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bouring country, therefore, could only have known her from his earliest 
recollection, as being then a very ancient, old lady; and I can imagine 
the minds of old people in her neighbourhood to have become awed and 
bewildered, while feeling in themselves the gradual, creeping infirmities 
of declining life, to see years on years, years on years, passing, gone ; 
and the great lady at the castle none the older, but as hale, as hearty, 
and as strong as when they were but children; still to be seen walking 
from the castle to the town for her pleasure, “‘ she that could ride, if she 
but pleased, the best horse in the kingdom, with her beautiful pillion, 
all velvet and gold!’ And in her later period, when, amidst the wreck, 
ruin, and desolation of this princely, patriarchal family, she, the vene- 
rable, solitary widow of a long past, an almost forgotten generation, she 
alone had remained unscathed, untouched—a fragmentary remnant of 
its past magnificent grandeur and power. Could all this be daily before 
the eyes, and in the thoughts, of the imaginative Irish, and not raise in 
their minds a mysterious and undefined idea that hers was no common 
life, but one guarded and preserved by an unseen Power, surely for some 
high and special design. The great Earl had perished miserably in his 
ill-advised rebellion. His only son, the last of the titled race, had since 
died, a prisoner in the Tower of London. The Harl’s boundless estates 
in the counties of Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary, Cork, and Waterford, had 
been parcelled out in endless divisions, and were occupied by strangers. 
Yet the old Countess Cattelyn remained among them, unharmed ; and for 
twenty years after its downfal, in her the Geraldine still seemed to have 
onE to represent 1r. And when, at long, long length, her wondrous 
course was closed, and she, too, with her husband, and six preceding 
earls, found her last earthly home in the Franciscan Friary at Youghal, 
her memory must have gathered round it an awful and affectionate re- 
verence, from the recollection of her ancient lineage and high rank, her 
fabulous old age, and that with her the great house of Desmond was 
now indeed extinct !—that the proud halls of Askeaton were, as the 
regal halls of Tara, levelled in the dust,—the glories of the Geraldines, 
like those of Brian, of Clontarf, passed away to the bards and minstrels 
of other days; and all that now remained to the sorrowing survivors was 
the Caoine* that had wailed over the old Countess Cattelyn ; while a 
Boyle lorded in the castle of Inchiquin, and a Preston flaunted in the 
ermine and coronet of Desmond! 
When, therefore, Fynes Morryson, nine years only after her death, 
was making his inquiries of all that was interesting and noteworthy, 
and when his informants came to the history of their old Countess, I 
again ask is it within the possibility of human nature, that, if she had 
been forcibly and illegally dispossessed of her castle and jointure, had 
been driven to wend her way over sea to Bristol, and from Bristol to toil 
* The pronunciation of Caoine is nearly Queen-a. That of the cis very like the French 
que.—J. WINDELE. 
2Cavine, pronounced Kwee-na, softening or dropping the sound of w as much as you 
can; or Ko’een-na, shortening the 0, so as to make thesound Ko’een one syllable.—O. C. 
