MEMOIR OF A GENTLEMAN. 261 



was over, the worry and confusion of my unhappy life 

 would terminate. While the repairs proceeded, we resided 

 in a small house in a neighbouring village, and were not 

 much annoyed by unwelcome visitors. But no sooner was 

 the castle completed and the apartments reported habitable, 

 than the country for fifty miles round complotted, as I 

 verily believe, to inundate us with their company. A sort 

 of saturnalia, called the house-warming, I thought destined 

 to continue for ever ; and after having endured a purgatorial 

 state for several weeks, and the tumult and vulgar dissipa- 

 tion had abated, swarms of relations to the third and fourth 

 generation of those that loved us, kept dropping in, in what 

 they termed the quiet friendly way, until c the good house 

 Money-glass 5 * was outstripped in hospitality by my devoted 

 mansion. Although ten long miles from a post-town, we 

 were never secure from an inroad. Men who bore the 

 most remote affinity to the families of O'Shaughnessey or 

 O'Toole, deserted the corners of the earth to spoliate the 

 larder ; and persons who, during the course of their natural 

 lives, had never before touched fishing-rod or fowling-piece, 

 now borrowed them ' for the nonce/ and deemed it a good 

 and sufficient apology for living on me for a fortnight. 

 Pedlars abandoned their accustomed routes ; friars diverged 

 a score of miles to take us on ' the mission ;' pipers in- 

 fested the premises ; and even deserters honoured me with 

 a passing call, ' for the house had such a name." All and 

 every calculated on that cursed ceade fealleagh. An eternal 

 stream of the idle and dissipated filled the house - the 

 kitchen fire, like the flame of Vesta, was never permitted 

 to subside and a host of locusts devoured my property. 

 I lived and submitted, and yet had the consolation to know 

 that I was the most unpopular being in the province. I was 

 usually described as a ' dry devil, or a ' dark,-\ dirty little 



* This once celebrated mansion is immortalized in the old ballad, called 

 " Bumper Squire Jones," which chronicles the princely hospitalities of 

 that puissant and hard-headed family. Like " the Kilruddery Foxchase," 

 it was a mighty favourite with the stout old sportsmen in those merry 

 days. More popular airs have caused these popular and soul-stirring 

 lyrics to be disused, and, like those whose feats they recounted, they are 

 now almost forgotten. 



f " Dark," in the kingdom of Connaught, is frequently used synony- 

 mously with " unsocial." 



