SKETCHES IN THE SOUTH OF IRELAND. LETTER I. TO THE REV. THOMAS P. M-E. DEAR SIR, Our mutual friend, Sir F. B. has, I understand, shown you some letters which I addressed to him, descriptive of a portion of Donegal with which you are well acquainted. If I am rightly informed, you were pleased to express your approbation of these my sketches, when you said, that after your day of active exertions, when the mind but too much partakes of the exhaustion of the animal spirits, you could take up my light and trivial matter, while unable to resort to more sedate or profitable reading. Allow me, then, to address similar sketches of the southern coast of Ireland to you; for to whom have I a better reason to dedicate these and any thing else my humble pen can produce. In the following pages you will perceive that I have not trodden on worn tracks. I leave to tourists and lakers to hurry along, like a gang tied to fashion's chain, from the Giant's Causeway to Killarney: no, (to use a huntsman's phrase) like flinging hound, I track a scent of my own, and desire to seek amusement where neither the seal-skin cap, nor the Tilbury tournout of a tourist ever were seen. It is needless to inform you what brought me to this extreme southern part of the county of Cork; suffice it, for all our present purposes to say that I arrived at the village of Skull, (as it is now called; but in older and Catholic days, Sancta Maria de Scholia, St. Mary of the Schools,*) on a fine cold clear day in the month of last *This was, as tradition informs us, the Maynooth of Mun ster. me, then, to address similar sketches of the southern coast of Ireland to you; for to whom have I a better reason to dedicate these and any thing else my humble pen can produce. In the following pages you will perceive that I have not trodden on worn tracks. I leave to tourists and lakers to hurry along, like a gang tied to fashion's chain, from the Giant's Causeway to Killarney: no, (to use a huntsman's phrase) like flinging hound, I track a scent of my own, and desire to seek amusement where neither the seal-skin cap, nor the Tilbury tournout of a tourist ever were seen. It is needless to inform you what brought me to this extreme southern part of the county of Cork; suffice it, for all our present purposes to say that I arrived at the village of Skull, (as it is now called; but in older and Catholic days, Sancta Maria de Scholia, St. Mary of the Schools,*) on a fine cold clear day in the month of last ster. This was, as tradition informs us, the Maynooth of Mun March, and as I rolled along a M'Adamized road leading to the village, I had no occasion whatsoever, to look out for a sign-post to tell me where there were dry lodgings, or entertainment for horse or man; for if there be entertainment in a hearty welcome, comfortable fare, and a community of Christian fellowship and feeling, I had all prepared without money and without price, at the house of the curate of the parish. If any reader of these sketches be a quiet easy personage, that loves a summer jaunt along the lower road to Lucan, or by the Glanmire road into Cork; one whose eye perhaps is made up for the enjoyment of such scenes, where the industry of man dresses, brightens, and brings into full point and prominence the features of nature; perhaps such taste and likings made and moulded on landscapes such as these, would not relish the rough coast of Cork, the cliffs of the Atlantic, the mountain bulwarks that curb the angry ocean; but still, after all, if I could show even a cockney these shores, gilt and |