162 Walks in Ireland. [FEB. 



Rock hold divided sway. Let us go then but not to-day not 

 to-day. 



To-day, while the dull rain is falling, and the lagging wind is moan- 

 ing through the trees, and the drift creeps heavily along the sullen 

 waters, let us sit by the fire, and tell old tales spin yarns, as we say at 

 sea for, amongst my other accomplishments, I am an amateur sailor. I 

 will call up, from the depths of my memory, some of the countless wild 

 and gloomy legends, which in Ireland cling to every hill and glen, every 

 rock and ruin from the Causeway to Cape Clear and you shall half 

 believe in spirits before I have done. I promise to you that I have not 

 the least intention of using either order, method, or connected system 

 in my narration. I intend to follow the vagrant ignis fatuus of my own 

 fancy, skipping from one county to another, just as said fancy shall think 

 proper to bid me. My mind is, at this present moment, too full of rest- 

 less indolence either to remain quiet on the one hand, or to choose its 

 own course on the other. Dim recollections of bygone scenes and sha- 

 dowy tales of diablerie, and chivalrie, and antient wars, and fierce baro- 

 nial feuds, are flitting slowly before me, in orderly disorder, like phan- 

 toms in a magic glass ; and all I can do at present is to catch and 

 embody a few of them for you. So pray bend down your stately reason 

 for a while, like a tall lawyer I know of, when he puts himself upon a 

 civil equality with a stunted client, and looks, as he bends to lend a sym- 

 pathetic ear to the wrongs of the pigmy litigant, his white wig curling 

 round his solemn face, and his long black gown drooping around him, 

 like an aged giantess condoling with a wayward dwarf. Do now, like a 

 kind Reader as you are, resign yourself to that species of voluntary illu- 

 sion which legendary lore requires ; and let us talk of ghosts, and pro- 

 phecies, and haunted ruins. 



Red Gap Inn. 



I remember well how strongly my boyish feelings were excited at 

 reading the narrative of Raymond's escape from the murderous inn- 

 keeper, in Lewis's romance of " The Monk." His version of the story 

 has nearly faded from my memory ; but the circumstances upon which 

 he founded it are said to have occurred in Ireland, and, wild and impro- 

 bable as they are, you shall have them, verbatim, as they are related upon 

 the spot ; and, moreover, I am not to blame if you think fit to believe 

 them, inasmuch as I give up my authority and Lord Lyndhurst himself 

 could ask no more. My informant's name is Catherine Flynn. 



As you go from Kilcullen Bridge to Carlow, about three miles on 

 your road there stands, and barely stands, a ruined house. The situation 

 has nothing particularly striking about it; the country is open and 

 thinly cultivated, and a faint outline of hills is visible in the distance ; 

 but you may guess that, some seventy or eighty years ago, when the 

 system of travelling was so imperfect, even in England, that a journey 

 from York to London was thought more of than a trip, now-a-days, from 

 the Golden Cross, Charing Cross, to Tobolsk, or Ekaterinesklopfponski, 

 or any other locale, with a sweet-sounding name, under the benign sway 

 of the Emperor of All the Russias, that this same mansion looked bleak 

 enough, on a winter's evening, in wild, depopulated Ireland. 



The travellers in Ireland, in those times, were persons whom business 

 would not suffer to stay at home. Nobody thought of whisking from one 

 end of the island to the other, to look at a waterfall or a lake : the time 



