KILL A BITTERN. 3Q3 



too unsound to admit its being traversed by the lightest foot, 

 but generally it was broken into tammocks, which a bold and 

 practised shooter might pass with little difficulty. We took 

 opposite sides, and consequently few birds sprang without 

 affording one or the other of the guns a fair shot. The 

 number of snipes that flushed in this fen went far beyond my 

 expectation, though considerably excited ; and besides, we 

 met at least fifteen couple of that sweet little duck the Teal. 

 We followed the morass to its extremity, and then returned 

 and our beat homewards was pleasanter, and, so far as the 

 game-bags went, more profitable than the first range. 



Out of seventy head, we reckoned one woodcock and a 

 brace of old stagers that we found among the heathy banks 

 bordering the fen. We shot six couple of teal ; and, with one 

 exception, the remainder of the count were snipes, of which 

 at least a fourth were jacks. In the most impassable section 

 of the morass, old York pointed with more than customary 

 steadiness ; and, " it might be fancy/' actually looked round 

 with peculiar expression, as if he would intimate that no com- 

 mon customer was before him ! I got within twenty yards 

 and encouraged the old setter to go in ; but he turned his 

 grizzled and intelligent eyes to mine, and wagged his tail as 

 if he would have said, " Lord ! you don't know what I have 

 here." A tuft of earth flung by one of the aides-de-camp, 

 obliged the skulker to get up, and to our general surprise a 

 fine bittern arose. I knocked him over, but though he came 

 down with a broken wing and wounded leg, he kept the old 

 dog at bay until my companion floundered through the swamp 

 and secured him. On this exploit I plumed myself, for bit- 

 terns are here extremely scarce, and in Ballycroy they are 

 seldom heard or found. 



On our return home we passed the old castle of Doona, 

 once supposed to have been honoured by the residence of 

 Mrs. Grace O'Malley, who, if fame tells truth, was neither 

 a rigid moralist nor over-particular in her ideas of " meum 

 and tuum." Some wild traditions are handed down of her 

 exploits ; and her celebrated visit to that English vixen Eliza- 

 beth, is fairly on record. The castle of Doona was, till a few 

 years since, in excellent preservation, and its masonry was 

 likely to have puzzled Father Time himself; but Irish inge- 

 nuity achieved in a few hours what as many centuries had 

 hitherto failed in effecting. 



