Not fur from here wuz the cottage where Kate Kearney used to live. You know who she wuz, I spoze.
“For did you not hear of Kate Kearney?
She lives on the banks of Killarney;
From the glance of her eye
Shun peril and fly,
For fatal’s the glance of Kate Kearney.”
Whether he flew from her I d’no, but presoom he didn’t, men are so sot in these things.
Peril and danger hain’t a-goin’ to make ’em fly from a pretty woman—no, indeed!
In the lower lake, on an island, wuz the ruins of a big castle, picturesque and ivy-covered. It wuz owned by the O’Donohues. And the boatman said that every seven years the chief of the O’Donohues come back for a night to see his castle.
I thought to myself, mebby he come oftener than that, but didn’t say a word, not wantin’ to do anything to either make or break a legend hundreds of years old.