We saw the kitchen, where beeves were cooked in the merry old times, and the banquet-hall wherein they were carved. The latter was appropriated to a miscellaneous collection of rickety old farming implements,—rust, and dust, and decay, where brave knights laughed over the winecup,—
“And tapers shone, and music breath'd,
And beauty led the ball.”
Shall we re-ascend the tower, and preach, from that old stone pulpit, on “pulvis et umbra sumus?” Perhaps, as there is no congregation, and a Lunatic Asylum mighty convanient, we may as well postpone our sermon, and turn our steps to the gardens and groves of Blarney.
If the poet had not told us that “they are so charming,” I should scarcely have discovered the fact for myself, as they are but feebly ornamented with flowers, and—
“The gravel walks there, for speculation,
And conversation, in sweet solitude,”
are damply suggestive of a cold in the head. At the same time, from their pleasant position and varied surface, these grounds have a charm about them; and I should much like to wander in them, by moonlight, with—(I must decline, like the Standard Bearer, to communicate the young lady's name), just to see whether I had derived any benefit from my salutation of the Blarney Stone; whether I could say mavourneen with a sweeter tenderness, and discourse more fluently those “sugared glosses,” which are called by the sentimental “heart music,” and by the unsentimental “bosh.”
In these grounds the portly old gardener showed us one of those Cromlechs, which were used by the Druids for sacrificial or sepulchral purposes, and in which, I am ashamed to say, we professed an all-absorbing interest, though, on my asking Frank, as we left the gardens, “what a Cromlech was?” he replied that, prior to inspection, his idea had always been that it was a species of antediluvian buffalo!
Then we saw the lake
“That is stored with perches,
And comely eels in the verdant mud;
Besides the leeches, and groves of beeches,
All standing in order for to guard the flood.”
They say that, from this lake enchanted cows, snow-white and of wondrous beauty, come forth in the summer mornings, and wander among the dewy meads, to the intense astonishment and admiration, doubtless, of the celebrated Irish Bulls. 1