*A hundred thousand welcomes.
Next came Dromana Castle, where the extraordinary old Countess of Desmond was born,—the wonderful old lady whose supposed one hundred and forty years so astonished posterity. She must have married Thomas, twelfth Earl of Desmond, after 1505, as his first wife is known to have been alive in that year. Raleigh saw her in 1589, and she died in 1604: so it would seem that she must have been at least one hundred and ten or one hundred and twelve when she met her untimely death,—a death brought about entirely by her own youthful impetuosity and her fondness for athletic sports. Robert Sydney, second Earl of Leicester, makes the following reference to her in his Table-Book, written when he was ambassador at Paris, about 1640:—
'The old Countess of Desmond was a marryed woman in Edward IV. time in England, and lived till towards the end of Queen Elizabeth, so she must needes be neare one hundred and forty yeares old. She had a new sett of teeth not long afore her death, and might have lived much longer had she not mett with a kinde of violent death; for she would needes climbe a nut-tree to gather nuts; so falling down she hurt her thigh, which brought a fever, and that fever brought death. This my cousin Walter Fitzwilliam told me.'
It is true that the aforesaid cousin Walter may have been a better raconteur than historian; still, local tradition vigorously opposes any lessening of the number of the countess's years, pinning its faith rather on one Hayman, who says that she presented herself at the English court at the age of one hundred and forty years, to petition for her jointure, which she lost by the attainder of the last earl; and it also prefers to have her fall from the historic cherry-tree that Sir Walter planted, rather than from a casual nut-tree.
Down the lovely river we went, lazily lying back in the sun, almost the only passengers on the little craft, as it was still far too early for tourists; down past Villierstown, Cooneen Ferry, Strancally Castle, with its 'Murdering Hole' made famous by the Lords of Desmond, through the Broads of Clashmore; then past Temple Michael, an old castle of the Geraldines, which Cromwell battered down for 'dire insolence,' until we steamed slowly into the harbour of Youghal—and, to use our driver's expression, there is no more 'onderhanded manin'' in Youghal than the town of the Yew Wood, which is much prettier to the eye and sweeter to the ear.
Here we found a letter from Salemina, and expended another eighteenpence in telegraphing to her:—
PEABODY, Coolkilla House, near Mardyke Walk, Cork.
We are under Yew Tree at Myrtle Grove where Raleigh and Spenser
smoked, read manuscript Faerie Queene, and planted first potato.
Delighted Benella better. Join you to-morrow. Don't encourage
archaeologist.
PENESCA.
We had a charming hour at Myrtle Grove House, an unpretentious, gabled dwelling, for a time the residence of the ill-fated soldier captain, Sir Walter Raleigh. You remember, perhaps, that he was mayor of Youghal in 1588. After the suppression of the Geraldine rebellion, the vast estates of the Earl of Desmond and those of one hundred and forty of the leading gentlemen of Munster, his adherents, were confiscated, and proclamation was made all through England inviting gentlemen to 'undertake' the plantation of this rich territory. Estates were offered at two or three pence an acre, and no rent was to be paid for the first five years. Many of these great 'undertakers,' as they were called, were English noblemen who never saw Ireland; but among them were Raleigh and Spenser, who received forty-two thousand and twelve thousand acres respectively, and in consideration of certain patronage 'undertook' to carry the business of the Crown through Parliament.
Francesca was greatly pleased with this information, culled mostly from Joyce's Child's History of Ireland. The volume had been bought in Dublin by Salemina and presented to us as a piece of genial humour, but it became our daily companion.
I made a rhyme for her, which she sent Miss Peabody, to show her that we
were growing in wisdom, notwithstanding our separation from her.
'You have thought of Sir Walter as soldier and knight,
Edmund Spenser, you've heard, was well able to write;
But Raleigh the planter, and Spenser verse-maker,
Each, oddly enough, was by trade 'Undertaker.''