wee sawe there as cleare as Christall, naturally squared like Diamonds.1 "That part of the Countrey is all ful of great mountaines and hills, from whence came running downe the pleasant streames of sweete fresh running water. The naturall hardnesse of that Nation appeareth in this, that their small children runne vsually in the middest of Winter vp and downe the streetes bare-foote and bare-legged, with no other apparell (many times) saue onely a mantell to couer their nakednesse. "The chiefe Officer of their Towne they call their Soueraigne, who hath the same office and authoritie among them that our Maiors haue with vs in England, and hath his Sergeants to attend vpon him, and beare the Mace before him as our Maiors. "We were first intertained at the Soueraignes house, which was one of those 4. that withstood the Erle of Desmond in his rebellion. They haue the same forme of Common prayer word for word in Latin, that we haue here in England. Upon the Sunday the Soueraigne commeth into the Church with his Sergeant before him, and the Sheriffe and others of the Towne accompany him, and there they kneele downe euery man by himselfe priuately to make his prayers. After this they rise and go out of the Church againe to drinke, which being done, they returne againe into the Church, and then the Minister beginneth prayers. "Their maner of baptizing differeth something from ours: part of the seruice belonging thereto is repeated in Latin, and part in Irish. The Minister taketh the child in his hands, and first dippeth it back never heard of such having ever existed in the barony of Corkaguiny. Smith, the historian of the county, makes no mention of them. Yet I may observe, in illustration of the reference to "yron," that I have in my possession a Dingle tradesman's token, bearing the following inscription:-TOBY. CREANE. DINGLE-COVCH. IRON. WORKE. See Dr. Aquilla Smith's Supplement to his Catalogue of Tradesmen's Tokens, No. 29, in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. v. appendix vii. These "stones cleare as christall," or, as they are now called, "Kerry stones" and "Kerry diamonds," are to be found on the sides and tops of many of the Kerry mountains. Numerous are the joyous evenings which I have spent collecting them with my school-fellows in days now, alas! gone for ever! I have collected some large and very beautiful"Kerry diamonds" in the autumn of the year 1852, a selection from which I have presented to a lady friend in Dublin. I have also forwarded to our Honorary Secretary, the Rev. James Graves, a few specimens, which I hope are bright enough to illustrate the statement above made in the text. The Kerry diamonds appear to have been formerly held in much repute as an article of dress, as we learn from an interesting letter in the first volume of that curious old publication, the Anthologia Hibernica, p. 125, where it is stated that Thomas, the first earl of Kerry, had a passion for wearing Kerry-stone buttons, of which he had several suits set in the brilliant way. See also Croker's Researches in the South of Ireland, p. 323. The magnificent rock Kerry diamonds are principally obtained from the cliffs and caves of the western coast of the county and the Blasket islands. I have been informed that some of the coast-guards of the western stations here have sent away chests full of these rock diamonds to England. Several fine examples of the rock Kerry diamond were to be seen in the Great Irish Exhibition of 1853, and on the chimney-piece of the room in which I now write I have a small but not very good specimen of the rock diamond procured from the western part of the ancient kingdom of Kerry." wards, and then forwards, ouer head and eares into the cold water in the midst of Winter, whereby also may appeare their naturall hardnesse, (as before was specified.) They had neither Bell, drum, nor trumpet, to call the Parishioners together, but they expect till their Soueraigne come, and then they that haue any deuotion follow him. "They make their bread all in cakes, and, for the tenth part, the bakers bake for all the towne. "We had of them some 10. or 11. Tunnes of beere for the Victory, but it proued like a present purgation to them that tooke it, so that we chose rather to drinke water then it. "The 20. of December we loosed frō hence, hauing well prouided our selues of fresh water, and other things necessary, being accompanied with sir Edw. Dennie, his Lady, and two yong sonnes. “This day in the morning my Lord going ashoare to dispatch away speedily some fresh water that remained for the Victory, the winde being very faire for vs, brought vs newes that there were 60. Spanish prizes taken and brought to England. For two or three dayes wee had a faire winde, but afterwards it scanted so, that (as I said before) we were faine to keepe a cold Christmas with The Bishop and his clearkes."2 The original family name of the earls of Cumberland was Ponce, until Walter, the second son of Richard Fitz-Ponce, having obtained Clifford Castle, in Herefordshire, with his wife Margaret, daughter of Ralph de Toney, assumed thence that surname. From this Walter, the earl who undertook the voyage to the Azores was descended, and of him Burke writes:-"Earl George was educated at the University of Cambridge, and attaching himself to the study of mathematics, imbibed so decided a passion for navigation, that he became soon afterwards eminent as a naval commander, having undertaken at his own expense several voyages for the public service; but that, and a passion for tournaments, horse-racing, and similar pursuits, made such inroads upon his fortune, that he was said to have wasted more of his estate than any one of his ancestors."-Extinct and Dormant Peerages, 3rd ed. 1846, p. 127. [In illustration of the above very curious extract, Mr. Hitchcock sent the following remark from the letter of the gentleman who had directed his attention to it:-"It is singular that to this day-or, at least, fourteen years ago, for I have been out of Dingle so long-the bakers have still the custom, which I believe is peculiar to Dingle, of baking for a tenth part of the bread. Then the description of the 'Kerry stones,' the streams of water running down the streets,' and the price of fowl, might nearly stand for an account of matters as they now are. When I first went to Dingle, thirteen eggs were readily had for a penny."-EDS.] 1 The name of the earl of Cumberland's ship. 2 A cluster of rocks off the coast of Pembrokeshire. OF HAWKS AND HOUNDS IN IRELAND. BY JOHN P. PRENDERGAST, ESQ., BARRISTER-AT-LAW. TIME works such changes, both in the habits of men and in the appearance of a country, that to appreciate the history of former days one must endeavour to transport the mind from the present, and encompass it with the circumstances of the past. In this effort we have not merely to overcome the difficulty arising from "old customs changed, old manners gone," but from such a change in the aspect of the country, that were the actors of former scenes to return, they could scarce recognise their former haunts. Ireland of old-indeed up to one hundred and fifty years ago— was a thinly peopled country covered (not with large forests, unless in the King's and Queen's Counties, known as Leix, Offally, and Ely O'Carroll, but) with scattered woods and extensive plains.-Fynes Morryson's Itinerary, part iii. p. 160. Although without parks of fallow deer-for Sir John Davys (Discovery, pp. 124-5) observes, that the earl of Ormonde's park, at Kilkenny, was the only deer-park in Ireland-it abounded in red deer, like those of Scotland or of Killarney, which latter are but the relics of herds that roamed over hill and plain in former times. The survivors of this race have retired to the peninsula of Kerry and the wilds of Donegal jutting into the Atlantic, where a few may still be seen in those districts, the most remote from the cultivated haunts of men, and their last foot-hold in this island, so long their peculiar home. In the emblematic title-page to Sir James Ware's Antiquities of Ireland, published so late as the middle of the seventeenth century, Hibernia is represented as a kind of Diana, standing in the foreground of a woody scene, beside her a large deer-hound. In the distance are the deer, and in front a large tree swarming with bees, to indicate that Ireland was celebrated for her deer, her race of gigantic dogs, and for her abundance of wild honey. But her woods also harboured the wolf, and were full of martins in such numbers that lord Strafforde could promise archbishop Laud from out of the woods of Shilelagh, which he had wrung from the Byrns of Wicklow, enough of martins' skins to make a lining for his grace's winter gown. Let us then imagine ourselves at the distance of some three hundred years from the present, and from the leads of some neighbouring castle survey the scene. Looking down from the parapet, would be seen a green and swelling plain extending from the very walls of the bawn till it reached the neighbouring hills or wood-crossed only by some bridle-paths-and between, at distant intervals, the towers of some neighbouring castle, or the embattled wall and steeple of some abbey, embosomed in trees; or, let it be here in Kilkenny on some hunting morn, from the great tower of the castle. Waiting outside the great gate would be found the huntsmen and the dogs. In the court of honour Piers earl of Ossory, with a gallant company, getting ready for the field. How unlike the shooting parties and battues of the present day! Fowling-pieces and shot-belts were then unknown, and gun-powder but little used. The long bow and the cross bow were the soldier's arms. As in the old ballad of Robin Hood No waring guns were then in use, With these, sending their arrows as thick as hail, they conquered at Cressy and Poictiers. In those days they followed the chase with hawk and hound, and with a magnificence of which we should obtain but a poor conception, from even the best equipped trains of the present day. There awaited the earl of Ossory, as we suppose him riding out with all his company from the gate, no less than sixty deerhounds with their four and twenty huntsmen-for such was the number both of men and dogs used by the earl, as we shall see from an authority subsequently quoted. These deer hounds, no doubt, ran by sight more than scent; and they were held, in twos and threes in leashes, by hunters who were posted at different points to watch and let slip the dogs, as the deer might outrun the dogs first loosed. We can imagine the noise and joyousness of such a train leaving Kilkenny castle, and may, if we like, fancy we hear the earl jesting with his followers in Irish, for then, and long after, our Anglo-Irish nobles used the native tongue. Numerous, however, as was the earl's train, his hunting equipage had not the magnificence of, though it was no doubt more hearty than, those of men of like rank on the Continent and in England. And this leads one to consider the passion of the feudal nobles for the chase: more especially in France, Germany, and England, where they pursued it with a sumptuousness such as seems never to have been exhibited in Ireland. The extent and origin of their engrossing desire for this sport will be best appreciated by considering, in Monsieur Guizot's manner, in his History of Civilization in France, the condition of the feudal proprietor-a condition, he says, which though general in Europe, was probably unknown to all ancient times. He selects his castle, as the type and essence of the feudal system. Those massive walls, contracted chambers, and looped turrets, the parapets, battlements, and advancing barbicans; these were not the whims and caprices of wealth, but the necessity of his condition. He and his brother-adventurers, dwelling each on the property of some native, whom they had deprived of his lands and liberties, dwelt in the midst of dangers. Isolated, and obliged to depend on his own resources, he had need of fosse and tower against the attempts of the conquered race. And what was his life, cooped within this dark and narrow castle, without books, and without society! It was wearisome in the extreme-hence the absolute necessity for out-of-door life and enjoyment, and that overwhelming passion for the chase. It was to gratify this taste that William Rufus turned thirty miles along the southern coast of England, near his royal palace of Winchester, into a hunting forest, dispeopling sixty villages, besides monopolizing the right of sporting over all the kingdom. And when the Norman nobles won the freedom of hunting on their own estates, they considered this liberty as one of the liberties of England, and secured it by the Great Charter; for it was only on the confirmation of Magna Charta by king Henry III., that the clauses relating to the forest were first thrown into a separate charter, making the Charta de Foresta (Reeve's History of the English Law, c. v. p. 231). Some notion of the strictness with which they had been previously bound, may be obtained from the 9th and 12th chapters, whereby it was first permitted to every freeman to agist his own woods, i. e. to feed his cattle there, and to have liberty to take the eyries of hawks, eagles, and herons found there (Id. p. 255). But while they broke up the king's monopoly in favour of themselves, they continued it as regarded those beneath them, and enacted such severe laws, that in the matter just above mentioned they made it felony for any to steal hawks' nests, a statute which was only repealed within the present century. They forbade any under the degree of gentleman to intermeddle with vert or venison; and each Norman baron became after the model of their earlier kings, a little tyrant in his own fief, with his verderers and foresters, as they then called their game-keepers. From the king downwards to the pettiest baron, his hawks and his hounds and his equipage for the chase became the objects of the greatest parade. And so throughout the feudal nobility of Europe. The rolls of Close Writs, in the Tower of London, afford curious evidence of the taste of our early kings for falconry. Thus (in the 14th year of king John, A. D. 1213), we have the king's writ to the sheriff of Dorsetshire accompanying three gire-falcons sent to be mewed in that county, and directing him to find whatever may be required by Robin de Hauville their keeper, with his horse and man, and to furnish him with young pigeons' and swine's flesh for the girefalcons, and once a week fowls' flesh; the cost to be accounted to him at the exchequer.1 With another writ (21st March, 16th king John), the king sends to John Fitz-Hugh, by William de Merc and another, three girefalcons and "Gibbun the gire-falcon, than which," he adds, "we have no better;" and one falcon-gentle, and directs that they be put in mew and, for their food, be provided with plump goats and occasionally good hens, and once a week with hare's flesh; the cost of their Printed Calendar of Close Writs, in Tower of London, p. 118. |