622 



CURLL 



CURRANT 



against four, with a director styled skip for each ; 

 after which a certain length of ice is chosen on 

 which to play. This is called the rink. Certain 

 marks are then made at each end of the rink, con- 

 sisting of several concentric rings, called brouphs, 

 and a centre, called the tee. The game is decided 

 by time, or by one party first attaining a certain 

 number of shots, such as '21 or 31 ; and the keenness 

 displayed by rival sides in competing for Victory 

 is perhaps without a parallel in any other pastime 

 whatever. One on each side plays alternately. 

 The chief object of the player is to hurl his stone 

 along the ice towards the tee, with proper strength 

 and precision ; and on the skill displayed by the 

 players in placing their own stones in favourable 

 positions or in driving rival stones out of favour- 

 able positions, depends nearly all the interest of 

 the game. At a certain distance from each of 

 the tees, a line the hog-score is drawn across 

 the ice ; and any stone not driven beyond this 

 mark counts nothing, and is laid aside. In country 

 places, a dinner composed of 'beef and greens,' 

 the well-known curler's fare, generally concludes 

 the day's diversion, which, taking place when out- 

 door labour is suspended, is felt to be no encroach- 

 ment on rural occupations. 



For laws of curling, and general remarks on the game, 

 see The Channel-stane (four series, 1883-84), the last 

 series of which contains an ample bibliography ; Descrip- 

 tive and Historical Sketch of (!urlin<j (1828), reprinted as 

 The Kilmarnock Treatise ( 1883 ) ; Curling, Ye Glorious 

 Pastime (1882), a reprint of the Account of the Game of 

 Curling (1811); Curling, by Dr James Taylor (1884). 

 There are, besides, the Annuals of the Royal Caledonian 

 Curling Club, 1839-88. This club in its jubilee year 

 (1888) undertook the preparation of a volume the Rev. 

 J. Kerr's History of Curling (1890). 



Cnrll, EDMUND (1675-1747), a notorious Lon- 

 don bookseller of the first half of the 18th century. 

 His connection with Court Poems (1716) led to his 

 first quarrel with Pope, who afterwards made the 

 bookseller figure in the Dunciad. He earned an 

 unenviable reputation for the publication of in- 

 decent literature, which afterwards received the 

 brand of Curlicism. He was twice ( 1716 and 1721 ) 

 at the bar of the House of Lords for publishing 

 matter regarding its members ; was tried and con- 

 victed for publishing obscene books (1725), fined 

 (1728) for the issue of Nun in Her Smock and De 

 Usu Flagrorum, and spent an hour in the pillory 

 for his Memoirs of John Ker of Kersland. His 

 announcement of Mr Poke's Literary Correspond- 

 ence (1735) led to the seizure of the stock, and 

 furnished Pope ( who has been proved to have insti- 

 gated its publication ) with a sufficient excuse for 

 the issue of an authentic edition ( 1737-41 ). Curll 

 did not deal solely in garbage, as is shown in 

 a list of his containing 167 standard works, includ- 

 ing Swift's Meditation on a Broomstick (1710), Dr 

 South's works, &c. His Curliad ( 1729) is styled a 

 ' hypercritic upon the Dunciad Variorum.' It was 

 of Curll's biographies that Arbuthnot wittily said 

 they had added a new terror to death. 



Currach. See CORACLE. 



Clirragh, a large undulating down in the centre 

 of County Kildare in Ireland, 2 miles E. of 

 Kildpre town. It is the property of the crown, and 

 in it is a large camp of exercise, established in 1855, 

 with accommodation for 12,000 troops (see CAMP). 

 The Curragh of Kildare is even better known as a 

 famous racecourse. 



Curran, JOHN PHILPOT, Irish orator, was born 

 at Newmarket in County Cork, son of the seneschal 

 of the Manor Court there, July 24, 1750. At 

 Trinity College, Dublin, he was as idle and reckless 

 as he had been at school, but spite of his dissipations 

 he contrived to learn something of law, and the 

 boisterous taproom debates of his life in Dublin 



and London shaped him into an orator. After two 

 years at the Middle Temple, London, he was called 

 to the Irish bar in 1775. Here his conviviality, his 

 wit, and his vehement eloquence, soon made him a 

 prominent figure, and led to his being employed in 

 many of the greatest causes of the time. In 1782 he 

 became King's Counsel, and next year was returned 

 to the Irish parliament for Kilbeggan. He became 

 a strong supporter of Grattan, but his eloquence 

 proved less effective on the floor of the House than 

 before an Irish jury. His sarcastic retorts led him 

 into several duels, of which, in the course of his 

 career, he fought no less than five, all fortunately 

 without serious harm. Although a staunch Pro- 

 testant like so many great Irish patriots, Curran 

 had a warm sympathy with his suffering Catholic 

 countrymen, and was eloquent and constant in his 

 unavailing appeals to the government to change 

 a policy which was driving the Irish into rebel- 

 lion. With his defence of Archibald Hamilton 

 Rowan in August 1792 commenced the long series 

 of defences in state-trials which have shed such a 

 lustre on his name. The insurrection at length 

 broke out in 1798, but was speedily suppressed, 

 whereupon the prosecutions of its leaders at once 

 began. Curran flung himself into their defence 

 with a heroic energy that rose above the brow- 

 beatings of the bench and insured him an im- 

 mortality of affection in the hearts of his fellow- 

 countrymen. The last of his defences was that of 

 Napper Tandy in May 1800. Then came the 

 Union, which Curran had always opposed as 'the 

 annihilation of Ireland.' His own health was now 

 shattered, and soon domestic troubles followed to 

 darken his later years. His wife eloped with a 

 clergyman, and his youngest daughter, Sarah, pined 

 away and died in Sicily, a few months after the hap- 

 less fate of her bright young lover, Robert Emmett 

 (1803). Her story is immortalised in Moore's 

 well-known lines, ' She is far from the land where 

 her young hero sleeps.' After the death of Pitt 

 (1806) and the accession to power of the Whigs, 

 Curran was appointed Master of the Rolls in Ire- 

 land, an office which he held till his retirement in 

 1814. He died in London, 14th October 1817. His 

 remains were re-interred in Glasnevin Cemetery, 

 Dublin, in 1834. Curran's little figure, ugly face, 

 bright black eyes, and intense vivacity, formed a 

 sufficiently unique personality ; but his brilliant 

 wit, his quickness in repartee, his mental acuteness, 

 and the astonishing felicity of his ready language 

 were altogether unparalleled, and made him easily 

 the master of his company. He well deserved 

 O'Connell's epitaph : ' There never was so honest 

 an Irishman.' See Lives by his son, W. H. 

 Curran (1819), A. Stephens ('1817), and O'Regan 

 (1817); also Ch. Phillips, Ciirran and his Con- 

 temporaries (1850). His Speeches were edited, 

 with a Life, by Thomas Davis, in 1855. 



Curran t, a name originally belonging to a small 

 kind of grape (see CURRANTS), and transferred, in 

 consequence of the similar size of the fruit, to many 

 species of Ribes (order Saxifragacere, sub-order 

 Grossulariacefe ). The species known as currants 

 are destitute of spines, and have the flowers in 

 racemes : the spiny species are known by the name 

 Gooseberry (q.v. ). Among the fruit-shrubs most 

 generally cultivated in our gardens is the Red Cur- 

 rant (JR. rubrinn], Grosseille of the French, a native 

 of woods and thickets in the south of Europe, 

 found also in some parts of Asia and of North 

 America, perhaps rather a naturalised than a truly 

 native plant in Britain. It has long been cultivated^ 

 although it does not appear that it had a place in 

 the gardens of the ancient Greeks or Romans. The 

 berries, besides being used for dessert, and to a 

 much greater extent for pies, and for making 

 jelly (eaten with mutton and hare), are used 



