‘Yer honour,’ says the spalpeen, ‘I’m not a young man, an’ yet my head was never this many a night twice on the same pillow, an’ you’d be a long day findin’ out the spot that in that time I hav’n’t visited.’

‘Maybe you’re the Wanderin’ Jew,’ exclaimed Father Madden.

‘Jew or Gentile,’ says the spalpeen, ‘a wanderer I am, an’ a wanderer I must be; an’ now good bye to ye all, an’ God bless ye;’ and with that away he walked, an’ the never a sight of him did any one in Banagher lay his eyes on since. Some said he was this and some said he was that, and more said he was a sperrit; but what do ye think but the great scholars from Dublin, to hide their ignorance, gave out that he was somebody that Father Madden tuthored for the purpose to make little of thim an’ their larnin’, and have the laugh against thim.’

Next morning when all the counthry went out of curiosity to see the big stone, they found it torn down an’ carried off, for Mac Coghlan got it taken down in the night an’ buried somewhere; but, any how, it tould nothin’ but the truth, for in a few years afther, the castle fell with the frost, an’ not long afther that Mac Coghlan died; an’ sure you know yourself that he was the last of his name.”

A. M’C.

We should be grateful to any of our correspondents who would favour us with a biographical sketch of the last Mac Coghlan, of whom so many stories are still related by the peasantry of the King’s County, and of whom the following sketch is given in Mr Brewer’s Beauties of Ireland: it is from the pen of the late Chevalier Colonel de Montmorency.

P.

“Thomas Coghlan, Esq.—or, in attention to local phraseology, ‘the Maw’ [that is, Mac], for he was not known or addressed in his own domain by any other appellation—was a remarkably handsome man; gallant, eccentric; proud, satirical; hospitable in the extreme, and of expensive habits. In disdain of modern times he adhered to the national customs of Ireland, and the modes of living practised by his ancestors. His house was ever open to strangers. His tenants held their lands at will, and paid their rents, according to the ancient fashion, partly in kind, and the remainder in money. ‘The Maw’ levied the fines of mortmain when a vassal died. He became heir to the defunct farmer; and no law was admissible, or practised, within the precincts of Mac Coghlan’s domain, but such as savoured of the Brehon code. It must be observed, however, that, most commonly, ‘the Maw’s’ commands, enforced by the impressive application of his horse-whip, instantly decided a litigated point! From this brief outline it might be supposed that we were talking of Ireland early in the seventeenth century, but Mr Coghlan died not longer back than about the year 1790. With him perished the rude grandeur of his long-drawn line. He died without issue, and destitute of any legitimate male representative to inherit his name, although most of his followers were of the sept of the Coghlans, none of whom, however, were strictly qualified, or were suffered by ‘the Maw,’ to use the Mac, or to claim any relationship with himself. His great estate passed at his decease to the son of his sister, the late Right Hon. Denis Bowes Daly, of Daly’s-town, county of Galway, who likewise had no children, and who, shortly before his death in 1821, sold the Mac Coghlan estate to divers persons, the chief purchaser being Thomas Bernard, Esq. M. P., in whom the larger proportion of the property is now vested.”

THE ROYAL FAMILY OF STATEN-ISLAND.

It has long been the general belief that the gipsy race, which is found every where else, has never yet penetrated into America; but the opinion is erroneous. There is a family on Staten-Island whose history and habits prove their Zingaro descent, despite the counter evidence of their white skins, patches of which may be seen through the rents of their tatters, like intervals of blue sky in a clouded empyrean.