect to tremble 
 lest " Lady Morgan should put them into 
 her book," — by dropping into their " unwil- 
 ling ears" the secret that tovt hois n'est pa^ 
 hon a Juire Mercure. Like Macbeth, " I 
 cannot strike at wretched kernes;-' and not
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 even for the benefit of a puffing " key" 
 would I transfer to "my book" the obscure 
 insignificance and flippant pretension that bore 
 and worry me in society. I also take this 
 opportunity of averting the wrath of half the 
 fair Burcaucratie of Ireland, roused by my 
 palpable hit at a certain red velvet gown, in 
 Florence Macarthy (for of the genuine aristo- 
 cracy either of rank or wit, I have no cause to 
 complain), by informing those whom it may 
 concern, that the said red velvet gown belonged 
 to a person, with whom I had every right to 
 take every liberty — even to the libellous extent 
 of *' putting her into my book,"" when, where, 
 and how I pleased, — that is, to myself. 
 
 SYDNEY MORGAN 
 
 Kildare-street, Dublin^ 
 Oct. \st, 1827.
 
 THE O'BRIENS, 
 
 AND THE 
 
 O FLAHERTYS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CORRESrONDENCE. 
 
 Look into the chronicles. We came in with Richard Conqueror. 
 Therefore, paucas pallabris. Let the world slide : Sesta ! 
 
 Taming of the Shrew. 
 
 Avocat ah ! passons au deluge. Let Plaideur*. 
 
 Letter I. 
 
 To General Count Sir Malachi O'FJlaherty^ 
 of the Hy-Fflaherty, Tanist, or Chief of the 
 Hy-Tartagh, or West Country, or Tar Con- 
 naught, in the province of Connaught, Lord, 
 or Prince of Moy Cullen, hereditary standard- 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 ^ THE O BRIENS, AND 
 
 hearer of the Bally-hoe of Conmacnamara 
 (vulgo Cmmemara), Knight of the order of 
 Curaidhe na Croibhe Ruadh or Knights of the 
 Red Branch, Chevalier de St. Louis ^ Gentil- 
 homme de la Chamhre de S. M. le Roy de 
 France, and Colonel of the 9.nd Regiment of 
 the Irish Brigade. 
 
 A Son Hotel, 
 
 Rue de VUniversite, F. St Germain, 
 a Paris. 
 Per favour of Major O'Gara, ^ 
 of said regiment. j 
 
 St. Grellan, Barony of Tar Connaught, Co. 
 Galway, April \st. 177 — 
 
 Sir Malachi OTflaherty, 
 
 I TAKE leave to address you by your 
 unalienable title of hereditary knighthood, since 
 neither the law of the land, nor the degendered 
 customs of present times, will bear you out in 
 taking the title or captainship of your tribe or 
 sept ; — the same having been renounced, dis- 
 claimed, and surrendered for ever, with all the
 
 THE O FLAHERTYS. 3 
 
 Irish customs to the same name incident, by 
 your ancestor, Murroch ne Doe O'Fflaherty, (to 
 the moan and shame — then and long after — of 
 him and his) by his writing, signed with his 
 signet, bearing date the 30th. Ehz. 1609: at 
 which time, it is notable here to mark that the 
 said Murroch ne Doe 'coming in,' as the phrase 
 is (or was), did surrender, give, grant, or con- 
 firm to the said queen, in her chancery of Ire- 
 land, his principality of Hy-Tartagh in Conne- 
 mara, belonging to the sept, family, or sir name 
 of the O'Fflaherties, together with all manner 
 of manors, castles, demesnes, messuages, lands, 
 tenements, rents, reversions, services, mills, 
 meadows, feedings, pastures, forests, woods, 
 underwoods, houses, edifices, granges, dove- 
 cotes, fisheries, warrens, watercourses, ponds, 
 loughs, lakes and turlochs, patronage of ab- 
 beys, churches, chappels, chauntries, presenta- 
 tions, advowsons, oblations, obsentions, tithes, 
 pinsions, portions, courts-leet, views of frank 
 pledge, together with all perquisites and profits 
 of the same, and all other rights, possessions, 
 commodities, uses, liberties, and hereditaments, 
 B 2
 
 4 THE O BRIENS, AND 
 
 as well spiritual as temporal, with all and sin- 
 gular their members, rights, and appurtenances 
 universal in your principality of the Hy-Tar- 
 tagh, viz. in Moy Cullen,* Both-Cowna, Bally 
 Cowark, Ballynonaghe, Cornevecaghe, Bog 
 Moy, Ballyslattery, &c. &c. &c. &c. with the 
 ancient township, burgh, or bishoprick of St. 
 Grellan, the chief town or burgh of the barony 
 of Moy Cullen, in Connemara, county of Galway, 
 province of Connaught; which was a manor 
 exempted from all taxes, enjoying privilege of 
 market or fair, SenechaPs court to determine 
 litigations, &c. &c. 
 
 The said Sir Murroch ne Doe, having so 
 come in, and surrendered with the intent, (and 
 no small blame to him), to receive back the 
 same, by letters patent, from the said queen, 
 under the great seal and signet of the kingdom 
 of Ireland, she did give or grant to him, the 
 said Murroch ne Doe, Knt., his heirs and as- 
 signs for ever, the said demesnes, castles, lands, 
 tithes, signories, reversions, &c. &c. &c. &c. 
 
 * At Park, in the Barony of Moy Cullen, was born the 
 celebrated author of «' Ogygia," Rod. O'Flaherty, An. 
 Dom. 1630.
 
 THE O FLAHERTYS. 5 
 
 with all and singular their appurtenances ; — he 
 receiving the same (though his unalienable 
 right from the year of the world 2000, — as 
 may be seen in the annals or green book of St. 
 Grellan, now in my possession) of the queen's 
 special grace, certain knowledge, and mere mo- 
 tion. "But to be holden" (saith the patent) 
 " of us, our heirs and successors, by part of a 
 knight's fee, &c. &c. : provided always, that 
 these our letters patent, or any thing contained 
 in the same, shall not exonerate or change any 
 rents, customs, duties, and services, to be per- 
 formed to us, our heirs and successors, &c. &c. : 
 provided always, that this our grant do in no 
 wise extend to the damage, hurt, or prejudice 
 to the rights of any one or more of our subject?, 
 except such pretended rights and titles as 
 any of them shall or may claim, by the name of 
 O'Fflaherty, the head, captain, or thane of 
 that name ; which name we here extinguish 
 for ever^ by this grant: provided lastly, not- 
 withstanding, that if, hereafter, it shall suffi- 
 ciently appear that we, our heirs or successors, 
 are entitled, or have, or ought to have, any
 
 6 THE 0"'bRIENS, and 
 
 right on the said premises, or any parcel thereof, 
 or any of the rights, profits, or services issuing 
 out of the same, that this our present grant, 
 and these our letters patent for such of the 
 premises as we, our heirs and successors are 
 entitled, or have right unto, shall be void and 
 of no effect against us, our heirs and successors ; 
 any matter above expressed to the contrary 
 notwithstanding." 
 
 N0W5 Sir Malachi, you will little marvel if 
 this patent turned out Talagh-hill talk,* as we 
 say in Ireland ; for little cause was wanting to 
 shew that her majesty, her heirs and successors, 
 were entitled to have rights and estates of or 
 on the premises ; so that cantred after cantred, 
 liberties and hereditaments, spirituals and tem- 
 porals, went one after the other ; the queen and 
 her successors paying off services done them 
 with the lands of the " popish O'Fflaherties," 
 granting, at one slap, the barony of Bog Moy, 
 and the lordship of Bally slattery to the Mac 
 Taafs of the Fassagh, who had come in and 
 
 • An Irish phrase for words that mean nothing. Talagh 
 Hill, near Dublin, is the site of the Archbishop's palace.
 
 THE OFLAHERTYS. 7 
 
 reformed, of which them slapper-sallaghs,* my 
 sisters-in-law (devil squincet the relationship), 
 the ]Miss Mac Taafs are seized at this day. 
 
 Then came the Cromwellians ; then prisals, 
 and reprisals, and forfeitures, and reclamations ; 
 and then the act of settlement, which unsettled 
 every thing ; and then your grandfather, Sir 
 Bryan Ruagh O'Fflaherty, having little left 
 but the estates of Moy Cullen and Ballynonaghe 
 in Barony Ross, County Mayo, and some 
 chief rents, went to Chichester house, to make 
 good his rights before the court of claims, giving 
 himself out for an innocent papist. But a par- 
 ticular time having been given to examine these 
 claims, and the numbers being so great, that 
 when the commission was closed, seven thousand 
 gentlemen were still unheard, of whom one was 
 Sir Bryan, an act of explication was passed, 
 forbidding all who were unheard ever to prefei 
 their claims again (|) So Sir Bryan returned 
 
 • Draggletails, f Query, Devil quench. 
 
 X ** Mais la prorogation ayant ^te refusee par Clarendon, 
 la cour Stabile pour Texamen des pr^.tensions des innocens* 
 fut obligee de cesser ces fonotions, et de se s^parer.
 
 B THE o'bRIENS, and 
 
 to his property in Tar Connaught, living, and 
 holding his patrimonal heriditaments, as it were, 
 by stealth ; placing part in trust with a pro- 
 testant neighbour, and holding the rest suh rosa. 
 Then came the penals ; and a bill of discovery 
 completed the ruin of the family of the Hy- 
 Tartaghs; and then it was that your father 
 abandoned the fine old abbey, that had been 
 fitted up as a mansion house, and retired to a 
 small castle, hard by convenient, the first stone 
 castle raised in Connemara. But them that were 
 
 Clareadon cr^a alors un nouveau tribunal, compost des 
 gens, dont la plupart avoient usurpe les terres, dont les 
 legitimes propri^taires sollicitoient la restitution. Les 
 premiers ainsi devenus juges et parties ; quelle esperance 
 restoit-il aux derniers ? Pour leur rendre a jamais la 
 justice inaccessible, le parlement fit un nouvel acte cTex- 
 plication^ que leur interdisoit toute demarche ulterieure a 
 cat egard." Histoire d''lrlande, par VAlbe Geoghegan, 
 *• Voila," says the author, ** les lepons de morale, que ces 
 reformateurs donnoient aux Irlandois:" and such has ever 
 been the morality which has presided over the proconsular 
 government of that people, down to a secretary's last 
 unblushing assertion, that the treaty of Limerick was only 
 available to those who were within its walls at the time j 
 as baseless a subterfuge as "the equivocating fiend" of 
 intolerance ever rested upon.
 
 THE oVlAHERTYS. 9 
 
 to flourish by his ruin, missed their mark. For 
 few tenants were there to till the land, or take 
 it ; and rack rents, and cottiering and short 
 leases ruined all; and great emigrating — tne 
 poor to America, the gentry to foreign parts. 
 So rents fell rapidly : and lands were pilled and 
 polled, and the protestant discoverers themselves 
 began to quake, and the hereditaments of the 
 O'Fflaherties, which had brought thousands to 
 the original proprietors, brought not hundreds 
 to the usurpers. Meantime the beautiful barony 
 of MoycuUen became as it were a desart, the 
 land wasted, the turloughs* spreading, the rivers 
 overflowings their banks: mills, mansions, and 
 castles crumbling to the earth, and the roads, 
 mamsjt passes and bridle ways, filling up by the 
 falhng in of rocks, rubbish and earth. But for 
 all that, there are those in the present day, who 
 are willing to purchase the abbey lands of Moy- 
 cuUen at any price. Nor need I tell you that 
 this abbey was founded by Beavoin OTflaherty, 
 
 • Marshy grounds. 
 
 t Mam — defiles ia the mountains — nearly synonymows 
 with " pass." 
 
 B 3
 
 10 THE o'bRIENS, and 
 
 daughter of Earva, King of West Connaught, 
 Anno 944, lineal descendant from Duaeh Tean 
 gumha, or the silver tongued^ fifth christian king 
 of Connaught. This Beavoin was mother of Brian 
 great monarch of all Ireland, called Brian Borru, 
 and in her native mountains did Beavoin OTfla- 
 herty ny Brian, queen of Ireland, retire after the 
 death of her royal husband, and found this same 
 abbey, for nuns of the order of St. Brid£:et, and 
 under the blessed invocation of Mary, John, and 
 Joseph ; and with her of blessed memory began 
 the alliance of kith, kin, and kindred of the 
 O'Fflaherties and the O'Briens ; and, from that 
 hour to this, they have ever been engaged in 
 love, or in war, and ever will to the end of time, 
 until the prophesy be fulfilled. 
 
 And be it known to you, that the person who 
 now addresses you, is yournear kinsman and first 
 cousin, once removed, the son of your first cousin, 
 Onor ny Fflaherty,of the Fflaherties of BalHnsor- 
 beagha, county Mayo, and -iRory Oge O'Brien, 
 the descendant and representative of the 
 O'Briens, Clan Tiegs, princes of the isles of 
 Arran, and lineal descendant of Brian Borru :
 
 THE O^LaHERTYS. 11 
 
 which royal race of the O'Briens of Arran were 
 by the O'Fflaherties in the reign of Queen 
 
 Ehzabeth expelled from ; but of these 
 
 more hereafter. To take up the thread of my 
 narration, 1 say, there are them, who would 
 purchase the abbey lands of IMoycullen at any 
 price, from their present supposed proprietor, 
 Archdeacon Hunks of St. Grellan, son of the 
 discoverer ; which lands, though let below their 
 value, and at a short lease, to a Midhain,* 
 who again parcels them off at rack rents 
 to poor scullogst and beggarly tenants, who 
 ruin all, the archdeacon refuses to dispose 
 of — assigning no reason but that he fears 
 them would take them at so great a price, 
 came not well by their means ; and would fain 
 turn the fine old ruins of the abbey, tower, chaun- 
 try, and castle, to some popish and superstitious 
 uses ; some saying that the talk was, and is, of 
 the nuns of St. Bridget, now lodged over Paddy 
 Blake's shop in the Claddagh of St. Grellan, 
 that they were to be restored to their ancient 
 premises ; and others, having it that the old 
 • Middle-man. f The lowest description of Irish farmers.
 
 12 THE o'bRIEJJS, ANU 
 
 church or chapel, which stands in good preserva- 
 tion in the abbey, is to be fitted up for popish 
 service (the wooden chapel serving for eight 
 parishes having been burnt) and what not ; 
 and surely it would be well worth restoring that 
 ancient, old, and beautiful abbey, if it was only 
 for the honour and glory of the country. For 
 though founded for the nuns of St. Bridget, yet 
 it being no place for faimales, in regard of the 
 troubles, the septs of Connemara fighting through 
 other after the old fashion, the chiefs of the 
 Hy-Tartagh took it into their own hands ; and 
 from the twelfth century to the reformation, the 
 abbot was ever an O'Fflaherty. In 1542 Abbot 
 Hugh surrendered by indenture, covenanting to 
 furnish the king with sixty horse, sixty kerns, 
 and a band of gallow-glasses, whenever the Lord 
 Deputy came into the province. On this con- 
 dition the abbey was insured to him for life ; and 
 after his death, his nephew, Malachi OTflaherty, 
 continuedseizedof itstemporahties, in despite of 
 the king and deputy, being upheld by his sept : 
 and when Malachi died, it was granted, as hereto- 
 fore mentioned, by Elizabeth to your immediate
 
 THE o'flAHERTYS. 13 
 
 ancestor Murroch ne Doe, for ever, in free soc- 
 cage. 
 
 Now this Abbot Malachi, after whom you 
 were named, was a mitred abbot, and a peer of 
 parliament under Queen Mary ; and preyed 
 more cattle, and kept up more hospitality than 
 all the Tanistsin Connaught; and governed his 
 monastery with sovereign controul ; and had his 
 choral monks from Italy, and his church organ 
 from Amsterdam ; and his wines from France 
 and Spain ; and kept his almoner, and his pit- 
 tancer, his chamberlain, and his cellarer (and 
 troth that was no sinecure), and lived as well as 
 the protestant bishop of St. Grellan at this 
 day, as by law established, every taste. 
 
 Be that as it may, there are them do suspect 
 the truth to be that the archdeacon cannot make 
 a title to the property ; and there are who will 
 engage to restore General Count Sir Malachi to 
 his rights and hereditaments in the barony of 
 Moy Cullen, commonly called the abbey lands of 
 themonastery of St. Bridget, provided alwaysthat 
 the Count agrees thereunto, and backsby his pre- 
 sence, influence, and interest (the thing being to
 
 ;14 THE O^BRIENS, AXD 
 
 be brought before the House of Lords) his law- 
 agent, champion, and advocate, who, without 
 fee or reward, or any consideration of lucre or 
 gain, but being as it were employed by the count 
 in the said causes, and acting under his, and 
 counsel's instruction, hereby undertakes to pur- 
 sue the claim, and signs himself the count's 
 
 Humble servant, friend, cousin, and kinsman, 
 Terentius Baron O'Brien, 
 of the Clan Tiegs of Arran. 
 
 P.S.— It will be needful to obtain from the 
 Miss Mac Taafs leave to look through some 
 papers in the old box of the Brigadier Mac Taaf, 
 called the brigadier's cofFre:-a word through the 
 Abbe O'Fflaherty, P.P., who arrived here lately 
 from France, will suffice. The inclosed case 
 will more fully explain your situation. It shall 
 be submitted to counsel for approval, on the 
 receipt of your order to that effect. 
 Case. 
 The father of the defendant Hunks was 
 decreed, as aprotestant discoverer, to the benefit 
 of a statute staple taken by a papist. It can be
 
 THE o'FLAHERTYS. 15 
 
 proved that this discoverer was of papist parents 
 of the old Enghsh stock ; and that, though be- 
 coming a protestant, he had never filed any cer- 
 tificate of his conformity ; and therefore that his 
 claims as a discoverer are void and null. It can 
 be proved that the said father of the defendant, 
 having been till the age of discretion a papist, 
 had never received the sacrament, nor subscribed 
 the declaration, nor taken the abjuration oath, 
 nor filed a certificate thereof in a court of justice; 
 and it is submitted that according to the — th 
 statute Anne, § 14, he cannot be deemed a pro- 
 testant, within the intent of the act, notwithstand- 
 ing that the person so professing himself a pro- 
 testant shall have procured a certificate from the 
 bishop. And it is submitted that the claims of 
 Count Malachi O'Fflaherty, the lineal descen- 
 dant and heir of Sir Bryan OTflaherty, on 
 whom the discovery had been made, are avail- 
 able against said defendant. Hunks.
 
 16 THE o'bRIEXS, and 
 
 Letter II. 
 
 (Inclosing the foregoing.) 
 
 To the Ahhe O'Fflaherty, Post Office, SLGrellan, 
 Galway, Ireland. 
 
 Paris, Rue de V Universite, 177 — 
 MoN Rev. Directeur et cher Cousin, 
 
 What do you think of the inclosed? and 
 what do you know of the writer ? Is he of 
 your communion ? Is he compos mentis? and. 
 for his sins or for yours, is his conscience in 
 your keeping ? 
 
 .•« Car il m'envoye un parchemin escrit, 
 Oil n'y avait seul mot de Jesu Christ ; 
 Mais oil il ne parloit que de plaidoirie, 
 De conseillers, et d'imprimerie." , 
 
 It appears from the plaidoirie of this Con- 
 naught Mons. Chicaneau, that you are arrived 
 at your living in the wilds of Connemara, 
 to which, by divine indignation, and the favour 
 of your uncle, the titular Archbishop of Tuam, 
 you have been appointed ; where a catholic
 
 THE oVlAHERTYS. 17 
 
 priest is a felon by law, and a martyr by choice ; 
 and where you are destined to the full enjoy- 
 ment of all the pains and penalties annexed in 
 Ireland to that perilous calling. Cela m'echauffe 
 la bile. — That a man of your force of intellect, 
 your condition, your philosophy, (all priest as 
 you are), with your Port Royal morality, your 
 Jansenism, and above all your tastes and habits 
 — but I have not time now to fight the ground 
 over again. I have been sous les armes all the 
 morning. For Abbe Hussey and O'Leary break- 
 fasted (fasted) with me on a pate d'anguilles 
 d Amiens, and a flask of mousseuoc dAi; and 
 their fanaticism about Ireland, is at least equal 
 to your own. Like you, they pant 
 
 D'aller a Domfront juste ville de malheur. 
 
 Oil Ton est accuse a midi, et pendu el une heure. 
 
 I write le pied sur Vetrier, Mons. le Due de 
 Lauzun waiting to accompany me to Marli, 
 where we are going for a particular purpose, 
 en polls soil [not being ''' du voyage).'' Here is 
 more English than I have put together on paper 
 these twenty years ; and you will discover, that
 
 18 THE o''bRIENS5 and 
 
 like Arlequin, ^'je ne suis pas fort sur loriho- 
 graphie!''' I dare not trust r/iyself on the sub- 
 ject of the inclosed papers, till I hear from you ; 
 lest I should give myself a ridicule ineffor. 
 ^ahle. " Principalities and advowsons ! spirituals 
 and temporals, depar tous les diahles I ! ! celajait 
 venir Veau a la bouche. What think you of 
 Abbot Malachi the second ? music from Italy, 
 and wines from France, '' Jigurez-vous IT 
 The lance and the crozier have ever quartered 
 well together. St. Ignatius and a hundred 
 other saints were " des braves milUaires,'''' and 
 fought their way to Paradise sword in hand. 
 Hugues Caput, le Grand Capitaine, was called 
 Hugues r Abbe. The council of Henry the Third 
 of France proposed to erect all the abbeys in 
 France into secular commanderies, and to be- 
 stow them on the officers of his court and 
 army. Are there not at this moment des 
 pauvres peres spirituels in Germany, who com- 
 mand a regiment of guards? and am I not 
 already a military lay-monk as knight of the 
 holy order du Saint Esprit ? — " Persuade me 
 not, Sir Hugh ;" my probation is already made!
 
 THE o'fLAIIERTYS. IQ 
 
 Was it not the abbot of Cluni that was called 
 " Tahbi des abbes?" but what was he, or all the 
 abbes of the earth, compared to the abbot of 
 Moycullen, with a noviciate made in camp 
 and court, and transported from Marli and Ver- 
 sailles, to the mountains of Connemara ? What 
 new lights I shall bring with me, in addition to 
 the efficient graces of the abbots Malachi and 
 Hugh. En attendant^ I shall not take my 
 vow till I have further heard from you on the 
 subject, nor resign my colonelcy and my charge 
 de gcntilhomme de la chambre, with all privi- 
 leges and immunities of that alhambra of cour- 
 tier's wishes, " les petits appartemens^^^ until 
 assured by you that my spiritual vocation has a 
 chance of being backed by a competent portion 
 of the good things of this world. 
 
 Write to me immediately en large et longuemcnt. 
 Egoist as I am by habit and by necessity, there is 
 one green spot in my heart, over which the world's 
 blast has not passed, nor the chill of exile (which 
 withers all) withered. It is sacred to the impres- 
 sion of early ties and of passed associations; for 
 I too have my lay vocation to the land of my
 
 20 
 
 birth, if I had the folly to indulge it. But I 
 keep down the brute instinct, and still believe, 
 or endeavour to believe, that " le pays oil Ton 
 doit vivre est celui ou Von vive le mieux^^ and in 
 this heresy I subscribe myself, your penitent in 
 the confessional ; et partout ailleurs. 
 
 Your affectionate friend and kinsman, 
 
 The Count O'Fflaherty. 
 
 P.S. If you do not approve of the inclosed letter 
 for my cousin the baron, who is, I take it for 
 granted, some black letter barrister of the Chi- 
 chester House* school, write what you like better 
 in my name. Also, if the whole be not a day- 
 dream of the baron^s^ wait on the ladies of 
 Mac Taaf, the slapper-sallaghs ! (Delia Cm- 
 
 • Chichester House, so called, after the Chichester family, 
 who erected it, was, in 1641, the residence of the famous 
 Lord Justice Borlase. Parliaments were afterwards assem- 
 bled there ; and the couit of claims being opened in it, it 
 became the constant resort of the old Irish families, who, 
 ruined by forfeitures, had always claims to make. That 
 magnificent and beautiful fabricthe Parliament House, now 
 the bank of Ireland, occupies the site of Chichester House.
 
 THE O'FLAHERTYS. 21 
 
 scans ! et vous les quarante ! find me in your 
 dictionaries a word comparable to that in sound 
 or sense,) and see what is to be done about the 
 brigadier's coffer. I direct to you at hazard, 
 not quite certain whether your nearest post 
 town is in Nova Scotia, " or our own good city'' 
 of St. Grellan. I send this under Lord Stair's 
 diplomatic cover, with the English dispatches ; 
 so I reckon on its arriving safely. Write, write, 
 write ; and direct always to the F. St. Germ. 
 If it is not felony for a priest to ride, pray mount 
 your horse, and pay a visit to my dominions, 
 temporal and spiritual, of Moycullen, that you 
 may report on their condition. Once more, sans 
 adieu. 
 
 Yours, M. OT.
 
 22 THE o'bRIENS, and 
 
 Letteii III. 
 
 A Mons. le General Comte O" FJLalierty ^ a son 
 Hotel, rue de V Universite, F. St. G. d Paris. 
 
 MoN CHER General, et beau Cousin, 
 
 I thought to have dated ray first Irish letter 
 from " wretched Dublin, in miserable Ireland," 
 to use a phrase of Swift's, as applicable now as 
 when it was first employed. Many causes, how- 
 ever, have urged my immediate departure from 
 the capital. My poor brethren of the Augus- 
 tinian Friary, in St. John's-street (consisting 
 only of the old prior and two regulars), where 
 I intended to lodge, en chemin/aisant, had been 
 obliged to fly from the rew persecution against 
 all the regulars in Ireland. My friends and 
 travelling companions, also, the Lord and Lady 
 Clandillon, who, after their long exile, were 
 returning to purchase estates and settle in the 
 land of their fathers, have stopped short in 
 London ; where letters met them with an 
 account of the prevalent intolerance both of the
 
 THE o'fLAHERTYS. ftB 
 
 laws and system of government, and of the dis- 
 turbances in the south. So they mean to return 
 once more to the continent, and with sad 
 hearts to resume their foreign habits, and breath 
 their last in a distant chme. Thus it is that 
 Ireland is deprived of its capitalists. Many 
 families who have acquired large fortunes on 
 the continent, and in India, and who were dis- 
 posed to bring back to their native country 
 their wealth, their enlarged views, and industri- 
 ous habits, are driven back from its shores, by 
 those barriers to all national prosperity and 
 moral improvement, the penal laws, and the 
 state of society arising out of them. My brother, 
 too, my excellent brother, to whom my untra- 
 velled heart returned with such hopes of a per- 
 manent intercourse, he is gone. I had only 
 time to embrace him, after a separation of twelve 
 years. He has closed his partnership with the 
 house of Mahony and O'Connor, resolved to 
 place the little he has saved by twenty years 
 labour beyond the reach of those penalties and 
 forfeitures, to which his unfortunate caste daily 
 exposes him.
 
 24 THE o'briexs, and 
 
 At the present moment, all commercial inte- 
 rests are suffering deeply under the common 
 affliction of the country — the monopoly enjoyed 
 by the merchants of the established church. 
 The laws which favour them with superior 
 influence, credit and early information, expose 
 their less orthodox brethren to injury and de- 
 pression, and greatly prejudice the trading 
 community at large. It is in vain ; that we 
 strive to extricate ourselves from these toils ; on 
 every side, new suspicions are to be allayed, 
 new mortifications are to be endured ; and, 
 distrustful of the present, as hopeless of the 
 future, we are reduced to the choice of acts alike 
 abhorrent to our natures, apostacy or treason. 
 What then is left but flight ! And yet this is 
 a sad alteiTiative I The horrible system pur- 
 sued for a century, to degrade and pillage the 
 Catholic population, has worked its end. The 
 peasantry appear morally and physically to be 
 reduced to a state, to which, that of the beasts 
 of the field is preferable. The spirit of the few 
 gentry, now to be met with in the capital, is as 
 broken, as their whole condition is fallen.
 
 THE o'flahertvs. 25 
 
 Nothing like a political sensation exists among 
 them, for though O'Connor of Ballinagar and 
 others, whose smuggled education has given 
 them a moral existence, have endeavoured to 
 get up a committee ; yet the Catholics are still 
 satisfied, with being permitted to carry a slavish 
 address to each successive viceroy, which is 
 treated with all the contempt it deserves. 
 
 The frightful shock, the utter dislocation of 
 society, given by the revolution, is still felt in 
 faint and remote vibration, though at the end of 
 a century. The displaced classes are not yet 
 shaken down, into their permanent positions. 
 Many of the gentry have melted into peasants, 
 many of the lowest persons have risen into 
 sudden wealth ; while consideration is confined 
 to power and office, and all distinctions are 
 ill defined, save those conferred by legis- 
 lative influence, or church supremacy. A 
 third insurrection since 1759, has recently 
 broken out. With names as wild* as their ven- 
 
 * In 1759, the white boys directed their vengeance 
 chiefly against tithe proctors, but the church and the 
 chapel, the priest and the parson, were usually attacked 
 
 VOL. I. C
 
 26 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 geance, the wretched peasantry, maddened into 
 violence by want and injustice, have beset their 
 petty local rulers, with such arms as nature ever 
 lends the oppressed. They overrun the park, 
 and trample down the meadow ; they assail the 
 glebe, and lay waste the farm. Clustered in 
 numerous array, under the shelter of darkness, 
 for the purposes of midnight depredation, they 
 spring up in by-ways and lone places, and 
 avenge their wrongs with a cruelty, propor- 
 tioned to the barbarous policy by which they 
 are oppressed. 
 
 You will not wonder then, that I hastened 
 ray departure from Dublin (which is still * 
 the same, ill built, filthy, and badly policed 
 city, I left it twelve years back), and that even 
 the wilds of Connaught appear preferable to 
 the moral desolation of that disgusting capital. 
 
 on the same night, with unsparing impartiaUty. In 1763 
 the hearts of oak boys, and in 1770, the hearts of steel 
 boys were abroad. A commission appointed by govern- 
 ment to inquire into the disturbances, reported that the 
 authors of these riots were of different persuasions, and 
 that no marks of disaffection to his majesty's government 
 appeared in anv of the people. 
 
 * Anno 177 —
 
 THE OFLAHERTYS. 27 
 
 I accompanied my venerable maternal uncle, the 
 titular Archbishop of Tuam, as far as his resi- 
 dence ; and then proceeded, by Galway, to my 
 parish in lar-Connaught ; a parish, in point of 
 extent, equal to an English bishoprick. Its 
 duties extend by land and sea, bog and moun- 
 tain, over a surface of some thousand Irish acres ; 
 as it partly lies in the great isle of Arran (Ara na 
 Twaimhi, or Arran of the saints) and partly 
 among the southern mountains of Connemara ; 
 that is to say, in your ancient fief of Moy Cullen, 
 of which Arran-Moreis the half barony. 
 
 I have just returned from my ocean parish, 
 after a delightful sail of three hours ; and peu 
 ienfaui^ that I do not make it my domicile, and 
 send my coadjutor (who at present officiates 
 there, in a ruined monastery, founded by St. 
 jEngus) to Moy Cullen. Are you aware that 
 the isles of Arran were royally governed by the 
 clan Tieg O'Briens, up to the time of Ehzabeth ; 
 when, as the old records of Galway attest (for 
 the Clan Tiegs, and the town of Galway were 
 always in mutual alliance, offensive and defen- 
 sive), Murroch Mac Turlogh O'Brien, chief of 
 eg
 
 J28 THE OBRIENS AXD 
 
 his sept, lord of the isle, and in full possession 
 of his lawful inheritance, " was by the usurping 
 power of the O'Flaherties thence expulsed?" 
 But upon information being received by the 
 queen's government, the O'Flaherties of lar- 
 Connaught were in their turn expelled ; and the 
 queen issued a commission, declaring "that the 
 islands belonged to her majesty in right of the 
 crown," This was ever the old way of settling 
 disputes between quarrelsome neighbours, in 
 Ireland. Since that time, these most romantic 
 islands, the foyer of druidism, of Christianity, 
 and of all antiquarian research, have passed 
 through various hands. In 1641 the Clan Tiegs, 
 who to this day claim them as their inheritance, 
 surrounded and attacked them on all sides (so 
 numerous and powerful was this sept) ; and they 
 were only frustrated in their designs by the 
 Marquis of Clanrickarde, at the head of an En- 
 glish army. Even at the actual moment, a new 
 claimant to this property has arisen, in the 
 person of one Baron O'Brien (one of our barons 
 by courtesy, I take it,)* a profound Seanachy 
 
 * " Of the title of barons (not lords) there are several 
 families that yet remain in this kingdom. Many are ex-
 
 THE O FLAHERTYS. »9 
 
 antiquarian, and Irish philologist; who, to 
 fulfil a prophecy " that the sept of the Clan 
 Tiegs will never regain their dominions in the 
 islands, till one of the direct line be born in the 
 ruins of Dun ^ngus," (a most curious remain- 
 der of Irish military architecture), has twice car- 
 ried the baroness from her snug brick-house in 
 St. Grellan, to give an heir to the head of the 
 " quinque familiae"* in their ancient fortress. 
 Unluckily, a fausse couche has twice proved 
 that the star of the Mac Tiegs does not hold its 
 
 tinct, and some are advanced to higher degrees of honour. 
 Of old, we had in this country (Westmeath) the baron of 
 Moynshell, (Tuitt). The family remains in good reputa- 
 tion and port, although the title be almost obsolete. The 
 baron of Rathconrah (Owen), the family now reduced to 
 one poor brogue-maker, the chief of a few mean cottiers. 
 In the county of Meath, the baron of Navan (Nangle), the 
 baron of Galtrim (Hussey) ; in the county of Kilkenny, 
 the baron of Burnchurch (Fitzgerald) j in Munster the 
 baron of Loughmoe (Purcell), and several other families in 
 this kingdom. This honour is hereditary in the several 
 families, though the style (I know not by what neglect) be 
 almost worn out everywhere.'' — Survey. 
 
 * The " five families of free ejentlemen," descended from 
 Milesians, were the O'Briens, O'Connors, O'Neales, O'Don- 
 neU, and O'Kevanaghs.
 
 30 THE o'bRIENS AtfD 
 
 ascendant. But the Irish have great faith in 
 odd numbers; and the third voyage of this 
 future mother of the Irish Gracchi has been just 
 undertaken. I passed the royal barge, " big 
 with the fate of Cato and of Rome," on my 
 voyage home. Thus all here tends to the 
 past ; 
 
 " E di memoria nudrisi, piii che di speme." 
 
 I have obtained this Shanaos, partly in Irish, 
 partly in bog Latin, and partly in Connaught 
 English, from Shane na Brien, the son of a wierd 
 woman, or Benicd of the Isle of Arran-more ; 
 one of the sept, and who moreover " wears a 
 girdle,"* Mor-nv Brient is to be the JunoLucina 
 ('' according to the prophecy," says Shane) and 
 the fosterer of the young prince of the isles. 
 Shane himself, the son by a former marriage of 
 
 • For an account of the consecrated Irish girdle, and its 
 miraculous power, see Walker's History of the ancient Irish 
 dress. 
 
 t Ny, " the daughter;" the female prefix, answering to 
 the O', or titular distinctive of the males. ** O' " properly 
 applies only to the chief family; " Mac," signifies the son 
 of; and " Na," the genitive case of the article, is appro- 
 priated to the humbler followers of the clan.
 
 THE o'FLAHERTYS. 31 
 
 this Sybil of the Isles, is a fine specimen of the 
 mere Irish animal, in its highest physical perfec- 
 tion. A young giant in structure, he possesses all 
 the qualifications of that race, whom the English 
 army of Henry Fitzempress " hunted through 
 the woods, but found it impossible to take, while 
 the leaves were on the trees." With senses as 
 keen as a beast of prey, he sees and hears, when 
 neither sound or object meet more civilized 
 organs; yet is he obtuse and dull, to all subjects 
 that do not reach him through his local interests 
 or his hereditary attachments. He is one of the 
 last representatives of the true " green born rap- 
 paree" of the early part of the century. His 
 immediate ancestors, gentlemen of high descent, 
 had been among the victims of revolutionary 
 rage ; and being I'educed to the alternative of 
 " Hell or Connaught," chose the latter, as a 
 mezzo termine, and gradually degenerated among 
 the savage regions of that remote province, from 
 loyal gentlemen (martyrs on a good principle, 
 to a bad cause), to desperate outlaws. They 
 were in one generation, the fierce bog-hunted 
 tory ; in another, the predatory rapparee ; and
 
 32 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 in the nejdt, were broken down to the mere wood 
 kern. Shane leads a genuine green wood life, 
 fishing, fowling, climbing, diving, and paddling 
 his canoe round the isles. His powerful me- 
 mory, and more powerful imagination, (the one 
 stored by his mother, a celebrated Scealuidhe, 
 or story teller of Arran, and the other fed by 
 the fantastic superstition of the Arranites,) are 
 proofs of his true Irish organization; which 
 bad laws and institutions may have degraded, 
 but have not destroyed. I should hke to 
 educate and lure him into the lines of civiliza- 
 tion : at present he follows the perilous and pic- 
 turesque profession of a clifter, or Puffin hunter ; 
 and I doubt not he will be the Chiron of the 
 future Achilles of the west. 
 
 What a contrast between the scenes and as- 
 sociations of this island, and my entresol in the 
 Rue de Bac, entre coiir et jar din ; or even be- 
 tween its romantic solitudes and the " priest's 
 house " on the main land, surrounded on all sides 
 by objects of squalid misery, and physical and 
 moral disgust. By a strange anomaly, the 
 deeper you go in Ireland, within the boundaries
 
 THE o'flahertys. 33 
 
 of civilization, the more you are struck with the 
 degradation of society. 
 
 This moment, " Paddy the post," a red 
 shanked runner between the town of St. Grellan 
 and the mountains of Connemara, has brought 
 me your welcome letter, and its curious enclo- 
 sure. Its odeur musquee, transported me at 
 once to the boudoir au pavilion^ rue deVUni- 
 versite, and the sight of your writing, gave me 
 the first thrill of pleasure I have experienced 
 since my arrival in this land of suffering and 
 sadness. What a curious coincidence between 
 your inquiries and my historical notices of the 
 Clan Tiegs. I shall dispatch your letter to the 
 Baron by an Arran sunfish boat this evening, 
 and immediately pay my respects to the Miss 
 Mac TaafTs of Bogmoy. The expression of 
 your friendship touched me sensibly. Never were 
 feelings and habits more at variance than 
 yours. " C'est un hon mauvais svjet," said la 
 Duchesse de Coigny^ speaking of you the night 
 before I left Paris, and I have often thought 
 that you illustrated the dogma of Porphyry 
 that the souls of men were angels, who in the 
 c 3
 
 34 
 
 THE O BRIENS AND 
 
 great conflict between good and bad spirits, 
 were doomed to corrupt bodies, to try their 
 sincerity ; and never was angelic soul more tried 
 by the appetites and passions of a worthless 
 body, than your own. I leave however to time, 
 that great reformer of life, and director of 
 conscience, to effect that for you which I have 
 failed to do ; not for want of zeal, but means : 
 and in the interim, must love you for the virtues 
 you have, in expectation of those that as yet 
 " you know not of." 
 
 Your vocation to the monastic life is quite 
 en regie, for you have long since qualified for 
 givfng more joy in heaven by your repentance, 
 than the ninety and nine just persons who have 
 never erred. I have seen many such as you, 
 desabuses sur tout, digging their own graves at 
 La Trappe, or treading the snow at St. Bernard, 
 
 Car li^las! les plus aimables 
 Sont souvent les plus coupables. 
 
 Among the lingering recollections of your boy- 
 hood, can you not recall an old dreary building, 
 which stood on the edge of the Fassagh, on the 
 road from ^loy CuUen to St. Grellan, between
 
 THE o'flahertys. 35 
 
 shore and mountain ; and which with the name 
 of Bogmoy house, presented in its composite 
 order of tower and gable, bawn and barn, 
 thatch and shingle, " fair limestone house, and 
 wicker-work edifice,'' a monument of the pro- 
 gressive history and vicissitudes of the country ? 
 In our times, it was the domestic fortress of a 
 certain brigadier Flavius Mac Taaf, who vo- 
 lunteered, with many other Irish gentlemen to 
 follow George the Second to his German wars, — • 
 who as gallantly defended himself against an 
 host of besieging creditors at home, as he had 
 defended his king against his enemies abroad ; — 
 and who having fought, and tippled away his 
 limbs, health and temper, continued to the last 
 to swear like a trooper, drink like a fish, to run 
 his own claret into the smuggling caves of his 
 own Fassagh, to distill his own poteen in the 
 security of his own bawn, and to claim half the 
 titles and all the estates of the province, on the 
 testimony of his own Connaught Shanaos. 
 
 This Shanaos, with his bogs, barrels, still pots, 
 and lawsuits, he bequeathed to the Miss Mac 
 Taafs, his three nieces and co-heiresses, the sole
 
 36 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 re presentatives of their acute, w ary and pugnacious 
 sept. As they are of an old protestant family, ac- 
 customed to look down on the new converts, and in 
 alliance with all the catholic families in Connaught, 
 they have all the toleration towards our unhappy 
 cast, which is wanting in the more modern sec- 
 tarians. The parish priest has always a duplicate 
 key of their gardevin, and a cover at their Sunday 
 dinner table ; and he is a never faihng adjunct 
 to their party, at " five and forty" and cribbage. 
 Although I have not yet availed my self of these 
 privileges, which my predecessor (I hear) did not 
 permit to lie idle, I have left ray card at their 
 door, and have received an invitation to dine with 
 them next Sunday, written on the back of a dirty 
 knave of clubs, which I suppose, in the words 
 of their favourite game, has been, " thrown out 
 for the rob."" 
 
 You shall hear from me as soon as I have 
 made the necessary inquiries touching Terentius 
 and his claims : meantime 
 
 and ever, I remain, 
 
 Your's, &c. &c. &c. 
 Abbe O'Flaherty.
 
 THE o'flahertys. 37 
 
 LETTER IV. 
 
 To Gen. Count Of Flaherty, 
 
 6fc. S^c. SfC. 
 
 My Dear Count, 
 I have delayed writing, that I might write to 
 some purpose ; and finding that it was possible 
 to combine my temporal agency with my spi- 
 ritual mission, I have rendered each subservient 
 to the other. In penetrating into tlie remote 
 wilds of my diocese, and making the personal 
 acquaintance with the poorest, as well as the 
 wealthiest of my flock, I have obtained the 
 requisite information respecting both your 
 interests and my own. All this I have 
 done under the guidance, and with the full 
 benefit of the advice, information, and su- 
 perior knowledge of our kinsman and legal 
 champion, the Baron O'Brien ; with whom I 
 have visited your castle, abbey, and feudatory 
 domains, under circumstances that have put
 
 S8 
 
 THE O BEIENS AND 
 
 me perfectly aufait to his character, views, and 
 springs of action, both with respect to himself 
 and to you : — for you are not to suppose that 
 all his exertions are ^^pour V amour de vos heaux 
 yeux^"" No, there is an outstanding prophecy 
 to be fulfilled. The sacrilegious crimes of 
 Murrogh O'Brien, Lord Inchiquin, Cromwell's 
 apostate general, are to be redeemed through 
 his descendants. But above all, there is a long 
 account of vengeance to be paid off' to the Arch- 
 deacon Hunks: "a true Irishman (says the 
 baron) never forgives an injury nor forgets a 
 kindness."" 
 
 Now, who do you think this Terentius Baron 
 O'Brien turns out to be — this head of the 
 " quinque familiae,'"* this living representative of 
 the ancient Brehons and Seanachies of the land, 
 whose professional success has enabled him to 
 purchase estates in the dominions of his ances- 
 tors, and to drive a carriage emblazoned with 
 the royal arms and supporters of the O'Briens ? 
 " Devinez sHl vous plait. Je vous le donne en 
 guatre, je vous le donne en cent ; jetez voire 
 langue aux chiens ;" you will never guess ; what
 
 THE o'FLAHERTYS. 39 
 
 do yoQ think of little Terneen na garlach* the 
 noistroiHc of the mass cave in the old abbey 
 of Moy CuUen, the supposed illegitimate ofT- 
 pring of your cousin Onor ny Flaherty, who as 
 the '* Callecn dhas dliii'X of Turlogh Carolan's 
 amatory muse, and as the possessor of the Ab- 
 bess Beavoin's cross, obtained a sort of poetical 
 and pious celebrity, which has not yet passed away 
 in her native district ? But I forget that your 
 early expatriation, and the world through which 
 you have passed, and which effaces every thing, 
 must have obliterated these early recollections ; 
 which my frequent visits to Ireland, peculiar 
 situation, and professional habits, have preserved 
 in all their original freshness. Well, then, to 
 suit my narrative to your jucunda oblivia of 
 Irish life (for what is there of Irish misfortune 
 which it is not pleasant to forget !) you are to 
 know that Onor ny Flaherty was the only and 
 posthumous daughter of one of those gallant 
 officers, who after the capitulation of Limerick, 
 
 ♦ Trrneen na garlach. Little Terence the base-born. 
 
 f l>acristan. 
 
 X Call', en dhas dhu — The pretty dark girl.
 
 40 THK O'BRIENS AND 
 
 assembled amidst the ruins of the abbey of 
 Quin, to make their election between remaining 
 in Ireland, or going into exile. Of this deli- 
 beration, a voluntary expatriation was the result ; 
 and the English government saw with dismay 
 and mortification the flower of the Irish no- 
 bility and army, headed by Sarsfield, Lord 
 Lucan, march to the coast, from which they 
 embarked, to the number of four thousand, to 
 give to Europe her most gallant soldiers, and 
 most skilful leaders. 
 
 The death of Col. O'Flaherty, who fell at the 
 battle of Veletri, left Onor an houseless orphan, 
 and enlisted her of necessity, into that legion of 
 poor cousins, who then billetted themselves on 
 the few of their own caste, who had rescued any 
 portion of their property from the general pro- 
 scription. Poor Onor, condemned by her in- 
 solvent, but proud gentility, to lead an idle and 
 wandering hfe, continued (in the phrase of the 
 day) " to walk up and down the country 
 among her fosterers and kindred/' with no 
 earthly means of support, but " the run of their 
 houses," and the little revenue derived from the
 
 THE oVlAHKRTYS. 41 
 
 Abbess Beavoin*s cross, an hereditary relic, like 
 the Cathach of the O'Donnels :* the country 
 people coming far and near, in all their petty 
 litigations to swear upon it at a tester the oath. 
 Onor was wont upon these occasions to throw in 
 a prayer gratis ; for Onor was a great voteen, a 
 sort of unprofessed nun, (when none other was 
 permitted by law,) who had moreover vowed her- 
 self to the Virgin, and v/as of the confraternity 
 of the blessed rosary. Onor, too, had the voice 
 of an angeJ, and whoever once heard her sing 
 Carolan's " Gloria in excelsis^'' or the '^ Miserere ^"^ 
 with Irish words, will never forget those heart- 
 breaking tones ; tones which are so peculiar to 
 the plaintive and melodious organs of her coun- 
 trywomen. 
 
 * The lower Irish in general esteem no oath as binding, 
 which is not made on a crucifix, or something in a shape 
 of a cross. The crosier of St. Monalagh (Dr. Warner 
 obsen'es) is still preserved with great care. It is called the 
 boughal, or stick, and is of curious workmanship. It is 
 held in such veneration, that oaths are taken on it with 
 great solemnity, and a shilling is paid for its use, to a poor 
 woman who gives it out to the applicant, and it travels 
 safely from cabin to cabin.— See Statistical View of the 
 County of Clare.
 
 42 THE OBRIENS AND 
 
 It happened, however, that while Onor was 
 enjoying the odour of sanctity, ere her vow to 
 the Virgin was yet dry in the records of heaven's 
 chancery, there arrived in St. Grellan, to the 
 peril of all vestal vows, one of those " idle 
 young gentlemen of this kingdom," who (in the 
 words of the statute) " having nothing to live on 
 of their own, will not apply themselves to labour, 
 but doe live idly, and inordinately, coshering 
 upon the country, and cessing themselves, their 
 followers, horses, and greyhounds upon the poor 
 people and gentry." Yet in spite of all acts 
 and statutes, when this " idle young gentleman"* 
 came galloping' down the main street of St. 
 Grellan, with his follower trotting after, and his 
 greyhound running beside him, every hat was 
 touched and every eye smiled ; for all knew it 
 was Rory Oge O'Brien, of the Clan Tieg 
 O'Briens of Tromra, once lords of the lies of 
 Arran ; whose name was a passport to the re- 
 verence, respect, and good will of the whole 
 province. His father, Colonel Daniel O'Brien, 
 to avoid the act of prcemunire then held in ter- 
 rorem over such papists as either taught their
 
 THE O FLAHEllTYS. 4sJ 
 
 children at home, or sent them abroad for edu- 
 cation, having fled with his youngest son while 
 yet a child, to the continent, fought in the 
 service of the King of Spain and the two Sicilies, 
 and in the Commandery of Calabria, and fell at 
 the battle of Cremona. His young son was 
 thus left a pupil in the Jesuit College of Naples, 
 (and is the now celebrated ex-jesuit Abbe Igna- 
 tius O'Brien). Meantime, Rory Oge, the heir 
 and Tanist of the sept, remained in Ireland, 
 and preserved the old influence of clanship, and 
 the old habits of gentlemanly idleness ; literally 
 " coshering upon the country, and cessing him- 
 self, horse and greyhound" upon friends, rela- 
 tions and neighbours. But as there was no 
 penal statute for maiming, or otherwise defacing 
 the person of an handsome papist, nocent or 
 innocent, Rory Oge contrived to prey the coun- 
 try, as his ancestors had done before him : not 
 indeed, carrying away herds, but hearts; and 
 breaking more vows to the Virgin, than the 
 Iconoclasts ever broke images. 
 
 Now, it happened that Onor ny Flaherty 
 stood telling lier beads and looking at the kiss-
 
 44 THE o'briens and 
 
 ing and quarrelling of the market people in the 
 main street, from the Spanish bay window of a 
 kinsman's house, when Rory Oge rode into the 
 town of St. Grellan. Eory was an experienced 
 watcher of windows on a market day ; and he 
 saluted the lady with a flourish of his Ramilies 
 hat, as, riding up to the porch, he claimed his 
 coshering with " Eanaght and Kdraugli^ " after 
 the old prescriptive fashion. There he not only 
 cessed himself, horse, follower, and greyhound, 
 for one calendar month upon Onor's hospitable 
 Connaught cousin, but lodged himself for life 
 in that sanctuary which the Virgin, till then, had 
 exclusively occupied — poor Onor's tender heart- 
 O'Brien, who, like Madelon, was of opinion 
 that ^^ne f aire V amour qii en faisant le contrat 
 de marriage^' ^ was ^^ prendre le roman par la 
 qaeue^' had as yet no inclination " de venir de 
 but en hlanc a Vumon du mariage;'' but Onor 
 was a gentlewoman born and bred, and though 
 Rory Oge was as ardent as all the Rory Oges 
 ever have been, and ever will be to the end of 
 time, yet Onor was as pure, though not as frail, 
 * See Statute of Charies II., against coshering.
 
 THE o'flahertys. 45 
 
 as her own vow to the Virgin. The result, as 
 mio'ht be expected, was a compromise between 
 love and conscience. One fine morning Onor 
 mounted en croupe behind Rory Oge, accx)m- 
 panied only by his horse-boy and greyhound, 
 took the road to the mountains of Moy Cullen, 
 by the then desolate and unfrequented pass of 
 Glen-murrogh, and presented themselves at 
 the cell of the titular Bishop of St. Grellan, 
 (a persecuted prelate, who, under your 
 father's protection, and at a great risk, took 
 shelter among the ruins of the Abbey of St. 
 Bridget, whence he addressed his letters to his 
 exiled friends abroad, " ex nostra ultimo re- 
 fugio)r* 
 
 The jealousy of the statute book against 
 
 * About this time a proclamation was issued by tiie 
 privy council of Ireland, for the detection of catholic 
 priests, by which, in addition to the rewards offered by 
 acts of Parliament, the informers were promised, on the 
 conviction of an archbishop, bishop, or vicar general, the 
 sura of f 150 ; for every priest or other person exercising 
 ecclesiastical jurisdiction £50 •, for every person, having 
 property to a certain amount, and entertaining, concealing, 
 or relieving a priest, £200.
 
 46 THE o'briens and 
 
 holy wedlock then ran so high, and the pre- 
 miums on catholic concubinage were so much 
 above par, that it was perilous for a catholic 
 priest to celebrate the forms of marriage between 
 any parties whatever ; and notwithstanding the 
 two ancient catholic names that now presented 
 themselves to be indissoiubly united, the bishop 
 hesitated. There was, however, something in 
 the air of Rory Oge (to say nothing of the ides 
 of May, and the solitary pass of Glen-murrogh), 
 that induced him, for Onor's sake, to risk a 
 compliance. But when the sacrament of mar- 
 riage was over, and the bishop proposed the 
 celebration of a still more solemn ceremony, 
 O'Brien started, hesitated, and at last confessed 
 that he was by accident, and without his own 
 knowledge or consent, a member of the church 
 as by law established, having been converted by 
 a process of persuasion then very prevalent, 
 which saved the soul and the property of the 
 proselyte by the only means deemed security for 
 either. To recover a very small estate, Rory, 
 who was no bigot, had undergone a temporary 
 conformity ; with the mental reservation of re-
 
 THE o'FLAHERTYS. 47 
 
 lapsing as soon as he should have sold his few 
 acres so recovered, and placed his money in 
 safety in some foreign security.* For this act, 
 he boasted at the time that he had good grounds; 
 and he declared that he would rather trust his 
 soul with Providence for a few months, than 
 leave an acre of his land for one day at the 
 mercy of the statute book. 
 
 On this avowal, which struck poor Onor to the 
 heart, the bishop made no observation ; but coolly 
 taking down a book, read aloud as follows : — *' If 
 a catholic clergyman happens, though inadveri- 
 ently^ to celebrate marriage between a catholic 
 and a protestant, not previously married by a 
 protestant minister, he is liable by law to suffer 
 death '' Onor, already feeling the penalty of 
 her breach of one vow, by the fatality of another, 
 swore at the feet of the crucifix, before which she 
 had just pledged her faith to O'Brien, never to 
 reveal her marriage during the life of her revered 
 
 » •'Necessity that makes a man ten times forsworn," 
 rendered this a very common practice in Ireland at the 
 epoch alluded to, when every species of demoralization was 
 forwarded and protected by the law of the land.
 
 48 THE o'briens and 
 
 pastor ; while Rory swore " by all the books 
 that ever were opened or shut," not to betray a 
 secret which, under any circumstances, it had 
 never been his intention to disclose. 
 
 Shortly after Rory left the country, never to 
 return ; and poor abandoned and betrayed Onor 
 remained to stand the brunt of his desertion and 
 of her own disgrace. She soon lost not only her 
 fine spirits, but what was worse, her fine form. 
 No longer the welcome guest of even Connaught 
 cousins, she was looked coldly upon by all. A 
 superannuated court lady, then sheltering her 
 titled head in Castle O 'Flaherty, who had in her 
 fair youth wooed the smile of the Duchess of 
 Portsmouth, or courted a nod from Sedley's 
 profligate daughter, now turned her eyes 
 askance when poor Onor came in her way ; and 
 when, deserted by all, she gave birth to Terence 
 O'Brien, in the cabin of a poor cotter in the 
 mountains of Moy Cullen, she had the mortifi- 
 cation of hearing the sobriquet of " Terneen na 
 garlagh"*'* bestowed upon the legitimate descend- 
 ant of Brien Borru. In a short time afterwards 
 • " The illegitimate."
 
 THE o'fLAHERTYS. 49 
 
 Onor and her infant son disappeared from the 
 neighbourhood of St. Grellan, and nothing was 
 known of her for some years, except that she 
 was living in the isles of Arran, and had been 
 occasionally met by wayfaring people, wander- 
 ing lonely in lone places, in the mountains of the 
 Hy-Tartagh, with her son in one hand, a pil- 
 grim's staff in the other, and her hereditary cross 
 in her bosom. There she was revered as a saint, 
 by the title of " Onor na Croise^^* and indeed 
 was regarded as a martyr also; for, while 
 making a pilgrimage to St. Patrick's purgatory, 
 she was caught in the act of praying at the holy 
 well, and thus incurred the penalty of a fine ; 
 which as she had not the means of paying, she 
 suffered the punishment of a whipping, de- 
 nounced against every person, " who shall 
 attend or be present at any pilgrimage^ or meet- 
 ing at any holy well, or reputed holy well." 
 To this punishment, some say she submitted, as 
 a voluntary penance ; but this is not probable. 
 
 The death of the persecuted bishop, for whose 
 sake she had undergone so much ignominy 
 
 * Honor of the Cross. 
 VOL. I. D
 
 50 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 and suffering, released her from her vow of 
 silence. 
 
 The castle of your father, limited as were 
 his means, was at that time the rendezvous 
 and asylum of a number of unfortunate 
 cathoHc ladies and gentlemen, reduced from 
 rank and opulence to houseless poverty, by the 
 proscription which followed the revolution. 
 There was in those dark times, an affectionate 
 party attachment, the relic of the old feudal 
 clanship, which new associations of mercantile 
 and metaphysical ideas, together with distrust 
 of all, felt by all, have now abolished. It hap- 
 pened, that on the Christmas eve, which fol- 
 lowed the death of the titular bishop, the party 
 of the castle had assembled for midnight mass, 
 in the cave under the chauntry in the abbey, 
 which still bears the name of " the mass cave, 
 or priest's chamber.'" Mac Cabe* had just played 
 on the harp, the fine " Gloria " of Carolan, and 
 had struck up the Miserere, when a voice of the 
 most heart-breaking pathos, that drew tears from 
 
 * One of the last of the composers and harpists of the 
 old school, who played in the halls of the nobility and 
 gentry of Ireland.
 
 51 
 
 all eyes, issued froQi a remote part of the cave. 
 The voice of poor Onor was never to be forgot- 
 ten ; and when the service was over, the vision 
 of her former self was recognised, advancing to 
 the altar, her child in one hand, and a paper in 
 the other, which she presented to the officiating 
 priest. She was wrapt in the old Irish mantle, 
 and her long hair, no longer the raven locks of 
 the Calkcn dJtas dhiu but white as snow, hunir 
 round her fine tall figure, and with her up- 
 raised eye, recalled the Magdalen of Guido. 
 The priest read the paper she presented aloud, 
 from the altar. It was the bishop's certificate 
 of her marriage. All knew his seal and signa- 
 ture affixed to the instrument, that restored her 
 to her fair fame ; and all were willing to make 
 the amende, for all were sensible of poor Onor's 
 pious sacrifice. But Onor, with the double vin- 
 dictiveness of female, and of Irish pride, wounded 
 l^eyond all solace, did not forget, and could not 
 forgive. She had vowed, never to sleep beneath 
 "the shed of a shingle roof ;'' and she would 
 accept of no hospitality, but from that humble 
 class, which had never deserted her. She con- 
 tinued, however, for a short time on Sundays
 
 52 THE o'briems and 
 
 and holidays, to frequent the mass cave, where 
 she sang the Miserere in Irish, while her little 
 boy, pranked out in a tattered stole and cinc- 
 ture (for she had devoted him to the church), 
 served as Noistreoir or Sacristan. I was then 
 a boy ; but I see him now, as I saw him at the 
 time, walking barefooted and barelegged, after 
 the officiating priest, with his bell and book in 
 either hand, bowing to the right and to the left, 
 according to the forms; snuflBng with his fingers 
 the tallow candles, that lighted up the rude 
 rock altar, chaunting out the responses, and 
 tingling his little bell, with a low and muffled 
 vibration, as if he feare d its prohibited sound 
 should be borne on the blasts, that rushed 
 through the secret mass cave, to the ears of 
 the bishop, " by law established." Oh ! my 
 dear O' Flaherty, these are the scenes, and these 
 the recollections, which render the catholics of 
 Ireland, the most catholic of any in Christen- 
 dom ; which array the heart and fancy, on the 
 side of a persecuted religion, and bind both of 
 them to forms and creeds, which I much fear 
 are losing their influence over every other part 
 of Europe.
 
 THE O FLAHF.RTYS. 5b 
 
 It was just before I was sent to Douai, that 
 Onor, returning to her hovel in the Isle of 
 Arran, was found on a spring morning dead 
 among the ruins of Dun Engus, " with wander- 
 ing spent and woe" ; and poor Terry, the little 
 descendant of the heroes who raised that great 
 military fortress, having wept himself asleep on 
 his mother's body, on the night of her inter- 
 ment in the family vault, set out the next day 
 on his travels in the quality of a poor scholar. 
 With '' the world before," and a satchel of books 
 behind him, and with the Abbess Beavoin's cross 
 for his sole inheritance, he continued to lead 
 much the same wandering and precarious life 
 he had led from his cradle, (alas f there were 
 many of the sons of the proscribed Irish gentry 
 who had then neither so certain nor so honest 
 a means of subsistence). It happened that 
 Terence, no longer Terneen na Garlach, but 
 Terence na Librach*, was pursuing his voca- 
 tion one Sunday in the cemetery of St. Grellan's 
 cathedral, and was reading out the ^' Seven wise 
 
 * Terence of the book?.
 
 54 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 maisters^'* for a circle of less learned auditors, 
 at a halfpenny a head, when he was suddenly 
 seized by Prebend Audley Hunks, under the 
 statute, which " impowers a protestant minister 
 to pick up any stray child receiving charity in 
 the parish, and to bind the said child to a 
 substantial protestant as a menial servant till 
 his twenty-first year." 
 
 Now one of the most substantial protestants 
 in St. Grellan town was GeofFry Hunks, an 
 old black letter conveyancer, who, at his bro- 
 ther's, the Prebend Hunks's suggestion, wil- 
 lingly availed himself of the letter of the law ; 
 for little Terence had become accidentally known 
 to the reverend prebend as the expounder of 
 many old Irish and Latin inscriptions on the 
 tombs and monuments of the cathedral of St. 
 Grellan. You are aware that at this period, 
 while the natural resources of the soil were 
 abandoned to neglect and waste, and bogs were 
 gradually overspreading rich vallies, and fertile 
 tracts, the intellectual and moral resources of 
 the nation were alike doomed to sterility and 
 uncultured wildness.
 
 THK o'flaiiertys. 55 
 
 One of the ends pursued in the early part of this 
 century, with httle regard to the means, was the 
 impolitic measure of compelhng catholics to edu- 
 cate their children in protestant schools, and to 
 force on the cause of proselytism by tlie very 
 modes which have always tended to retard it. 
 The result was the degradation of the lower classes, 
 (till nothing was left but their powerful instincts 
 and vehement passions) and the driving away 
 the youthful catholic gentry to foreign countries, 
 (as in the instance of yourself) from whence 
 they seldom returned ; or if they remained at 
 home, remained only to flourish like the wild 
 slirub of the desert, sending forth their vigorous 
 shoots of intellect in luxurious disorder, and 
 frequently in mischievous strength. A few 
 gloomy and concealed convents still indeed 
 existed (and still exist) in the provinces of Con- 
 nauglit and Munster, where a sort of smuggled 
 education was perpetrated (in defiance of the 
 law, because unknown to it), by some simple, 
 ignorant, and bigotted friars, who taught their 
 bare-footed scholars to translate the poetry of 
 Homer and the eloquence of Cicero into bad 
 Irish, and worse English. There, too, some
 
 56 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 dreaming old annalists or antiquarians (such as 
 initiated Geoffry Keating in those fables to 
 which he has given the name of history), still 
 taught the " hard Irish," and affected to trans- 
 late the branch Ogham into versions which 
 none could dispute, since none could understand 
 them. 
 
 In such seminaries, led by his wandering 
 mother, had little Terence acquired that sort 
 of learning which rendered him as precious 
 an assistant to the old black letter conveyancer 
 of St. Grellan, as the young heaven-born states- 
 man, Jonathan Swift, was to Sir William 
 Temple. All Hunks's business lay exclusively 
 among those litigious Connaught gentry, who, 
 dissatisfied with the judgments of successive 
 suits, spent their last doubloons in asserting 
 claims involved in all the obscurity of parch- 
 ment and of pedigrees, which, both for their 
 Irish and Latin, might have puzzled even 
 Geoffry Keating himself. 
 
 Even still these '' bondsmen of the law," backed 
 by counsel's opinion, as given by Counsellor 
 Hyacinth Daly of Galway, or Counsellor 
 O'Sullivan Bere of Kerry, continue to urge and
 
 THE O'FLAHERTYS. 57 
 
 to boast of claims merged in the successive for- 
 feitures of ages, with all the pertinacity of igno- 
 rance worked upon by pride, the refuge — vice, 
 or virtue of the oppressed and degraded of all 
 countries. 
 
 The success of Terence in deciphering these 
 hieroglyphics, and above all his version of an 
 old inscription in Runic Ogham (as he called 
 it), found on a stone in the Abbey (said to 
 be the very stone on which the annals of the 
 Ballyboe were first began), induced old Hunks 
 to change his indentures of menial servitude 
 into a patent of professional gentility, and to 
 create Terence a gentleman by law, as he was 
 by blood, alliance, and descent. For this, how- 
 ever, a preliminary act of regeneration was ne- 
 cessary ; for, saith the statute, " whereas, by 
 experience, in this kingdom, it hath always been 
 found that papist solicitors and agents have 
 been the common disturbers of the peace and 
 tranquillity of his Majesty's subjects, his most 
 excellent Majesty, for the remedy thereof, by 
 the advice and consent of the lords spiritual and 
 temporal, has decreed that none can practise as 
 D 3
 
 58 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 attorneys or solicitors who do not declare against 
 all interpretation of the gospel, but such as the 
 existing hierarchy of the land promulgateth." 
 
 Terence, from the hour of his birth the predes- 
 tined victim of statutes, who, under their influence 
 had one parent exiled, and the other dishonoured, 
 — who had seen his mother flagellated, himself 
 bastardized, the rites of his rehgion celebrated in 
 midnight mystery, — and who moreover trembled 
 at the name of Hunks, could not be supposed 
 to possess that sort of moral courage which gives 
 the church its martyrs. As his ideas of the 
 " hierarchy of the land" were Friar Pat and 
 Father John, and as the Gospel was imaged to 
 him by the little leather bag (so named), tied 
 round his neck by his mother, to keep off" the 
 chin cough, he had little hesitation to agreeing 
 to any interpretation of it proposed to him ; and 
 when called on to avow if he believed the thirty- 
 nine articles, he himself replied, *' Aye, troth, 
 and more if your honor plases.*" Thus docile 
 to the existing influence of the time, the de- 
 scendant of Brien Baroihme, the sacristan of 
 the mass cave, became an indented attorney, and
 
 THE O'FLAHERTYS. 59 
 
 a member of the law church; while solicitor 
 Hunks was eulogized to the skies for having 
 rescued a soul from that " danmable heresy" 
 which turned even the professed conservators of 
 the law into " common disturbers of the peace 
 and tranquillity of liis Majesty's subjects." 
 
 The age and indolence of the unlettered 
 Hunks, the diligence, learning, and activity of 
 his apprentice, soon gave the younger and more 
 vigorous limb of the law the dessus. Old 
 Hunks finally admitted him to a share of that 
 business of which, in fact, he had long done the 
 whole; and Miss Deborah Hunks, his only 
 cliild and mature daughter, who for thirty years 
 had flirted through the entire chapter of St. 
 Grellan, cracked the voices of more vicars cho- 
 rals, and disappointed the hopes of more aspir- 
 ing young choristers than any Connaught heiress 
 of the day, at last disposed of her heart as her 
 father had done of his affairs; and when 
 Terence had completed one indenture, he entered 
 unresistingly into another; doubtful whether 
 there was not some penal statute by which the 
 comely young apprentice of an old solicitor was
 
 60 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 obliged to marry the plain, elderly daughter of 
 his master by " the advice of his Majesty's 
 council, spiritual and temporal." 
 
 The death of old Hunks in the fifth year of 
 Terence's marriage, left him in full possession 
 of a good country business ; and there was not 
 a more painstaking and protestant attorney in 
 the province of Connaught, when the sudden 
 appearance of Terence's uncle (the expatriated 
 younger brother of Rory Oge), superior of the 
 Jesuit convent of '' Le Gesu,''^ at Rome, gave 
 a new colour to the story and circumstances 
 of his nephew. 
 
 The Abbate Don Ignatius O'Brien, whose 
 restless and zealous character has since come 
 out with such force, in his public struggles to 
 prevent the suppression of his order, and secretly 
 to perpetuate its influence ; and whose active life 
 has proved that " Cuculus noii facit mcma- 
 chum^^ had come over to Ireland ostensibly to 
 find out his nephew, and to establish his legi- 
 timacy according to the statute book, as it was 
 already proved according to the law of God. 
 Rory Oge, who had died an officer of the Pope's 
 guard, and a brother of the " PenitenW to
 
 THE o'FLAHERTYS. 61 
 
 boot, had, it appears, left a certificate of his 
 having returned to the catliohc church before 
 his marriage with Onor; and confessing the 
 supercMrie of having concealed the fact, be- 
 queathed a sum of money to his long abandoned 
 son, with all his nominal rights, privileges, and 
 immunities in the isle of Arran. The ambitious 
 marriage of Rory with the indigent widow of 
 an insolvent Roman principe, a representative 
 of the S. P. Q. R. of ancient Rome, during the 
 lifetime of his first wife, had rendered illegi- 
 timate the birth of his only child by this mar- 
 riage; and at the early age of sixteen, the 
 daughter of the Italian princess and the Irish 
 prince, took the veil in an Irish convent at 
 Rome, supposed to be under the special protec- 
 tion of the Jesuits. 
 
 Such was the ostensible motive for the Abbate 
 CBrien's visit to his native country. The au- 
 thorities of St. Grellan, however^ looked upon 
 his mission as governed by other views. An 
 ex-Jesuit, superior to the richest house of that 
 |X)werful order in Rome, who travelled in his 
 own carriage, who had removed the remnant of
 
 62 THE o''beiens and 
 
 the order of St. Bridget from their retreat in 
 a garret over the shop of a grocer in the mar- 
 ket-place to the old monastery of Mary, John, 
 and Joseph, in another part of the town, 
 who expended considerable sums in charity, 
 and who in his progress through the wilds 
 of Connemara and the Isles of Arran was 
 followed like another St. Patrick, could not fail 
 to excite suspicions in times when nothing was 
 talked of but " popish banditti spirited up by 
 agitating friars, and Roman missionaries sent 
 over to sow seduction, and spread heresy and 
 rebellion among the people." The charities of 
 the Abbate soon furnished an excuse for his 
 persecution, in a land where charity was made the 
 pretext for open and forceful robbery.* In a 
 
 * It is laid down, not only by the statute concerning 
 superstitious uses, and other English statutes, but also gene- 
 rally, that the King, as head of the church, and as en- 
 tmsted by the common law to see that nothing is done in 
 maintenance or propagation of a false religion, is entitled 
 to all grants and gifts made for such purposes, so as to 
 appropriate them to other uses that are held lawful. This 
 principle of general policy, which may be pushed to any 
 extent that to a chancellor may appear necessary, applies 
 equally in the law of Ireland and England. The com-
 
 THE o'FLAHERTYS. 6S 
 
 little time he found himself the object of an 
 infinity of petty intrigues, the victim of the 
 most absurd calunniies, the subject of a pro- 
 tracted correspondence xoith the castle ; and on 
 the point of being arrested by a secretary of 
 state's warrant — I know not under what ridi- 
 culous charge — was at length compelled in self- 
 protection to retire from a scene and country in 
 
 missioners of charitable bequests form a board expressly 
 appointed to hunt out catholic charities, and dirert 
 them to protestant uses j and their zeal and activity in 
 the discharge of their ungracious functions, completely 
 frustrated every attempt to provide a permanent main- 
 tenance for the catholic ministers of worship, their places 
 of education, and other pious and charitable foundations. 
 It may, by the bye, be remarked, that this same dictum of 
 the common law, appointing the king to the supervisor- 
 ship of religion, is another of those gratuitous inventions 
 by which the judges manufacture laws for whatever suits 
 their convenience. The common law of England arose 
 in the woods of Germany, when the religion of Woden 
 was *' by law established;" and it grew up to maturity 
 under the catholic kings of England. The ne quid detrU 
 menti authority must therefore be two steps removed from 
 protestantism ; and the seizure of property to protestant 
 uses, a direct infraction, instead of a fulfilment of common 
 law : at least, so common sense would say. But what 
 has law to do with common sense ?
 
 64- THE o'briens and 
 
 which, though his existence was not recognized 
 by the law, his life was embittered by its odious 
 and persecuting enactments. Thus a man, 
 whose bigotted ambition, haughty character, 
 and temporal views for the supremacy of ultra- 
 montane principles, and above all for the main- 
 tenance of his own pernicious and enterprising 
 order, was the least calculated to succeed with 
 the Irish catholics, (whose national notions re- 
 sembled in independence those entertained by 
 the Galilean church), was elevated to the 
 glory of sanctity and martyrdom ; and his 
 sudden departure from St. Grellan will be Jong 
 commemorated as their Hegira by the natives of 
 Connemara and the isles of Arran. Yau will see 
 in these animadversions what you call the dernier 
 rejeton de Port Roy ale and the leaven of Jansen- 
 ism — but let that pass. 
 
 The persecution of his uncle rendered Terence 
 more protestant and loyal than ever. He even 
 carried his subserviency to the length of sub- 
 gcribing to the " black petition"" against the 
 catholic claims;* for^ the more unmeasured the 
 
 * See Harding's Galway.
 
 THE oVlaitertys. 65 
 
 oppression, the deeper is the dissimulation it de- 
 mands. But though all cried out that " O'Brien 
 was a pretty name to open a pew* door with," 
 all were pleased to see the legitimized son of 
 Mr. O'Flaherty drive to the cathedral porch 
 with the arms and supporters of his family in 
 his — one-horse chaise, and his " boy" in the 
 crimson livery of the O'Briens. The death of 
 his elderly wife, and an open breach with her 
 dictatorial and intolerant kinsman, the prose- 
 lyting prebend of St. Grellan, released O'Brien 
 from the tyranny of a family, which, in making 
 his fortune, had, in his estimation, risked his sal- 
 vation ; and which, in forcing him under the pro- 
 tection of the statute book, could not place him 
 beyond the persecutions of his own conscience. 
 " And now, Abbe O'Flaherty," said the 
 Baron CBrien, in touching upon this part of 
 his story — for I am giving you a brief abstract 
 of his own biography, as we wound through the 
 almost impassible pass of Glen Murrogh, on the 
 way to Moy CuUen, — " and now, being no 
 
 • Pews are peculiar to protestant churches.
 
 66 THE O'BRIEN'S, AND 
 
 longer a slave, nor an indented apprentice, but 
 feeling myself one of the five free gentlemen of 
 Ireland, and at liberty to dispose of my heart 
 and person, without the fear of act or statute ; 
 and it having pleased Divine wisdom to take the 
 firstBaroness ©""Brien, alias Miss Hunks, to itself; 
 I begun to look about me for the ould blood 
 flowing in good protestant veins, that the mother 
 of the future representative of the tribe of Dal- 
 gais (founders of the Irish monarchy under Cas 
 son of CoNAL of the swift horses,) should not 
 throw a Jlan deargh* on the scutcheon of the 
 family ; and so I consulted my late ould clients, 
 Brigadier Flavius Mac Taaf, of Bogmoy, and 
 he offered me his oldest niece and co-heiress, 
 Miss Mable Mac Taaf, and said if he had an 
 oulder he would give her to me. But, Abbe 
 OTlaherty, I resolved to be a Hussian,-f- and 
 fight for pay no longer; and though Miss 
 Mable Mac Taaf is a comely fine woman, and 
 in her prime, as I may say, — likewise Miss 
 
 * A term in Irish, signifying in heraldry a standard or 
 colour; used also as a disgrace or blot in an escutcheon, 
 t An Hessian.
 
 THE o'l'LAHERTYS. 67 
 
 Monica, — yet, do ye see, I had a vocation to- 
 wards the cadette. Miss Bridget, who was the 
 Cinderella of the family, and who was often sent 
 to slip down to our office in St. Grellan with a 
 bond to be signed, or a deed to be executed. 
 So, having slipped in, one fine day, she forgot, 
 the cratur, to slip out, till she was Baroness 
 O'Brien, and then she wrote to her uncle for 
 pardon, a letter that would mollify a stone ; in 
 which I enclosed the grey mare to Miss Mable, 
 to soften her heart : but all would not do. Well, 
 Foghal Foh ! wait a while, but to this blessed 
 hour Miss Mac Taaf hates the ground I walk on. 
 So much for the history of your cousin, law 
 agent and hereditary foeman. With respect 
 to his character, it is a study; and is combined 
 in a singular degree of the temperament of his 
 sept, and the qualities of his social (or rather 
 anti- social) position. It is evident that Terence, 
 physically brave as the fiercest of his family, is 
 morally timid, as the most degraded of his caste. 
 Always ready to risk his life on a point of per- 
 sonal or of national honour (and I am told that 
 he fought a duel with an English officer who
 
 68 THE O'BRIENS, AND 
 
 had observed that the legs of the Connaught 
 ladies and the Connaught heifers were formed 
 on the same model) ; yet he shrinks from legal 
 infliction, however remotely threatened, and is 
 ready to prostrate his opinion to any constituted 
 authority, from a king to a constable. Courting 
 the notice of the great, even in the party he 
 hates, he enjoys himself only in the intimate 
 familiarity of the lowly and oppressed. Secretly 
 attached to the popular party, without one po- 
 pular feeling, or one constitutional idea, he is 
 ready to restore, but unwilling to reform. With 
 thoughts ever retrospective to the glories of 
 ' ancient ould Ireland,' with its green banners, 
 and harps, and collars of gold, — and with that re- 
 ligious tendency to passive obedience with which 
 we catholics are accused, he is a rebel and a 
 royalist on the same principle. These conflicting 
 opinions he veils under an exterior of the most 
 unlimited submission to the powers that be ; 
 giving no further vent to his fears and his hopes, 
 than may be safely expressed in his favourite 
 adage of Foghal Foh, or " wait awhile." Dis- 
 trusting all, and not confiding even in himself,
 
 THE o'fLAHERTYS. (J9 
 
 he lives in perpetual fear of becoming, without 
 his own consent, that thing " hated of gods and 
 men I" a irlapsed papist,— as he became at the 
 direction of others, a protestant proselyte. In a 
 word, he is not only a " brief abstract " of a 
 large class of his countrymen, such as six cen- 
 turies of degradation have made them ; but is, 
 in his own person, with all his contrarieties and 
 inconsistencies, a part and parcel of the law of the 
 land, a leaf torn out of the Irish statute book, a 
 comment on that code written in human blood, 
 which stands accountable for the perversion of a 
 national character, as gallant and as good as 
 was ever checked in its progress to improvement, 
 and driven back disgracefully and disgraciously 
 to the starting-post of civilization, by a system 
 that renders legislation a bye-word, and govern- 
 ment a crime. 
 
 With respect to O'Brien's professional cha- 
 racter, he is, that 7'ara avis in terris, an honest 
 attorney. His high calling in the profession, forced 
 on him by circumstances, has given him a sort 
 of historical dignity in the suits he undertakes. 
 He brings up evidences, as Hecate called up
 
 70 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 spirits, and marshals a dozen of Irish kings in 
 sad array, to scare the wits of Scotch adven- 
 turers, and extinguish the claims of protestant 
 discoverers ; giving to his causes a sort of bardic 
 interest, and making his suits the very poetry of 
 litigation. 
 
 I pause for a moment at this recollection, 
 struck with the different destinies of two men, 
 each representing the story of their country in 
 different ways. The chief of the O'Flaherties 
 driven into exile, to fight on foreign grounds 
 for foreign interests ; but by so acting, recover- 
 ing his " simple state of man," and shining out 
 in all the original brightness of hereditary en- 
 dowment, — elevated by rank, distinguished by 
 titles, loaded with honors obtained through qua- 
 lities which ever find their own level, where no 
 partial institutes impede their progress, and con- 
 vert all talent to misery or to abuse. The de- 
 scendant of the supreme monarchs of Ireland, 
 was on the contrary chained by a concatenation 
 of evils, to the stake of disqualifying persecution ; 
 dragging his historical name through the mire 
 of sordid poverty and debasing dependence, and
 
 THE O'FLAHERTYS. 71 
 
 jiredestined before his birth to inevitable degra- 
 dation. With a spirit doubtless as brave, 
 energies as active, and feelings as vehement, 
 as the most high minded of his forefathers, yet 
 with the sources of all these ennobling gifts 
 ]X)isoned at their spring, he is beaten down by 
 statutes, into a disgraceful subserviency, which 
 settles, after some ineffectual struggles between 
 nature and fate, into a suppressed indignation 
 and profound duplicity, and leaves the individual 
 victim, who represents so large a portion of his 
 fellow countrymen, an heterogeneous particle of 
 an heterogeneous mass. Secretly devoted to one 
 religion (for Terence, live as he may, will die 
 ''' ferme cathoUque''), but affecting to uphold 
 another, — a patriot, loving Ireland '' not wisely 
 but too well," he is more calculated to injure 
 than benefit its cause, and that by the very means 
 he would resort to for its redemption. Au reste, 
 he is the finest possible specimen of his caste and 
 class; speaking, like all the old catholics, and 
 protestants too, in Ireland, the English of Queen 
 Anne's days, with the accent of Queen Elizabeth ; 
 and, evidently dressed by the statute book, no
 
 72 THE o'briens and 
 
 reformed chief of Harry the Eighth''s time, who 
 had saved his head by cropping it, and pre- 
 sented himself to the lord deputy unmantled and 
 unbendelled, glibs closely cut, and Crommeale 
 closely shaven, was ever more loyally and guard- 
 edly habited.* Still he looks the very personi- 
 fication of a recusant or nocent papist ; and 
 though tall and comely, like all the O'Briens, 
 effaces the original nobility of nature, by an air 
 cowering and servile, which marks the moral 
 degradation of his position. 
 
 O'Brien has met my advances on your belialf 
 with the most enthusiastic ardour : and the opi- 
 nions of two eminent lawyers are so clearly in 
 
 • The jealousy of Irish manufacture was as keen in the 
 middle of the last century, as in its commenctment, when 
 Dean Swift, having published "a proposal for the univer- 
 sal use of Irish manufactures," it was by the men in oflfice 
 construed to be " a seditious and factious pamphlet." The 
 printer stood his trial for its publication ; and the jury 
 persisting in finding him not guilty, the chief justice sent 
 them nme times back, imtil, tired out, they left it to the 
 mercy of the judge by a special verdict ! The chief justice, 
 laying his hand on his heart, solenmly declared that a pro- 
 posal to encourage the manufactures of Ireland was a 
 design to bring in the pretender.
 
 THE o'flahertys. 73 
 
 favour of the case, that I have no hesitation in 
 urging you to proceed. 
 
 I conclude abruptly, though (for your pa- 
 tience), not briefly; having just found means to 
 dispatch this, via Bordeaux, through the 
 Frenches and Blakes, whose argosie now rides 
 at anchor within view of my window. I shall 
 write again to-morrow, for I willingly take re- 
 fuge in your affiiirs from the sad impressions of 
 pauperism by which I am surrounded, and from 
 the daily mortifications here inflicted upon all, 
 who, for worshipping their God, in the form 
 once practised throughout Europe, are the pros- 
 trate victims of an intolerant and impolitic code, 
 that renders them ahens in their native land. 
 
 Adieu I I commend your spiritual welfare to 
 the Husseys and to the O'Learys, and for the 
 rest, Ciira id valeas. 
 
 Yours, &c. &c. 
 
 The Abbe O'Flaherty. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 74 THE o'bkiens and 
 
 Letter V. 
 To Count MalacU O^ Flaherty, S^c. S^x. 
 
 MON BEAU COUSTN, 
 
 Vos ciffaires vont leur train. The inclosed 
 will convince you that your cause, already 
 bruited about (for our Baron is tres-demonstratif) 
 is popular, and that the old feeling to the old 
 family anticipates its success. The Hunkses, (the 
 delegated authorities of the Proudforts, the reign- 
 ing toparchs of the country) are, for their inso- 
 lence of office, detested by all sides and parties. 
 D'ailleurs, a change is ever a sensation ; and a 
 lawsuit in Connaught is always a ben trovafo. 
 
 I have had audience of the Misses Mac Taaf ; 
 audiences, alas ! where, for two mortal hours, I 
 was " sole auditor."" Des memoir es cont^^e le 
 genre humain, with six centuries of wrongs at 
 their finger's ends, and the '^ abductor of that 
 simple omadaun, the cadette, that turn-coat 
 papist, Terry O'Erien,"" for the refrain of all. 
 All this too, in a sustained drone, the fluent
 
 THE o'flaheutys. 75 
 
 monotony of which, if you have never lis- 
 tened to Connaught Shanaos, you cannot con- 
 ceive ; though the drone of tlie Scotch pipes has 
 some resemblance to it. Meantime the Briga- 
 dier''s cojfre is ours ; and a sort of treve de Dieu 
 has been patched up between O'Brien and the 
 heiresses of Bog Moy, who have even consented 
 to see the mother of the young chief of the isles, 
 on her return from her accouchement. " And 
 let the Count know. Abbe O'Flaherty," said 
 Miss ^Viable, " that I have done for him what I 
 would not do for the thirteen tribes of Galway."" 
 The fact is, O'Brien thinks that both as evidence 
 and as authority, they can be of infinite use ; 
 " and will, I'll engage," says O'Brien, '' and 
 have their own raisons for that same, Abbe 
 dear; and what was the heart and person of 
 Baron O'Brien, in comparison to Count Sir 
 Malachi OTlaherty ? and Miss Mac Taaf is a 
 comely fine woman to the fore, and has fine acres, 
 townland and turloghs, stretching up to the Pass 
 of Moy Cullen, if they were well worked. And 
 it's herself would not throw a good offer over her 
 shoulder, as the saying is of the priest and the 
 E 2
 
 76 THE o'briens and 
 
 poteen." Indeed, from certain hints of both 
 ladies, I rather suspect O'Brien's surmises are 
 well founded, and that you would find no diffi- 
 culty in quartering tlie arms of the O Flaherties 
 with those of the Barons of Bally Slattery and 
 the spurs of the Green Knight. 
 
 On my visit to Bog Moy (where I found 
 every thing in statu quo, as in the Brigadier s 
 time. — even to the ruined roof, which fell in 
 during the great storm of 42, leaving one-half 
 of the fabric uncovered). Miss Mac Taaf ob- 
 served, " You see here is a fine place. Abbe 
 0' Flaherty, if there was one to keep things 
 together, and make the most of it ; and hopes, 
 before the Count arrives in the country, to see it 
 another thing ; for myself and Monica have it in 
 contemplation (a favourite word with her uncle 
 for thirty years before his death) to raise that 
 roof this spring, plaze God, which covers the 
 great dining-room, and to Jlure (floor) the new 
 parlour built by my grandfather Sir Columbus ; 
 and whenever the suit is terminated with Martin 
 of Dangan, and gets lave to work the quarry 
 claimed, by the Darcys and Blakes, and to
 
 THE O FLAHERTYS. 77 
 
 wliicli wc have every right in Hfe — which Terence 
 O'Brien, the poltroon knows, if he would spake 
 out like a man — manes to build up with Con- 
 nemara marble the great gate pillars of the 
 bawn, and has had it long and late in contem- 
 plation to drain the turlogh and plant the de- 
 mesne, (an unreclaimed bog,) but would be 
 glad to have the binefit of the count's ad- 
 vice.'' Thus you see ''if the dial speak not, 
 yet it makes shrewd signs."" 
 
 As for O'Brien's own views in urging on the 
 promotion of your interests, it seems to me that 
 your suit once gained, he wishes to become the 
 purchaser of the abbey lands, ruins and all, 
 (which are magnificently picturesque, and in 
 wonderful preservation,) either for himself, or 
 in trust for others. I think I can detect the 
 intriguing Jesuitical spirit of the Abbate O'Brien 
 under all. Since the suppression of his order, 
 (which never has been suppressed) the Pope has 
 given him several missions, and participates 
 more than ever in his views. AVith all the imper- 
 turbability of a narrow but zealous mind, he is 
 acting upon principles, w^hich however operative
 
 18 THE o'bRIENS AXD 
 
 in the days of the La Chaises, and the TelUers, 
 and of their credulous dupe and victim, Louis 
 le Grand, are as inapplicable to the spirit of this 
 age, as they have in all ages been injurious to 
 the interests of society. As a proof he has sent 
 over his Italian niece, Rory Oge's daughter by 
 the Pi'incipessa, and O'Brien's half sister, to pre- 
 side over and to reform the order of St. Bridget, 
 now represented by the poor sisters of Mary, 
 John, and Joseph at St. Grellan (for female 
 orders in Ireland have held their ground, when 
 the abbeys and monasteries have lost theirs.) It 
 was in vain that in the religious vicissitudes of 
 three centuries, the sisterhood had been fre- 
 quently driven from their altars, by the reform- 
 ing halberds of Elizabeth, and the pious pikes 
 of Cromwell ; that their holy houses were laid 
 bare, and that deeds were perpetrated within their 
 consecrated walls, which made " the shrines 
 all tremble, and the saints grow pale." The 
 nuns fled for shelter to their orders in Spain and 
 France, or lay hid in the castles and fastnesses 
 of their friends at home. It was in vain that 
 the government sent orders to the mayor of St.
 
 THE o'fLAHERTYS. 79 
 
 Grellan, " to keep a strict eye" upon the nuns 
 of Mary, John, and Joseph, (four old ladies, the 
 wreck of the order, which had suffered persecu- 
 tion from Cromwell to William). Though 
 twenty times exiled, they had twenty times re- 
 turned ; and when in the year 1740, the last 
 inquisition was taken of their house, and when 
 the mayor reported that he had searched it and 
 only found ten beds, in which it was " appre- 
 hended that the reformed nuns lay before their 
 dispersion," the old ladies still held their ground 
 perdues under the beds, where the mayor had 
 forgotten to look for them. 
 
 From that period, government gave up 
 the unequal contest, tired out, and convinced 
 that the double pertinacity of the church 
 and the women was too much even for the 
 penal laws; and that the different fate of the 
 brotherhood and the sisterhood of St. Do- 
 minic, St. Bridget, and St. Augustin, proved 
 that " ce que femme veut, Dieu veut.'''' In spite 
 therefore of the law of the land, which makes 
 monastic vows felony, the venerable sisters have 
 preserved theirs ; and have still received the
 
 80 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 VOWS of others, at the altar of Mary, John, and 
 Joseph, as if no such law existed. The life 
 they lead is as pious and useless, as prayers 
 and idleness can make it. The house they 
 occupy is as comfortless, dirty, and unwhole- 
 some, as time, poverty, neglect, and the want of 
 all ventilation, has left it. Still the poor nuns, 
 though maintained by charit}^, are objects of 
 veneration and respect, and the little well in 
 their narrow garden, dedicated to the blessed 
 Virgin, and to St. John the Baptist, is still 
 visited with faith and unction, and still per- 
 forms as many miracles, as the celebrated 
 virgin of the Rosary, in the Abbey of ]\Ioy Cul- 
 len, mentioned by John Heyne. 
 
 To reform or rather to revive this order, the 
 Abbate has translated his niece from her convent 
 a coton on the Corso (one of the mignon esta- 
 blishments at Rome, under the special govern- 
 ment of the Jesuits), to the convent of St. Brid- 
 get in the Cladagh of St. Grellan. Imagine 
 this Italian nun (who, by the by, is Italianis- 
 sima,) with the true temperament and organi- 
 zation of her country, brought up amidst the
 
 THE o'fLAHEIITYS. 81 
 
 splendid ceremonies of her church, fed upon 
 sofp sounds, and brilUant hghts, not speaking a 
 word of English nor of Irish, and suddenly 
 dropped among the bonnes grosses meres (of 
 St. Bridget's), who speak nothing else. Of 
 course, as others have done in the same situa- 
 tion, she will return in disgust, by the first 
 opportunity to her own country. Meantime 
 slie is drawing crowds to her cha])el, even pro- 
 testants, by the singular beauty of her voice and 
 person ; and so far, the Abbate has not hit u})on 
 a bad expedient for bringing papacy into 
 fashion. For, says O'Brien, who worships his 
 new found sister as a thing inskied, " with 
 woman and music, Abb^ dear, you might pro- 
 selytize all Ireland, far better than by all the 
 j:)eynals, and all the persecutions that ever were 
 invented : and wonders but the government 
 never hit upon it." 
 
 On the first of the month we move to Dub- 
 lin, to take the field, under the standard of 
 Messrs. Ponsonby and Egan. As soon as you 
 are wanted, we shall write for you. 
 
 En attendant, do the lionours by the Baron, 
 E 3
 
 8% THE O BRIEXS AXD 
 
 and the Miss Mac Taafs. I enclose Miss 
 Mac Taafs envelope to me, with her letters for 
 you : it is as characteristic as its enclosure. — Vale. 
 
 Yours, &c. 
 
 Abbe OTlaherty. 
 
 ENVELOPE. 
 
 To the Rev. Abbe 0' Flaherty. 
 
 The Miss Mac Taafs (Mable and Monica), 
 of Bog Moy, present regards to the Abbe 
 O 'Flaherty. Take leave to enclose him a letter 
 for his cousin, General Count O'Flaherty, not 
 knowing the Count"'s present abode in Paris. 
 The Miss Mac Taafs (Mable and Monica) 
 forgot to remind the Abbe, that they had the 
 pleasure of making his acquaintance, when they 
 were slips of girls, at the Mayor of Gal way's, 
 Patrick Lynch ; more betoken it was a drum 
 (dry), not all as one, as in the old times, as I 
 hear tell, by my uncle the Brigadier, when cho- 
 colate, rosolia, and usquebagh, were served 
 round, more plenty than cathbhruidh* may be 
 * A sort of curds and whey.
 
 THE o^'flahertys. 83 
 
 had in Gal way town now. And for all that, as 
 my sister !Monica pleasantly says, there was as 
 much pride as poverty there ; the Bells, Blakes, 
 and Bodkins, and the rest of the thirteen tribes, 
 being as high in the instep, as if they had ever 
 an acre of land in the province, barring what 
 they got by trade ; not all as one as the ould 
 residcnters and ancient proprietors of the place, 
 since the flood and before. 
 
 P.S. It gives the Miss Mac Taafs the greatest 
 of pleasures to learn the probable success of the 
 OTlaherty cause ; and wonders but the Abbe 
 would employ Counsellor Costello, who does the 
 Miss Mac Taafs business to their entire satis- 
 faction, and would, with the Miss Mac Taafs 
 assistance, make a far better hand of it than that 
 Terence O'Brien, who got what proofs he has 
 out of the Brigadier's bureau. For it is your- 
 self, Terry O'Brien, that had the plunder of it 
 and us, when you had the run of Bog Moy 
 house, as the chartered school apprentice of old 
 Hunks. And a poor creature you were, with 
 scarce a skreed to your back, though you ride 
 in your own chuy now ; and were glad to truck
 
 84 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 the Brigadier's old black camblet coat for ten 
 masses for your mother^s soul, to poor Father 
 Blake, for all your going to church on Sundays, 
 like any kiln-dried protestant in St. Grellan. 
 And it is a pretty return you made us, abduct- 
 ing and preverting that unfortunate cratur, 
 that was but a child in the eye of the law. To 
 say nothing of her being seduced and disgraced, 
 to ally herself to one every way below her, an 
 attorney ; for which, if God forgive you, Terence 
 O'Brien, the Miss Mac Taafs never will, and 
 
 I am, 
 
 Abbs OTlaherty's 
 
 Humble servants, 
 
 Mable and Monica Mac Taaf.
 
 THE oVlahertys. 85 
 
 Letter VI. 
 To Gen. Count OTlalicrUj, 6^0. 4'C. 
 
 The Count O'Flaherty will surely be plased, 
 witliout being surprised, that the Miss Mac 
 Taafs, (liable and Monica), nieces and co- 
 heiresses of the late Brigadier Flavins ]Mac 
 Taaf, of Bog INIoy, (which is but a mole hill to 
 tlieir estates on both sides the Shannon, to 
 which the Miss Mac Taafs are entitled, setting 
 aside the male tail, if every one had their due), 
 should take up the pen to wish the Count every 
 joy in life, on the probable success of his cause 
 against the Hunkses ; the Miss Mac Taafs 
 having themselves, from documents purloined 
 out of their uncle the Brigadier's coffer, by his 
 attorney, Terence O'Brien, (now Baron, as he 
 has proved on the evidence of an old tombstone*; 
 contributed thereto; and moreover, as bein^r 
 near relations of the Count ; no two families 
 in the province being more nearly related by kin 
 and kindred, gossipry and alliance, than the 
 
 • The Roscommon Peerage, now before the House of 
 Lords, is claimed on a similar testimony.
 
 86 THE o'bjiiens akd 
 
 Mac Taafs and the OTlaherties, the Count and 
 the Miss Mac Taafs, (Mable and Monica), 
 having one common ancestress, Mabiha, sole 
 daughter and heiress of Mac Oge IlUvan 
 O'Mailly. By the said Mabiha^s second marriage 
 with a Geraldine, the Count and the Mac Taafs 
 claim kindred with the Fitzgeralds of May- 
 nooth, or Leinster family, the Talbots of Mala- 
 hide, the Barnwells of Turvey, and most of 
 the great Pale families, — to say nothing of the 
 celebrated Granuaile,* or Grace O'Mailly, (re- 
 markable for having had six husbands), daughter 
 and sole heiress of Duondarragh, son of Cormac, 
 
 * This celebrated lady, when wife of Mac William 
 Oughter, was so determined and persevering in her hos- 
 tility to the English, and committed so many acts of 
 depredation, that it was found necessary, (1579), to send 
 troops from Galway, under the command of Captain Wil- 
 liam Martin, to besiege her romantic castle of Carrick na 
 Uile, in the county of Mayo. The expedition sailed from 
 Gahvay on the 8th of March ; but so spirited was the de- 
 fence, that the English troops were obliged to retreat on the 
 26th,having very narrowly escaped being made prisoners, a 
 circumstance which wou'd have been followed by the 
 instant death of the entire party. The names of the men 
 sent are entered on an old MS. formerly belonging to Sir 
 Ed. Fitton.
 
 87 
 
 the son of Owen Omailly, chief of his name. 
 Her daughter IMargaret became the wife of Sir 
 ^lurrogh na Doe O 'Flaherty, of Aghnanewer ; 
 and the Count is surely apprised that the Earl 
 of Carlingford, dying in 1730 without male 
 issue, (my cousin, Rodolphus, Chancellor of the 
 German Empire, Lord of Ballymote, having 
 only succeeded to the Ballymote title, a ba- 
 rony), the Carlingford branch is represented by 
 ^liss ^lac Taaf, who would bring the earldom, 
 together with the Barony of Bally Slattery, 
 into any family she might chance to marry into ; 
 also the Green Knight, which she is in the 
 female line : for that title, (which my uncle the 
 Brigadier often proved was more ancient than 
 the three Knights of Desmond, viz. the White 
 Knight, Knight of Glin, and Knight of Kerry), 
 would in right belong to the heiress of Bog Moy's 
 husband, if he plased to make claims thereto. So 
 that whenever the eldest Miss Mac Taaf plases to 
 change her situation, (as m}' sister Monica says), 
 she will bring as her dowry, undisputed claims 
 upon the earldom of Carlingford, the Barony of 
 Bally Slattery, and the most ancient knighthood
 
 88 THE o'brtexs and 
 
 in the country, which she can herself prove in 
 any court in Christendom : and should Count 
 O'Flaherty be inclined to make a visit to Ire- 
 land, she would point out to him a way of 
 recovering the greatest part, if not all of the 
 O'Flaherty country under which the Mac Taafs 
 held vast tracts of land, by Fearon AUod ;* 
 (for far be it from me to dispute that we were 
 only Rigli begs or petty kingsf under the OTIa- 
 herties) ; and the aforesaid lands were re-granted 
 to 2is under the great seal on coming i7i, with 
 other grants, in lieu of services done ; and a 
 non obstante for life to the Brigadier's great 
 grandfather. Sir Daniel Mac Taaf, as in the 
 grant of Sir Thomas Cusack : all of which we 
 should be reprized in, (the same being for- 
 feited,) should Count O'Flaherty recover his 
 property of the Hy Tartagh, particularly a 
 moiety of the Suck and the parish of Kilfar- 
 
 * MiUtary tenure. 
 
 t The chief of each noble family in Ireland was styled 
 king, the only title in use among the Irish to distinguish 
 the nobility from the inferior gentry, until the arrival of the 
 English, who introduced the title of earl. — See Keating's 
 History.
 
 THE o'FLAIIERTYS. 89 
 
 boy, anciently given by your ancestors to found 
 tlie abbey of St. Bridget, to which you have 
 every claim and right, and might distrain for 
 tithes to-morrow if you plased. It is well 
 known that the adventurers in Charles the 
 Second's time did willingly deliver false certi- 
 ficates to the Court of Claims at Chichester 
 House, which I can prove from the Brigadier's 
 papers, and which, if proven, saith the act, 
 '"• such adventurer or his assignee doe forfeit the 
 rents, profits, &c. &c. thereofF." But all now 
 standeth at stay, in regard of the Count's ab- 
 sence, who could, if present, rejust all, (the 
 Miss Mac Taafs aiding and abetting thereunto). 
 For it is an old Irish saying, that " the elm 
 tree is not to be cleft but by a wedge of its own 
 timber ;" and the presence of General Count 
 O'Flalierty would surely set all to rights, and 
 show the Hunkses and Proudforts who was 
 who in the province ; and have the honour to be 
 the Count's humble servants and kinswomen. 
 
 Signed for self and sister, 
 
 Mable and Monica Mac Taaf.
 
 90 THE OBRIENS AND 
 
 P. S. There were three of us, as the Count 
 well knows, and will marvel to hear no mention of 
 the Cadette, which is a great heart-break ; hav- 
 ing disgraced herself by marriage with one re- 
 puted to be a base-born of a cousin of the Count's, 
 and worse than that, an attorney, now employed 
 in the O'Flaherty cause : and hopes the Count 
 will have no raison to repent, Counsellor Costello 
 being the man. 
 
 P. S. Miss Monica Mac Taaf takes lave to 
 notify to Count O 'Flaherty (of which she re- 
 minded her sister last night, as forgotten by 
 her), that in case the Count recovers Bally na 
 Umhal (the owl's country),he will find by papers 
 in Miss Mac Taaf s possession, that same is en- 
 cumbered with certain tributes to the Mac Taafs, 
 in heu of services done by them for the O' Fla- 
 herties during their feuds with the Mac Tieg 
 O'Briens of the Isles — yearly, ten cows, fifty 
 hoggs, two barrels of corn burnt in the straw, 
 fifty oaten bannocks, and ten bandals of ratteen 
 dyed in the wool ; and often heard tell by my 
 uncle, the brigadier, that it was an old custom, 
 that with the tribute came in the making of two
 
 THE o'fLAHERTYS. 01 
 
 clever mantles a-piece for the ladies of the 
 family of Bogmoy, a great courtesy on the part 
 of the gentlemen of the O'Flaherty family, one 
 of which, but little the worse of the wear, hangs 
 up in the ould tower to this day, only faded by 
 lying bye ; it is of two colours, after the Spanish 
 fashion, and my sister thinks it was a Spanish 
 mantle of Sir Gioil O'Flaherty, Knight of the 
 military order of St. Jago, for services done to 
 the King of Spain, and has it in contemplation 
 to get same scoured this spring, plase God, as 
 a great relic. 
 
 P. S. — Takes lave to inclose a letter from 
 Turlogh O'Flaherty, a follower of the families, 
 and an honest poor cratur as breathes the breath 
 of life, now a scullog* on the Ballyslattery 
 estate. 
 
 (Letter inclosed in the Miss Mac Taafs.) 
 To General Count O'Flaherty, 
 
 Plaze your honour. Sir, I'm the boy who has 
 the so ward, with which your honour's grand- 
 father, Sir Bryan, fought for Shamus at the 
 * Scullog — a small farmer.
 
 9^ THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 battle of the Boyne ; the curse of the crows on 
 him day and night, I pray Jasus, for its himself 
 sould the Pass. And plaze your honour, Sir, 
 the soward was found in the black bog, near 
 your own place in Moy Cullen ; and if it had a 
 blade would be a good soward, being the same 
 ancient ould trusty that the great OTlaherty 
 More, would flourish when he declared war 
 agin the toun of Gal way.* And would go to 
 your honour every step of the way, and fetch it 
 to you in France myself, if your honour's glory, 
 long life to yez, would order Baron O'Brien 
 Torney of St. Grellan to give me eighteen 
 thirteens to pay my journey over say and land ; 
 and would make it on my bare knees, truth I 
 would, for your sake and the family's, and think 
 little of it. Your honour, it's well known, and 
 Father Festus, of the Dominicans, will prove 
 the same, that I am of your honour's oun kin 
 and blood, though never tould it to any sowl 
 living or dead, out of respect to your honour 
 and the family ; and never will, barring Father 
 Festus and the Miss Mac Taafs : and hopes 
 
 ♦ A tradition of the family.
 
 TIIK O'FLAHF.RTYS. 93 
 
 vour honour will spake a good word for nie to 
 Mr. O'Brien, in respect of a bit of grazing 
 ground in a luib of the mountains, when ye get 
 back your own — which was my father's before 
 me, time out of mind ; and wont sell it over my 
 head, being of the family; and would be 
 sorry to see Darby Lynch, a notorious sae 
 Pirate, put above me, which is what I will never 
 be reduced to submit to, cost me my life or his. 
 So no more at prisint, only the greatest of joys 
 at your honour's success ; for the heart of me 
 was too big for my bosom on that day, I heard 
 tell that the downfall of the Boddah Hunkses 
 was coming — and long may yez reign, which is 
 the last prayer of now and ever more amen, 
 
 Your loving friend and kin, 
 
 his 
 TuRLOCH K^ O Flaherty. 
 mark
 
 94 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 Letter VIL 
 
 To the Miss Mac Taafs, St. Grellan, 
 
 Fer favour of the Abbe 0^ Flaherty. 
 
 Count O'Flaherty begs to offer the expression 
 of his homage to the Miss Mac Taafs. He is 
 quite sensible (it is impossible to be more so) of 
 the honour conferred upon him b}'^ their gracious 
 and amiable letter; and he assures them that 
 among the many very interesting details it con- 
 tains, nothing touched the Count more pro- 
 foundly, than the privilege granted him of 
 claiming kindred with ladies so amiable and 
 accomplished. The invitation held out to the 
 Count to visit his unhappy, but always loved 
 country, is a reason the more for doinsj that 
 which he has long desired and intended. He 
 looks forward at no very distant period to offer- 
 ing to the Miss Mac Taafs the expression of 
 his gratitude for the kindness they have 
 shown in his favour, and the still greater kind- 
 ness they may yet confer on him. Touching
 
 THE o'fLAHERTYS. 95 
 
 his claims on the Abbey of St. Bridget, he has 
 every possible desire to establish them ; and 
 trusts he will find no very obstinate resist- 
 ance on the part of the ladies of that venerable 
 order, which he understands now flourishes 
 under the control of the reverend Mother Ab- 
 bess O'Brien. With respect to the tribute 
 offered by the cavaliers of the Hy Tartagh 
 family to the fair ladies of Bog Moy, it is a token 
 of fealty which the Count will be charmed to 
 renew with other marks of his homage. In the 
 mean time he begs their acceptance of a piece of 
 Lyons silk (cuisse de la reinc'), and a Flanders 
 coiffure a la Du Barry, which are at present 
 making the rage at Paris — they will be sent via 
 Bordeaux by the Count's wine-merchant to 
 the care of French and Blake, Galway. The 
 Count has no doubt that these foreign com- 
 modities, like Spanish wines, will improve by 
 the voyage, and acquire new graces from the 
 amiable wearers, to whom they are destined 
 with sentiments of the profoundest respect and 
 derotion. 
 
 Paris, Rue de Bac, 177—.
 
 96 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 Letter VIII. 
 
 To the AhU 0' Flaherty, St. GreUan. 
 
 Cher Abbe, 
 
 Ploijce aux dames ! Inclosed is a note for the 
 heiresses of Bog Moy. I have rubbed up my 
 old Irish, or rather, done my French gallantry 
 into English to answer them. They are impay- 
 ables. The importance attached to the dignity 
 of our respective dynasties, by these well-pre- 
 served specimens of other times, is delicious. It 
 reminds one of Mademoiselle Montpensier's 
 remark on the liaison of Mademoiselle Rohan 
 
 and the Chevalier De (when such things 
 
 made up the soul of French government and 
 society) — " Cette affaire entretient toute la terre 
 durant Vhiver.'''' What is most ridiculous in all 
 this, is, that I am myself infected by the very 
 absurdity I laugh at, and have been actually 
 seeking over an old map of O" Flaherty ""s country, 
 for some of those atrocious names of town-lands
 
 THE O FLAHERTYS. 97 
 
 and Bally-boes, which have the same charms for 
 me that Versailles and Fontainbleau have for 
 the priviUgies of the French court. The me- 
 mory of early impressions is that which sur- 
 vives all others ; it is the memory of the 
 heart. All that I have since seen, struggled 
 through, suffered, or enjoyed, has passed like 
 shadows over the surface ; while all I saw, and 
 heard, and shared in, before I left the rude 
 mountain fastnesses of my forefathers, is graven 
 in deep and graphic images on my mind. I 
 see even now that grosse masse de bdtimens, the 
 stern and gloomy hold of the chiefs of my 
 sept ; and the beautiful ruins of the adjacent 
 abbey, reflected on its own still lake, as distinctly 
 as when I saw them for the last time, the 
 morning we sailed for France. How strongly 
 the parting scene of that eventful day rushes to 
 my recollection ! Even now the tearful faces and 
 grotesque figures that filled up the fine old arch- 
 way of the court gate, as we issued forth after 
 parting with my mother in the black oak room, 
 old M*Cabe seated on the stirrup-stone, with 
 his harp on his knee, playing tremulously, ** You 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 98 THE O'BRIEXS AND 
 
 take the summer along with you," — a poetical 
 farewell to two Irish youths, heirs to six hun- 
 dred years of misery and oppression, driven by 
 national adversity into a foreign land. My 
 father too, (I never saw him or my mother 
 after!) with fixed eye, compressed lips, and 
 clenched hands, keeping down the emotions of 
 parental sensibility by a sort of muscular 
 resistance. The venerated titular bishop of 
 St. Grellan, with his mild and martyr looks, 
 had come forth from his hiding place in the 
 abbey, to give his parting benediction to the son 
 of his protector* You too, my dear Abbe, with 
 your pale, thoughtful, but boyish countenance, 
 already mounted on your little Connemara 
 poney, giving a hand to one and a smile or a 
 sigh, as it happened, to another : even my 
 grandfather's old greyhound, and the great 
 chained wolf-dog, (the last of the breed I be- 
 lieve), are prominent figures in the picture. 
 
 There is one heart-rending circumstance con- 
 nected with my departure from Ireland which I 
 did not then know. The difficulty of giving a suit- 
 able education in Ireland to the representatives
 
 99 
 
 of an ancient and noble family, the barbarous 
 English then spoken, and the bog Latin then 
 learned by the young gentry of Connaught, 
 were the pleas urged by my father for sending 
 me to a foreign seminary, and permitting me to 
 enter a foreign service. But his most cogent 
 reason was, as I have since learnt, that atrocious 
 and inhuman law, called the gavel act, which 
 tempted the sons of the catholic gentry in Ire- 
 land to betray their own fathers, and which, 
 by the law of the land, gave to the child a 
 power over his parents, in defiance of the law 
 of God. My father used to call this clause a 
 law against the fourth* commandment. 
 
 By what a variety of ways did the penal code 
 of Ireland attack those morals which are founded 
 in the affections ! I shall never dispute that the 
 English might not have acted wisely in ex- 
 terminating the Irish at the time of the revo- 
 lution, and thus getting rid of a race which they 
 looked upon as armed in the cause of despotism 
 and bigotry ; (for we, " of the Irish na' lon^'' who 
 have seen these things de prts, have other no- 
 
 • The fifth in the protestant decalogue.'
 
 100 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 tions on these subjects, than those entertained 
 by our brethren, who have staid at home to 
 brood over their misfortunes, under the lash of 
 actual inflictions, and to mix up their wrongs 
 with their opinions). 
 
 Having, however, permitted the Irish to live, 
 they should not have deprived them of all the 
 rights which give life its moral dignity, and 
 alone raise the human above the brute animal. 
 What madness too, on the part of the Irish 
 catholics, to refuse the offer of the Prince of 
 Orange.* But when have we acted with con- 
 
 ♦ " The Prince of Orange was touched with the fate of 
 a gallant nation, the victim of French promises, and who 
 had ran headlong to ruin, for the only purpose of advanc- 
 ing the French conquests in the Netherlands. He (Orange) 
 longed to find himself at the head of a confederate army, 
 with so strong a reinforcement In this anxiety he offered 
 the Irish catholics the free exercise of their religion, half 
 the churches in the kingdom, half the employments, civil 
 and military, and even the moiety of their ancient proper- 
 ties. These proposals, though they were to have had an 
 English act of parliament for their sanction, were refused 
 with contempt. They had no confidence in the pro- 
 mises of a country, which had already broken her public 
 faith with respect to the articles of Limer-ck." — Sir Charles 
 Wogan's Letter to Swift.
 
 THE O'FLAHERTYS. 101 
 
 sistency, with unity, or under other influence 
 than that of vehement aftections and impetuous 
 passions, and (I must say it) personal, or if you 
 will, national vanity. How often do the agree- 
 able singes-tigres, among whom I live, recall 
 you Irish to my mind ! Still, however, driven 
 back as you have been to the infancy of society, 
 and kept there, your governors, (like those of 
 Other children,) and not yourselves, are account- 
 able for your follies and your faults. 
 
 Do you know that your last letter quite un- 
 fitted me for Versailles, where I was just going 
 to risk a few louis on the cards of the pretty 
 duchesses, when your gros paquet QxrwQdL. Onor 
 na Croise, however, takes the pas of the superbe 
 de Grammont, and Rorie Oge, and Terence 
 O'Brien are objects of more importance to me 
 than even that troop of " Marquis charmans, 
 poudreSy et embaumes ^"^ who from the height 
 of their seven quarterings and red heels, look 
 down upon the rest of the human species, as the 
 canaille of the creation. I write by this post to 
 O'Brien, acknowledging the relationship, in a 
 manner that will flatter his genealogical pride ;
 
 102 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 and with respect to his poetry of litigation, Je* 
 le laisse Jaire, ana have given him carte blanche 
 to act as he pleases. 
 
 Pleasantry apart: — I have just now a 
 strong vocation towards Ireland ; and should I 
 be reinstated in some of my droits de seigneur, 
 as Tanist of Moycullen, I am not quite sure 
 that I shall not re-edify the old abbey, and 
 quit the w^orld before it quits me ; like other 
 " 'pieux fameans^'' who have nothing to do but to 
 
 *♦ Chanter les Oremus, faire les processions, 
 Et r^pandre a grands flots les benedictions." 
 
 But of that hereafter. 
 
 For a man, hlase sur tout, Ireland is the 
 place. But if we fail, and I am forced to yield 
 before the Hunkses, then I will abduct you 
 vi et armis, and carry you back to France. I 
 prophecy that, with your talents and moral cou- 
 rage, you will inevitably expose yourself to that 
 jealous irritability of power which bears no 
 resistance, and you will incur that personal pro- 
 scription which has banished all the talent of the 
 land. Here, at least, we have blue skies, and
 
 THE o'fLAHEIITYS. 103 
 
 we have not an Irish penal code. The re- 
 morseless zealots, whose sanguinary policy pre- 
 ferred extermination, to the prolonged agonies 
 of legalized torture, have in France for ever set 
 at rest the question of religious differences. You 
 shall still have your old gHe in the Bice de 
 Bac, and your taudis in the pavilion of my 
 garden of Bretigny ; and as we grow old to- 
 gether, we will gather with our own hands the 
 grape, whose juice " fait danser les chevres.'^ 
 There, instead of making dreary pilgrimages to 
 Patrick's purgatory, or incurring a flagellation 
 by hanging a rag at an holy well, we will light 
 a taper to Rabelais at his presbyter e of Meudon, 
 or commemorate the classic fetes of Jodelle and 
 Ronsard among the vineyards of Arcueil : and 
 when at last we shall suddenly find ourselves 
 ^' un de ces viellards quon appelle heureux, dont 
 le honheur consiste a ne pouvoir jouir d'aucun 
 plaisir de la vie," we will die as we have lived, — 
 you, as a saint ; and I, as one who, long the 
 sport of uncontrollable events, desire only, with 
 Rabelais, " qu'on tire le rideau, la farce etant 
 jouee,''*
 
 104 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 I shall certainly go to Ireland, as soon as I 
 can obtain a semestre from the Due de Fitzjames ; 
 for which, however, I must wait the return of 
 Colonel Eugene Macarthy, of Spring-house. 
 Commend me to the prayers of the abbess of 
 Mary, John, and Joseph. Dio huono I what 
 a reformer. Oh ! ye Calvins and Luthers ! 
 Women and music! Those Jesuits are like 
 Madame La Duchesse de Ferte ;— " /Zw'e/ a 
 qu'eux qui ont toi0ours raison.'" Adieu I write 
 frequently. Nothing but letters from Connemara 
 can amuse les peu amusables, tels que 
 Voire tres qffectionne. 
 
 The Couxt OTlaherty. 
 
 P. S. Pray give a guinea on my account to 
 my cousin O'Flaherty, of the sword ; but do not 
 give him " the eighteen thirteens " for travelHng 
 charges ; lest he should put his threat into prac- 
 tice, and visit me at Versailles.
 
 THE oVlahertys. 105 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 ST. GRELLAN. 
 
 '' Cela m^rite bien qu'en oyer un motelet, Jivftnt que venir k inon 
 prlDCipal discourc." 
 
 Satire Menippee. 
 
 Among the variety of evils which distracted 
 Ireland, at the period of the revolution, and 
 for nearly a century afterwards, one of the most 
 perplexing and least remediable, was " the con- 
 fusion worse confounded," in which a large 
 portion of the landed property was involved. 
 Five hundred years of successive forfeitures, — 
 jxjssessions held for ages by prescription, won by 
 the sword and reconquered by the sword, — tenures 
 obtained by force or usurped by fraud, — parti- 
 tions of the soil carelessly made over to succes- 
 sive " adventurers, soldiers, patentees, and po- 
 lalines," in grants, regrants, debentures, pa- 
 f3
 
 J06 
 
 tents, commutations, and reprisals, gifts of 
 '* mitre land," consecrated by his holiness the 
 Pope, and now conferred, by our sovereign 
 lord the King, — with trusts perpetually violated, 
 and discoveries nefariously made, — had rendered 
 the laws a chaos, producing a series of contra- 
 dictory decisions and ludicrous statutes ; which, 
 (to borrow the language of the legislature itself) 
 *' had long puzzled both executors and regu- 
 lators." 
 
 Down to the middle of the last century, a 
 feeling of insecurity in all classes prevailed 
 through this anomalous condition of things ; 
 which, while it kept capital out of the country, 
 paralyzed industry, and, misdirecting the restless 
 energy of the people, awoke a spirit of litigation, 
 that has long been a ridicule and a reproach 
 to the national character. The small but as- 
 cendant party of protestants, scarcely less ha- 
 rassed than the victims of their own oppression, 
 suffered through their fears of the disabilities 
 they had themselves imposed ; and largely par- 
 ticipated in the insecurity of property, which 
 they had inflicted on their catholic opponents.
 
 THE o'flahertys. 107 
 
 An agitating though suppressed emotion per- 
 vaded the whole population ; and whatever 
 brought the question of property into debate, 
 was sure to throw the community into ferment- 
 ation : insomuch, that at one epoch, the govern- 
 ment had ordered the Irish bar not to defend 
 the revived claims of an Irish noble of the old 
 caste.* 
 
 While, however, scarcely one of every hun- 
 dred claims was justified by law or equity, and 
 the fabric of many a litigious vision fell before 
 the inquiry it courted, the issue of a cause be- 
 tween a protestant ecclesiastic, (supported by the 
 Proudforts, one of the most powerful families 
 in the kingdom,) and a catholic gentleman in the 
 service of the King of France, excited, when 
 known to be in favour of the latter, a consider- 
 able anxiety and alarm. The coffee-houses of 
 the capital, then the centres of all the political, 
 literary, and legal gossip of the day, rang with 
 the intelligence; Lucas's (once Cork-housef) 
 was then exclusively the resort of the protestant 
 
 * Lord Clancarty. 
 
 t Built by the celebrated Earl of Cork and Orrery.
 
 108 
 
 and official gentry of Dublin ;~the catholics 
 rarely appearing in public, and (when they did 
 come forth in church-time on Sundays,) herding 
 at " The Globe, " in Essex Street. 
 
 It was in the long room at Lucas's, where 
 the Boyles, the Burlingtons, and the Orrerys 
 had held their statesmen-circles, and literary 
 coteries, that the triumph of Count OTlaherty 
 was announced by one of the habitues, who read 
 aloud the decision of the court, from the columns 
 of Faulkner's Journal. The news was heard 
 by the descendant of many a protestant disco- 
 verer with fear and trembling ; and not a few 
 doubted, what it was so painful to believe : for the 
 measure of men's faith generally lies in their 
 interests ; and Bramah and Mahomet, at least, 
 owe as much to rice fieJds and green tur- 
 bans, as to pure conviction and disinterested 
 assent. 
 
 " I will venture to swear,*' said a rival editor 
 of old George Faulkner, who was present, 
 '* that this turns out one of George's blunders ; 
 like his own house in Parliament Street, which 
 he has built without a staircase ; or his yester-
 
 109 
 
 day's erratum — for her grace the Duke, read 
 his grace the Duchess.'* 
 
 The reperusal of the paragraph was called 
 for, but it afforded no refuge for interested in- 
 credulity. " So, here is a pretty precedent es- 
 tablished,"" burst forth a little gentleman, whose 
 clerical hat and cassock detected his calling 
 (the learned professions then still retaining their 
 distinctive liveries in Ireland). But though 
 evidently of the church, there was a certain 
 pendulous movement of the shoulders, an ap- 
 proximation of the knees, a squaring of the 
 elbows, and a poking of the head, which indi- 
 cated another vocation, and pointed him out as 
 one better qualified to run for the cup, than to 
 start for the mitre. He was a noted character 
 of the day : by some deemed mad, by none 
 deemed wise ; he was cherished and upheld 
 by the party who committed their interests to his 
 absurdities; while his folly and his ambition 
 went so well together, that all who listened to 
 his ravings and knew their true object, might 
 have exclaimed — 
 
 " Ma foi ! c'est d'etre sage, que d'etre fou comme lui."
 
 110 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 " We shall now have the papists," he continued, 
 '' rummaging out old claims, and proving their 
 rights to all the landed property of the country ; 
 and his Majesty's protestant subjects of Ireland 
 will have nothing to expect but poverty and 
 persecution, the overthrow of the church, the 
 murders of forty-one, the massacre of St. Bar- 
 tholomew, the dragonades of France, the in- 
 quisition, the popish plot, Guy Faux, and 
 Bloody Queen Mary I We shall have the scar- 
 let old woman of Babylon holding levees at the 
 Castle, papist archbishops celebrating high mass 
 at St. Patrick's, and all our church lands, tithes, 
 glebes, and parsonage-houses, fox-hounds, hunt- 
 ers, and old Bordeaux, passing into the hands 
 of monks, abbots, and friars." 
 
 This prophetic threat, including all the bug- 
 bears of terrorism, and all the images of ruin 
 then conjured up in Ireland with unfailing effect, 
 was heard with approving nods and affirmative 
 exclamations. The laying down of newspapers 
 and coffee-cups, the resting of chins upon gold- 
 headed canes, the turning of all eyes to the 
 place where the speaker sat, indicated a wish that
 
 THE o'rLAlIERTVS. IH 
 
 he should proceed with the subject ; when a per- 
 son, from a distant box at the remote end of the 
 room, observed, that " he hoped the government 
 was too wise to hsten, and too poKtic to give heed, 
 to such unfounded insinuations as had been then 
 broached. "Whatever a few interested persons 
 might think, or rather circulate, to the contrary, 
 and the catholics of Ireland, whose property had, 
 every acre, been twenty times confiscated, and 
 changed its owners alternately in favour of ca- 
 tholics and protestants, were neither so ignorant 
 nor so mad, as, by the revival of obsolete claims 
 and the questioning of established settlements, to 
 involve such of their own estates as by the con- 
 nivance of the law they were yet permitted to 
 hold ; most of which had been purchased on the 
 faith of forfeitures. The interests of men are 
 ever the strongest security for their peaceable 
 demeanour ; and the rev. gentleman may 
 depend upon it, that no danger can reason- 
 ably be apprehended either to church or state, 
 from the claims of the few representatives of 
 Milesian proprietors still unsettled. The case 
 in question,"' he continued, " is one of a singular
 
 112 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 and, indeed, unequalled description; and any 
 other decision than that given, would have ren- 
 dered the laws a jest, and the statute book as 
 idle, if not as amusing as Joe Miller, or Jona- 
 than Wild : for it would have proved that for 
 cathoHcs there was no justice." 
 
 " Catholics, forsooth !" exclaimed the little 
 advocate of ascendancy, '* Where are they ? 
 Who are they ? Where do they burrow ? Where 
 do they roost ? Where do they earth ? Shew me 
 their marks, and prints ? Trot me out here an 
 Irish papist, and I'll take the odds, I shew you 
 sport for a week ! An Irish catholic ! who ven- 
 tures to acknowledge that such a thing exists ? — 
 not the laws of the land : the chancellor has 
 settled that point. He has given it from the 
 woolsack, that a papist only breathes by the 
 connivance of the government." 
 
 " And yet," said the mild but emphatic 
 speaker from the remote box^ " it does happen, 
 that by a dictum, superior even to that of the 
 Lord Chancellor, a connivance paramount to 
 that of the government, four millions of Irish 
 catholics are at this moment breathing as health-
 
 THE o'fLAHERTYS. 113 
 
 fully and as vigorously, as though no acts of 
 parliament, to deprive them of their being, were 
 on the statute book." 
 
 *' A connivance paramount ! a dictum supe- 
 rior!" re-echoed, somewhat incoherently, the 
 man of lungs. " Where is it, I beseech you, 
 my voice from the Vatican ? Is it ould infalli- 
 bility the fisherman's ? or the Council of Trent's, 
 or the Lady's of Loretto ? or — '* 
 
 *• No,*" interrupted the party appealed to, in 
 a tone of deep and firm emphasis, " it is the 
 connivance of a power above all prelates, princes, 
 and potentates: a power. Rev. Sir, of which 
 you, I take it, are the minister on earth ; a power, 
 that has upheld the persecuted for conscience' 
 sake, in all ages, and in all climes — the power of 
 a just and beneficent providence !^' 
 
 Silenced for a moment, by the appeal made 
 to his holy calling, the champion of ascend- 
 ancy soon recovered breath and spirit ; and, 
 flattered by the circle that had gathered thickly 
 around him, set to for another round, ex- 
 claiming, " Now, my hearties, you all know that 
 I am no Jesuit, in, or out of disguise ; I thank
 
 114 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 God for it ; I have none of St. Peter's logic at 
 my fingers' ends ; and I can neither dogmatize, 
 nor prevaricate, nor double, nor turn, nor break 
 cover, as it suits the purpose. Nor shall I stop 
 to strip off the foliage of Italian drapery from 
 any defender of the faith, who may please to 
 start up. But this I will say, and let me see 
 who will deny it, that his present Majesty, like 
 his predecessors, is imposed upon ;* and if the 
 government of this country, that is, the ignorant 
 cabal of his Majesty ""s council, and the weak 
 men at the head of it, do not change their tune, 
 and listen to wiser heads than their own, (the 
 
 * The two first Georges, like the gallant William of 
 Nassau, were friends to religious toleration, but were 
 obliged to truckle to the ail-powerful oligarchy, who though 
 then sharing the prejudices of the English people, were as 
 independent of them, and as much the main spring and 
 moving souls of the government, as they are in the present 
 day, in which the minister can neither give liberty to an 
 Irishman nor bread to a Briton, but according to their good 
 will and pleasure. The first sovereigns of the House of Han- 
 over relaxed as far as they dared, the penalties annexed to 
 the catholic worship ; and George the Third, began his 
 reign by following in their footsteps, till " Hanoverian 
 toleration" had passed into a by-word among the ascen- 
 dancy party. — See O'Connor's Life,
 
 THE O'FLAHERTYS. 115 
 
 chancellor and archbishop of Dublin, always 
 excepted) there is an end to church and state ; 
 and Luther and King William, may go and 
 hunt hares together. Mind my words, my 
 worthies, if this new conciliation system, as it is 
 absurdly called, goes on, the ouldest amongst us 
 will live to see the repeal of the whole penal 
 code— we shall see papists riding blood horses, 
 and the first protestant gentlemen in the land, 
 not daring to seize a hair in their tail — we shall 
 have papists purchasing land, and bequeathing 
 it by will — teaching publicly in schools, and 
 speaking publicly in places where a few years 
 back they dared no more show their faces, 
 than in the castle-yard — we shall have papists 
 called to the bar, admitted to the king's inns, 
 allowed to marry protestant wives, and edu- 
 cate their own children in the catholic faith — 
 we shall have Jack priests stalking about, as if 
 they were not felons by the law of the land, — 
 and emissaries of Rome and Spain, prowling in 
 our very coffee-houses. In a word. Gentlemen, 
 we shall have papist barristers, papist attornies, 
 papist constables, papist watchmen, papist ladies"*-
 
 116 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 lieutenant holding drawing-rooms in the castle ; 
 and to climax all, we shall have papists enjoying 
 the elective franchises, and in due time we shall 
 send papist members to a papist parliament, 
 and live to see our protestant House of Com- 
 mons perverted into a conclave of cardinals." 
 
 The lighted torch thrown by the Pope among 
 the congregation at St. Peter's on Maunday 
 Thursday (after the Coena Domini), and ima- 
 gining the thunder of his own anathemas, never 
 gave more alarm to the conscience of the timid 
 sinner, than the denunciations of the little pro- 
 testant pope of Lucas's, now excited among his 
 prejudiced, ignorant, and self-interested audi- 
 tory; when the ^^ imperturhahle^^ of the remote 
 box, whose fine and characteristic head only was 
 visible above the high oak screen-work, behind 
 which he was deliberately taking his chocolate 
 and dried toast, coolly observed, that " all that 
 the Rev. Gentleman had predicted, with the 
 exception of a papist parliament and conclave 
 senate, would eventually come to pass; and 
 that too, at no distant day. It is in the order of 
 things," he added, " that, as the intemperate
 
 THE oVlAHERTYS. 117 
 
 times, which occasioned the infliction of penal 
 statutes pass away, the impohtic laws should 
 pass with them ; together with the petty and 
 personal vexations, which grow out of them, to 
 the destruction of those social pleasures, which 
 the Irish, beyond all other people, are calculated 
 to enjoy.* To inflict civil punishment, where 
 no civil crime is committed, to make men's 
 private creed the measure of their public prin- 
 ciples, to vindicate the Deity by fires, and mulct 
 faith by forfeitures, are expedients that belong 
 only to an age in which the nature and end of 
 legislation are either totally unknown, or are 
 forgotten or set at nought, amidst the conflict 
 of contending factions." 
 
 The advocate of toleration then arose, threw 
 down the amount of his bill, and courteously 
 
 • So far back as the year 1725, Swift alludes ia one of 
 his letters to Sheridan, to the " glorious and immortal 
 memory," being a party signal, occasioning many quarrels. 
 The Bishop of Cork, Dr. Peter Browne, wrote a pamphlet 
 called, " A Treatise against drinking to the Memory of the 
 Dead." Cumberland also gives an account of the fatal 
 effects of unnecessary insults heaped on an oppressed and 
 persecuted people, by the ascendancy party.
 
 118 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 bowing to the company, withdrew from a con- 
 test, forcibly illustrative of the jargon of the 
 times. He was a person of distinguished ap- 
 pearance, with a countenance full of intelligence, 
 softened down by an expression of melancholy. 
 He was scarcely middle aged ; and his dress 
 and tournure recalled, to those who had travelled, 
 the French ecclesiastic of rank, so frequently 
 found in the highest circles of Parisian society. 
 His accent was, however, perfectly Irish, though 
 with something of a foreign rhythm. As he 
 passed through the hall of Lucas's Coffee-house 
 to his chair, the crowd of link-boys, coachmen, 
 and chairmen, who then usually thronged in 
 such places, took off their hats, and cheered him 
 with " Long life to your Reverence Abbe 
 O'Flaherty ! — Connemarafor ever ! — the O'Fla- 
 herty cause, and long may they reign !— Hurrah 
 for ould Ireland !" 
 
 The information communicated by this voci- 
 feration of the populace ex«s'jted a general sensa- 
 tion. Some wondered at the courage of the 
 Abbe, others swelled with indignation against 
 him, as one whose existence was denied by the
 
 THE o'fLAHERTYS. 119 
 
 Statutes, and who thus, like the Genoese gaU- 
 rien, bore the word lihertas upon the chains 
 which galled him. All considered this unwonted 
 boldness in a papist, a priest, and a regular, as 
 a bad omen ; and many prophesied the resuh of 
 that temporizing system, which, though they 
 themselves might not live to see the evil conse- 
 quences, would, they said, throw their children 
 upon " evil men and evil times." 
 
 The striking of the castle clock now sounded 
 the tocsin for the evening's occupations and 
 amusements. Some adjourned from the coffee- 
 room below to the private apartments above ; 
 where cards and hazard assembled the legitimate 
 predecessors of the future members of Daly's 
 and Kildare-street. Others ordered their chairs 
 to the Parliament House, or to the theatre in 
 Smock-alley. The habitues of Lady Brandon's 
 private box, at the new theatre in Crow-street, 
 hastened, in obedience to lier ladyship's morn- 
 ing commands, to support her " dear Mr. 
 Mossop;" and all who were of the musical 
 faction, (the " coin de la re'me^'), the Leinsters, 
 Conollys, Belmonts, and Westmeaths, proceeded
 
 120 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 to the Italian Opera in Capel-street ; where the 
 bewitching Sestini, in " La huona F'lgliuola^'' 
 and Pinetti, in the " Isola d' Alcina^'' elicited a 
 rapturous, but judicious applause, even from 
 the gallery, which it would now be vain to look 
 for from the most refined audience that Dublin 
 can supply. 
 
 But if the issue of the O 'Flaherty cause had 
 excited some sensation in the capital, there was 
 a spot where it was deemed of no less magnitude 
 than the acquisition of Silesia had been to 
 Prussia, the dismemberment of Poland to Russia, 
 or the results of the war of the succession to the 
 House of Bourbon. This spot was the remote, 
 romantic, and venerable district and town of St. 
 Grellan ; the former a long and winding tract, 
 between sea and mountain, indented with pic- 
 turesque harbours and beautiful bays, lying in 
 all the still repose of sheltering rocks ; — the 
 latter, like all old Irish towns, consisting chiefly 
 of along, narrow^ rutted main street, intersected 
 by the market cross, and terminating in a ruin- 
 ous, over-peopled suburb, called the cladagh;* 
 * Cladagh, literally — the dirty place.
 
 THE o'fLAHERTYS. -flSl 
 
 which, with a few diverging lanes, passages, and 
 courts, leading " up to the mountains, or down 
 to the sea," made up the whole of its straggling 
 circumference. 
 
 With all its defects, however, St. Grellan, 
 ^when viewed from a distance, had still a vener- 
 able and imposing air. Its picturesque ruins 
 of monasteries and towers, and, above all, its 
 Spanish-built castles, or castellated mansions, 
 raised round narrow courts, and opening to the 
 main street by ponderous archways, recalled, on 
 a diminished scale, the Stradas of Seville and 
 Badajos. Upon these models they had been 
 evidently built, by the burghers of the town, 
 who, in times of turbulence, had found such for- 
 tifications necessary for the preservation of their 
 wine cellars and counters against the inroads 
 of the toparchs of the Milesian race ; when, on 
 pretence of claiming *' connowe and meales, due 
 to them by the testimonial of many auncient, 
 ould, and credible persons,''' the native chiefs 
 were wont to come down upon the town, from 
 their raths and forts in the mountains, in utter 
 contempt of the impotent by-laws of the good 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 122 THE o'bJIIENS A\D 
 
 mayor and corporation, which decreed, that 
 " Ne Mac, nor O, should strut, ne swagger, in 
 the streets ; nor ne Irishman brag ne boast upon 
 the town." 
 
 But in process of time, when the chiefs of the 
 old race dropped into the lines of civilization, it 
 became their pride to rear their mansions also 
 within the town wall, and to sculpture over their 
 massy portals their ancient armorial bearings, 
 and expressive mottoes, which distinguished them 
 from the plebeian residences of the '•'' gailohh^^^ 
 or tribe of merchants. Many of these patrician 
 edifices still remained, though fast falling to ruin ; 
 and were no less revered by the natives of St. 
 Grellan, than the palaces of the Massimi, with 
 their imperial arms and cardinal hats, are by 
 the modern Romans. Few of them, however, 
 were in the possession of the descendants of the 
 ancient proprietors, whose name they still bore. 
 Almost all were in litigation ; and some were 
 claimed as the estates of two or three different 
 families : the first story being held in fee by an 
 O, the second by a Mac, and the rez de chaussee 
 being possessed and inhabited by some pains-
 
 THE o'flahertys. 123 
 
 taking tradesman of the Cromwellian stock, who 
 proved his right in the premises by " a deben- 
 ture of Colonel Stubbers,'*' or a grant of some 
 other of Cromwell's Connaught governors. A 
 stone staircase, and two dark closets, were 
 claimed in Mac Taaf's Court (an old house in 
 the Cladagh), by the Miss Mac Taafs, who 
 were still carrying on the suit, begun in the year 
 forty-five by their uncle the brigadier. 
 
 All beyond the coast and plain of St. Grellan, 
 called the Fassagh, and the lower range of hills, 
 which formed its land boundary, had become 
 terra incognita to its indolent and unenterpris- 
 ing inhabitants; and the river Pactolus, Gol- 
 conda, or the ruins of some ancient Irish 
 Palmyra, might have existed in the interior of 
 the mountains of Connemara without awakening 
 their curiosity, or stimulating their research. 
 
 The military passes, made through these ro- 
 mantic mountains by the Lord Deputy Clan- 
 rickard, and his rebellious kinsmen, the Clan 
 Earla,* were long blocked up by the caprice 
 of torrents, which yearly changed their course, 
 
 * The Earl's sons. 
 c 2
 
 124 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 or by the fall of rocks, which yielded to the 
 fierce storms engendered in the surrounding 
 ocean. The bridle tracks still cut through in the 
 gorges of these stupendous hills were but little 
 known or frequented, except by smugglers, 
 passing from the coast, to the interior of Mayo 
 and Galway, or by other lawless persons, the 
 successors of the Rapparies of Queen Ann's 
 and George the First's day. 
 
 At the distance of five Irish miles from the 
 town of St. Grellan arose the castellated domes 
 of Beauregard, like a fairy structure in a desert, 
 backed by inaccessible mountains and dreary 
 wastes. The object of its noble owner in chus- 
 ing this site, was to oppose and conquer the 
 country physically, as he had already succeeded 
 in doing in the moral sense. But the riches, 
 the magnificence, and the extent of this almost 
 royal palace, were in vain opposed to the deep- 
 rooted prejudices of the people in favour of their 
 ancient chieftains. The power, the influence, 
 the measureless expanse of estate were all on 
 the side of the Proudforts; but the chiefs of 
 the Hy Tartagh, the forfeited and abdicated
 
 THE o'flahertys. 125 
 
 O'Briens and OTlaherties, with their " gestes et 
 fails'^ in th' ould times, held their supremacy 
 in the public imagination. It was in vain that on 
 the head-stone of a ruined arch of one of the 
 town gates of St. Grellan, might still be read the 
 timid invocation, "From the ferocious O'Fla- 
 herties deliver us, O Lord !" it was in vain that 
 the marks of a ring were still pointed out in 
 the fragment of an embrasure of the town walls, 
 as the place where a chain had been drawn 
 across the western suburbs, to prevent the 
 O'Flaherties from rushing down from the moun- 
 tains and gallopping through the town, to plun- 
 der the honest burghers, the descendants of a 
 company of English merchants ; — it was in vain 
 even that the O'Flaherty of the day was 
 branded with absenteeism ; and that for thirty 
 years he had given no other proof of his recol- 
 lection of such a spot, than his annual demand 
 of the few chief rents which still remained to 
 him : in spite of all these " damning proofs," 
 there was yet a magic in the name ; and while 
 the gallantry and misfortunes of the brave sept 
 were st'dl sung in many a merry planxty, or
 
 126 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 chaunted in many a doleful cronan, the faults 
 and ferocity of its turbulent chiefs with their 
 cuttings, and cosherings, and black rents, and 
 other barbarous exactions of their feudal power, 
 were all forgotten. All the recollections of these 
 Alpine districts were associated with the names, 
 fortunes, and fate of that fallen but revered 
 dynasty ; the recent triumphs of whose repre- 
 sentative, now conveyed such general satisfac- 
 tion to the mere Irishry of the Bally-boe. 
 
 General Count Malachi O'Flaherty, the hero 
 of the day, was of the highest order of Irish 
 exiles, whom the misrule of their own country 
 had driven to become the ornaments and defend- 
 ers of another. With considerable talent, cou- 
 rage, and great personal beauty, he was less 
 indebted for his rapid, but late, promotion in the 
 French service, and his favor at the French 
 court, to these superior natur^il endowments, 
 than to the degrading accident of his relation- 
 ship, being claimed (not proved) by the pro- 
 fligate Count Du Barry, and to the condescen- 
 sion with which he permitted the king''s mistress 
 to call him cousin in the circle, where cringing
 
 THE o'flahertys. 127 
 
 peers and crouching priests received their appoint- 
 ments, and canvassed their promotions from the 
 smiles of the royal concubine. Previous to this 
 mortifying distinction, he had only won unpro- 
 fitable honours, in a service which afforded to the 
 Irish exile no prospect, but that of growing 
 more unhappy as he grew old in it ; but from 
 tliis epoch his military promotion was rapid, his 
 illustrious Irish descent was acknowledo-ed in his 
 patent of French nobility, and he had his " charge 
 a la cour^''' and the '' entree des petits apparie- 
 f?ie?is.''^ If in the first era of his favour, his 
 high martial spirit^ his sense of family honour 
 and hereditary glory, had to struggle against 
 privileges and distinctions, so degraded by the 
 source from whence they flowed ; yet long ab- 
 sence from his native land, his habitual inter- 
 course with a nation of slaves, in a country 
 where there was no public opinion, no private 
 morals, had gradually blunted, though it had 
 never extinguished these feelings. An indignant 
 remorse in the midst of his good fortune, would 
 frequently rise to embitter the present, and lead 
 him to regret the dignified adversity of the past.
 
 128 
 
 This mood of mind was not peculiar to Count 
 OTlaherty. The unfortunate and exiled 
 catholic gentlemen of Ireland, dependants 
 abroad, as slaves at home, carried about with 
 them a dark repining temper, which rendered 
 them not les3 suspicious of favours conferred, 
 than they were jealous of distinctions withheld. 
 
 In pohtics. Count OTlaherty, as a feudal 
 aristocrat, was a stern upholder of the divine 
 right of kings ; but though upon principle a 
 Jacobite, he was, by sentiment, a contemner of 
 the despicable family in whose cause his own had 
 suffered ruin, almost to extinction. In rehgion, 
 he was a Roman catholic, upon point of honour; 
 but while he regularly (in the Irish catholic 
 phrase), ''attended his duty,'' and assisted a la 
 messe du roi, at Versailles, he was, at Paris, in the 
 " coterie d'Holbach^* and of the prevailing faith of 
 all the esprits forts^ and fashionable philosophers 
 of the day ; who admitted no infallibility but in 
 the wit of the patriarch of Ferney, who borrowed 
 their texts from Rabelais, and who took their 
 epigraphs from the Lutrin of Boileau. A man 
 of pleasure, in the truest sense of the word, but
 
 129 
 
 " en Jtomme comme iljaut^ always in love, rarely 
 out of debt, addicted to play, and spoiled alike 
 by his mistresses and his creditors, he was 
 scarcely accountable for a character, to which he 
 had been predestined by the history of his coun- 
 try ; nor answerable for irregularities, into which 
 he was hurried by a vivacity of constitution, the 
 temperament of his nation. Unrestrained by 
 those wholesome ties, which men placed under 
 the control of public opinion in their own 
 country, acknowledge and obey, still handsome, 
 and still " en bonne fortune ^"^ the Count had yet 
 attained the age, when the tide of life is on its 
 ebb — when the vain are vainest, and men of 
 gallantry most gallant. Touchy and jealous of the 
 triumphs which once sought him, but which he 
 was now obliged to seek, he was the more dan- 
 gerous, as he was less passionate. The penalties 
 of time were paid off from the treasury of ex- 
 perience ; and the ambition of supporting a re- 
 putation, which had placed him in the ranks of 
 the Lauzuns and the Lauragais, left him ready 
 for any adventure which circumstance and situa- 
 tion might throw in his way. 
 g3
 
 130 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 Such was the man, whose recovery of a small 
 part of his patrimony excited so strong a sen- 
 sation in St. Grellan. The event was exa«:- 
 gerated, as all such events are in Ireland. It 
 was considered as " the happy prologue of a 
 swelling theme/' in which the Irish pentarchy 
 was to be restored, according to the imaginings 
 of those whose forefathers had been all kings. 
 
 The Count O 'Flaherty only arrived in Dublin 
 in time to witness the completion of his hopes, 
 and to go through the forms which the law re- 
 quired. He then set off on his royal progress 
 to St. Grellan, with a suit of two carriages, and 
 accompanied by his champion and kinsman, the 
 Baron O'Brien, by the Abbe O'Flaherty, and 
 by two young French noblemen of his own school 
 and caste, who had visited Ireland in a frolic. 
 
 The eyes of the protestant ascendancy of the 
 town, as they glared from the balcony of the 
 episcopal palace, beheld with amazement the 
 multitudes who followed the chariot of the 
 victorious client of Baron O'Brien. At the 
 Cladagh, the horses were taken from the Count's 
 carriage, and he was carried to the Proudfort
 
 THE o'flahertys. 131 
 
 Arms on the necks of liis sept. The Baron too 
 was chaired through the town, to his own house, 
 by a party of '' fsie of Arran boys," led on by 
 Shane, whose mother, Mor-ny-Brlen, in her Arra- 
 nite costume, stood in a window, with the young 
 diief of the IVIac Tiegs, the Baron's only son, in 
 her arms; and the Miss Mac Taafs in their 
 coiffures ala du Barri, from the bay window at 
 which Onor OTlaherty had formerly saluted 
 Rory Oge, on his visit to St Grellan, waved 
 their white kerchiefs to the Count as he passed ; 
 whose gracious smile, and graceful bow, gave 
 them full assurance that " le coiL]pfut parti,^' 
 and that he had already made up his mind to 
 the Green Knighthood, and Barony of Bally- 
 slatterie, as Miss Mac Taaf, the elder, had 
 made up her's to be Countess OTlaherty, of 
 MoycuUen. 
 
 As the evening advanced, preparations were 
 made for the old Irish demonstration of all 
 sorts of joy, and triumph — a bonfire. The 
 whole town and Ballyboe were in movement. 
 Children came bounding down the moun-
 
 182 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 tains, with their tributary brasneeiis ;* the 
 old folk were busied in collecting turf, mold, 
 bones, and sea-weeds, to heap up in particular 
 stations ; and the fishermen of the Cladagh 
 marched up the main street, in a sort of con- 
 fused procession, carrying bundles of reeds on 
 poles (as on the eve of St. John), to con- 
 tribute to the general conflagration. Young 
 females, carrying small brooms of dock stems, 
 touched the passengers with their rustic fasces, 
 with the simpering request of " honour the 
 bonfire," " honour the bonfire of the O'Flaher- 
 ties and the O^Briens ;" and those who refused to 
 comply with this demand by moving the hat or 
 bending the knee, did not withhold their ho- 
 mage with impunity. It was to little purpose 
 that the Honourable and Right Reverend the 
 Lord Bishop of St. Grellan fulminated a bull 
 from his ecclesiastical residence, against bon- 
 fires and riotous assemblies ; that the mandate 
 was proclaimed by the beadle with bell and staff, 
 
 * Bundles of underwood and brambles, picked up in the 
 hedges. &c.
 
 THE o'flahertys. 133 
 
 and with three " Uaishts; *'* that it was repeated 
 by the verger in pontificalibus ; echoed by two 
 squeaking choristers, and intonated by a bass 
 vicar choral — the brasneens still came in, and 
 the fires blazed out. It was to as little pur- 
 pose that the state came in aid of the church ; 
 that old justice Hunks, brother of the arch- 
 deacon of St. Grellan, rummaged all the statute 
 books, from William to George, to find some 
 act " for the better putting down of seditious 
 and popish bonfires :"" the evil had escaped the 
 attention of the legislature, the law had pro- 
 vided no penalty ; and had not the great oli- 
 garch of the town and county, the Lord Viscount 
 Proudfort (brother to the bishop, uncle to the 
 dean, and cousin, or kinsman, to half the rich 
 rectors and prebendaries in the diocese), in bis 
 quality of governor of the town, ordered out a 
 military party to suppress the incendiary symp- 
 toms of insurrection, (which under the simple 
 name of bonfires, were in fact the houtes fetioo of 
 incipient rebellion,) there is every reason to 
 
 * ** Uaisht;' listen : the " Oyez^'' or rather " O yes," 
 of the Connaught town criers.
 
 134 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 suppose, that the bonfires would eventually — 
 have gone out of themselves. 
 
 As it was, a riot ensued ! a life or two 
 were lost, some half dozen, half naked, turf- 
 cutters and bog-trotters, were incarcerated in 
 the cells of the town-jail — some few limbs 
 were fractured, some few heads were broken, 
 and some few brave English soldiers, (worthy 
 of a better cause,) were wounded by that un- 
 failing missile, a well-directed stone, thrown by 
 a well-practised hand. Thus, before midnight, 
 the social order of St. Grellan was restored ; 
 but, lo ! as the grey dawn broke upon the silent 
 town, the bonfires were found blazing higher 
 than ever, from cliff to cliff, from rock to rock, 
 along every high point on the coast ; as if the 
 sun, as he rose from behind O 'Flaherty's moun- 
 tains, had kindled them with his own celestial 
 rays. It was thus in ancient times he was wont 
 to light up the fires of the god Samhuin, at the 
 same high places, and at the same season ; while 
 druid priests sang his praise, and sold his dis- 
 pensations. 
 
 There were many in St. Grellan who when
 
 THE o'flahertys. 135 
 
 they heard of this phenomenon of the cjucnch- 
 less fires, crossed themselves. Some there were 
 indeed who could account for the fact upon 
 very simple principles; but the majority pre- 
 ferred the belief, that the whole was a miraculous 
 interposition of Heaven itself, in testimony of its 
 special protection of a family and of a church, 
 which, in spite of these occasional proofs of 
 celestial favour, were still prostrate before hu- 
 man power, and subjugated by human events.
 
 136 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE REVIEW. 
 
 Beauty, and such a stock of impudence, 
 
 As to the playhouse well might recommend her. 
 
 Etheridcb. 
 
 The warrior. Liberty, with bending sails 
 
 Helm'd his bold course to fair Hibernia's vales ;— 
 
 Firm as he steps along the shouting lands, 
 
 Lo ! Truth and Virtue range their radiant bands; 
 
 Sad Superstition wails her empire torn. 
 
 Art plies his oar, and Commerce pours her horn. 
 
 Botanic Garden, Canto IJ. 
 
 Time went on ; and in less than a quarter of 
 a century, " nay not so much," from the epoch 
 of the OTlaherty cause, the force of circum- 
 stance, bearing down, as it ever does, the sys- 
 tems of human policy, effected changes in 
 Ireland, which the legislatures of centuries had 
 deemed impracticable, and which the bigotry of 
 interested ignorance had shunned, as ruinous. 
 Within this " brief and petty space,**' the shock 
 of opinion (first felt in America) had vibrated
 
 THE O'FLAHERTYS. 137 
 
 to the remotest regions of civilization ; and 
 wherever the deep and awful convulsion had 
 passed, the long-during edifice of despotism had 
 crumbled under its influence. Even Ireland, 
 the cul de-sac of politics and of society — inert 
 and stagnant as she had long lain, under the 
 pressure of the penal code — participated in the 
 movement. The Irish — or to give the people 
 of Ireland a more definite designation — the 
 Irish Catholics, though excluded from all pri- 
 vileges, were reluctantly acknowledged to exist 
 as citizens ; and were allowed to pray, as con- 
 science dictated, without incurring the penalties 
 of felony. They were permitted to hold their 
 own estates in their own hands, without fear of 
 the treachery of their children ; they could ride 
 blood horses, worth fifty pounds, without the 
 risk of being obliged to part with them for 
 five ; they might fill the state offices of watch- 
 men, and constables, and enter into the liberal 
 professions of attornies and notaries, without 
 being considered as disturbers of the peace and 
 tranquillity of his Majesty's subjects ; they 
 could raise their timid voices in coffee-houses,
 
 138 THK o'bhiens axd 
 
 and shew their proscribed faces in the castle 
 yard. Yet with all these long-dreaded innova- 
 tions — these bugbears to loyalty and ascendancy 
 — the isle was not " frighten'd from her pro- 
 priety." No civil war of 1641 was rekindled, 
 no massacre of St. Bartholomew ensued ! Every 
 wise concession had served but to strengthen 
 national confidence, and to develop the na- 
 tional resources. The fearful alternations which 
 had agitated the community for more than a 
 century, the vague and wasteful exertions of 
 delirious strength, the troubled sleep of ex- 
 hausted violence, were gradually subsiding in 
 the enjoyments of rights obtained, and the consci- 
 ousness and foretaste of rights to be conceded. 
 America had revolted ; and England, in her 
 hour of peril, fearing Ireland, as the oppressor 
 in times of danger always fears the oppressed, 
 reluctantly abandoned a part of that all-per- 
 vading and comprehensive system of tyranny, 
 which had hitherto paralyzed the energies of 
 the nation ; and by this " premier pas"""" ren- 
 dered the ultimate emancipation of the people, 
 morally, and almost physically, inevitable.
 
 THE o'flahertys. 139 
 
 It was not, however, until a French fleet rode 
 triumphantly in the Irish seas,* that the 
 
 • To what purpose, it may be asked, are these bitter 
 recollections revived? Certainly neither to irritate nor 
 insult the English nation, from whose justice and good 
 sense Ireland has so much to expect. The fact, how- 
 ever, being as it is, it is neither unfair nor unwise to re- 
 mind the party in England, who are perpetually vociferat- 
 ing, both in and out of parliament, '* we won't be bullied," 
 and who endeavour, by alarming the timid, and by arous- 
 ing the passions of the people, to seduce them into no- 
 popery fanaticism, that the Tory faction (calling itself the 
 State) has been d ull ie d a.nd mai/ he bullied: and that as it 
 never has granted any thing to justice or to generosity, the 
 turbulence of the Catholic agitators is not quite as ground- 
 less, or devoid of policy, as their opponents affect to imagine. 
 It should not be forgotten, that though a brave and high- 
 spirited people can never be threatened mto a tame submis- 
 sion to wrong, nothing is more common than for the most 
 powerful to be forced into a concession of rights. There 
 is an inevitable efficiency in moral propriety, from the mere 
 constancy of its action : accident, at some time or other, 
 must conspire with it ; and small circumstances are enough 
 to render it irresistible. The outcry against being threat- 
 ened into toleration is, therefore, mere empty declamation. 
 A reasonable apprehension of the natural consequences of 
 moral wrong is prudence, not fearj even though the argu- 
 ment be advanced in the spirit of hostility. But, after all, 
 what has the conduct of the agitators to do wiih the 
 policy of the main question?
 
 140 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 attempt was made to bribe Ireland into tran- 
 quillity, by relaxing her chains. Then indeed 
 the experiment was made ; and England found 
 that the people she had so long oppressed, were 
 not quite debased. Permitted to arm in their 
 own defence, the Irish stood forth with all their 
 ancient valour, and with more than their ancient 
 unity, to protect their native land from foreign 
 aggression ; and to realize that splendid dream 
 of political philosophy — a national army — self- 
 associated, self-organized, self-paid ; each and 
 all having an interest and a property in the 
 land they had risen to defend. 
 
 Such were the Irish volunteers, whose bril- 
 liant, but short-lived story, forms the only illu- 
 minated page in Ireland's dismal annals ! Such 
 was that gallant band of patriots, who, during 
 the short epoch of their existence, rescued their 
 country from bondage, and redeemed it from 
 disgrace. Attracting the attention of other 
 countries, and winning the veneration of their 
 own, the Irish volunteers made daily acquisitions 
 of strength by an alliance with all classes. 
 Nobles sought the distinction of becoming their
 
 THE o'fLAHERTYS. 141 
 
 officers ; men of boundless wealth were proud of 
 being enrolled in their ranks ; all sects and all 
 relioions united under their banners; and the 
 moral dignity attached to the service created 
 prepossessions, which its imposing exterior was 
 not calculated to diminish. A race, which had 
 ever been deemed comely, became improved by 
 military discipline. The use of arms, while it 
 rubbed oft' the uncouth awkwardness of the lower 
 orders, gave energy to the languid movements 
 of the highest. Volunteering became a vogue, 
 as well as a principle- The women (and Ireland 
 was then deemed the Corinth of Europe) took 
 them under their special protection, presented 
 their banners and dictated their devices. Gal- 
 lantry and patriotism were nev^er in a more strict 
 alliance ; and national vanity, occasionally sup- 
 plying the place of national feeling, enlisted 
 many in the volunteer corps, whose natural 
 vocation, by birth and caste, la}^ all another 
 way. 
 
 To defend the land from foreign invasion 
 had been the original motive which armed the 
 volunteers of Ireland; but this was onlv a tern-
 
 142 THE o'beiens and 
 
 porary remedy, applied to a temporary evil. 
 The result, the important result, was an effor|; 
 to emancipate the nation from six centuries of un- 
 mitigated sufferingj and to re-open those sources 
 of national prosperity, which had so long been 
 dried up, or turned aside. The impulse gave 
 a new spring to the spirit of this military body ; 
 and an armed association of thirty thousand 
 citizens, assembling by their representatives, 
 struck terror into minds inaccessible to the sug- 
 gestions of sound policy, or of fair dealing. 
 The eloquence of men, with arms in their hands, 
 was not to be resisted. A free trade, the re- 
 jected prayer of ages, was conceded ; Ireland's 
 legislative independence, the long, but hopeless 
 aspiration of millions, was acknowledged, and 
 the government consented to abandon pretensions 
 which it was no longer in a condition to assert. 
 
 When, however, America triumphed, and peace 
 was proclaimed, England — punished but not 
 taught — returned to her old policy ; and having 
 no further occasion for that flame she had per- 
 mitted to kindle, she resolved to quench it. 
 But the Irish spirit, like a long compressed
 
 TnE o'flaiikrtys. 143 
 
 spring set free, though somewhat too rapid and 
 irregular in its movements, was still too forcible 
 and vigorous to be readily reduced to its former 
 subjection. The volunteers still continued to 
 debate in their convention, and the highest in 
 rank and talent presided in their assemblies, and 
 took a frank and approving part in their de- 
 liberations. They continued to hold their mili- 
 tary reviews in all parts of the kingdom, and 
 their graceful movements, performed under the 
 rewarding eye of beauty, were executed to the 
 exhilarating sounds of their national music. Such 
 meetings were considered as historical epochs by 
 the people, and such reviews were regarded as 
 national festivals. 
 
 A military institution, so singular in its na- 
 ture as to include the several gradations of nobles 
 and commons, merchants, yeomen, and me- 
 chanics, always prompt to combat the views of 
 an unfriendly government, and make head against 
 the corrupt influence of a banditti of dictators,* 
 
 • " Three of four grandees had such an influence in the 
 Irish House of Commons, that their coalition commanded 
 a majority upon any question."
 
 144 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 soon became to the state, which had eulogized 
 its first organization, an object of amazement, 
 and a source of vexation. In their infancy, the 
 volunteers might have been suppressed — in their 
 present state, to resist them was difficult ; to con- 
 troul them, vain ; to disband them, impossible ! 
 But to disunite, to undermine, to sap, to slander, 
 and to vilify, w^ere always practicable in Ireland. 
 Corruption, the old medium, was again resorted 
 to. Religion, the old state engine of English 
 policy, was again brought into play. Ridicule, 
 under many forms, launched by the witty and 
 the profligate, the hireling satirist and the pen- 
 sioned buffoon, was set to work to raise " that 
 dread laugh," against which even virtue is not 
 always proof. The volunteers themselves, like 
 all sanguine reformers, and like all Irishmen, 
 overshooting or deviating from their mark, oc- 
 casionally furnished their enemies with arms 
 against themselves; and divisions, industriously 
 sown between the leaders and their corps, were 
 rapidly breaking up their unity, when the French 
 revolution broke forth — a brand from the altar
 
 THE O FLAHERTYS. 145 
 
 of American independence — an event that ter- 
 minated the struggle between kings, and began 
 the contest between governments and nations. 
 
 The French revolution, at its dawn so splen- 
 did and so temperate, produced in Ireland an 
 effect the most powerful and electric. Reor- 
 ganizing in their legislative assembly a new 
 empire from an old despotism, breaking the fet- 
 ters of ages, and calling forth a national army 
 to replace their liveried and foreign forces, the 
 French had obtained the suffrages of the wise 
 and good of all parties ; but in Ireland their 
 proceedings awakened more than admiration — 
 they aroused a powerful sympathy, and a deep 
 and self-reflecting interest. They gave an ex- 
 ample of which Ireland had but too much 
 reason to avail herself; and the Irish volunteers 
 boldly, though not prudently, commemorated 
 the great event of the revolution by the most 
 public demonstration of opinion. It was then 
 that the government, taking new alarm, re- 
 solved upon the destruction of a force, which, 
 if it had no other demerit, must have been 
 
 VOL. 1. H
 
 146 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 at once odious and suspicious, because it 
 was — national. Yet, ere the hand of power fell 
 with an annihilating weight upon the devoted 
 bands, while public opinion yet suspended the 
 coming blow, the volunteers continued to ex- 
 hibit to their partial fellow-citizens that admirable 
 discipline to which they bad so long and so 
 cheerfully submitted; and their reviews con- 
 tinued to embrace all classes, either as actors or 
 spectators, from the viceroy to the lowest popu- 
 lace. 
 
 It happened that while the army of Ulster 
 were celebrating, in their province, the anniver- 
 sary of the French Revolution, the army of 
 Leinster, with less ostensible motives for re- 
 union, were summoned to a grand review in 
 the Phoenix Park. The reviewing general, upon 
 this, as upon every other occasion, was the 
 great Earl of Charlemont, the general of the 
 volunteer army of Ulster, the father of the 
 volunteer army of Ireland ; one of those men 
 who hallow a whole people, and lift up all who 
 live in their time. Presiding over a great army
 
 THE o'flahertys. 147 
 
 for j^ears without reward, he had assisted to 
 establish a revolution* without blood. The 
 Earl of Charlemont was then advanced in years, 
 and suffered under their consequent infirmities ; 
 yet still at his post, he gave to his country what 
 age in its usual egotism requires for itself — his 
 health, his time, his tastes, his repose, and it is 
 melancholy to add, his peace. 
 
 On the evening previous to this review (one of 
 the last and the most splendid), the several corps 
 were seen marching into the capital from various 
 directions. They were met by the cordial inha- 
 bitants, who accepted their billets with cheerful- 
 ness, receiving them with boundless hospitality, 
 and entertaining them with emulous profusion. 
 In the morning (and it was a bright May 
 morning) Dublin was all bustle and movement. 
 Military music was heard in every direction. 
 The carriages of the nobility and gentry, colonels 
 and commandants of the various provincial corps, 
 came rolling into town from the seats and villas 
 of their distinguished owners. The different 
 
 • In 1782, well denominated "Ireland's lifetime.'' 
 H 2
 
 14-8 THE O'BRIEN'S AND 
 
 corps assembled to beat of drum, or sound of 
 trumpet; forming themselves into brigades in 
 the most spacious streets, or along the noble 
 quays of the LifFey : and by eleven o'clock the 
 arm}^ of Leinster, led on by the Dublin Volun- 
 teers, headed by the Duke of Leinster, were all 
 marching to the scene of action. A multitude 
 preceded, followed, and surrounded them ; and 
 all who did not, or could not accompany them 
 to the field, hailed and cheered them as they 
 passed, from the windows, balconies, and roofs 
 of the houses. 
 
 The Phoenix Park — the old manor of Fionne 
 uisge^* gallantly translated by Lord Chester- 
 field into '^ phoenix^'' — once the domain of 
 the powerful priors of Kilmainham, now the 
 " hel respire''^ of the anglo-Irish officials, from 
 the viceroy to the chamberlain, from the ' se- 
 cretary of state to the clerk of the kitchen — 
 the Phoenix Park is, perhaps, one of the most 
 beautiful suburban pleasure grounds that any 
 city in Europe can boast. Since the Union it 
 has been deserted by the dispirited citizens of 
 ♦ Fair water.
 
 THE oVlAHKUTYS. 149 
 
 Dublin, and wholly abandoned to the temporary 
 residence of the English members of the Irish 
 government. At the epoch here alluded to, it 
 was not only the site of many villas belonging 
 to the nobihty, but the Hyde Park and Ken- 
 sington of the Irish metropolis. It was the 
 daily resort of the rank, beauty, and fashion of 
 ihe capital, where the corso was performed witli 
 all the punctuality of an Itahan town. It was 
 the weekly promenade of the lower and middle 
 ranks, who assembled there, not only for health 
 and amusement, but to witness that emulous 
 display of splendid equipages and numerous 
 cavalry, which it was then the vanity, and some- 
 times the ruin of the Irish gentry to indulge 
 in ; and above all, it had been the site of all 
 mihtary exercises, from the '^joustes etjetes'' of 
 those belligerent monks, the knights templars of 
 Kilmainham, to the reviews of the Irish volun- 
 teers. 
 
 Its diversified scenery, the vast variety of 
 its surface, and the accident of a broad and 
 uninterrupted plain, called the "Fifteen Acres," 
 admirably calculate the Phoenix Park for mili-
 
 150 THE O^BRIENS AND 
 
 tary evolutions. Rising from the banks of the 
 Liffey, in a succession of gentle eminences, it 
 commands an exterior view of that embellished 
 landscape, which swells on the opposite side of 
 the river to the base of a ridge of mountains, 
 whose bold and daring outline forms the back 
 ground of the whole. Within the park innu- 
 merable swellings of the surface and shaded 
 glens, intersected by the gleaming waters of 
 small natural lakes, diffuse an air of rural 
 beauty, even over the pleasure grounds of a 
 court ; while groves of luxuriant hawthorn, of 
 large and venerable growth, spread their shades 
 over many *' an alley green, dingle, and bushy 
 dell," in whose recesses groups of deer- repose 
 undisturbed, and add a touch of wildness to a 
 scene at once romantic and cultivated. 
 
 On the occasion of the volunteer review, now 
 alluded to, the park was all green and gold, 
 verdure and sunshine. The LifFey reflected 
 skies blue as any that ever tinted the waters of 
 the Arno ; and the rich bloom of the hawthorn, 
 pushed forth by a mild winter and an antici- 
 pated spring (so common and so delusive in
 
 tHE oVlahertys. 151 
 
 Ireland), already clothed the trees with beauty, 
 and loaded the air with perfume. The Dublin 
 mountains, cutting darkly against the purple 
 lights of their horizon, gave relief to the city, 
 which exhibited, as it spread down to the port, 
 many a spire and steeple, mingling with the 
 flags of vessels, which then rode into the very 
 heart of the metropolis. Tents, for the enter- 
 tainment of the lowly, and pavilions of every 
 colour and kind, for the repose of the great, 
 were pitched among the glens and defiles, so as 
 not to impede the movements of the troops. 
 Some few, upon well selected eminences, at- 
 tracted attention, by their peculiar elegance, by 
 the guards that sentinelled their draped and 
 curtained entrance, and by the banners that 
 floated on their summit. One of these, with 
 the royal flag over it, was the vice-regal banquet 
 tent, reserved for his excellency, the Lord 
 Lieutenant, and his party. Another was a 
 gallantry, on the part of the Dublin Volunteers, 
 to their illustrious commander. Its scarlet ban- 
 ner, with the motto of Cromaboo, denoted that it 
 was reserved for the Leinster family.
 
 152 THE O'LEIEXS AXD 
 
 All the several gates of entrance to the park 
 were thrown open to receive the multitude, 
 which poured in from the capital and its en- 
 virons. For the Irish, always prone to pleasure^ 
 or to what they deem pleasure, are the people 
 in the world 
 
 " De vivre heureux — s'ils avoient de quoi vivre." 
 
 Towards mid-day, the tide set in with great 
 force. Parties of men, women, and children, 
 escaped from the foul air of the " Liberty," or 
 " Partrick's Close," already seated upon various 
 hillocks, and covered with dust, were, in their 
 own language, " moistening their clay," by a 
 recurrence to that resource, which rarely fails 
 the lower Irish, even in the worst of times — 
 whiskey. Groups of bare-legged spalpeens, 
 with their ragged jackets on their arms, their 
 brogues on their shoulders, and their short 
 sticks in their hands, came trooping over the 
 green heights ; their brawny breasts exposed to 
 the sun, and their staring eyes, searching for " a 
 place to see the Review," where they might 
 admire the manoeuvring of their own village or 
 county corps, and be thus enabled on their
 
 THE o'flahertys. 155 
 
 return, to relate the prowess of the heroes of 
 Pucks Town, or Hazle Hatch, County Kildare, 
 or County Cavan. 
 
 The pedestrian spectators, who *'took time 
 by the forelock," were followed by the 
 humbler order of vehicles of all kinds; the 
 old Irish Tim ichiskeij, the Chaise marine^ 
 that capacious Irish family vehicle, and pre- 
 decessor of modern jingles ; the Noddy I that 
 humble, unpretending, public carriage, which 
 placed the driver, his horse, and his companion, 
 in such intimate, close, and social contact ; the 
 Dublin hackney coach, that short process to 
 dislocation ; \hepo chay^ from Castle Knock, or 
 Castle Dermott, from the "Black Bull," or the 
 " ^lan of War;"" with the one-horse chair of the 
 Dublin cockney, or the new-invented ** Duchess's 
 ffig,^ the unpopular novelty, sported by an un- 
 popular corporator, who, as the pasquinade of 
 the day had it 
 
 ■ " Set up his gig 
 
 With the money he got for sticking a pig."* 
 
 • The vaudevilles of Dublin were then as much a vehicle 
 for giving vent to public discontent, as those of Paris in 
 the time of Cardinal Richelieu, 
 n 3
 
 154 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 all jumbled, jostled, shambled, and shattered 
 along, with emulous rapidity. The " Judys^' 
 and '' Juggys," from Bally-bough, or Bally-tore, 
 from Glassneven, or Glassmanogue, mounted 
 en croupe upon the stout lean garrons * of their 
 husbands, displayed " their broad beaver hats, 
 and red cloaks all so fine," to the envious eyes 
 and invidious sarcasms of their less opulent 
 pedestrian neighbours. 
 
 Last, and late, and long after the plebeian 
 spectators were assembled, came the splendid 
 and numerous equipages of the aristocracy ; the 
 greater number drawn by four, and some by six 
 horses ; with liveries that sparkled in the sun, 
 like cloths of gold, and out-riders mounted on 
 steeds, that looked like chargers. Driving up 
 the most perilous sites, and " seeking glory, 
 even in the cannon's mouth," came rolling on, 
 the female charioteers, supreme above all in 
 splendour and attractions ; some of whom, 
 mounted in lofty phaetons, and guiding their 
 fiery coursers with more spirit than discretion, 
 
 * Garron, a lean horse.
 
 THK o'flahertys. 155 
 
 seemed like the spoiled child of the sun, only 
 to have " obtained the chariot of the day, to 
 set the world on fire.'' These splendid per- 
 sonages were, however, as few as they were 
 conspicuous ; for high phaetons and female 
 charioteership, were then alike novelties in Ire- 
 land ; and were exclusively confined to those 
 great female oligarchs who governed society, as 
 their husbands governed the state, and ruled 
 in the coteries of the capital, as their consorts 
 ruled the country, in all the insolence of exclu- 
 sive privilege, and all the lawlessness of un- 
 limited power. 
 
 Conspicuous amongst the most conspicuous 
 of these stars of the ascendant, was a lady, who 
 took the field with an eclat^ a brilliancy, and 
 bustle, which for a time fixed the attention of 
 all upon herself. Although a fine woman, in 
 the strictest sense of the term, and still hand- 
 some, though not still very young, she was even 
 more distinguished by her air of high supremacy, 
 than by her beauty. She sat loftily in a lofty 
 phaeton, which was emblazoned with arms, and 
 covered with coronets ; and she played with her 
 long whip, as ladies of old managed their fans^
 
 156 THE o'briens and 
 
 with grace and coquetry. She was dressed in a 
 rich habit, whose facings and epaulettes spoke 
 her the lady of the noble colonel of some pro- 
 vincial corps of volunteers. A high military 
 cap surmounted with a plume of black feathers, 
 well became her bright, bold, black eyes, and 
 her brow that looked as if accustomed " to 
 threaten and command.'' The air had deepened 
 her colour through her rouge, as it had blown from 
 her dark, dishevelled tresses the mareschal pow- 
 der, then still w^orn in Ireland — (the last hngering 
 barbarism of the British toilette, which France 
 had already abandoned, with other barbarous 
 modes, and exchanged for the coiffure d'Agrip- 
 pine and the tete a la Brutus). Her pose, 
 her glance, her nod, her smile, all conscious and 
 careless as they were, proclaimed a privileged 
 autocrat of the Irish bon ton, a " dasher,' ' as 
 it was termed, of the first order: — for that 
 species of effrontery called dashing was then in 
 full vogue, as consonant to a state of society, 
 where all in a certain class went by assumption. 
 The lady had arrived rather early in the field, 
 for one whose habits were necessarily on the 
 wrong side of time and of punctuality. She
 
 THE OFLAHERTYS. 157 
 
 came bowling along, keeping up her fiery steeds to 
 a sort of curvetting gallop, like one deep in the 
 science of the manege — now deranging the order 
 of march of the troops, by breaking through the 
 ranks, in spite of the impertinent remonstrances 
 of the out-posts and videttes, at which she 
 laughed, at once to shew her teeth and her power ; 
 — and now scattering the humble crowd, " like 
 cliafF before the wind," as giving her horses the 
 rein, she permitted them to plunge head-long 
 oir, while skilfully flourishing her long whip, 
 she made on every side a preliminary clearance. 
 Many among the multitude announced her as 
 the famous Kitty Cut-dash ; and nodded know- 
 ingly as she passed them ; but the greater 
 number detected in the beautiful charioteer, the 
 equally famous Albina Countess Knocklofty, 
 the female chief of that great oligarchical family, 
 the Proudforts — a family on which the church 
 rained mitresj the state coronets, and the people 
 —curses. 
 
 Beside her, sat, or rather lounged, another 
 dame of quality; bearing the stamp of her 
 class and caste as obviously, yet less deeply
 
 158 THE o'briens and 
 
 marked, than her companion. More feminine 
 in her air, more foreign in her dress and entire 
 bearing, her faultless form, and almost faultless 
 face, had all the advantages of the new demo- 
 cratic toilet of Paris (adopted by its court, 
 when more important innovations were still 
 fatally resisted) ; and she appeared in the 
 Phoenix Park, dressed much in the same cos- 
 tume as Marie Antoinette and her female 
 favourites are described to have worn in the 
 gardens of Trianon, or in the bowers of St. 
 Cloud, — to the horror of all old dames d'atours, 
 and all the partisans of the ancient regime of 
 whalebone and buckram ! The chemise of 
 transparent muslin, or robe a la PoUgnac, 
 chapeau de paille a la bergere, tied down with 
 a lilac ribbon, with 
 
 " Scarf loosely flowing, hair as free," 
 gave an air of sylph-like simplicity to one, wliose 
 features, though beautiful, were marked by an 
 expression foreign to simplicity, evincing that 
 taste, not sentiment, presided over her toilet, and 
 that,"c^^^ elle, un beau desordrefut Veffet de VarU 
 This triumphal car was followed, or sur-
 
 THE o'flahertys. 159 
 
 rounded, by a host of beaux ; some in military 
 uniform, and with true Enghsh faces and figures ; 
 but the greater number in the civil, though un- 
 civilized, dress of the day, and with forms and 
 pliysiognomies as Irish as ever were exhibited in 
 Pale or Palatinate, to the dread of English settlers 
 and Scotch undertakers. Ponderous powdered 
 clubs, hanging from heads of dishevelled hair, — 
 shoulders raised or stuffed to an Atlas height 
 and breadth, — the stoop of paviers, and the 
 lounge of chairmen, — broad beavers, tight buck- 
 skins, the striped vest of a groom, and the loose 
 coat of a coachman, gave something ruffianly to 
 the air of even the finest figures; which assorted 
 but too well with the daring, dashing manner, 
 that just then had succeeded, among a particular 
 set, to the courtly polish for which the travelled 
 nobility of Ireland were once so distinguished. 
 Such, in exterior, were many of the members of 
 the famous Cherokee Club, and such the future 
 legislators of that great national indignity, which 
 had procured them a contemptible pre-eminence 
 in the black book of public opinion, by the style 
 and title of " the Union Lords.''' As they now
 
 160 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 crowded round the cynosures of the day, there 
 was something too ardent and unrestrained in 
 their homage, something too emphatic in their 
 expressions and gestures, for true breeding ; 
 while in their handsome, but " hght, revelling 
 and protesting faces," traces of the nigh t'*s orgies 
 were still visible, which gave their fine features 
 a licentious cast, and deprived their open and 
 very manly countenances of every mark of 
 intellectual expression. 
 
 The volunteers had now nearly all marched 
 into the park, and awaited only the arrival of the 
 Lord Lieutenant (the Duke of Belvoir), and of 
 the reviewing general and commander of the 
 forces, before they commenced the usual opera- 
 tions. Meantime it was curious to observe the 
 interest excited by these native legions among 
 the spectators, as each corps, bearing some well- 
 known standard, passed the groups and parties 
 stationed in various positions. Each body was 
 hailed with cheers and plaudits, according to its 
 own popularity, or the popularity of its dis- 
 tinguished leader. Even the smallest company, 
 from some little hamlet in the vicinity, had its
 
 THE o'fLAIIERTYS. 161 
 
 partisans, and was named with pride by friends 
 and townsmen. One of these, the spokesman on 
 the occasion, was an old Fingahan, as great an 
 amateur of volunteer reviews, as George Selwyn 
 was of executions ; and he continued to announce 
 to his party each company and its " great cap- 
 tain," as it marched beneath the little hill on 
 which he was seated. The appearance of the 
 Duke of Leinster, at the head of his own corps, 
 drew forth one continuous cheer of universal 
 approbation ; for at this epoch, the old prejudice 
 in favour of the Geraldines was in full force, 
 nurtured by the active patriotism, which was 
 deemed the inalienable inheritance of the Fitz- 
 gerald family, and which some of the illustrious 
 members too soon afterwards shed their blood to 
 prove. 
 
 As his Grace passed beneath the hill alluded 
 to, which was studded with joyous faces from 
 base to summit, the cries of " the Leinster lads 
 for ever !"" — " Success to the Maynooths !" and 
 '• Crom aboo to the ind of time, and long after !" 
 were heard on every side, from crowds led up 
 by the Fingal oracle, Tim Doolin of Port-ran, 
 who, in expectation of the arrival of the corps
 
 162 THE o'bhIENS and 
 
 of his own townlands, liberally did the honours 
 by every other. 
 
 '' Now, boys," cried Tim, '•' up with your 
 heads, and off with your hats! Here comes 
 the Malahides and the Coolocks — Talbot's 
 own fencibles for ever, with three cheers, 
 boys, hurra ! And now look to your lift, 
 marching from Stony Batther gate to the 
 tune of Langolee ; thim's the Balruthries ; 
 and close on their traheenSy in scarlet and blue, 
 comes the Portrans,* my cuishla they are, and 
 Captain Hampden at their hid. Now, boys, 
 jewels, up with your hats, and off with your 
 bids ! Oh ! by the powers, here's the raal 
 things, any how! the " Dublin Indipindints ! " 
 Hould your whuiskt now, every sowl of yez ; 
 the Volunteer's March, do ye hear that ? There 
 they go ; three cheers for the great and grand 
 
 * Fortran, a beautiful peninsula, darting out into the 
 Bay of Dublin, at that time the seat of Hampden Evans, 
 now the residence of his son George Evans, Esq. a good 
 landlord, a liberal politician, and one of the few who still 
 hold by the country which gave them birth and subsist- 
 ence, and reflect back upon it the high benefit of enlight- 
 ened and well-directed patriotism.
 
 THE oVlahertys. 163 
 
 Dublin Indipindints, and Counsellor G rattan for 
 ever, huzza !'" 
 
 This popular corps, one of the finest and first 
 raised in the Leinster army, was this day headed 
 for the last time by one of the greatest men 
 that Ireland ever produced ; and as the Irish 
 Cicero rode on, amidst deafening acclamations 
 of popular gratitude and enthusiasm, there was 
 something in his eye and air that might well 
 recal to the classic mind the liberator of Rome, 
 the father of his country. Grattan had lately 
 merited and obtained a similar title, and his elo- 
 quence was daily raised to oppose the corruption 
 of more than one Verres, and to put down the 
 conspiring audacity of more than one Catiline. 
 
 While the cheers of a grateful people were 
 hailing the name of their champion, other public 
 characters succeeded to elicit popular applause. 
 The officer next in command to the immortal 
 colonel of the " Dublin Indipindints" was, like 
 him, of the " true antique mould." With the 
 head of a Brutus, and the figure of a Hercules, 
 yet with the air of one practised in the gi'aces 
 of a court, Archibald Hamilton Rowan, received
 
 164 THE o'briens and 
 
 the cheers of admiration with all that peculiar 
 suavity and cordiality, which, springing from the 
 heart, still survive, with principles that never 
 varied, and spirit that never quenched. 
 
 Other corps followed, each hoisting colours ex- 
 pressive of the tone and feeling of pub he opinion. 
 On one was inscribed, " The five free nations, 
 America, France, Poland, Great Britain, and 
 Ireland ;" on another, " The nation, the law, 
 and the king ;" on a third, " The asylum of 
 liberty ;" and on a fourth, " Unite and be 
 free." The leaders of all were remarkable for 
 their manly bearing and intellectual counte- 
 nances; and the "long lives" wished to them by 
 the populace (the Irish, as it was the Jewish 
 benediction), seemed rather a promise than a 
 vow. Yet in a few short years many of those 
 young lives were offered up upon the scaffold, a 
 sacrifice to sincerity in that cause, which, wrong 
 or right, was by the victims deemed the cause 
 of their country. These victims were then all 
 full of youth, life, love, and hope, surrounded by 
 admiring compatriots, and gazed on by eyes 
 whose smiles were immortality — by eyes soon to
 
 THE o''flahertys. 165 
 
 be dimmed with tears which time has not even 
 yet dried up. 
 
 Several provincial corps succeeded, only less 
 distinguished, because less known .to the people 
 of Dublin and its vicinity, than their own imme- 
 diate companies ; until one approached, which 
 seemed to challenge a species of feeling beyond 
 all vulgar admiration. On the silken flag of 
 emerald green which preceded it, was woven in 
 gold letters, " The Irish Brigade," with the 
 Irish harp, and the motto of" I am new strung." 
 On the reverse was inscribed, *' Fait ce qiie doit, 
 arrive qui pourra^'' an old epigraph, adopted by 
 a peculiar branch of the O'Briens. There was 
 something bold, and it might seem perilous, in 
 such devices ; but they were the fashion of the 
 day, and as yet unreproved (though not unno- 
 ticed) by government. The corps had been 
 recently raised. The dernier rejeton of the old 
 stock of the Irish volunteers, its last vigorous 
 offset, not numerous, but select, — it was almost 
 exclusively composed of the tlite of the youth 
 of the capital and the university. A certain 
 brilliant petulance of look and movement, with
 
 166 
 
 a gallant and military bearing, not always found 
 in the best disciplined home-bred troops, distin- 
 guished this band of boy-citizen-soldiers ; and the 
 eclat of their appearance, well became their age 
 and vocation. Martinets in dress and disci- 
 pline, their elegant and highly ornamented green 
 uniform, of a foreign cut and novel fashion, 
 gave them the air of Polish hussars, enlisted 
 under the free banners of some gallant Kos- 
 ciusko ; and a few striking novelties in their 
 exercises, introduced by their young captain, 
 (who, it was understood, had seen foreign ser- 
 vice), gave them advantages, personal and mili- 
 tary, which had obtained for them the sobriquet 
 of the " Ladies' Own." Preceded by a fine band, 
 and headed by a youth whom nature in her 
 partiality had called out of the common roll of 
 men, they presented, as they marched into the 
 park, in quick time, a splendid image of preco- 
 cious patriotism, gaillard as the " Jeunesse 
 doree" of the French Revolution, and honoured 
 as the '^ gioventu armatcC^ of the best days of 
 Florence. 
 
 " Why, then, who are they at all, Tim, dear.^"
 
 THE oVlaHEUTYS. 167 
 
 demanded a Skerries fisherman, who had during 
 the day consulted Tim Doolan, as his oracle. 
 
 " Why, then, I couldn't tell you thruly, bar- 
 ring I'd lade yez astray, Pat Doran," replied 
 Tim, " for 'bove all the volunteer throops, in 
 the Phanix, this day, thims the boys I don't 
 know nothing about at all, at all ; but thinks to 
 the best of my behef, they are Lords'* sons, or 
 the College boys." 
 
 *' Why, then, I wouldn't wonder," said the 
 Skerries man. The question, however, repeated 
 to another bystander, was suddenly, and it 
 should appear, oraculously, answered like the 
 druidical oracles of old, from the top of a tall 
 and magnificent oak, which, rooted at the base 
 of the acclivity, overshadowed its summit Avith 
 thick and lofty branches. " O'Brien aboo," 
 shouted with an echoing yell the respondent; 
 and the cry, long, loud, and shrill, was taken 
 up by Tim Doolan, repeated by Pat Doran, and 
 reiterated by the imitative multitude. While 
 yet but half pronounced, it had caught the 
 quick ear of the young leader of the Irish 
 brigade. He started— threw his eyes up to the
 
 168 THE o'brifns and 
 
 oak, whence the cry had issued ; then cast them 
 suddenly down, and reddened, and grew pale — 
 and gave the word of quick march ! to his com- 
 pany. But when the cry of " O'Brien aboo," 
 found an echo from the popular voice, he seemed 
 proudly to apply its meaning to himself, and 
 saluted the multitude with his sword, and smiled 
 with all the popular grace of a young Roman 
 tribune. 
 
 ^' What does O'Brien aboo mane?" asked 
 Pat Doran, hoarse with shouting it. 
 
 " Why it manes the same as Crom aboo,* to 
 be sure, what else would it mane ;" replied Tim 
 Doolan, " and often heard tell by my gossip in 
 Fingal, that it was w^id that same watch-word, 
 that Brien Borru diffinded the great pass of 
 Bally-bough bridge agin the Danes, at the 
 battle of Clontarf.^' 
 
 * " O'Brien aboo," the cause of the O'Briens. 
 
 Aboo ! the war-cry of the ancient Irish, was adopted by 
 the Norman or English settlers, as— Butleirach-abti, the 
 cause of the Butlers, 
 
 Crom-a-boo, the molto of the Geraldines, is literally 
 the cause of God, -" Crom" being one of the many names 
 of the Deity in he Irish language.
 
 THE o'flahertys. 169 
 
 " Why, then, I wouldn't wondher if thai 
 comely young chap at their head there, was 
 Mr. Brien Bore-yous own son, Tim Doolan, 
 for he looks like a lad would head a ruction, 
 bravely, as the father that bore him."" 
 
 " Whooh, man ! that's mortally unpossible/* 
 replied the antiquarian of Fingal ; '' sure that 
 battle was fit in th' ould times, afore the battle 
 of the Boyne, or Aughram, fifty years! aye, 
 troth, a thousand (and more,) out of the me- 
 mory of man, Pat Doran, dear." 
 
 " Why, then, sorrow ache, their hearts ache, 
 that fought at that fit, any how, Tim." 
 
 '^ Oh, thrue for you, Pat; sorrow ache, and 
 never did, not all as one as now ; for th' ould 
 times was the fine times, and will be ever more, 
 amen, plaze Christ." 
 
 It was not, however, from the clients of the 
 Portran oracle, that the Irish brigade alone 
 attracted notice, and awakened inquiry. Many 
 bright eyes followed, and many bland smiles 
 shone upon the elite of " the Ladies' own." But 
 none so bright or so bland, as those which ema- 
 
 voL. I, I
 
 170 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 nated from the fair occupants of the splendid 
 phaeton, already described ; which had drawn 
 up parallel to the halt made by the Irish 
 
 brigade. 
 
 " O'Mealy,*' exclaimed the fair and noble 
 charioteer, with a prettily lisped, but tech- 
 nical, " steady, now; steady, I tell you;" ad- 
 dressed to her horses--" O' Mealy, what corps 
 is that with the green standard and uniform?"" 
 
 " What corps is it, Lady Knocklofty ? why, 
 then, give you my honour, I don't know a corps 
 in the Volunteer army ; 'pon my honour I don't! 
 We, reglars^ never know any thing of the train 
 bands, and more partickilarly, we cavalry make 
 it a point ; besides, there are some ugly custo- 
 mers among them, such as one's tailor, or shoe- 
 maker, upon my honour !" 
 
 This answer was made by a handsome, flashy 
 looking person, in military uniform, w4th large 
 features, scattered at random over a broad face, 
 with a leering smile, good bold eyes, high co- 
 lour, and a perfect chevaux-de-frize of powdered 
 whiskers. He had long been sidling his horse
 
 THE o'fLAIIERTYS. 171 
 
 up to the phaeton, and had obtahied, with 
 some difficulty, a position which he maintained 
 with some effort. 
 
 " What a very fine young fellow that is,**' con- 
 tinued Lady Knocklofty, not attending to the 
 assertions of O 'Mealy, and keeping her magni- 
 ficent eyes steadily fixed on the face of the young 
 leader of the Irish brigade; who, perhaps, not 
 quite unconscious of the gaze, either in the con- 
 ^ fusion of vanity, or under the oppression of 
 heat, removed his phimed cap: as he dis- 
 placed and scattered the dark unpowdered 
 locks (then a mark of singularity, if not of dis- 
 loyalty) which clustered round his high and in- 
 tellectual temples, he exhibited one of those 
 heads, which painters love to copy, and sculp- 
 tors to model. 
 
 " What a handsome head, and what a singu- 
 lar one I" said Lady Knocklofty to the lady be- 
 side her, 
 
 " Yes, I have seen many such at Paris, this 
 winter," was the reply; ''it is caWed tete a la 
 victimey 
 
 " Do, like a good soul, O'Mealy,"' (cried 
 I 2
 
 172 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 Lady Knocklofty) " find out who he is ; I am 
 sure it is some one I ought to bow to, for he 
 seems to canvass a salute. Can it be one of the 
 Carrick, or Mount Garret Butlers." 
 
 " He is one of the mount garrets^ I dare 
 say/' replied Lady Honoria, laughing. "Many 
 of these volunteer heroes, I believe, descend 
 from their altitudes to take the field ; and ex- 
 change their leather aprons for their leather 
 belts.' ^ 
 
 " What eyes !" continued Lady Knocklofty, 
 keeping her own fixed ; " those are what Hamil- 
 ton, the painter, calls Irish eyes, large, dark, 
 deep set, and put in, as it were, with dirty 
 fingers ; O' Mealy, do find out who that boy with 
 the eyes is.*' 
 
 '^ Is it the chap with the squint?'' demanded 
 the captain, "that's my boot-maker, of the Golden 
 Leg, in Ormonde Quay. If your ladyship ever 
 wears top-boots, I'd take the liberty of recom- 
 mending him to your pathronage and protection." 
 
 " I suppose. Captain," said the other lady, 
 " vou infer that her ladyship occasionally wears 
 top-boots, because she sometimes wears the — ;"
 
 THE OFLAHERTYS. 173 
 
 and the most beautiful Jips in the world boldly 
 pronounced a word that would now shock even 
 ears, which do not pique themselves on being 
 ears polite, to listen to. 
 
 Captain O'Mealy raised a horse laugh, which 
 shewed his large white teeth from ear to ear. 
 "• Bravo ! Lady Honoria, I will make it a point 
 to report that at mess to-day ; give you my 
 honour I will. " 
 
 ** I am sure you know who he is, O'Mealy, 
 if you chose to tell,"^ said Lady Knocklofty, 
 |x?ttishly ; " there, I mean that tall boy, with 
 the eyes — " 
 
 " Tall boy,' (repeated Lady Honoria) '*do 
 you call him ; he looks more like a console, 1 
 think."* 
 
 "Oh, the young captain there, in green," 
 aaid O'Meally, conceitedly, " that's a young 
 journeyman tailor, one of Roger Sweeney's men, 
 who himself commands a corps here to-day." 
 
 "A tailor!" said Lady Honoria, " Oii les 
 beaiuv yeux vonWils se nicker !''' 
 
 • Two fashionable pieces of furniture, the ar moire and 
 tripod of the day.
 
 174 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 " A tailor ! nonsense ! impossible !" said Lady 
 Knocklofty, haughtily. 
 
 " Give you my honour, Lady Knocklofty, if 
 I'm not grately mistaken, and I take it for 
 granted I am not, he is a tailor. If your lady- 
 ship wants a habit, I'll ingage that's your man." 
 
 "A habit!" said Lady Honoria, " a fancy, 
 you mean." 
 
 "Bravo! again, liady Honoria; 111 report 
 that at mess to-day, give you my honour I will; 
 and what I shall report would have no credit, 
 were not the proof so high, as the immortal 
 Shakspeare says.'' 
 
 "•What is the meaning of that Irish motto on 
 that green flag.?" asked Lady Knocklofty, 
 wholly preoccupied with her subject ; "at least 
 it looks like Irish." 
 
 " That, Lady Knocklofty ? — never had one 
 word of Irish in my existence." 
 
 " Nor two of English," (muttered Lady Ho- 
 noi-ia). "Now, upon your honour, Captain 
 O'Mealy, of all tongues, living or dead, which 
 is your favourite V 
 
 "Why, then, upon my honour and con-
 
 THE OFLAHERTVS. 175 
 
 science,"" replied Captain O'' Mealy, emphati- 
 cally, throwing round his large eyes, and pulling 
 up his black stock, anxious to observe if his in- 
 timacy with the two great ladies was noticed ; 
 " and what's more, upon the honour of a soldier 
 and a man. Lady Honoria, I have no choice." 
 
 " But Hobson's," said Lady Honoria, gravely, 
 and both ladies burst into an immoderate fit of 
 laughter, with very little consideration for the 
 feehngs of the object of their mirth ; who, to 
 evince that he had none, joined in the laugh 
 also, — too happy to keep his enviable station, at 
 any expense. 
 
 " Lady Honoria takes horrible liberties with 
 your parts of speech, O'Mealy,'' said Lady 
 Knocklofty. 
 
 " Her ladyship may take any liberties she 
 plazes with me, Lady Knocklofty," replied the 
 Captain, with an impudent leer; "and the freer 
 the welcomer, 'pon my honour; so, I'll beseech 
 you, let her will have a free way, as I said last 
 night ai the private thayathricals, in the Moor of 
 Venice."
 
 176 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 " The Moor of Ennis," said Lady Honoria, 
 in allusion to the Captain's strong county of 
 Clare accent; — *' apropos, Captain O'Mealy, 
 what did you mean by refusing the part of Cap- 
 tain O' Blunder, as Lady Ely cast it for you 
 the other night at the Attic ?'' 
 
 " Lady Ely ? why, I mane Lady Honoria, I 
 never could lay my tongue about the ' Irish 
 brogue, give you my honour; and besides, 
 O'Blunder is intirely too low for me.'' 
 
 "Do you really mane that,'' asked Lady Ho- 
 noria, broadly ; and both ladies again laughed 
 in his face, while he again joined them, though 
 a little less heartily than before ; adding, " 'Pon 
 my honour, I am highly delighted to see your 
 two ladyships in such charming fine spirits to- 
 day, considering the bating the countess got at 
 the brag-table last night, or rather this morning, 
 after the private thayatricals at Lady Ely's." 
 
 " O'Mealy," said Lady Knocklofty, yawning, 
 " what have you done with Miss Macguire ?" 
 
 " What have I done with her, Lady Knock- 
 lofty ? why, as any young lady would like to be 
 done by ; as your ladyship will own, when I
 
 THK O'FLAHERTYS. 177 
 
 tell you that I have left her with the whole staff, 
 riding along the line in the Fifteen Acres." 
 
 ** Well, now, do go like a good man, and 
 stay by her, and see that she don't play tricks 
 with my mare ; Kitty Macguire would spoil any 
 horse in Ireland. She has left Rowdelam not 
 worth a shilling, and ruined the mouth and gait 
 of Mrs. Slamikin beyond cure. Do go,"* con- 
 tinued her ladyship, impatiently, as the Captain, 
 flanking her to the left, impeded the view of 
 everything but his own sprawling person. 
 
 " Certainly, Lady Kuocklofty ; born for your 
 use, I live but to obee you ;" and he was back- 
 ing out, when again turning round, and pulling 
 up his stock, he demanded, affectedly, " I hope 
 I am to have the honour of meeting your lady- 
 ships at the small, leetle, private paurty at the 
 Castle to-night?" 
 
 " Oh, y(yu are asked, are you ?'" said Lady 
 Knocklofty, with a look of insolent surprise. 
 '^ I suppose you are on guard at the Castle, to- 
 night." 
 
 " Why, I shaul be on the Castle guard, I 
 believe," said the Captain, " that is, I take it 
 I 3
 
 178 ^ THE O'BRIENS Als^D 
 
 for granted, I will ; but whether or no, Lady 
 Knocklofty, I assure your ladyship, I would be 
 asked ; as it has long been her excellency's polite 
 intintion to have me at all her small, leetle, 
 private paurties." 
 
 " Oh, if you would be asked, there is not a 
 word more to be said," observed Lady Honoria 
 gravely, " so, cm revoir.^' 
 
 '^ Aye, au revoir,'" added Lady Knocklofty, 
 impatiently nodding him off; *' and mind you 
 return to Kitty Macguire, and look to the 
 mare." 
 
 The captain again backed out and flourished 
 off, making way for a heavy dragoon, (who had 
 long and patiently waited for the reversion of 
 his place) ; and continuing to repeat to himself 
 as he trotted on his mission, " O rewoir^ O re- 
 woir ; that's not in the grammar as far as I've 
 got, but to be sure T am not further than Jay^ 
 I have, tu zvah, thou hast. O rezvoir, well to be 
 sure !" and the captain added, *' au revoir,'^ or 
 something that sounded like it, to a vocabulary 
 he was industriously composing, from the crumbs 
 which fell from the rich man**? table.
 
 THE o'flahertys. 179 
 
 Suddenly and unexpectedly introduced into 
 high life by the very absurdities which should 
 have kept him out of it, he felt that as la nature 
 n'apprend pas I orthographic^ some aid from art 
 was necessary to supply her deficiencies ; and 
 beheving that learning, like a " wise-bearing 
 carriage, is caught as men take diseases one 
 from another," he had put himself through a 
 course of education, to which all his great friends 
 unconsciously contributed, in conjunction with 
 " the immortal Shakspeare," whose acquaintance 
 he had recently made by acting in the singing 
 characters, and filling up that useful range of 
 parts included in " mutes, guards, attendants, 
 and others," at the Countess of Ely's attic 
 theatre in Ely- place. 
 
 " How that vulgar fellow gets on,'** said Lady 
 Knocklofty, cutting dead the heavy dragoon by 
 turning her back to him, and addressing her 
 companion. 
 
 '* Get on ! to be sure he does," said Lady 
 Honoria ; " il est fait pour cela. With his im- 
 maculate brogue, his pushing manners, and 
 divine voice, how could he fail .^" 
 
 I
 
 180 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 " Oh ! his brogue and manners are detes- 
 table ; but what would he do, if he lost his 
 voice ?" said Lady Knocklofty. 
 
 " Do?" said Lady Honoria, " why, do with- 
 out his dinner very often ; unless you appoint 
 him to the etat of dry- nurse in perpetuity to 
 Kitty Macguire." 
 
 " I am tired of them both," said Lady 
 Knocklofty, yawning ; and, for want of excite- 
 ment, just then tired of every thing: " I wish,'' 
 she continued, still cutting the dragoon, " they 
 were married to each other." 
 
 "What! the Hon. Kitty Macguire, with 
 her high blood' and her (sometimes) high airs, 
 married to Barney O'Mealy, the son of an inn- 
 keeper at Ennis ! Oh ! la mesalliance r 
 
 " I wish then Lord Knocklofty would not 
 bore me with his hangers on and poor cousins, 
 if he has no means of providing for them."" 
 
 *' He has provided for the Captain,'' said 
 Lady Honoria. 
 
 '• He ? not a bit. It was Captain Macheath 
 that made a Captain of Barney O' Mealy. The 
 Duke was so pleased with him at Lady Ely's."
 
 THE o'fLAHERTYS. 181 
 
 " Yes, but who introduced him there to please 
 the Duke? But as for young Kitty, soyez traiu 
 quilk. Kitty will provide for herself, some how 
 or other. In the mean time, she is the most 
 useful bit of furniture in Knocklofty house. 
 She talks to the bores, flirts with the boys, takes 
 a hand with the dowagers, fills the beau-pots 
 with flowers from the country, and sings slang 
 songs to amuse Lord Knocklofty, when he re- 
 turns from the house, badgered into an ill temper 
 by the pathriots of the opposition, with their 
 eternal refrain of places, pensions, penals, and 
 all the old list of Irish grievances. By the by, 
 where is your husband to-day, my dear ? I 
 don't see him upon the ground." 
 
 The question was asked with a carelessness, 
 too careless not to seem studied. 
 
 " Lord, child, I have enough to do to mind 
 other people's husbands, without looking after 
 my own," rephed Lady Knocklofty, laughing : — 
 '•but I really thought he was with you this 
 morning when I called to take you up in Ste- 
 phen's Green ; I thought, at least, I saw a frosted
 
 182 THE o'bRIEXS and 
 
 head between the Venetian blinds in your dress- 
 ing-room." 
 
 " Oh ! that was my deary ""s head, tete de mari 
 au naturel, que cependant J'ai bien coiffe before 
 I left him, for we were going over the old 
 ground — " 
 
 " What old ground ?'" asked Lady K., who 
 had now fairly shouldered out the dragoon. 
 
 ''Want of money, simply that, my dear,^' 
 said Lady Honoria. 
 
 " The only want I cannot complain of," said 
 Lady Knocklofty with a sigh ; "but by-the- 
 by, I heard the Duchess ask Lord Knocklofty 
 to join her "awkward squad,'' as she calls the 
 household. You know the ministe rials have 
 sent her over a new consignment of younger 
 sons to provide for. Oh ! here she comes, the 
 vice-reoal Venus." 
 
 " A Venus in brass, (said Lady Honoria, 
 spitefully), as old Lady Slipslop (Hislop, par 
 parenthese) names the * Diana in bronze,' when 
 she undertakes to shew off her husband's 
 museum. O dear, I forgot she was your aunt, 
 child!"
 
 THE O^FLAHERTYS. \Sti 
 
 " Oh ! never mind that ; spare my friends, 
 and do as you please with my relations. But 
 you should remember every one has not tra- 
 velled like you," said Lady Knocklofty, sharply. 
 " Yet you have your nickname, as well as my 
 aunt, Hislop."" 
 
 " Oh, I have, have I ? and what do they call 
 me .f*" 
 
 '• Madame de Polthogue, (said Lady Knock- 
 lofty, with a pretty little malignant smile that 
 always became her) ; from your constant use of 
 French phrases, and, as they pretend, from your 
 patriotic preservation of the Munster accent."" 
 
 ^' And what does polthogue mean.'^" asked 
 Lady Honoria, biting her lips. 
 
 " In Irish, a thump, or blow, I believe." 
 
 '' VV^ell, I do give them some hard knocks, 
 now and then, that is certain. I hold them all 
 (the set or clique excepted) in utter contempt. 
 To my French phrases, I plead guilty : for the 
 phraseology of the mere bel-air of Dublin is so 
 baroque, so anti-European, that of necessity I 
 take refuge in the French. But I deny the 
 Munster brojrue ; I deny the coach horses, Sir
 
 184* *rHE o'eriens and 
 
 Peter. And now draw in, for Heaven's sake, 
 or we shall be run down by your friend, the 
 vice-queen." 
 
 Lady Knocklofty tightened her reins^ and the 
 next moment the low and splendid phaeton of 
 the Lady Lieutenant — small, light, and elegant 
 as the biga of the Vatican, — came sweeping over 
 the ground. It was drawn by four tiny steeds, 
 which looked as though some such fairy god- 
 mother as Cinderella's had recently converted 
 them from white mice into white ponies. They 
 were whimsically driven by two little, jet-black 
 postillions, turbaned and draped in eastern cos- 
 tume ; and they strongly contrasted their 
 moorish visages, and ebony countenances, with 
 the pretty fair faces of two little boys, who sat 
 sur le devant, and who might have passed for 
 loves, if they had not been loaded with the 
 military finery of viceregal pages. Alone in 
 her triumphal car, surpassing all, even those 
 who " surpassed the passing fair,'' sat the 
 fairest representative of royalty that ever was 
 delegated by foreign policy, to win over a re- 
 fractory people, by means which might have
 
 THE OFLAHERTYS. 185 
 
 succeeded, when weightier measures failed. 
 But party spirit is not gallant ; and politics 
 and chivalry have ever stood aloof. It hap- 
 pened therefore that her Excellency, the idol 
 of her court, formed to " engage all hearts, 
 and charm all eyes," was not a favourite with 
 the people; who confounded the gaiety of her 
 drawing-room with the impolitic measures of 
 her husband's cabinet. And though, whenever 
 she came forth into public, a sudden burst of 
 admiration, which nature sent from the hearts 
 to the lips of all parties, hailed her approach, 
 yet it was too frequently chilled by prejudice, 
 or checked by misdirected indignation. She 
 appeared at the review in a habit of Rutland 
 blue, faced with scarlet, and embroidered in 
 gold. Her faultless face was too much shaded 
 by the broad leaf of a white beaver hat, sur- 
 mounted by Si panache blanche, which, like that 
 worn by the best of the Bourbons, was the 
 oriflamme of many a devoted heart. As she 
 passed along, she bowed gracefully to all ; and 
 familiarly, and with a significant glance and 
 smile, to the ladies in the phaeton. Her splendid
 
 186 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 appearance extorted involuntary homage from 
 every eye — and voluntary sarcasms from many 
 lips. " There she goes," said Lady Knocklofty, 
 "the ' queen of hearts,' with St. Leger, and St. 
 George, and St. John, and all her train of saints 
 after her." 
 
 " And sinners," said Lady Honoria, signifi- 
 cantly. 
 
 " I hope you don^t count my lord in the 
 number, poor man," said Lady Knocklofty, " for 
 he is close upon her chariot wheels, you see." 
 
 " Yes !"" said Lady Honoria, with humour, 
 " she is at alPm the ring." 
 
 " If she is at him, it will be love's labour 
 lost,-' said Lady Knocklofty, " or coquetry's ; 
 for if I know any thing of Lord Knocklofty, he 
 is not to be taken, alive or dead." 
 
 " Well !" said Lady Honoria, " 'sur ce cha- 
 pitre on pent se rappoi'ter a vous^ as Ninon 
 says; and it is as well to be put upon one's 
 guard at once." 
 
 " I don't mean to say that Lord Knocklofty 
 is not to be won," said his wife, coolly ; *' but it 
 will not be by a woman, who, Uke the Duchess, is
 
 THK o'flahkrtys. 187 
 
 neither actuated by passion, nor by avarice ; and 
 who, spoilt by flattery herself, never thinks of 
 offering it, where flattery alone will take. Lord 
 Knocklofty must be wooed, and not unsought be 
 won. He has no time to make love. A clever 
 woman might do any thing with him, who would 
 take that trouble off* his hands. As for the 
 Duchess, she, you know, means nothing by her 
 conquests but the pleasure of making them." 
 
 "Humph!" ejaculated Lady Honoria ; *' I 
 am not quite so sure of that." 
 
 Here the flourish of trumpets, the roll of 
 drums, and the striking up of the English na- 
 tional anthem by the several bands, announced 
 the arrival of the Lord Lieutenant, General and 
 General Governor of Ireland. In the prime of 
 life and manly beauty, gay, careless, and spirited, 
 splendidly attired, and numerously attended by 
 a brilliant cortege of young English military of 
 rank and fashion, he came, not pompously, but 
 dashingly on, smiling and bowing to the host of 
 beautiful women, who hailed him as he passed ; 
 while, -among the multitude, but few "threw up 
 their caps, and cried, ' God save King Richard ! ' "
 
 188 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 The reviewing general (the Earl of Charle- 
 mont), and his staff, immediately followed. 
 Then the popular voice swelled into acclama- 
 tion to the remotest confines of the multitude ; 
 hats were waved, and handkerchiefs flaunted, 
 and the old national air of " Patrick's Day" 
 honoured the progress of the father of the 
 Irish Volunteers. He rode on slowly, as if at 
 once to spare and gratify the people, who 
 crowded closely on him, and almost under his 
 horse's feet ; his venerable head uncovered, his 
 white hair contrasting with his dark impending 
 brows, and with a certain severity of look, softened 
 down by a beneficent smile. As he passed the 
 Knocklofty carriage, the ladies bowed coldly, 
 but respectfully ; while to the Lord Lieutenant, 
 who seemed disposed to stop and speak to them, 
 they nodded familiarly, and smiled sportively. 
 
 " How handsome he looks P' said Lady Ho- 
 noria. 
 
 "^ Yes ; but he wants expression,"*' said Lady 
 Knocklofty, " a certain sentimental ardour of 
 look, without which there is no beauty for me." 
 
 " Oh, pooh !" interrupted Lady Honoria, im-
 
 THE o'flaiieutys. 189 
 
 patiently, " I am half inclined to exclaim with 
 Charles Surface, ' curse your sentiment ;' hut 
 how unpoyjular he is; — only observe.'*'' 
 
 " I am sure I don't know why/' said Lady 
 Knocklofty ; "he does every thing to please 
 them : he scarcely ever goes to bed sober, and 
 he bespoke tabinet furniture the other day to 
 an immense amount"" 
 
 " It is the ^ pathriots^ as they call themselves, 
 that are doing it. What do you think of that 
 insolent fellow, Curran, talking something about 
 ' a paltry viceroy'' the other day in the House ? 
 However, we have all made a party to go to the 
 gallery with the Duchess, to witness the putting 
 down of this young patriot by dear Fitz; we 
 are to have an exhibition by command.''* 
 
 " It was at my house that it was arranged,'' 
 said Lady Knocklofty. 
 
 " One would think,"" added Lady Honoria, 
 " that the Duke was the very beau ideal oi an 
 Irish Lord Lieutenant, made on purpose for 
 them. But there is no knowing where to catch 
 the dear Irish, and * I xvill be drowned, and
 
 190 THE O'BRIEKS AND 
 
 nobody sJtall save me,' as it is their own gram- 
 mar, should be their motto." 
 
 Here the subject of her animadversions, at- 
 tended only by one aid-de-camp, rode up to the 
 phaeton, (having hastily acknowledged the mi- 
 litary honours with which he was received). 
 His Excellency was evidently aux petits soins 
 with Lady Knocklofty ; and Lady Honoria, like 
 a true woman of the world, left them to their 
 chuchoteries, and turned her whole attention to 
 the carriage of the Lady Lieutenant, which was 
 a little in advance. Humming the then popular 
 French air of " Je suis Lindor^"' she observed 
 through her glass, with an involuntary sneer of 
 pleasure, the cold, phlegmatic deportment, which 
 Lord Knocklofty preserved, while among the 
 crowd of servitors with whom he was confounded. 
 
 The observations of Lady Honoria Stratton 
 (a woman of the world, in all the force of the 
 term), with respect both to the chief governor, 
 and the country he governed, or misgoverned, 
 were not unfounded. If Ireland ever did pos- 
 sess the true " heau ideaV^ of a popular Lord 
 Lieutenant (to use her Ladyship's phrase}, it
 
 THE o'fLAHERTYS 191 
 
 was in the person of liim, who now seemed espe- 
 cially marked out by popular prejudice for 
 aversion. Young, beautiful, generous, and gal- 
 lant, — but too much addicted to social pleasures, 
 and but too prone to convivial indulgence, — this 
 semi-Hibernian chief governor epitomized in 
 himself the leading traits of temperament and 
 habits, ascribed to the Irish character. In his 
 early youth, he had been distinguished in the 
 English house of peers, as the apologist for 
 the popular disorders in Ireland, by judi- 
 ciously and courageously ascribing them to 
 their true causes; yet it belonged to the 
 anomalies of the most unfortunate of all coun- 
 tries, to consider its early friend as a present 
 enemy ; to make him answerable, on his first 
 arrival, for the errors of the administration 
 he came to replace; and to hold him ac- 
 countable for measures over which he as 
 yet had no controul. Impatient, (as the 
 long-suffering always are,) occasionally unjust, 
 (as those to whom all justice has been denied 
 frequently will be), the Irish acted upon the 
 impulse of irritated and hasty feelings; and
 
 192 THE o'bkij:ns and 
 
 received with a whoop of insult, the man who 
 had long sympathized with their sufferings. In 
 the petulance of wounded self-love, and the 
 hauteur of high rank, the offended chief go- 
 vernor suffered every prepossession in favour of 
 Ireland to yield to unconquerable disgust. Love 
 of ease, with the sense of unmerited indignities, 
 combined to withdraw the votary of pleasure 
 from the drudgery of business ; and, hastily and 
 imprudently yielding up the reins of the state 
 to more interested and less safe hands — to 
 hands long used to direct it, by the whip and 
 curb— he abandoned the cabinet for the ban- 
 quet hall, changed the council " into merry 
 meetings," turned his sceptre to a thyrsus, and 
 braiding 
 
 '* His brows with rosy twine, 
 Dropping odour.% dropping wine," 
 
 he converted the strong hold of an ascendant 
 faction into the court of a Comus, and hke 
 Beuvron, the faineant couAier of Louis the 
 Xllllh, '^ il Jit ires-bien sa charge, quaiid il 
 ny avoit rien dfaire.^''
 
 THE o'fLAHERTYS. 193 
 
 The troops to be employed in the sham fight, 
 were now assembling near the fifteen acres. Pi- 
 quets of cavahy, supported by infantry, were 
 distributed in various directions ; some concealed 
 in the luxuriant bushes near the great ravine, 
 and others in the knolls and clumps of the re- 
 servoir. A few videttes remained on the skirts 
 of the back woods, their arms glittering through 
 the foliage; and aids-de-camp and orderlies 
 scouring across the intervening plains, gave to 
 the scene the air of a field of battle on the eve of 
 a great engagement. 
 
 The spot chosen for this display of calculated 
 evolutions, was called the Star Fort, the attack 
 and the defence of which formed the principal 
 features in the manoeuvres of the day. It 
 appeared the ruin of a strong and ancient 
 hold, covering a regular polygon, of consi- 
 derable dimensions ; but was, in reality, of 
 modern construction. It was raised by the 
 celebrated Earl of Wharton as a retreat iov 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 194 THE o'bkIENS and 
 
 safety in the event of an insurrectionary move- 
 ment in the capital— some symptoms of such an 
 event having manifested themselves in an attack 
 upon the statue of King William the 3d, on 
 his lordship's arrival in the country, to take 
 the reins of its government. But the appre- 
 hensions it had awakened proved groundless; 
 the Fort, ere it was quite finished, was per- 
 mitted to fall into a picturesque and pre- 
 mature decay, (presenting to the eye the image 
 of a once impregnable place ; and adding to the 
 fine scene, it dominated, a feature of character- 
 istic interest and great effect,) and it continued to 
 be lonoj identified with the reien of him who 
 erected it, by the name of " Wharton's Folly." 
 
 The defence of this place had been assigned to 
 the Dublin volunteers, who occupied a position 
 extending along " the Nine Acres ;" with their 
 right resting on the Fort, which they had strongly 
 garrisoned, and their left upon the first bridge, 
 which, at a short distance from the approach to 
 the vice-regal lodge, is thrown across the piece
 
 THE o'fLAIIERTYS. 1 Q^ 
 
 of water, wliich runs in a parallel direction to 
 the road leading to it. The second bridge, 
 equally well guarded, served as a key to the 
 centre of their well taken position. The as- 
 sault was reserved for the '' Irish brigade," and 
 the manner of conducting it was left (with 
 the exception of the usual sketch of a "project 
 for a field day ") entirely to the skill and dis- 
 cretion of its youthful leader. There appeared 
 to be two ways only of approat^hing the 
 Fort, which he was appointed to attack, and 
 both were equally disadvantageous. He must 
 either carry the bridges upon which the 
 enemy were posteJ, or enter upon the rear of 
 their position, by making a long detour to the 
 right, or to the left. The leader of the enemy 
 was aware of his own strength, and was equally 
 prepared for his antagonist's adopting either of 
 these alternatives. The first, he knew, would 
 be difficult to accomphsh ; and the second would 
 occupy so much time that it could hardly be 
 K 2
 
 106 THE o'bBICNS AXD 
 
 accomplished at all. There was, however, one 
 advantage which the Irish brigade possessed: 
 they had a full and complete view of the whole 
 of their opponent's position, and could see, dis- 
 tinctly, any movements that they made; whilst 
 their own motions were concealed from the ob- 
 servation of the enemy by the thickness of the 
 foliage, with which their part of the park was so 
 luxuriously shaded. 
 
 Shortly after, within view of many thousand 
 spectators, and under the eye of many veteran 
 officers, the Irish brigade commenced the action, 
 by a spirited and simultaneous attack upon both 
 the bridges. For these attacks, the enemy was 
 well prepared, and the defence and assault were 
 conducted with equal obstinacy and skill. But 
 while the enemy's attention was exclusively 
 directed to the defence of these important points, 
 the leader of the Irish brigade, putting himself 
 at the head of his light infantry, and taking ad- 
 vantage of the inequality of the ground near the
 
 THE o'fLAIIERTYS. 19t 
 
 Royal Military Hospital, proceeded in double 
 quick time, made a detour to his left, and keep- 
 ing close to the south wall of the park, succeeded 
 (unobserved by the enemy) in establishing his 
 columns among the thorn bushes, which lay 
 scattered irregularly between the wall and the 
 Star Fort. Here, with the eye of a lynx, and 
 the patient vigilance of a young tiger ready to 
 spring on its prey, he awaited the result of the 
 operations of the other part of the brigade. The 
 bridge on the enemy's left, after a persevering 
 defence, fell at last before the skill and ardour 
 of the assailants ; w ho instantly passing their vic- 
 torious columns over it, wheeled short round to 
 the left, under cover of the ground which slopes 
 down towards the water, and proceeded rapidly 
 to attack the rear of the enemy, employed in de- 
 fending the bridge in the centre. This bridge 
 had held out long and obstinately, in consequence 
 of the fire of a twelve-pounder having been 
 directed to check the progress of the assailants.
 
 198 THE O'bRIEXS AXD 
 
 Meantime the leader of the besieged had per- 
 ceived the last skilful movements of the be- 
 siegers ; but not suspecting the presence of an 
 enemy in the immediate vicinity of the Fort, he 
 drew out of it a large body of his troops, and 
 led them to the support of his centre. Upon 
 this movement, the young chief of the Irish 
 brigade had calculated ; and allowing the enemy 
 to advance beyond the possibility of a recal, he 
 rushed forward, sword in hand, at the head of 
 his light infantry, scaled the unprotected ram- 
 parts, and, forgetting for a moment the unreality 
 in the ardour of the attack, forced the artillery 
 men from their guns, and amidst cheers and 
 shouts of the excited and anxious spectators, he 
 planted the colours of the Irish brigade in the 
 centre of the Fort. 
 
 The Reviewing-General who had watched 
 with much interest, the progress of the fight, 
 and to whom this last movement was as unex- 
 pected as it was to the enemy — observed to
 
 THE O'FLAHERTYS. 199 
 
 his Staff, that by all the rules of war the Irish 
 brigade had conquered ; and ordering the bugles 
 to sound for a cessation of hostilities, he rode 
 up with his staff to the youthful and spirited 
 leader, smilingly congratulated him upon his 
 victory, and seriously commended the skill which 
 he had displayed in achieving it. 
 
 The young man received commendations thus 
 flattering, from one whose praise was fame, 
 with head uncovered, with eyes flashing beneath 
 their downcast lids, and with a face glowing 
 with a deeper flush than that which the acti- 
 vity of his recent feats had kindled. The 
 veteran general, and the youthful soldier, as 
 they stood in contact and in contrast, exhibited 
 the splendid representation of the men of 
 Ireland's best days. 
 
 The great body of the army of Leinster now 
 proceeded to the Fifteen Acres ; the vanquished 
 party taking up its ground, in contiguous 
 columns, on the spot where the chief Secre- 
 tary's lodge now stands : while the victors
 
 ^00 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 diverged to the left, and passing on the rear of 
 the Hibernian military school, halted and piled 
 their arms on the rising ground which over- 
 looks the white houses and ivy-covered church 
 of the village of Chapelizod.
 
 THE o'klahkrtys. 201 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE REVIEW. 
 
 Sr, Tou Lave wrestled well, anJ overtiirown more Uian your 
 eneuiiet. 
 
 As You Likt it. 
 
 Heated and animated, with the strong ex- 
 citement of the combat still fluttering in every 
 lieart, and throbbing in every pulse, the Irish 
 brigade and their leader stood at rest along the 
 liighest ridge of the acclivity — the gaze and 
 admiration of the multitude, w ho were crowded 
 along its base in vehicles of all sorts, public and 
 private. It was to this spot, where the mock 
 combat had terminated, that Lady Knocklofty 
 urged her restless steeds, though the ascent wa> 
 steep and the way encumbered. She had followed 
 the progress of the sham fight with the eye, 
 if not with the science, of a practised tactician. 
 K S
 
 ^02 THE o'bUIEXS and 
 
 The conspicuous form of the young assailant 
 had seldom eluded her observation, through all 
 the evolutions of the corps : and she had per- 
 ceived that while, with downcast looks and 
 crimsoned cheek, he stood modestly receiving 
 the eulogies of Lord Charlemont, his furtive 
 glances had more than once been directed towards 
 the spot she occupied. The sight of the lynx, 
 and the scent of the hound, are dull instincts 
 when compared with the rapid perception with 
 which a vain woman detects the admiratior) she 
 has awakened, and the interest she excites. 
 
 She now halted, and drew in half way up the 
 hill, flanked to her right by the line of the 
 Irish brigade, and to the left by a confused 
 mass of gigs, noddies, cars, and private car- 
 riages, so as to have all approach cut off' on 
 that side where Lady Honoria Stratton was 
 placed. Evidently out of spirits and out of 
 temper, silent and sullen, that lady sat enve- 
 loped in a white satin cardinal, which she had 
 drawn round her fine figure ; her pouting
 
 THE oVlahertys. 203 
 
 pretty face just peeping above it, like that 
 charming picture of Miss Farren, in a similar 
 costume, which was once the ornament of every 
 dressing room. The fact was. Lady Honoria had 
 not during the day been fortunate-— the Lady Lieu- 
 tenant had kept many of her own particular men, 
 and one in particular, in constant attendance on 
 her vice regal progress; and while several young 
 military and some of the household contrived 
 to squeeze their horses between the wheel of 
 the phaeton, and the acclivity fringed by the 
 Irish brigade, for the purpose of paying their 
 homage to Lady Knocklofty, all Lady Honoria's 
 prospects were bounded by an old shattered 
 carriage, whose hind wheel had got fast locked 
 in that of Lady Knocklofty's phaeton — a most 
 ludicrous mesalliance ! 
 
 " This is a capital position," said Lady 
 Knocklofty, throwing a batterie (Tenfilade of 
 smiling looks along the line of the Irish brigade, 
 every one of which hit its man. '^ This is a 
 capital position, is it not, Honoria P'**
 
 204 THE OBRIKKS AKD 
 
 " Cest selon,'' said Lady Honoria, dryly ; who 
 as usual, preferred speaking the language she 
 had acquired in the best circles of Paris, to the 
 dialect she had learned in her native moun- 
 tains. 
 
 " How sehn f demanded Lady Knocklofty. 
 
 " Why, according to the object you have in 
 view.' 
 
 " Oh ! my object," replied Lady Knocklofty, 
 laughing, " is to see the manoeuvres in the Fif- 
 teen Acres to the best possible advantage ?" 
 
 *' The best manoeuvres are not those gone 
 through in the Fifteen Acres," said Lady 
 Honoria, with a humour in her tone that did 
 not escape her friend's penetration ; wlio, look- 
 ing in her face, demanded, in the drawling 
 French accent, acquired in her paternal castle in 
 Connaught, from her mother's Swiss maid, 
 '« !^nr quel-Jieur avez le vans marche, ma chere ?" 
 
 " Sur une pensee^^ was the quick reply, with 
 the true grasseyani tone of the Faubourg St. 
 Germain.
 
 THK u'l-LAHr.RTYa. 205 
 
 '' Apparently ,"" said Lady Knocklofty, Avith 
 that acrimony which dear friends in high hf« 
 vfill sometimes feel towards each other, ** ap- 
 parently your ^' pensce"^ is not '' heart's ease.''"' 
 
 ** No," said Lady Honoria, throwing up her 
 meaning eyes to the Irish brigade; *' neither is 
 my pensee, (or, as the Irish call it, my pansee), 
 a Xarciscus.'''' 
 
 ** Vou are a greater adept in the language 
 of flowers, as in every other,'"" (said Lady Knock- 
 lofty coldly), " than I am ; and I confess your 
 meaning escapes my comprehension. ' 
 
 ^' I wish I could escape from this atmosphere 
 of bad smells,"" said Lady Ilonoria, looking 
 round with disgust ; " pah ! we have got into a 
 pretty mess here !" 
 
 " What the devil, Albina, could have drivtii 
 you to take up this position ?" demanded an 
 authoritative voice from behind the carriage. 
 Both ladies started, and turned round. A gen- 
 tleman, for whom the two outriders had backed 
 to make way, had got his horse between the
 
 206 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 hind wheels of the phaeton. He was a tall, 
 fair, slight, cold-looking person, with a phleg- 
 matic countenance and haughty demeanour ; but 
 more distinguished by his splendid volunteer 
 uniform, and his blue ribbon and star of St. 
 Patrick, than by any other mark of exterior 
 supremacy. It was Lord Knocklofty. Lady 
 Honoria stood up, and leaned over the back of 
 the phaeton, with a face, from which every trace 
 of ill humour was banished, and was succeeded 
 by radiant smiles. Lady Knocklofty carelessly 
 turned round her head, and without noticing 
 the conjugal inquiry, addressed her steeds with 
 " Steady now, dears, steady," continuing to tip 
 their ears with the whip, in a manner to pro- 
 duce a very contrary effect from that her words 
 directed. Lord Knocklofty pressed significantly 
 the fair hand presented to him by Lady Ho- 
 noria, with the murmured observation of " How 
 beautiful you are looking to-day !"" Then ad- 
 dressing his wife, he added, " I say, Albina,
 
 THE o'fLAIIERTYS. *207 
 
 do get out of this as soon as you can — what 
 could induce you to drive up this hill ?" 
 
 ** To show my learning, as your Lordship's 
 coachman calls it,"" said Lady Knocklofty, play- 
 ing with her whip, and smiling archly at " a case 
 of coxcombs,'* who were in waiting by the side 
 of the phaeton. 
 
 " Your pedantry you mean," said Lady 
 Honoria pointedly. 
 
 " Exactly," said Lord Knocklofty, " you 
 are a witty creature." 
 
 " More witty than wise,"" said Lady Honoria, 
 laughing, " or I should not trust myself with such 
 a neck-or-nothing driver as her Ladyship here." 
 " Why did you let her scramble up this 
 hill ?'' added Lord Knocklofty, while his lady 
 was talking to one of her cavalieri serventi. 
 
 " Needs must," (said Lady Honoria, shrug- 
 ging her shoulders), '* when the — " she paused 
 and laughed. 
 
 " Devil drives, of course,"" added Lady 
 Knocklofty, sharply, and suddenly turning round.
 
 SOS THE o'bRIEXS and 
 
 " But observe, my dear, your coming with me 
 to-day was your own proposition." 
 
 Lady Honoria looked mortified, as if her pro- 
 position had been her alternative, between com- 
 ing in Lady Knocklofty's phaeton, or not coming 
 at all. 
 
 *' Well, at all events get out of this as soon 
 as you can," said Lord Knocklofty ; " and 
 pray don't tease your horses so, Albina." 
 
 " Why, I'm only tipping them the silk," 
 said Lady Knocklofty, " just to keep them 
 alive." 
 
 '* I'll be d d but they'll throw you." 
 
 " I'll be d if they do," said Lady Knock- 
 lofty, not with Lady Townly's ' gulp,' but 
 with such a look, and such a smile, and such an 
 accent, that the coarseness of the imprecation 
 was almost neutralized in its utterance, and its 
 very profaneness almost turned into a grace by 
 the dramatic simplicity and archness with which 
 it was given. Such were the manners of the 
 day in Ireland ; not so bad, indeed, as in the
 
 THE oVlahertys. 209 
 
 days of Queen Elizabeth, when fine ladies were 
 wont to ^'Jurcr leur Grand Dieu,'' at every 
 word ; nor yet so coarse as when the prettiest 
 lips uttered the broadest douhle-entendres in tlie 
 time of the Mary Wortleys. Still they were bad 
 enough ; en arriere with the age, and even in 
 Ireland peculiar to the domineering and minis- 
 terial oligarchy, whose lawless power was thus 
 well illustrated by manners as licentious. All 
 the men laughed vociferously at the playful non- 
 chalance of Lady Knocklofty's imprecation, who 
 added, in a coaxing tone, to her cold and sullen 
 Lord (himself occupied in listening to some 
 muttered ^ntticisms of Lady Honoria), 
 
 •' \Vell, don't be angry. Lord Kr , and 
 
 'pon honour, and, as O 'Mealy says in Macheath, 
 ' may me meer slip her shoulder,' if I don't 
 escape out of this, as soon as I can extricate my- 
 self from this file of carriages." 
 
 " Why, then, long life to your honour. Mar- 
 ram, I hopes you soon will, plaze Jasus, with 
 the help of God ; and that your ladyship's
 
 210 THK O'BRIENS AND 
 
 honour will just let go my bit of a hind whil], 
 Marram, which you have kotched here behind 
 to the rare." 
 
 This prayer, which produced a general laugh, 
 was uttered by the postillion of an old-fashioned 
 and cumbrous vehicle that seemed of foreign 
 build, except that it was unemblazoned with 
 arms ; and as its blinds were drawn up, and the 
 glasses were down, it was probably unoccupied. 
 The ragged postillion, and the miserable 
 cattle he drove, justified all that ever was said, 
 written, or sketched in the broadest spirit of 
 caricature of the genuine Irish posting of the 
 eighteenth century. He was a short, thick- 
 set, sun-burnt person, with an old hat on one 
 side of his shock head, and a broken pipe in 
 one corner of his arch mouth. His eye was sly, 
 liis visage shrewd, and his attitude, as he sat 
 ]ack-a-daisically, that of a person, in whom 
 " patience per force, with wilful choler meeting," 
 was very humourously obvious. He had pre- 
 ceded his appeal for the emancipation of his
 
 THE o'rLAIIEUTYS. 211 
 
 liind wheel, by many a supplicating look, first 
 at the captive wheel, and then at the captivating 
 lady, and by many a true Irish " Och hone !" 
 though he was evidently neither an unamused 
 nor an unwilling auditor of the superior beings 
 with whom he was thus accidentally brought 
 into such close contact ; and when he now 
 audibly made his petition, with a look and 
 gesture correspondent to the words, he heard the 
 very general laugh with which it w^as received 
 by the grandees with the same unaltered air of 
 plaintive supplication which he had all along 
 asi-umed. 
 
 " Famous, by Jove! capital,*" exclaimed a 
 pretty boy officer of the Prince's Own, on the 
 watch for Irish fun, expecting a wit in every 
 peasant, and a hon mot in every word uttered by 
 the common people. " Capital ! come, we shall 
 have some vastly good fun now. Do draw him 
 out, Lady Knocklofty — now pray !" 
 
 " So, friend," said Lady Knocklofty, ^' I see 
 I have got you into a predicament.""
 
 S12 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 " Perdicament ! och I you have, plaze your 
 ladyship ; and am'nt the first, I'll engage," 
 looking archly round at the gentlemen. 
 
 " Capital !'' said the Prince's Own ; " but I 
 say, why don't you take your pipe out of your 
 mouth, you rascal, when you address a lady ?" 
 
 " Is it the dhudeen, plaze your honour," 
 taking out the black stump of a pipe, looking at 
 it complacently, and then placing it back, be- 
 tween his large white teeth ; " och ! then, Sir, 
 so I would, only sorrow puff in it, nor won't till 
 I get back, for want of a spark ; barring I might 
 light it at her ladyship's eye." 
 
 " Bravo !'' exclaimed the officers, *' bravo ! 
 excellent !'' 
 
 '* Very well, indeed/' said Lady Knocklofty, 
 with whom the coin of admiration was always 
 current, pass through what hands it might. 
 " Come, that's a compliment worth paying for. 
 Oh, Kitty Macguire has my purse. There she 
 is, St. Leger, with Captain CMealy," pointing 
 to a fair, fat, fashionable looking girl, in a faded
 
 THF. o'fLAHERTVS. SlfJ 
 
 green riding habit, and mounted on a magnificent 
 horse. " But, stop, who will lend me something ? 
 — Lord Knocklofty, Lady Honoria ?" 
 
 '' You know I never carry money," rephed 
 Lord Knocklofty. 
 
 *' You know I never have any to carry," 
 >aid Lady Honoria. 
 
 A hundred purses bad now ** leaped from 
 their" waistcoat pockets. Lady Knocklofty 
 took Colonel St. Leger's (one of the most distin- 
 guished members of the Irish court). 
 
 '* Oh ! there is nothing here but gold," she 
 said, looking into the purse as she drew the 
 strings. *' Stay, here is a seven shilhng piece," 
 and she flung it to the driver, adding, " there, 
 friend, that's to drink your mistress's health." 
 
 " This is paying for flattery a poids d'or,'' said 
 Lady Honoria to Lord Knocklofty. 
 
 " 'Tis just like her," he replied ; and then 
 whispering to Lady Honoria, took leave with a 
 " goodbye till this evening ,-" for an aid-de-camp 
 had called him off to the Lord Lieutenant.
 
 214 THE O'BRIENS AlsD 
 
 The driver looked at the bright coin thus 
 cai'elessly thrown at him, and then in the bright 
 eyes of his generous donor, as if he doubted 
 his good luck. " Sure I a'n't to keep it all, 
 my lady," he said, dropping his pipe from his 
 mouth, and throwing an expression of gratitude 
 and delio^ht into his mobile countenance. 
 
 " Yes, yes," said the lady, laughing, '^ I 
 don't expect any change." 
 
 " Why then, may I never live to have a 
 happy death, if ever I drive the Castle Knock- 
 garrons again, oncet T get rid of my load." 
 
 " Your load !" exclaimed the ladies and the 
 beaux, fixing their eyes on the close blinded 
 carriage, " Why, have you any one shut up 
 in that old chaise ?"" 
 
 " Is it in the cbay ?''' (said the man, rubbing 
 his head with a slight contraction in the muscles 
 of his face), ''sorrow, christian, how would 1 ? 
 Sure thims returns," (pointing to the horses), 
 '' fresh as they look and nat a hair turned,
 
 THE o'flaiiertys. 215 
 
 the animals — "" and he stroked down the necks 
 of the blind and broken-winded beasts, which 
 had scarcely an hair left to turn. 
 
 *' What do you mean then by getting rid of 
 vour load?" said the Prince's Own ? 
 
 " What do I mane is it, plaze your honour ? 
 Wliy then, what would I mane (scratching his 
 head in evident perplexity), but my own self, 
 Sir ? There is many a man would be glad to 
 ^get rid of himself; and ^vhaihether way could I 
 do it than in drinking long life to her lady- 
 ship's honour there." 
 
 " You mean then," (said Lady Honoria), 
 '* you will get beside yourself as soon as you 
 can." 
 
 *' That's just it, long life to your ladyship, 
 mind, and body;" and looking back at his 
 locked wheel with an expression of anxiety, and 
 an evident desire to extricate himself and be 
 off, he added, " and hopes it's no offence, only 
 just if your Ladyship would back a taste, sure 
 I'd get off in a jiffey."
 
 216 THE O'BRIENS AXil 
 
 " No, no, pray Lady Knocklofty don't let 
 him go," exclaimed the Prince's Own ; " he is 
 worth any thing, he is by far the best fun we 
 have seen since we arrived. I say, Paddy — " 
 
 " That's not the name that made a christian 
 of me, plaze your honour." 
 
 " AVell then, come, do tell us what is your 
 name, my worthy ?" 
 
 " Barny Hougloghan is the name*'s upon me, 
 Sir, off you plaze." 
 
 " Well, Barny Orlegan, if you are so impa- 
 tient to be off, what brought you here may I 
 ask .?" 
 
 " What brought me here is it. Sir ! — the 
 cattle did,'' said Barny dryly, and smacking 
 his whip. 
 
 " Capital !" said the young officer, chuckling ; 
 " and so your horses came to see the review, 
 did they.?" 
 
 " Och, plaze your honour, they are not such 
 asses as that any how, nor myself neider; we 
 have something else to be doing, nor to be look-
 
 THE O'FLAHERTYS. 217 
 
 ing after divarsion at this hour of the day, 
 Sir !" 
 
 " Then how did you get into the scrape, 
 Bawney ?" 
 
 " Och, I didn't get in at the scrape at all, 
 but in at the Castle Knock gate shure ; to cut 
 across the Phanix, and to shirk that divil's own 
 Knock-maroon hill on the low road; and just 
 made down to the Fifteens, to see if I could 
 not catch a taste of the Castle Knock infantry 
 doing their revolutions, when one sentry driv 
 nie here, and another driv me there; and th roth, 
 if they'd been army soggers instead of our own 
 volunteers, I wouldn't have been driven out of 
 my own road by any of them : and so they kip 
 driving me here, and driving me there, till I 
 was fairly driven in amongst the quahty; and it's 
 how I came by the great honor of being kotched 
 fast by her ladyship; many a bether man's luck 
 afore me, and will again, plaze God." 
 
 A general laugh followed this allusion, which 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 218 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 gained much, by the leer, the look, and the 
 accent, in which it was uttered. 
 
 '' Well," said Lady Knocklofty, throwing 
 round her eyes, and drawing out Barney, much 
 less for the amusement of the English beaux, 
 than for the crowd in general, and for the corps 
 of young brigades in particular — " Well, now 
 I have kotched you, I shall keep you, you may 
 depend on that." 
 
 " Oh, very well, my lady, your honour will 
 do as you plaze with me, and troth I'd ax nothing 
 better, than to stay wid yez all day, only — '"' 
 and he looked back at his chaise, and then at 
 his wheel, " as one perplexed in the extreme;" 
 when suddenly elevating his eye to the Fifteen 
 Acres, and resting it on rather a rustic troop, 
 who were going through their evolutions to the 
 left, he cried out — " Oh, by the piper that played 
 before Moses, if thim an't the Castle-knocks, 
 and Master Thady, the master's son, at the 
 head of em, in his new regimintals ; oh, thim'g
 
 THE o'fLAHERTVS. 219 
 
 the boys ! I'd back thini, afore any corps in the 
 Phainix ;" and seating himself, he continued 
 to follow every movement of his native troops 
 with intense admiration and scrutiny; uttering 
 at intervals exclamations of delight, and shoulder- 
 ing his whip, and following the movements of 
 his friends, with a precision, which evinced that 
 even the postillion of Castle Knock was in heart 
 an Irish volunteer. He was observed, and 
 laughed at, as long as he amused; and then, 
 sharing the fate of other tumblers, in other 
 places, was dropped and forgotten. 
 
 Meantime, Lady Honoria was still excluded 
 from the agreeable pastime of flirtation, by a 
 blockade of carriages, and her old flanker the 
 Castleknock ; and Lady Knocklofty continued 
 running through her " tricks of singularity,'' 
 fixing every eye, and arresting every ear, within 
 the sphere of her operations. She had missions 
 and commissions for all her patiti, civil and mili- 
 tary ; who were all addressed by name, with a 
 L 2
 
 220 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 levelling familiarity, which shewed no respect 
 for titles and dignities, hereditary or professional. 
 ''Edward Fitzgerald" was sent to his brother 
 Leinster, to beg he would put off the private play 
 
 at Carton ; as she had got the Dean of 
 
 to play Filch, who had to preach at St. Patrick's 
 on Sunday ; so that his private vocation might 
 not interfere with his public duties. Kilcolman, 
 a young Tipperary Earl, (and descendant of one 
 of Charles the Second's playfellows and ministers), 
 was sent on an embassy, such as his ancestor 
 had occasionally undertaken, at Whitehall — with 
 a single violet to the Lord Lieutenant. He 
 hesitated. " Go, go," said Lady Knocklofty, 
 significantly ; " he will understand it." The 
 Tipperary Earl rode off, with the nobility of 
 six hundred years on his back. An hand- 
 some young page was dispatched to the Earl, 
 his papa, to procure tickets for a concert at 
 ^he Rotunda, at which the noble amateur 
 was to take the lead. Colonel St. Leger,
 
 THE o'flahertys. 2'2l 
 
 the " rose of fashion," with " Freddys," 
 « Franks," and " Phils," " all honourable 
 men,"*^ were expedited on various missions; while 
 Manser St. George, (one of the last and best of 
 the Irish fine gentlemen in Ireland's most bril- 
 liant day,) was sent to the Duchess, begging per- 
 mission to bring Lord Charles Fitzcharles, of 
 the Prince's Own, to her grace's petit soupcr and 
 blind-man's buff that evening. 
 
 All flew to execute her " infinite deal of 
 nothings," with a zeal and readiness which 
 proved that the *' age of chivalry was not yet 
 imssed," in Ireland. Neither was it. The Irish 
 gallantry of that day had indeed the true smack 
 of tlie chivalry of the old times. A mixed 
 system of devotion and brutality ; in which 
 women, alternately treated as sultanas and a« 
 slaves, extorted all homage but that of respect ; 
 and Qxcited all feelings, save those of tenderness. 
 Adored to-day, (Ulaisstes to-morrow, fashion or 
 jjassion ruled their momentary ascendant ; and 
 the old parts of the rouQS of the French court
 
 ooo 
 
 THE O BRIENS AXD 
 
 were played to the life by the i^oiies of the Irish, 
 who were all little Richelieus and De Gram- 
 monts in their way. 
 
 A long-drawn inspiration, as the last of her 
 noble estafettes galloped off, indicated that their 
 liege lady was not sorry to get rid of them. 
 The two great ladies and dear friends, in evi- 
 dent guignon with each other, sat dos a clos. 
 Lady Honoria, again enveloped in her cardi- 
 nal, was sulky, and self-concentrated. Lady 
 Knocklofty with looks and spirits all abroad, 
 hummed an air from the Beggary's Opera ; and 
 playing her very pretty foot against the side of 
 her phaeton, slipped it in and out of a Httle 
 zebra shoe, which was the fashion of the day, 
 and an exact type of a slipper, from the se- 
 rao'lio of the Grand Sic^nor. 
 
 This movement, conscious or unconscious on 
 the part of the exhibitor, had attracted the 
 eyes, and caused some confusion along the line 
 of the Irish brigade. It more particularly at- 
 tracted the young leader, who stood in advance
 
 THE O FLAHERTYS, i2^3 
 
 of the corps, and who watched the tvvinkhng of 
 the Httle foot with such a glance as the hawk 
 gives to tlie fluttering of a young bird nestled 
 near his eiry. The slipper (as might be ex- 
 pected) at last fell to the ground ! and tlie 
 young volunteer, springing from his post, 
 pounced on his pretty prey with a rapidity 
 that distanced all other competitors for the 
 honour of picking it up, and restoring it. With 
 the slipper in one hand, and his cap in tlie 
 other, he stood beside the phaeton, presenting 
 it gracefully ; his colour deepening, and his 
 eyes raised with a look, not confident but in- 
 tense, to the face of its distinguished owner. 
 Finer eyes might be forgotten ; but such eyes, — 
 eyes that awaken emotion, by emitting it, once 
 met, are remembered for ever ! 
 
 Lady Knocklofty, instead of taking the shoe 
 so respectfully and gracefully offered, looked 
 round for a moment, then putting out her foot, 
 seemed to say by the motion, and the smile 
 more cordial than coquettish, which accompanied
 
 S24 THE o'BRIE^S AND 
 
 it, " there ! you may put it on for your pains f" 
 The look was understood, as it was meant, and 
 the shpper was put on ; but with an air of such 
 rehgious respect, as pilgrims give to the conse- 
 crated slipper of St. Peter, when first permitted 
 to kiss with " holy palmer's kiss'** the toe of 
 infallibility. 
 
 The enviable office performed, the young 
 volunteer bowed, was thanked with smiles, 
 backed, and resumed his post: from that mo- 
 ment, orders ran along the line, and fuglemen 
 figured in vain. 
 
 " Ma belle,''' said Lady Honoria, who had 
 witnessed this silent intercourse of eyes, (a 
 drama, whose unities were included in an instant 
 of time), " Ma belle, avec un id langage on 
 se passe de paroles V Lady Knocklofty (still 
 pre-occupied,) started, coloured through her 
 rouge, and asked coldly, " what do you mean, 
 child?" 
 
 " Mean, child ! why I mean that ycu seem 
 to think those ' eyes right' there, which you
 
 THE o"FLAIIKETYS. SS5 
 
 have been endeavouring to set wrong all clay, 
 are * d'asscz beaux i/eu.v, pour dcs tjcu.v dc' 
 province.' *' 
 
 "Yes/' said Lady Knocklofty, flirting lier 
 wliip and smiling, " tlicy are terrible eyes, that's 
 the truth of it, llonoria. Ho is altogether a 
 very fine lad ; much superior to the creatures 
 lie is liustled among. I wonder who he is?'' 
 
 " Poll ! what docs it signify who he is ? Of 
 course, as O' Mealy said, he is some young 
 tradesman. If he were ani^ hodij^ we could 
 not fail to know him. But, be he who he 
 may, gentle or simple, 3'our permitting him 
 to put on your shoe in this public place, was 
 very foolish. We shall have it all in i\\v 
 " Freeman's Journal" to-morrow, with an e);i- 
 gram from Curran, or Lysaght ; or it will be 
 sung as a ballad about the streets, with " the 
 Duchess's gig ;'"' and I am sure we are unpo])ular 
 enough already with the swinish multitude." 
 
 "Nonsense!" said Lady Knocklofty; "it 
 l2
 
 ^26 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 was all the thing of a moment, and nobody 
 saw it." 
 
 " Every body sees every thing ; but my dear 
 Albina/' said Lady Honoria in an affectionate 
 and admonitory tone, " I must say you are the 
 most indiscreet person in the world ; for you 
 not only take the oddest fancies, but" 
 
 '' Oh, come, this is too pleasant," said Lady 
 Knocklofty, piqued, " as if you never had your 
 fancies, as you call them." 
 
 " Yes, to be sure, I have,'' said Lady Ho- 
 noria, laughing ; " but as Mrs. Peachum says, 
 ' not with a highwayman, you hussey.' Ob- 
 serve, it is as a matter of taste, and not of mo- 
 ]'als, that I consider these affairs; I am no strait- 
 laced censor, D'leu le salt ; for with me, as with 
 the world, it is the rank of the parties, not the 
 nature of the contract, that stamps it with in- 
 discretion." 
 
 " Why, yes,'"' said Lady Knocklofty, point- 
 edly, *' you are tolerably aristocratic in your
 
 THE OFLAHERTYS. ^Ji / 
 
 fancies, and none under nobility approjichcs 
 Mrs. Kitty." 
 
 " To be sure," said Lady Honoria, '* Iqvc 
 has no better child's guide than the red book ; 
 and the Exchequer is your true Paphos, aftei 
 all : see, who has governed France for the last 
 fifty years." 
 
 " Do you call that love? I call it calculation,'^ 
 said Lady Knocklofty, significantly. 
 
 " Call it what you please," said Lady Ho- 
 noria, colouring slightly, "but 'tis good taste, 
 pour le vwins; and that is precisely what yon 
 mere home-bred Irishwomen of fashion are pt r- 
 ])etually sinning against." 
 
 " We home-bred Irishwomen ! And pray, 
 what are you, my dear, pretty, Honoria O'Cal- 
 laghan, with all your county Cork kindred — 
 
 '• Pat O'Daisey, 
 And Mistress Casey, 
 All blood relations to Lord Donoughmore." 
 
 " Why, my dear, to answer you (with a little
 
 2>28 THE o'brieks and 
 
 variation in the text) from Paddy O Carrol in 
 the ' Register Office,'' — It is true, that as ill 
 luck would have it, ' I conied over to Ireland to 
 be born,'' but I was never dipped in the Shannon 
 for all that ; and, thanks to ray father, have 
 lived too much abroad^ not to be fully aware of 
 the absurdities of my native home, since, by 
 divine indignation, I have returned to it. It is 
 a sure sign of barbarism when women make a 
 parade of the vices they have not, and even ex- 
 hibit more of the virtues they have, than is con- 
 sistent with decency and hienstance. You 
 Irishwomen are all, by temperament, cold and 
 vain ; you love display, and there is frequently 
 in your flirting manners and unmeaning allures, 
 an absence of taste and a want of keeping, which 
 would in other countries put many a woman 
 in keeping, out of countenance. You look, and 
 you sigh, and permit innocent liberties,— all 
 meaning nothing at all, — and then, are rather 
 startled some fine day, when a disappointed ad- 
 mirer turns, heigh presto, into an inveterate
 
 THE oVlahertys. 2f29 
 
 enemy ; and you find you have lost your repu- 
 tation, without gaining any thing by the sacri- 
 fice. For instance, you have been playing oft' 
 this foolish boy, merely for the pleasure of 
 turning his head ; as Mrs. Colonel OGallagher 
 got her husband broke for throwing his regi- 
 ment into confusion, at a review in Kilkenny, 
 through her coquetting with the fugleman." 
 
 " Well, and how do you think I have suc- 
 ceeded ?'' asked Lady Knocklofty, sportively. 
 
 " Oh, I dare say you will send the boy back 
 to his school or his shop,- utterly unfit for book 
 or business."" 
 
 "1 believe," said Lady Knocklofty, "even 
 if he is what you suppose, it would be difiicult 
 to make him now think 
 
 " A shop with virtue is the lieight of bliss.'' 
 *'0h, I grant you," said Lady Honoria, 
 *' that politics and patriotism, and the French 
 revolution, are upsetting all, and playing " the 
 devil among the tailors." But, again, to quote 
 from your prologue, (which, by the by, Mrs.
 
 SSO THE o'bEIEXS and 
 
 O'Neil did not give last night with her usual 
 
 spirits)— 
 
 To check these heroes, and their laurels crop. 
 And bring them back to reason and the shop, 
 
 •would, for the present, be difficult, while such 
 eloquent demagogues as Curran and Grattan are 
 working on the folly and passions of the lower 
 orders. Pray, however, do not you bring liberty 
 and equality into fashion by your looks and smiles, 
 lest you should, some day, have such a youth as 
 that with the 'terrible eyes,' taking liberties which 
 your quality would not stand ; ' car c'est le plus 
 grand petit poUs'Son,' or I am much mistaken. 
 Pray remember, Albina, that there is some one 
 on the ground, and not far off (whose glass is 
 now pointed at you,) worth all the Irish volun- 
 teers that ever raised the flag of rebellion, or 
 brogued vulgar nonsense in their factious con- 
 vention — to the edification of their earl and their 
 bishop;* and recollect, that for one of those 
 
 * The Earl of Charlemont, and the celebrated Earl of 
 Bristol, and Bishop of Derry, who took a leading part in 
 these conventions.
 
 THK O'FLAHERTYS. 531 
 
 cciUades that you are throwing away upon that 
 cliit with the eyes there, you might command 
 a place in the revenue for your butler, make a 
 captain of the battle-axe of your groom of the 
 chambers, or obtain a pension on the concor- 
 datum for tliat sprig of pauper nobility, your 
 right honourable and ever devoted, but just now 
 not very popular friend, the Lady Ilonoria 
 Stratton/' 
 
 " Poh ! my dear Honoria, you know you 
 may have what you please ; for if I command 
 the viceroy, you may command one who ' is 
 viceroy over him,' one over whom I have long 
 ceased to have any influence,'"' and her Ladyship 
 sighed. 
 
 '* I see what you allude to," said Lady 
 Honoria, " but upon my honour you are wrong. 
 I amuse Lord Knocklofty, and I aim at no 
 more ; and aim at that only, as it gives me the 
 more opportunity of being with you, dear Al- 
 bina.*" The ladies looked in each other's eyes.
 
 THE OBRIENS AND 
 
 tenderly, and pressed each other's hands senti- 
 mentally. 
 
 " I love you very much," said Lady Knock- 
 lofty, fondly ; *' but you are so severe, so sar- 
 castic with me ; you would rather at any time 
 sacrifice a friend, than lose your hon mot.''^ 
 
 " To act otherwise," observed Lady Honoria, 
 laughing, " Lavater says, entitles one to canoni- 
 zation ; and you know, dear, I am no saint. 
 But seriously, you mistake mc, dearest Albina ; 
 I am only vexed to see your romantic imagina- 
 tion perpetually getting the better of your judg- 
 ment. Now, tell truth, haven't you conjured 
 up that young volunteer into a regular hero of 
 romance T'' 
 
 " He has the air of one,'' said Lady Knock- 
 lofty ; '-' surely you can't deny that ?" ^ 
 
 " What, because he is tall, has impudent eyes, 
 and wears no powder ! But you are always dans 
 les hautes aventm^es. You know you once fan- 
 cied your black footman was Prince Le Boo,
 
 THE o'flahertys. 283 
 
 which produced that ridiculous scene at tlie 
 castle, and committed you beyond "* 
 
 " I have, at least, never so committed myself 
 as to forfeit my own esteem," interrupted Lady 
 Knocklofty, her temper risings in spite of her 
 friendship, at the allusion to Prince Le Boo — a 
 sore subject. " And allow me to tell you 
 frankly," she continued, raising her voice with 
 most unsentimental vehemence — 
 
 " Tell me what you please, and as frankly as 
 vou wilV said Lady Honoria, in a muttered 
 and rapid tone, " but don't tell it to me quite so 
 loud, for I suspect we are overheard.'" 
 
 "Heard, by whom— there is no one near," 
 said Lady Knocklofty. 
 
 " Don't be too siu*e of that," said Lady Ho- 
 noria ; '.' I much mistake if we have not some 
 close auditors in that old chaise ; for I have 
 more than once caught something hke a bright 
 eye glancing through the fracture of the old 
 blind." 
 
 While Lady Honoria was still speaking, a
 
 ^4 
 
 THE O BRIEXS AXD 
 
 sudden jerk was given to the chaise, which 
 occasioned one of the old Winds to drop down ; 
 and the chaise itself was immediately thrown 
 into rapid motion by the wild gallop of the 
 bare-boned, ill-trained steeds, excited by the 
 smacking whip of Bamy Houloghan, who dash- 
 ing on through thick and thin, overturned a 
 noddy, upset a tim whiskey, threw down an old 
 barrow woman, and extricating himself from all 
 obstacles, as he continued his rolling, rattling, 
 jolting, and serpentine course across the park, 
 cleared his way to the gate, and then disap- 
 peared ; but whether, according to the phrase of 
 romance, " in the haze of distance,"*' or in the 
 first ditch that presented itself outside the Park 
 wall, reste a savoir ! 
 
 During the few minutes that the two ladies 
 had been so closely and intimately engaged in 
 their '* coloquy sublime," Barny, crawling be- 
 tween the two carriages, had contrived to extri- 
 cate his wheel; and taking advantage of an 
 opening in the file of vehicles, made by the
 
 THE o'FLAHliRTYS. ^35 
 
 drawing off of the Lady Lieutenant's phaeton, 
 " which had stopped the way/' he seized the 
 first moment of possible escape, and drove, as 
 the drivers of Irish chaises still drive, in utter 
 contempt of consequences, and a total for- 
 getfulness of the frailty of all sublunary 
 things— wheels, springs, traces, and bridles 
 included. 
 
 He was almost out of sight before Lady 
 Knockloft}^ drawing breath, observed, in al- 
 lusion to the discovery made by the dropping of 
 the bUnd, " How very extraordinary ! Did you 
 ever see such figures ?'' 
 
 '• I suspected there was some one shut up in 
 that old chaise from the beginning," said Lady 
 Honoria. 
 
 " There is something very mysterious in this,"" 
 said Lady Knocklofty, whose imagination was 
 easily mounted. " I wish Lord K. had seen 
 them. You know there is 5001. offered for the 
 taking of Captain Right; and I should not 
 Asonder if he was one of those strangely
 
 236 THE o'brieks and 
 
 disguised figures — for disguised they certainly 
 were." 
 
 " No, no,*' said Lady Honoria, " there was 
 no Captain Right there ; I saw distinctly the 
 far off figure, who sat more prominent than the 
 muffled one next to us. If not the ghost of St. 
 Dominick come down in his character of Grand 
 Inquisitor, to reform his own order in Ireland, 
 it is some intriguing monk from France or Spain, 
 some Abbe Hussey, whom my father and I left 
 digging his own grave in La Trappe, and who, 
 the year after, was figuring away as an in- 
 triguing diplomatist, between half the courts in 
 Europe. You perceived the old man was ton- 
 sured.'^ 
 
 " Yes ; and what a countenance !'' said Lady 
 Knocklofty. " It just met my idea of the monk 
 in the Castle of Otranto ; but the other creature 
 looked like a female ; though it was so veiled and 
 muffled, it was difficult to make it out Who, 
 and what could they be ?"
 
 THE o'FLAHERTYS. ^7 
 
 " Be they who they may,'* said Lady Ho- 
 iioria, " they have heard all we said, and the 
 frate may turn our auricular confession to some 
 account. These papists are on the watch for 
 every thing, and would like to have the shewing 
 up of one of the Proudforts, their most power- 
 ful and inveterate enemies — to say nothing of a 
 squib at a ' privy counsellor's wife,' or a hit at a 
 ' certain beautiful and witty member of the 
 beau monde,^ as the Dublin journal calls me ; 
 for it has elected me as it's ' arch wag,' and 
 lays all its trash at my door." 
 
 Here the tete-a-Ute of the inseparables (as 
 they were called) was interrupted by the ac- 
 cession of some new beaux of the second order, 
 who not being of the official c6te?ie, were tole- 
 rated, but not distinguished ; and who, for want of 
 something else to say, not being initiated, offered 
 the usual common places discussed upon such 
 occasions : " A fortunate day for the review — 
 magnificent spectacle — all the evolutions well
 
 THE O BKIENS AND 
 
 performed, in good time, and with life — men 
 carried their arms well, marched, wheeled, and 
 formed with exactness — the volunteers performed 
 their manoeuvres but too well ; it was no joke, 
 arming factious citizens," &c. &c. Their ob- 
 servations, military and political, were cut short 
 by the arrival of a young officer in the Prince's 
 Own, for whom all made way, and who was 
 received by both ladies with significant smiles, 
 exclusively reserved for him, and such as him. 
 It was Lord Charles Fitzcharles, the second 
 son of an English Duke, whose eldest brother, 
 the Marquis of B., w as a lunatic, subject to fits, 
 and likely to go off in one of his epileptic pa- 
 roxysms, l^ord Fitzcharles, with all the advan- 
 tages of so distinguished a position, was ordinary 
 fin his person, and brusque in his address. He 
 approached the ladies in a familiar and un- 
 ceremonious manner, with, 
 
 ** See what a pretty pickle I am in." 
 
 He was covered with dust and spattered
 
 THE OFLAIIEIITVS. 239 
 
 with nuul. " Did you ever see such a figure, 
 Lady K. ?" 
 
 '* You look as if you had fallen into the hands 
 of the non-importation confederates, and were 
 tarred and feathered after their most approved 
 fashion," said Lady Honoria. 
 
 " I had a narrow escape indeed," said Lord 
 Charles; " for just as I was turning short off* 
 by the Phoenix, to escape the four eternal Miss 
 Roistrums, who came galloping down on me 
 full charge, and flanked by four heavy dragoons, 
 my horse took fright, and I was all but ditched 
 and dished by an old ramshackled carriage with 
 a mad driver and mad horses ; I believe the 
 devil was in the chaise/' 
 
 ** Well, we have some reason to think he 
 was," said Lady Honoria, " either the devil or 
 a monk." 
 
 " By the by, Lord Charles," said Lady 
 Knocklofty, '•• I have engaged you to the Duch- 
 ess for this evening; and pray get off your
 
 MO THE O'BRIENS AKD 
 
 regimentals, and put on a romping frock ;* we 
 are going to play blind-man's bufF at the Castle, 
 in opposition to the Provost's kutch-a-kutch-choo 
 parties, who is obliged to have innocent pastimes 
 for the fellows and their left-handed wives. You 
 must come." 
 
 " I can't indeed ; first we cannot go in plain 
 clothes when in garrison, you know, and the 
 chief there; besides, I am particularly engaged 
 this evening.'' 
 
 '' Nonsense! I know there is nothing going 
 on in town this evening. The Duchess expects 
 you, and I command you." 
 
 *' Don't signify, I can't to-night, indeed. 
 Lady Knocklofty. I'm in for a frolic, that's 
 the truth of it, a regular set to ; the whole 
 party made this week back, expressly '', 
 
 " Where, what party? I hope not another 
 
 * A simple coat of pepper and salt mix lure, worn to 
 conceal the impression of powder, by the members of the 
 haut ton in Ireland about this period, when romping waa 
 the order of the day.
 
 THE o'flahertys. 241 
 
 drunken bout at Lord Kilcolman''s, with those 
 odious Cherokees, who broke all poc r Lady 
 Dunshaughlin's new furniture, the other night 
 in Merrion-street." 
 
 " No, I assure you ; none of us English 
 belong to that set." 
 
 " Then where can you be engaged this even- 
 ing ? Are you going to play at Daly's ? Has 
 the old Marquis got in his rents?'' 
 
 *" Don't know at all ; but the fact is, we are 
 going to....'"* Here his lordship lowered his 
 voice, and advanced his head ; " but you won't 
 'peach, either of you, now will you ?'* 
 
 "Honour bright and shining!" said Lady 
 Honoria, laying her hand on her heart ; ^' but 
 you must not tell us any thing naughty, mind ; 
 you must not do like the man in the gallery, 
 the other night, at the theatre, who put the public 
 into a particular confidence about our viceroy, 
 which it was not good manners to allude to." 
 
 " No, no," said Lord Seymour, " it is only a 
 frolic, which the lads of ours have entered into, 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 ?A2 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 en esprit de garnison. You know that one of 
 us was knocked down by a tavern keeper, the 
 other night ; so we are going to take a dinner 
 with him to-day, at the Stragglers, to see fair 
 play, and pay off old scores." 
 
 " The Struggles ! what Struggles ! where is 
 that ?" 
 
 " Why, the Strugglers in Wine Tavern-street; 
 a sort of Hole-in- the- Wall, where the Duke 
 and the Chancellor, and some of us, used to go 
 last winter to eat beef-steaks, and drink whiskey 
 punch." 
 
 *' Oh, yes! I remember,"" said Lady Knock- 
 lofty, '' and where some of you got into a sad 
 scrape ; what was it all about, I forget now ? ' 
 
 " Why, our host of the Strugglers is one of 
 your public spirited tapsters, a captain of vo- 
 lunteers; a legislator, with a musket on his 
 shoulder and a sword by his side ; a papist ; a 
 defender of the faith, and a leader of the tar 
 and feathering bands ! By the bye. Lady Hono- 
 ria, he was of the party by whose pathriotic
 
 THE oVlahertys. 24S 
 
 efforts your brother's London-built carriage was 
 si bicn cmplume last winter. '"' 
 
 '* The wretch !'* interrupted Lady Honoria, 
 " and who broke poor dear Madame Tournon's 
 windows, in Dawson-street, and carried off her 
 cargo of Lyons' silk and soufflet gauze, because 
 it was not Irish poplin ; well ?" 
 
 "Well, but really I ought to get O'Mealy to 
 tell you the story ; we English always spoil 
 your Irish stories, like the dull fellow in Joe 
 Miller ; and the long and the short, you know." 
 " No, no, go on,"" said both ladies, who 
 loved gossipry, ''plus que vepres ou sermon.'" 
 
 *' Well, it happened, that this host of the 
 Strugglers abandoned the spiggot and fosset for 
 a review at Drogheda, was billeted upon some 
 house where the guest^ were more numerous 
 than the couverts ; so that the captain, more 
 hungry than ceremonious, after a long march, 
 was caught helping himself, by such means as 
 were resorted to before the invention of knives 
 and forks." 
 
 M 9,
 
 244 THE o'briens and 
 
 " Oh, the nasty beast f * 
 
 " But here comes the best of it. The supreme 
 council of volunteer ban ton (for the volunteers 
 are all gentlemen, by Jasus, and use knives and 
 forks like other folk, while acting (that is ating), 
 under the eye of all Europe, as the Belfast 
 manifesto has it,) after a court-martial presided 
 by the only officer who is a private gentleman 
 in the corps, pronounced sentence of * ungentle- 
 manlike conduct at table ' on the primitive gtis- 
 iateur ; and he was forbid to bear arms for ten 
 months, for not having borne them at a dinner, 
 taken aic bout du banc. Meantime, as the cap- 
 tain's politics and politesse had nothing to do 
 with his excellent beef-steaks, we had a scramble 
 there a week or two ago ; and the captain's wife, 
 who always serves up the first dish^ happening 
 to be ' as pretty a piece of flesh,' as the man in 
 the play says, as any — '* 
 
 '' In her own larder," interrupted Lady Ho- 
 noria, " and quite as mangeable as her own 
 beef-steaks, I suppose."
 
 THE o'flahkrtys. 245 
 
 *' Exactly," said Lord Seymour, laughing; 
 ** and it did happen, that one of us stepping 
 down to the bar for a glass of Tokay — for 
 the fellow keeps choice wines — and being, I 
 rather believe, something more gallant, than 
 this Brutus of the Strugglers thought right or 
 
 proper , I don't know how it was, 
 
 but in the struggle, the Struggler knocked 
 one of us down. A row ensued, in which the 
 Struggler had the best of it ; and when a com- 
 plaint was made to the colonel commandant of 
 his corps, not only no notice was taken of 
 the insult, but the fellow was restored to his 
 company, and permitted to figure away here 
 to-day in the face of the lord-lieutenant, and the 
 very noblemen and gentlemen he had so grossly 
 insulted. Now it happens, my valet has be- 
 spoke a dinner at the Strugglers, to which 
 a few friends are invited ; and, as I rather 
 think there will be some, fun, I suspect we 
 shall not be in a plight for her Grace's party 
 of blindman's buff, afterwards."
 
 246 THE o'*BRIENS AND 
 
 " No," said Lady Honoria, " for I dare say 
 many of you would have the advantage of us, by 
 seeing double, instead of not seeing at all." 
 
 " Take care, though,'*"' said Lady Knocklofty, 
 " you will, I fear, get into a scrape ; I hate 
 xhose frolics, in which the common people are 
 concerned.'' 
 
 " Oh, my dear," interrupted her friend, " there 
 is no interfering with public duties ; and, truth 
 to tell, a little summary justice aftei the manner 
 of the ' tarrers and featherers ' themselves, is no 
 bad thing. It is just as well to meet them 
 sometimes on their own ground." 
 
 "Exactly," said Lord Charles; "Lady Ho- 
 noria is quite right. Lady Knocklofty, do your 
 horses stand fire ? We shall have the thirty- 
 six rounds before these heroes have done. 
 — Aye, there they go ; now for it, tenez 
 Jerme.'' 
 
 Her ladyship's answer was lost in the first 
 volley which was fired ; the horses stood it well, 
 but with a little pricking of ears, and curvetting
 
 THE ©""flahertys. 247 
 
 of hcxifs. The firing now continued by com- 
 panies, by grand divisions, by subdivisions, ob- 
 liquely, advancing, and retreating, then by files 
 and in squares, and finally concluded in one 
 tremendous volley, which burst with a crash 
 that resembled the explosion of a volcano. The 
 too spirited steeds of the reckless Lady Knock- 
 lofty, overfed and underworked, were startled 
 by the shock, and plunged forward, breaking 
 the traces. Loosely reined, wild, and unma- 
 nageable, they dashed down headlong among 
 the troops, with a fearful velocity that scattered 
 all before them, till they were lost in the dense 
 smoke of the artillery, which left the fate of the 
 two ladies in doubt. None of their cavalieri 
 serventi had the presence of mind to go to their 
 rescue, till their interference was too late ; and 
 when the smoke cleared off, the anxious specta- 
 tors of this fearful accident were relieved by 
 seeing the horses at rest in the plain below, 
 panting and foaming, but quiet ; their heads held 
 by the leader of the Irish brigade, who was
 
 ^8 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 coolly directing the groom to adjust the traces. 
 He had sprung down the acclivity, at the first 
 plunge made by the unruly animals, had thrown 
 himself before them in their wild career, and 
 had all the success in his efforts to save the 
 ladies, which such skill, courage, and presence 
 of mind rarely fail to obtain. 
 
 The two ladies, though frightened into a mis- 
 prision of hysterics, had not fainted. They had 
 firmly and wisely held their seats ; and as nerves 
 were not the order of the day, and dashing was, 
 they exhibited a fearless contempt of the danger 
 they had escaped, which was ill borne out by 
 their pale faces and quivering lips. The peril 
 over, the phaeton, (whose gaudy panels 
 were either broken or disfigured), was sur- 
 rounded by gentlemen. Among others, the 
 Lord Lieutenant, and Lord Knocklofty were 
 in anxious attendance, the latter on his wife's 
 friend, and the former on his friend's wife. 
 After a due application of Eau de Luce and 
 Sal Volatile, provided from the sumptuary
 
 THE oVlahertys. 249 
 
 pocket of Miss Macquire, (who with Captain 
 O 'Mealy and a party of horsemen and horse- 
 women had ridden up to the heroines of the 
 catastrophe, with sympathetic looks and smelling 
 bottles), the two ladies were conveyed to a 
 chariot in waiting belonging to her Excellency, 
 who had driven up to make her inquiries in 
 person. The carriage drove on, accompanied 
 for a few paces by the Duke and Lord Knock- 
 lofty; each with a hand on the window near 
 which they rode. 
 
 " Lady Honoria," said Lord Knocklofty, 
 "you had better go to Knocklofty House with 
 Albina. The sooner you get some hartshorn 
 and water the better." 
 
 *' Had they not both better go to the lodge ?" 
 said the Lord Lieutenant, with equal solicitude 
 of manner. 
 
 " No, no," said Lady Knocklofty, *' pray let 
 me go home. But first, T beseech you. Lord 
 Knocklofty, go to that gallant young gentleman, 
 who is still standing at the horses' heads, and 
 
 M S
 
 250 THE o'bhiexs akd 
 
 thank him for the service he has rendered us ; 
 and pray get his address ;"" for (added her 
 ladyship, who like Maritornes, had occasionally 
 some sketches and shadows of Christianity about 
 her), "under God, I do believe we owe the 
 preservation of our lives to his timely and 
 courageous interposition." 
 
 " Yes, yes," said Lord Knocklofty, without 
 turning his head towards the spot where the 
 gallant young gentleman stood, "Yes, yes, I'll 
 see to that ; but get home as soon as you can, 
 you know we dine at the castle. To Knock- 
 lofty house," cried out his lordship, authorita- 
 tively, to the postilion. 
 
 ^' Farewell," said the Duke. " till this even- 
 ing ;'' and the gentlemen rode oif. 
 
 As Lady Knocklofty passed her dismantled 
 phaeton, she pulled the check- string violently, 
 and called out " O' Mealy," with a shrill and 
 commanding voice, that was instantly obeyed 
 by the Captain, who was following Lord 
 Knocklofty.
 
 THE o'flahertys. 251 
 
 " O' Mealy," she said, " go after that young 
 gentleman in the green uniform, who is now 
 walking towards the striped tent ; don't fail to 
 get his address, and tell him Lady Knock- 
 lofty is fully aware, that she owes her life to his 
 gallant interposition, and that she hopes he will 
 give her an immediate opportunity of expressing 
 her gratitude de vive vo'ix.'''' 
 
 "/ shawl, Lady Knocklofty," returned the 
 Captain. 
 
 The carriage drove on. 
 
 " De v'lv zc'atc?," repeated Captain O' Mealy, 
 removing his large cocked hat from three hairs 
 on the left side of his head, to three hairs on the 
 right (a motion that always expressed the Cap- 
 tain's perplexity). — " De viv waw : well, the 
 women of quality are the * very queens of the 
 dictionary,' as Sir Lucius says ;" and looking 
 round, he found to his infinite satisfaction that 
 the " young gentleman" had disappeared. 
 Anxious to sidle into the suite of the Lord 
 Lieutenant, by following in the wake of his
 
 252 THE o'bKIENS and 
 
 patron, Lord Knocklofty,he gallopped on to over- 
 take the party, and insinuated himself between 
 two young aid-de-camps. As he rode along the 
 quays, wholly forgetful of his protegee. Miss 
 Maguire, he pulled up his stock, shifted his 
 hat, and threw a reconnoitring look, to discover 
 if his brilliant position did not render him the 
 observed of all observers. Occasionally as he 
 rode along, he repeated to himself, " de viv 
 waw — I shall thank him de viv waw — I suppose 
 that's Frinch for getting him a place or a pin- 
 sion, for saving her life. Well, to be sure, what 
 luck I had, to be sent foostering and gostering 
 after the honourable Kitty, when if I had been 
 left alone to mind my business and stay where 
 I was, I might have been thanked de viv waw, 
 and sent down a brigade major to Ennis ; or 
 made collector of St. Grellan, at laste ; who 
 knows .^"
 
 THE O'FLAHERTYS. St5S 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE ROW. 
 
 Sa jcunesse fait tant de bruit qu'il n'entend pas. 
 
 Mad. db Skvignb. 
 
 Now, Master Shallow, you'll complain of me to tlic king. 
 
 Merby Wives. 
 
 In the year 1770, when the penal statutes 
 were in all their fearful force, Dublin (some of 
 its aristocratic palaces excepted) was a city of 
 lanes and alleys, of cribs and dens ; whose filthy 
 avenues swarmed with a squalid and mendicant 
 population ; and whose trading streets exhibited 
 but few images to cheer the eye, or to exhilarate 
 the heart. From the year 1782, however, the 
 city rose from its rubbish, and the hovel of mud 
 became a palace of marble. It was from this 
 period, that the partial amelioration of the terri- 
 fic code, the influence of national independence,
 
 254 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 and the establishment of a free trade, awoke the 
 spirit of the people. The ancient capital of 
 *' one of the most beautiful countries under 
 heaven,"" as Spencer designates it, then began 
 to acquire the aspect, and to exhibit the splen- 
 dour of a metropolitan city. Then its dark 
 lanes and narrow courts gave way to spacious 
 streets and beautiful quays, where the air of 
 heaven was permitted to circulate, and its 
 blessed light to shine. Then edifices in the best 
 taste, at once noble and simple, were erected for 
 public use, or for individual enjoyment. The 
 change w^as not operated by the despotic wis- 
 dom of some sagacious tyrant, but by the par- 
 tial abolition of bad laws, and the limited intro- 
 duction of enlightened principles. 
 
 While, however, the north and east shores of 
 the beautiful river which winds through the 
 Irish metropolis, became crowned, as if by 
 magic, with all the pomp of architecture, the 
 west (or that part of old Dublin which once 
 was enclosed by its fortified walls, including the
 
 THE o'flahertys. 255 
 
 castle, law courts, cathedrals, and the houses of 
 the few gentry who anciently possessed man- 
 sions in the capital), remained but little changed. 
 Here were yet to be found the wrecks and 
 relics of the houses of the Geraldines, the 
 Pettys, the Boyles, the O'Briens, and such of 
 the chiefs of English and of Irish descent as 
 had dropped into the lines of fealty. Even 
 within view of the attic saloons of Moira House, 
 (then the Montague House of Dublin), might 
 still be seen some of those ancient edifices of cage 
 work and timber, covered with tiles and shin- 
 gles, whose high pointed gables and pending- 
 balconies threatened destruction to the pedes- 
 trian passing beneath, — while they ri vetted the 
 eyes of the antiquarian, and furnished the pages 
 of the modern Stanihursts with some of their 
 most interesting items. 
 
 One of these houses, a mansion of some ex- 
 tent, still stood upon that " voyd piee<8 .of 
 ground" then called Lord Galway's walk, and 
 now denominated the military road. Old and
 
 ^6 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 dilapidated as it then was, a more delightful na- 
 in urhe could scarcely be imagined, than it must 
 have been in former times. It hung over the 
 banks of the LifFey, commanded a long sweep 
 of river scenery, with the rising and wooded 
 grounds of the beautiful park on the opposite 
 side. From its casements in the rear, it looked 
 upon the mountains of Dublin, which gradually 
 break down into the green and fertile plains 
 that lie at their base. 
 
 If its rural beauties were many, its town 
 advantages had not been few. It lay in the 
 neighbourhood of the metropolitan cathedral 
 and of the old law courts, — a spot which the 
 litigiousness of the age rendered the focus of 
 the vital interests of the land. It was at no 
 great distance from the Tliolsel or Toll-stall, 
 the tribunal for petty delinquencies and small 
 litigations, where all tolls on provincial com- 
 modities were paid. The edifice itself was 
 not lofty, but lengthy ; resembling the old 
 black and white frame workhouses of old
 
 THE o'flaiiertys. 257 
 
 English towns. It was roofed with tiles, spot- 
 ted with little casements, and was entered by 
 an arch-way, disproportionately low and nar- 
 row. Alonfj the breadth of the buildino was 
 inserted a stout broad beam of Irish oak, on 
 which was cut an inscription with armorial bear- 
 ings perfectly legible, save where an upright 
 piece of timber being mortised in the wall, had 
 received the drippings of a projecting spout, 
 fixed in the roof, and consequently was some- 
 thing rotted. The inscription was, " Victoria 
 MiHi, Christus ;" and an escutcheon of arms 
 followed, with the date 16 — , and the united 
 initials of M.M. O. B. 
 
 The house had been called, time immemorial, 
 O'Brien's Inn, nobody knew why; but every 
 one supposed, that some one had kept an inn 
 there " in the ould times," at the sign of the 
 O'Brien Arms : for none but the learned knew 
 (and they were then fev;), that in7i (the transla- 
 tion of the French hotel), was the designation 
 of all noble houses in former days, both in
 
 ^S THE O'BIIIEXS AND 
 
 England and Ireland. O'Brien's inn had, in 
 fact, been the residence of that branch of the 
 O'Brien family, of which the celebrated Mur- 
 rogh. Lord Inchiquin, a General in CromwelPs 
 ai'my, was the last lineal descendant. He was 
 stigmatized by the name of Murrogh an To- 
 thaine^ or the incendiary, by the sect, family 
 and party he had deserted. Here Lord Inchi- 
 quin retired after the battle of Cashel, where 
 he had earned his infamous agnomen ; and the 
 venerable mansion had been constantly inhabited 
 by some one of the O'Brien family, until about 
 a quarter of century back, when it had fallen 
 into litigation between two claimants. Since 
 that epoch, the sturdy old fabric had, for the 
 most part, remained uninhabited; save by an 
 old crone, who occupied a dark room on the 
 ground floor, and who (with the shelter of its 
 roof for her hire) acted as housekeeper to 
 the desolate building, and lived by the men- 
 dicity of her little grand-child. 
 
 While modern buildings rose on every side,
 
 THE o'flahertys. 259 
 
 O'Ericn's inn stood, in its solitary and anti- 
 quated pride of gables and casements, like an 
 old dowager in her lioop and tete de mo2iton, 
 in the midst of a group of young beauties in 
 adhesive draperies and braided tresses. In 
 spite of the pious inscription, the premises 
 had a bad name. There existed against it, 
 and against the old woman who kept it, that 
 natural prejudice, which is usually felt against 
 all old women and old houses. 
 
 The old woman was asserted to be (on the 
 authority of a Kilkenny carrier), no other tlian 
 the famous Alice Ketyll, the traditionally cele- 
 brated witch of that ancient city, where 
 
 Fire without smoke. 
 
 Air without fog, 
 Water without mud, 
 
 And land without bog, 
 
 certainly do indicate the influence of some 
 supernatural agency. 
 
 As, however, tradition does not trade in dates,
 
 260 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 no one knew the precise period when Alice had 
 flourished ; but every one knew that she had 
 been cited and condemned by a Bishop of 
 Ossory, for heresy and sorcery ; that she had a 
 certain attendant spirit called Robin Artyson ; 
 that she had killed " in a certayne fourward 
 way," nine red cocks — had swept the streets of 
 Kilkenny with besoms, " between complin 
 and curfew ;'"* and that two of her accomplices 
 had worn the devil's girdle about their bodies, 
 for which they were burnt, by order of the 
 bishop and council ; while Alice, mounted on 
 her cowltre (an anointed stick), made her way 
 without let or molestation. 
 
 From that time Alice Ketyll was never heard 
 of, till more than a century or two afterwards, 
 when she was deterree by the Kilkenny carrier, 
 who passed O'Brien's inn every Monday, on 
 his way in, and out of town ; where he had seen 
 her sweeping the path-way with a besom, after 
 the old fashion, " between complin and cur- 
 few." The hue-and-cry, once raised against
 
 THE O'FLAHERTYS. 261 
 
 the old woman, had a deathless echo in the 
 neighbourhood of Watling-streel, and Lord Gal- 
 way's walk ; and persecution again raised its 
 bloody arm, not indeed to light brands and 
 erect stakes, but to throw rotten eggs at the old 
 woman, and pelt stones at the casements of the 
 old house. It was in vain that Alice's ex- 
 groom of the chamber, Robin Artyson (a poor, 
 half-starved, naked little boy), declared that his 
 name was Denis Mooney, and that Alice Ketyll 
 was old Molly Mooney, his grandmother, for 
 whom he had begged half-pence at the Tholsel 
 steps every day. Whenever Alice put out her 
 squalid head " between complin and curfew," 
 eggs were pelted and stones were thrown : and 
 if she was no longer cited before deans and con- 
 demned by bishops, to be burned alive, or driven 
 as a last resource to her cowltre, it was because 
 public opinion had taken another direction ; 
 and because the current of prejudice, which once 
 had set in so strong against heretics and witches, 
 had turned into another channel, and was, with
 
 262 THE O'BRIENS AXD 
 
 equal wisdom and policy, directed against pa- 
 pists and popery. For the last ten years, how- 
 ever, Alice and her grandson Robin, had lived 
 peaceably in the service of the lord and occu- 
 pant of the old mansion, its triumphant claimant 
 and present owner. 
 
 Lord Arranmore, an old nobleman, of the old 
 Irisli stock, was of recluse and singular habits. 
 Much more celebrated than known, he had dis- 
 tinguished himself by the pertinacious pursuit 
 of a title (long gone astray in his family, and 
 recently revived in his person), and by some 
 ingenious antiquarian papers, he had contri- 
 buted to the transactions of the Royal Irish 
 Academy, of which he was the most learned 
 and indefatigable member. For the rest, his 
 lordship led much such a life as Seneachys and 
 annalists of old — buried in the past, unconnected 
 with the present — the world forgetting, and 
 long since by the world forgot. His habits 
 of seclusion were indeed so ascetic, as to be 
 bevond even what a taste for studious solitude
 
 THE oVlahkrtys. 263 
 
 might inspire; and it was probable that this 
 retreat from the world was superinduced by a 
 recent mortification, publicly inflicted by order 
 of the Herald at Arms. His armorial supporters 
 N% ere effaced from the old vehicle he sometimes 
 exhibited in the streets of Dublin, though his 
 claims to the peerage had been allowed by the 
 House of Lords. As, however, he had been 
 accused of being a relapsed papist, the insult 
 was neither unprecedented nor extraordinary. 
 
 It was on the evening of the great review at 
 the Phoenix Park, and some time after the corps 
 had all been dismissed, and the crowd which 
 this brilliant and national spectacle had collected 
 fov the last time had been dispersed, that the 
 young leader of the Irish brigade, the victor of 
 the Star Fort, presented himself at the door of 
 the old edifice of Lord Galway's walk. It was 
 slowly and cautiously opened by Robin Artyson 
 in propria per sojia, wlio, but for his gorgeous 
 crimson livery, oddly contrasted by his naked
 
 264 THE o'briens and 
 
 legs and feet, might have passed for the evil 
 sph'it, whose name he still bore. 
 
 " Is my father returned ?" was the question 
 put to him, as the young volunteer, striding 
 rapidly up the broad, low, creaking stairs, 
 entered a dreary, comfortless chamber in the 
 attic. 
 
 " My lard's not at home," was the drawled 
 out and mechanical answer. 
 
 The intelligence seemed not to displease the 
 hearer. Making a somewhat hasty and partial 
 ablution, (a necessar}'^ refreshment after the heat 
 and dust of the day), he drew the costly robe, 
 appropriated by the university to its noble 
 members, (the fiUi nohilis,) over his volunteer 
 uniform ; and exchanging his plumed helm for a 
 square and tasselled cap, gave one glance into a 
 ponderously set mirror, and was just issuing 
 forth, when he suddenly turned back. 
 
 " Where is your mother, Robin ?" he de- 
 manded.
 
 THE O FLAIIERTYS. !2o5 
 
 " My moder ! Is it my granny ? Sure she^s 
 in bed." 
 
 " She is not ill, I hope?" was the kind in- 
 quiry. 
 
 *' Och, she is nat ; only a weight at her 
 heart." 
 
 " Robin, you need not mention my having 
 dressed here for the review this morning, except 
 the question is directly put to you." 
 
 *' I will nat," said Robin, shaking his heaa 
 importantly. 
 
 " And should Mr. Emmet inquire for me — 
 You know Mr. Emmet, Robin ?'* 
 
 *' I do nat," said Robin. 
 
 " Well, should any gentleman inquire for me 
 this evening, say — but, stay;" and not daring 
 to trust to the stupidity of one. whose intellect 
 had been only awakened to extortion, and whom 
 indigence had almost stultified to idiotism, he 
 tore off the back of a letter and wrote — " In 
 my chamber till nine— at the historical society 
 till ten ;" and giving the paper to Robin, he 
 
 TOL. I. N
 
 ^66 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 desired him to give that to any young gentleman 
 who might inquire for him. 
 
 " And mind, Robin," Jie added, putting his 
 finger upon his smiling lip, " not a word of the 
 review." 
 
 " Nae, nae," said Robin, with a grin, meant 
 to be significant, but which was only ghastly ; 
 and eagerly pocketing the shilling slipped into 
 his hand, he hastily slapped to the door. 
 
 With the rapidity of a shooting star, the 
 student of the Dublin university, and cap- 
 tain of the Irish brigade, hurried back to his 
 Alma Mater. He had already proceeded more 
 than half way, when his sword, by impeding 
 his movements, and nearly throwing' him on the 
 pavement, betrayed the hurry of thought, which 
 had led him to commit so palpable an etourderie, 
 as to retain it. He was returning with incredible 
 velocity to deposit, in the attic of the old house, 
 an implement so little suited to his academic 
 exterior, when his steps were retarded, and his 
 curiosity was attracted by a tumultuous assembly
 
 THE oVl-'xhertys. 26T 
 
 round the porch of an ancient and popular tavern, 
 called the Strugglers, 
 
 The house stood on that old up-hill part of 
 Dublin, which, opening on the Quays of the 
 Liffy, still preserves its antiquated name of 
 Wine Tavern- street. The host of the Strug- 
 glers, to whose private room the College boys 
 sometimes stole to indulge in furtive potations, 
 was a noted character, and had all those claims 
 to popularity with one party, and to persecution 
 from another, which then gave celebrity to in- 
 dividuals even of the humblest class. The 
 moment also was one of great excitement. While 
 the Irish senate was the scene of contention to 
 the most stormy passions, the arena where the 
 most powerful intellects were drawn out in the 
 fiercest opposition, — while the walls of either 
 house re-echoed to the eloquence of the most 
 eloquent men that Ireland or any other country 
 ever produced, — the people wanted no factious 
 tribune to plead their lowly cause, or express 
 their vulgar wisdom. Associated for the pre- 
 n2
 
 ^68 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 servation of interests, then misunderstood by all 
 classes, the manufacturing part of the com- 
 munity added to this general ignorance, a deep 
 and irritating sense of suffering, which is apt to 
 lead a?tray the best informed. Goaded by want, 
 and by the heart-rending conviction of the im- 
 possibility of finding employment for their skill 
 and industry', they occasionally exercised a sum- 
 mary vengeance on those whom they deemed the 
 violators of the national interest ; and these 
 violences rendered an association illegal, which 
 in its formation was intended for the most 
 legitimate purposes of self defence.* The me- 
 
 • In the general depression of the manufacturing inte- 
 rests, the people then looked (as many, not of the people, 
 still look for relief, to what is called the encouragement 
 of domestic manufactures; — that is, to the voluntary or 
 compulsory preference of dear or bad articles, of home 
 manufacture, to better or cheaper goods brought from 
 abroad. The non-importers, in the pursuit of this mis- 
 cidevous chimera, destroyed the foreign-made dresse?, 
 equipage?, &c., which appeared in the streets of Dublin, —
 
 THE o'fLAIIERTYS. 2()9 
 
 lancholy feature in this case was, that tlie 
 government secretly fomented the very intem- 
 perance it affected, by unconstitutional means, 
 to restrain. If, at least, no preconcerted phm of 
 getting up a tumult can be brought home to the 
 
 msulted and outraged the persons who used them,— and 
 attacked the houses of the great impjrthig merchants. 
 
 The causes of the depressed state of Irish manufactures 
 are multifarious; of which, the wicked and execrable 
 destruction of the Irish woollen manufacture, a sacrifice 
 to English jealousy, if not the chief, is perhaps the ori- 
 ginal. In compensation for this act of violence, various 
 experiments have from time to time been made by Go- 
 vernment and by the upper classes, for introducing other ma- 
 nufactures, which would spontaneously have found their own 
 way into existence, had the circumstances of the country 
 been adapted to their exercise. Such attempts, therefore, 
 have at best had but a partial success; by which numbers 
 of starving struggling wretches have been called into 
 being, where there were no permanent and assured means 
 for their support. Bad governments are never so mis- 
 chievous as when they turn sentimental, and interfere 
 with the private and pecuniary interests of the subject, 
 under the notion of relieving distress.
 
 270 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 door of the executive, it is notorious that the 
 riots were aggravated by the imprudence of what 
 was significantly called the Castle party. Mili- 
 tary force, too often substituted for the civil 
 power, irritated the popular resentment; and 
 widened a breach which had for some time 
 existed between the English soldiery, and the 
 Irish populace; w^hile it gave a sanguinary 
 character to disturbances, which of themselves 
 would have been bloodless and unimportant. 
 
 The contests between the populace and the 
 military, were now of daily and fatal occurrence ; 
 and even the officers of some of the crack regU 
 ments, quartered in the garrison of the capital, 
 had been known to mingle in the popular 
 broils, and in more than one instance to have 
 found no unequal opponents in the students of 
 the Dublin University, — a body which for more 
 than half a century, had composed a very for- 
 midable branch of the social order of those 
 dislocated times. 
 
 The actual riot at the Strugglers was one of
 
 THE o'fLAHERTYS. 271 
 
 those outrageous frolics, in which the idle, the 
 powerful, and the dissipated of the Irish capital 
 were, at this period, wont too frequently to in- 
 dulge. 
 
 Originating in the licentious gallantry of 
 the noble cornet alluded to by Lord Fitzcharles, 
 in the morning's conversation with Lady Knock- 
 lofty, it was not a little increased by the part 
 which the host was well known to have taken 
 in a recent broil between the military and a 
 party of the non-importation confederates. 
 
 As yet the mob without (consisting chiefly of 
 tradesmen and artizans returning home from 
 their work) appeared much less interested than 
 amused with what was passing in the house ; 
 and the spectacle of flying bottles and broken 
 decanters, in a combat not very unequally carried 
 on between the " familiars" of the Strugglers 
 and its military guests, excited less wrath than 
 merriment. When, however, the handsome 
 hostess, with dishevelled hair and clasped hands, 
 appeared at an upper window, and with true
 
 27^ THE O'BRIENS AXD 
 
 feminine and Irish eloquence called for aid and 
 protection, declaring to God and upon her 
 honour, that that honour had been insulted by 
 the impertinent gallantry of the English offi- 
 cers, who had incarcerated her husband in his 
 own cellar, and were reducing his property to 
 ruin, because he was a volunteer and a non- 
 importation man — then a new impulse was 
 given to popular feeling, a portentous movement 
 was visible in the crowd, and the cry of " Shame ! 
 shame !"' resounded on every side 
 
 " Shame on those who stand hy to xvitness 
 such an outrage T exclaimed ihe young col- 
 legian, who had pushed his way to the very 
 heart of the multitude, and who, rushing for- 
 ward, sprung through a breach made in the bar 
 window by one of the rioters within. His ex- 
 ample had an electric influence. The mob 
 w^anted but an individual to lead them to the 
 attack. The outworks were soon carried ; and 
 the assailed, who had thrown themselves in the 
 entry to defend the keep (the cellar, where the
 
 THE o'l'LAHKKTVS. S*.*) 
 
 host lay, confoanded among his own broken 
 bottles), were driven from their posts in various 
 directions ; the host was liberated by his young 
 brother volunteer, and a skirmish took place 
 between the combatants, (at first more ludicrous 
 than serious;) as the " rank-scented people"" 
 engaged hand to hand, and breast to breast, 
 with tlie trim and perfumed heroes of the 
 " Prince's Own." " No military murderers !"' 
 " No English importation men !" " Trinity boys 
 for ever 1* and other party watch-words, inap- 
 plicable to the event, but not to the spirit of thi' 
 affray, filled the air and enlisted new partizans. 
 Still the efforts of the mob and of its young and 
 gallant leader, went no further, than the most 
 decided manual endeavours to clear the premises 
 of the dashing Tarquins, whose deeds of vio- 
 lence the Lucretia of the Strugglers had scarcely 
 exaggerated. 
 
 Dislocated chairs, shattered glasse?, and 
 smashed windows, broken-headed waiters, and 
 screaming bar-maids, denoted the feats of these 
 n3
 
 274 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 military " brise-7naisons^'''' who, ripe for a row, 
 and primed with claret, gave, by their shouts of 
 laughter and ill-timed pleasantries, the character 
 of a frolic, to what was in fact becoming a very 
 shameful outrage. At first, they had received the 
 allies of the Strugglers upon the equal terms of 
 animal strength ; and clenched fists, and squared 
 elbows, a well flung bottle, or a better directed 
 blow, rendered the combat as yet both fair and 
 equal ; but when the brute force of the unwashed 
 artisans began to prevail over the science of the 
 patrician " eleves" of Mendoza, then it was 
 that the temper of the higher powers wholly 
 gave way. Taking close order, and making a 
 desperate rally, at the moment when they were 
 nearly ousted, they imprudently and intemper- 
 ately drew their swords on the unarmed po- 
 pulace ; and a sanguinary and unequal conflict 
 instantly began, which threatened the worst con- 
 set}uences. 
 
 The young collegian, who had hitherto stood 
 ** a keen encounter" with manv a well directed
 
 THE O^FLAHERTYS. J^75 
 
 fist, and returned every attack with interest, 
 now remembered the sword which had hung 
 forgotten at his side ; and throwing himself at 
 the head of the mob, he stood in the gap of a 
 door-way, and kept at bay more than one well 
 armed assailant, until the populace effected their 
 retreat into the street. Unfortunately, at that 
 precise moment, when the enraged and bleeding 
 people were preparing for a renewed attack, a 
 non-importation confederate company, returning 
 from a '* tar and feathering" expedition, fell in 
 with the combatants. No preliminaries were 
 necessary to the making a common cause — 
 " Rebellion lay in their way, and they found it ;'** 
 and the new allies, reeking from their recent 
 triumphs, were about to bestow the beaux 
 restes of their unsated rage on the English 
 party, when a military guard, accompanied by 
 a strong civil power, who had been sent in search 
 of '* the tar-and-featherers,"" overtook them at 
 this precise spot and moment. The soldiers 
 saw at once the danger of their officers, and in
 
 276 THE O'BRIENS AUD 
 
 a natural esprit de corps, though as yet un- 
 attacked themselves, fired without orders on the 
 uproarious multitude. One of the populace fell 
 dead ; a few were wounded ; some fled, hotly 
 pursued by the military ; others stood their 
 ground, and in their turn were again forced to 
 retreat. In amount twenty times the number of 
 the military — savage with rage and indignation, 
 and " all smarting with their wounds'' — they 
 tore up the pavement, and pelted the soldiers 
 with that favourite missile, with which the Irish 
 have ever done so much execution. Again the 
 soldiers fired, and the echo of their shots was 
 answered by shouts of execrations, and by 
 showers of stones. The civil power interposed 
 in vain, and confusion and carnage reigned on 
 every side. 
 
 One conspicuous figure, towering above the 
 rest, still kept the devant, and by his savage 
 shouts and Irish cries served as a rallying point, 
 giving spirit and force to the popular party, 
 which however he appeared to have rnly acci-
 
 THE FLAHERTYS. 277 
 
 dentally joined. In external appearance, he 
 resembled none of those by whom he was sur- 
 rounded, and was evidently a stranger from 
 some remote district of Connaught or Munster. 
 Wild, wierd, gaunt, bloody, half naked, and 
 apparently half mad, he continued to move 
 steadily on towards some given point. With 
 wondrous strength and dexterity, he whirled a 
 tliick, long, twisted pole above his head, and 
 occasionally let it fall with a fatal force on 
 whatever opposed his way. He shouted in Irish 
 as he moved along, " Faere ghem I — Faere 
 ghem '.^' — " O'Brien aboo !" — *•' Lamhlakler 
 aboo r — ^'' Faere^ faere, mi cuishleen !'' * — and 
 other incoherent exclamations, sometimes ad- 
 dressed to the mob, and sometimes to the young 
 collegian, towards whom, with all his strength 
 and agility, he was in vain endeavouring to make 
 his way. 
 
 • " Watch, watch, the cause of the O'Briens, the cause 
 of the strong hand, &:c , watch, my heart's vein,"
 
 S78 THE o'briens and 
 
 The collegian himself, (the next prominent 
 figure in the conflict.) stood in the foreground of 
 the fight, grappling hand to hand, and breast to 
 breast with the officer who had been the pri- 
 mar}' cause of all this tumult, and who, having 
 lost his own sword, was endeavouring to wrest 
 that of his opponent from his firm and nervous 
 grasp. Between these combatants there was 
 no disparity, they were well and gallantly op- 
 posed. Each had insulted and struck at his 
 adversary in the beginning of the affray ; and 
 as they now in their youthful strength and 
 passionate vindictiveness wrestled for life or 
 death, they appeared like two young vultures, 
 intent on tearing out each other's hearts, from 
 the breasts in which they panted. Heads tossed 
 back, teeth gnashed, eyes fixed, with fury in 
 their glances, pain unfelt, danger despised, the 
 instinct of carnage in full and fearful develop- 
 ment, would have given the conflict a poetical 
 character, on another site, and in another
 
 THE o'flahertys. i279 
 
 cause, than those, on which such courage and 
 such energies were now so uselessly and per- 
 niciously displayed. 
 
 This singrle combat in the midst of more 
 vulgar conflicts, attracted the attention of all, 
 who were not deeply engaged in their own de- 
 fence. Such tranquil spectators were chiefly 
 composed of the occupants of windows, and of 
 ilie old projecting balconies, suspended in front 
 of the cage workhouses, then still standing in 
 Wine Tavern-street. 
 
 Inuuediately next to the Strugglers (itself 
 a very ancient edifice), stood a formless build- 
 ing, which but for its waving gables above, and 
 its bricked- up arches below, might have passed 
 for the high, dead wall of a state prison. One 
 small jjrated casement alone diversified its 
 gloomy surface, behind whose iron bars some 
 restless object seemed agitated with a perpetual 
 motion, like that of a wild animal in his cage. 
 The figure was not only human, it was female ; 
 ii!Mi ai th'j dreary masure was the rear of a
 
 S80 THE o'bRIENS and 
 
 convent of Franciscan nurs, and the casement 
 (the only one which looked on the " busy haunts 
 of man") belonged to the Abbess's own apart- 
 ment, she probably was the pious and restless 
 spectatress of this sanguinary fray. Her curiosity 
 was well repaid by the evidence it must have 
 furnished of the wisdom of her retreat from a 
 world, vdiere human passions were still in such 
 baneful and reckless activity. 
 
 Meanwhile, an hundred voices continued to 
 cheer the collegian ; and the champion of the 
 military party had, by an effort of great dex- 
 terity, nearly wrested his sword from his grasp, 
 when the protecting demon of the Irish cause 
 reached the spot on which they contended. 
 Whirling his long pole over his own head, he 
 was about to let it fall on that of his destined 
 victim, when the generous collegian, perceiving 
 the treacherous attack as it was made, summed 
 up all his strength, and throwing back the 
 officer into the porch of the house, saved his 
 life, and permitted the pole to fall in noxiously on
 
 THE o'flahkiitys. 281 
 
 the resounding pavement. Shouts of plaudits 
 followed ; and reiterated cries of " The college 
 boys for ever," " Long life to the Trinity, and 
 the glorious Volunteers," filled the air. 
 
 At length the civil force, which with many of 
 the chief authorities, had been involved in the 
 |:)ell-mell confusion of the first heat of the riot, 
 began to prevail ; owing to the courage and 
 influence of one of the principal and most po- 
 pular magistrates of the day. He had thrown 
 liimself between the military and the people, at 
 the risk of his life ; and by his eloquence, his 
 promises, and his exertions, finally succeeded in 
 checkinrr the further progress of a tumult, which 
 might otherwise have terminated in an insur- 
 rectionary movement. The soldiers, who had 
 mingled in the affray, were marched back to 
 their barracks ; the young officers, whose frolic 
 had began it, were put under an arrest ; a gene- 
 ral dispersion of the mob followed ; and the 
 ring-leaders only, who iiad mingled in the row 
 from the beginning, were pointed out by spies
 
 282 THE o'briens and 
 
 of the police, and taken up, to be reserved as 
 examples of justice. At the head of these was 
 the collegiate captain of the Irish Brigade, who 
 had led on the mob, at the commencement of 
 the combat. For him was reserved the dis- 
 tinction of being arrested by the sheriff in per- 
 son, as he stood carelessly before the porch of 
 the Strugglers, wiping the blood from his 
 wounded forehead with one hand, while panting 
 and heated, he leaned on his sword with the 
 other. 
 
 " That is the young collegian that was the first 
 to enter the bar window, plaze your honour," 
 said a policeman, in the train of the sheriff. 
 " Sorrow stir the mob stirred, till he led the 
 way, your worship." 
 
 " You must give up your sword, young gen- 
 tleman," said the sheriff, addressing his prisoner. 
 
 " To you, Sir, certainly;" said the youth, 
 coolly presenting it. 
 
 " I am sorry," said the sheriff, " to see the 
 sword of an Irish volunteer so used, and the
 
 THE OFLAHF.RTYS ^MJ 
 
 dress you wear, and the rank it bespeaks, so 
 disgraced." 
 
 " Disgraced !'* reiterated the collegian, turn- 
 ing round indignantly. 
 
 " Constables, take your prisoner to the watch- 
 house,'" said the sheriff coolly, and walked on 
 to a spot, to which he was summoned by the 
 springing of a legion of rattles ; where he found 
 one of the guardians of the night struggling in 
 the fearful grasp of a gaunt and gigantic figure. 
 At the approach of the sheriff and his party, the 
 savage let go his hold, and dashing down his 
 prey upon the earth, fled with a velocity, that 
 distanced all pursuit. 
 
 While the young student was gathering his 
 torn robe round him, and stepping forward to 
 proceed with his guard, his military antagonist 
 was led forth from the Strugglers, under an 
 escort. Their eyes met. 
 
 " Lord Charles Fitzcharles, Prince's Own, 
 Royal Barracks," whispered the latter. "Mur- 
 rogh O'Brien, Trinity College," was the reply
 
 284 THE O'BRIENS AND 
 
 of the former; and both passed on, the one 
 over Queen's-bridge, to his quarters, the other 
 along the quays, to that " durance vile'' of 
 heroic spirits, a watch-house. 
 
 It was now a dark and foggy twihght ; the sun, 
 which sets with so fine and picturesque an effect 
 behind the last bridge over the Liffy, had sunk 
 portentously in black and lurid clouds. A pre- 
 mature obscurity had already involved the worst 
 lighted city in the empire. The shops and 
 houses in the neighbourhood of the riot, had 
 been shut up at an early hour, and the mob and 
 military, spreading consternation in their flight 
 and pursuit, as a shout was raised, or as a 
 musket w-ent off, had so completely cleared the 
 streets of pedestrians and carriages, that the 
 capital at nine o'clock had the desolate and 
 deserted aspect, which it was wont to assume 
 in troubled times. In the previous morning 
 the volunteer review had furnished an excuse 
 for recreation to the most pleasure-loving citizens 
 of any capital in the world. All had been bustle.
 
 THE o'flaiiertys. 285 
 
 light, and life : now all was glconi, silence, and 
 apprehension. The great bell of the university, 
 tolling out the ninth hour (that hour in the 
 Irish university over which care holds no con- 
 troul*), swung its deep tones over the still and 
 etnpty streets, as solemnly as if it were the 
 vesper bell of a convent of the blessed Virgin, 
 pealing through the silent cloisters of the mo- 
 nastery of Hogges-green.f 
 
 Tlie youthful prisoner, (who had so acted, as 
 inevitably to place himself under the ban of that 
 rigid institution, whose discipline that bell an- 
 nounced.) heard not its warning voice. He was 
 now insensible to all external imp/essions. " The 
 tempest in his mind " solely occupied him. 
 Agitated and pre-occupied, his heart fluttering, 
 
 • This bell fonnerly summoned the students of the uni- 
 versity to the October cellar, where a potation, equal to 
 the far-famed Trinity audit ale of Cambridge, was distri- 
 buted. 
 
 Hogges Green, now called College Green, from being 
 the site of the University, was, down to the commence- 
 ment of the 17th century, strewed with religious houses.
 
 286 THE o'eriens and 
 
 his chafed blood all on fire, he paced on, in the 
 centre of his guards, with a firm and rapid step. 
 His arms were carelessly folded in his tattered 
 gown, and his square cap was worn over his left 
 eye, as if in defiance ; but in fact was so worn, 
 to check the drops which oozed from a scar in 
 his temple. There was nothing in his bearing 
 that corresponded with an appearance so piti- 
 able, and a position so perilous ; and it might 
 have been supposed, to judge by his air and 
 motions, that a triumph, and not a prosecution, 
 awaited him. A flashing eye— a distended 
 nostril — an occasional haughty toss of the head 
 — and a tone of voice, which, whether replying 
 to, or demanding a question of the guard, who 
 almost *' toiled after him in- vain,'' had some- 
 thing scoffing and disdainful in its accent, — 
 spoke one worked on by powerful excitements, 
 and intoxicated by that exaltation of the mind, 
 which raises its subject above all sensible im- 
 pressions, and leaves even physical pain un- 
 heeded if not unfelt.
 
 THE o'flAHERTYS. 2^7 
 
 The day, in truth, with all its uncalculated 
 incidents and adventures, was a day big with 
 consequences to him, on whose head it had 
 risen, (as spring days arise upon the young and 
 hopeful,) in light, in lustre, and in joy. He 
 was one, whose generous enterprize and reck- 
 less daring bespoke a temperament, which leads 
 men from tlie beaten track, through ways of 
 danger, to fame and glory, — rarely to happiness. 
 The circumstances of times so stirring and so 
 consonant to the aspirations of the brave and the 
 imaginative, had contributed to the early deve- 
 iopement of passions, which in the ordinary 
 progress of nature, might still have slept ; and 
 the incidents of a day had thus probably de- 
 cided the destinies of a life. 
 
 The peace officers who conducted the pri- 
 soner, had nearly reached one of those horrible 
 dens, where folly and crime are so injudiciously 
 incarcerated and confounded together, when to 
 their surprise and consternation, a shrill and 
 savage shout burst upon their ears ; and a mob,
 
 288 THE o'briens and 
 
 led on by the same uncouth figure as had 
 already attracted the attention, but evaded the 
 vigilance of the poHce, came pouring forth in 
 dusky groups, and in great number, from one 
 of the many dark alleys which then opened on 
 the quays. The contest that followed was so 
 unequal, that an almost immediate rescue was 
 effected, in spite of the spirited resistance of the 
 police, and even of the remonstrances of the 
 young prisoner himself. The populace (now 
 masters of the field), raised the hero of the 
 evening on the shoulders of the stoutest of their 
 party ; and at the peril of him, they had sought 
 at such risk to protect, ran with an extraor- 
 dinary velocity along the banks of the Liffey ; 
 till their strange and uncouth leader halted 
 before the antique and solitary edifice, from 
 which his protege had issued a short time before, 
 unconscious of the portentous events in which 
 he was so soon to be involved. Three tremendous 
 shouts announcing the arrival of the party, 
 were echoed by the falls of a ponderous brass
 
 THE o'flahektys. 289 
 
 knocker ; while the cries resounded of " suc- 
 cess to your lordship''s honour. Here's your 
 ihgant fine son, Sir, brought safe home to you, 
 plaze your honour, th' Honourable Murrogh, 
 glory be to his name ! Open the door if you 
 plaze, my lord, afore the powlice comes down 
 upon us and murders us intirely, plaze your 
 honour." 
 
 To this appeal, no answer was made. A 
 window in the gable had, indeed, been opened, 
 but it was as suddenly closed. The whole house 
 seemed barricadoed, as if ready for a siege ; and 
 all was utter darkness, save when the moon, 
 appearing for a moment through the massy 
 clouds, fell with peculiar effect on the lofty figure 
 and upturned head of the collegian. It was 
 evident that, in the strong relief in which he 
 stood, he must have been fully recognised by 
 the person who had so immediately and timidly 
 withdrawn. After a short pause, therefore, he 
 addressed the mob to induce them to retire, and 
 
 VOL. I. o
 
 290 THE o'briens axd 
 
 to secure their own safety, without indulging 
 any fear for his. 
 
 He spoke not so much to the point, as to the 
 passions of his hearers. Little practised in ad- 
 dressing a multitude, his eloquence arose out of 
 the exigency of the moment ; and coming fresh 
 from the mint of an heated imagination, it 
 abounded in those watch-words of Irish feeling, 
 which are the clap-traps of natural vanity ; they 
 had their wonted efficacy. 
 
 The account of the rally and the rescue had 
 been rapidly communicated by the fugitives of 
 the discomfited party to one of the patrols, 
 which paraded the city ; who instantly bent their 
 steps in the direction in which the rioters were 
 supposed to have halted. They had reached 
 the ascent of that very ancient bridge, whose san- 
 guinary name* still attests the conflicts, of which 
 
 * Bloody Bridge, supposed to be so called from a battle 
 fought upon it between the Irish and Danes j but more 
 probably from the circumstance of several lives having 
 been lost by the fall of a bridge on this site.
 
 THE oVlahertys. 291 
 
 its narrow pass was once the scene, when the 
 mob, as they were still listening to the harangue 
 of tlie young orator, caught the -glitter of the 
 bayonets ; and suddenly dropping the object of 
 their triumpli from their shoulders (contented 
 with having left him at the paternal threshold) 
 dispersed in various ways. One alone remained, 
 moving like a strange phantom in the foggy 
 distance ; beckoning, by uncouth gestures, the 
 object of his evident protection to join him ; and 
 waving his long pole through the misty air, with 
 a faint exclamation of '^ Faere gliem, Faere 
 gliemy 
 
 The phantom, however, produced a far dif- 
 ferent effect on the object of its protection, from 
 that which it appeared desirous to operate. It 
 stunned, it stultified him. As often as he had 
 caught a view of the huge, dark, and shadowy 
 outhne of that figure, he doubted the fidelity of 
 his senses ; and as he Hstened to those strange 
 accents, deep and guttural as they were, he 
 paused and shuddered. But as the military 
 o 2
 
 292 THE o'bRIENS AVD 
 
 approached, the voice and figure faded away. 
 The collegian alone remained to stand the brunt 
 of the encounter. He had cast up his eyes to 
 the window, where he thought he had seen his 
 father. But no light or sound gave evidence 
 that his fate excited further attention. The 
 paternal door was evidently closed in wrath 
 against him, — a heart-chilling event in the life 
 of the young and the cherished. Still the dark 
 defiles of Watling-street, with its blind alleys, 
 might have afibrded him covert> To the right, 
 and to the left, lay the open fields and burying 
 ground of the Military Hospital, and all that 
 swampy wilderness of desolation, of ruin and 
 of wretchedness, which the trim military road 
 now bounds along the Liffey's banks. The 
 foot-fall of the approaching patrol fell quick 
 upon his ear. Flight was still in his power. 
 Flight! from what? from justice I Flight 
 would have confounded him with the vulgar, 
 timid, and capricious multitude. Far, there- 
 fore, from retreating, he advanced boldly to
 
 THE o'fLAHERTYS. 29S 
 
 meet the military. He had already been ob- 
 served ; and one of the soldiers sprung forth to 
 seize him, when his carbine was knocked from 
 his grasp to a considerable distance, by an unseen 
 but powerful blow ; and the man reeled back on 
 his steps from the violence of the shock. 
 
 The student, stepping before him, presented 
 himself to the commander of the party, touched 
 his cap courteously, and said — " To save all 
 further trouble, I think it right to inform you, 
 Sir, that / am the person in whose favour the 
 rescue has been effected, and of whom I suppose 
 you are in pursuit. I surrender myself volun- 
 tarily, and am ready to accompany you where 
 you please." 
 
 " Then march we to the castle guard-house,'* 
 replied the officer in a tone and manner but little 
 suited to the occasion ; while his party sur- 
 rounded the prisoner. 
 
 " Soldier, have you recovered your piece ?^' 
 
 *' No, plaze your honour, Captain O'Mealy,
 
 294i THE O'BRIENS Als'D 
 
 I have not : shure, it's the devil himself has ran 
 ofF with it, I believe, captain." 
 
 As he spoke, a shot was fired at the party, so 
 well aimed, that it took off the feather in the 
 officer's hat, as it whizzed bj him. He instantly 
 commanded a*halt. 
 
 " Upon my honour, this is too agreeable,'* 
 he exclaimed, as he picked up his damaged 
 plume, " My bran new Captain Absolute's fea- 
 ther, that Fm to wear at Lady Ely's." 
 
 '' The shot was fired. Captain, from my own 
 carbine, as sure as a gun," said the soldier, who 
 was still groping for his piece. 
 
 "Then the bloody-minded rebelly papist 
 cannot be far off," said the Captain. 
 
 A figure was, at that moment, dimly seen, in 
 a creeping, crouching attitude, to pass along 
 the walls of a ruined and dilapidated house. ~ 
 
 " Fire !" said the Captain. 
 
 " Hold ! " exclaimed the prisoner, earnestly and 
 passionately ; but his voice was lost in the noise
 
 THE o'fLAHERTYS. S95 
 
 of the volley, while a loud wild laugh, with the 
 cry of " Faere ghem, faere cjliem^' followed by 
 a blast of a horn, was distinctly heard. 
 
 The next moment, a tremendous plunge in 
 the Liffey disclosed the escape of the assassin, 
 by means that seemed as perilous, as the fire 
 from which he had so narrowly escaped. 
 
 *' The villain,'" said the officer, "has escaped, 
 after all ; well, boys, leave him to his fate, 
 which is not to be drowned, I'll ingage, any 
 how." And now, resuming his hat, he gave 
 the word to march. 
 
 Surrounded by the military, the prisoner 
 followed in the party, headed by the gallant 
 Captain, and proceeded on his way to the 
 castle. 
 
 END OF VOL I. 
 
 SHACKELL AND BAYLIS, JOHNSON's-COURT.