BITS OF BLARNEY.
How many have heard of "Blarney," and how few know how and why this appropriate term has originated! How could they, indeed, unless they had made a pilgrimage to the Castle, as I did, in order to manœuvre Tim Cronin into a narration of its legends?—They may go to Blarney, whenever they please, but the genius loci has vanished. Tim Cronin has been gathered to his fathers. By no lingering or vulgar disease did he perish; he died——of a sudden.
Scarcely any part of Ireland has attained more celebrity than the far-famed village of Blarney, in the county, and near the city of Cork. At Blarney may be seen the mysterious talisman, which has the extraordinary power of conferring remarkable gifts of persuasion on the lips which, with due reverence and proper faith in its virtues, invoke the hidden genii of The Stone, to yield them its inspiration. The ceremony is brief:—only a kiss on the flinty rock, and the kisser is instantly endowed with the happy faculty of flattering the fair sex ad libitum, without their once suspecting that it can be flattery. On the masculine gender it is not less effective. Altogether, it enables the kisser, like History,
"To lie like truth, and still most truly lie."
Immortal poesie has already celebrated the locality of Blarney. The far-famed chanson, written by Richard Alfred Milliken,[1] and called "The Groves of Blarney," has been heard or read by every one:—in these later days the polyglot edition, by him who has assumed the name of Father Prout, is well known to the public. There is an interpolated verse, which may be adopted (as it sometimes is) into the original chanson, on account of the earnestness with which it declares that
"The stone this is, whoever kisses,
He never misses to grow eloquent:
'Tis he may clamber to a lady's chamber,
Or become a member of Parliament."
Blarney Castle is surrounded by the Groves mentioned in the song. It stands four miles to the northwest of "the beautiful city called Cork," and, of course, in the fox-hunting district of Muskerry. All that can now be seen are the remains of an antique castellated pile, to the east of which was rather incongruously attached, a century ago, a large mansion of modern architecture.