King Cormac, happened on the salmon of knowledge; and time and your patience, good reader, would fail me, to recount all his succeeding renowned deeds. And now, I take my leave of Patrick's Purgatory and Donegal, advising you, my good Sir, unto whom I have ventured to address these letters, and every other person who may have leisure to peruse such trifles, if you do not like the information and amusement I have placed before you, to go and see for yourselves. I remain, my dear Sir, Your's, &c. &c. Lucan, Dec. 16, 1826. C. O. SKETCHES IN THE SOUTH OF IRELAND. LETTER I. TO THE REV. THOMAS P. ME. 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 Perciv 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, ster. as tradition informs us, the Maynooth of Mun |