170 Walks in Ireland. [FEB. 



ill-gotten property is scattered, as it were, to the winds of heaven, and 

 the peasant, as he tells the story, points to its fulfilment in the ruined 

 mansion of " the man with the white horse." 



The Devil's Mill 



About six miles to the westward of Dublin stands the village of 

 Lucan, " noted," as the Post Chaise Companion has it, "for its medicinal 

 spring, the waters of which are of great efficacy in many disorders," that 

 is to say, it is a pretty rural retirement, where people of fashion, in 

 former times, when there were people of fashion in Dublin, used to 

 recover from the effects of the dissipation of the season, by keeping 

 regular hours, and taking regular exercise, through romantic woodland 

 scenes, and in a mild salubrious climate, though they .invariably attri- 

 buted their cure to a pint of cold clear water (as agreeable in taste and 

 smell as the washings of a gun), by them taken twice a day. 



The low road to Lucan is a beautiful drive, passing through the 

 Phoenix Park, with its place of arms, the fifteen acres, where more duels 

 have been fought than upon any given spot on the face of the globe, 

 and the Strawberry Banks, whence Dublin is supplied with that fruit, 

 and where, in the pleasant days of summer, the citizens ruralize, after 

 the fashion of their brethren of Cockaigne, amongst the Arcadian groves 

 of Hampstead and Richmond Hill. Winding onward through rich mea- 

 dows, and sunny slopes, and gradually losing sight of all that can remind 

 you of the city, the road reaches the Liffey, there a dark, rapid, and 

 sullen-looking stream, overshadowed by tall trees, and embosomed 

 among gloomy superstitious groves, and silent upland pastures, that 

 shut out all distant views, and preserve unbroken the character of the 

 place. A little farther on, where the shadows fall deepest over river 

 and road, the troubled voice of the stream, at once mournful and com- 

 plaining, gives token that its course is ruffled by some impediment, and 

 there, half overcome by the indefatigable waters, lie certain antique 

 walls, and a ruined wear, denominated by the peasantry " The Devil's 

 Mill." A gloomy spot it is, that lonesome road, with its nodding spectral 

 trees, when an autumn evening is falling around you, and closing in the 

 view with its thin gray pall; when the chafed torrent is raving and 

 groaning through the dim-seen ruins, as if anxious to shake off their 

 load, and sweep them headlong from its path ; and when the wild 

 legend, to which they owe their name, arises in your mind. Many and 



many a time have I heard it, with the woods of L town right before 



me, and the work of the fiendish architect beneath my feet, as I sat on 

 the twisted root of one of the venerable trees ; while with that air of 

 undoubting implicit belief which lends a peculiar interest to all Irish 

 legends, whether humorous or tragic (for your narrator delivers them 

 to you, no matter how extravagant, as if he believed every jot and tittle 

 of them from the bottom of his soul), some patriarch of the neigh- 

 bouring village pointed out the various localities of the story. Here 

 it is for you. 



In the old-world times of the Charles' and James', ay, up to the mid- 

 dle of the last century, the Irish nobility were a fierce and lawless race, 

 little resembling their contemporary brethren of England, in manners or 

 habits, and preserving much of the feudal sway of the days of the 

 Henrys and Edwards, together with no small portion of the rude pomp 

 and stern aristocratic bearing, consequent upon that system. Between 



