writers, which, let us hope, has gone for ever, if it ever existed. Father Mathew is buried here, in St. Joseph’s Cemetery, and a bronze statue to his memory stands in Patrick Street.
Cork is a picturesque and interesting old city. Its churches are mostly modern; but St. Finbarr’s Cathedral stands on the site of a very old and famous church, and is itself a fine building.
Cork is one of the principal places where the genuine Irish cloak is at home, and most picturesque it is, though few of the younger women of to-day affect it. For the most part, the girls wear the universal shawl, draped over head and shoulders. The cloaks worn by the matrons and elderly women are great full-length wraps of a black or dark-blue cloth, with a wide hood. Rumour has it that they cost from five to ten pounds apiece, and last, literally, from generation to generation, being sometimes passed down as an heirloom from mother to daughter for half a century. There is a factory for the manufacture of these capes at Blarney, not far from the celebrated castle, and the product finds a large sale among lady visitors who like to spin along the roads at thirty miles an hour, and feel it unbecoming to wear the hideous motor-cap and mask of fashion.
Cork abounds in “cars” of all degrees of decrepitude and luxuriousness. The Irish jaunting-car is much more a real accessory of Irish life than the shillalah or the shamrock. In Wicklow one finds the cars more numerous than elsewhere; in the west they are the most decrepit, and in Dublin the most luxurious; but in Cork, of all centres of population, they appear to be the most in use.
There has been considerable fun poked at them. They are certainly not beautiful, comfortable, or magnificent, and their drivers, like the “jarvies,” “cabbies,” and “cochers” of other lands, are a species apart from all other humanity.
In some parts of the country it is compulsory that the name of its owner, usually the driver, be legibly written on the tailboard of every car. This led to the story which Punch, if it did not invent, at least promulgated, that an inspector, who asked Pat what he meant by having his name obliterated, was met with the reply: “Ye lie, sor; it’s O’Brien.”