KILCOLMAN CASTLE,
THE RESIDENCE OF THE POET SPENCER.
Few of the original houses of Genius[2] will excite more interest than the above relic of SPENCER. It is copied from a lithographic drawing in Mr. T. Crofton Croker’s “Researches in the South of Ireland,” where it is so well described, that we can spare but few lines in our abridgement of the passage:—
Kilcolman Castle is distant three English miles from Doneraile, and is seated in as unpicturesque a spot as at present could have been selected. Many of the delightful and visionary anticipations I had indulged, from the pleasure of visiting the place where the Fairy Queen had been composed, were at an end on beholding the monotonous reality of the country. Corn fields, divided from pasturage by numerous intersecting hedges, constituted almost the only variety of feature for a considerable extent around; and the mountains bounding the prospect partook even in a greater degree of the same want of variety in their forms. The ruin itself stands on a little rocky eminence. Spreading before it lies a tract of flat and swampy ground, through which, we were informed, the “River Bregog hight” had its course; and though in winter, when swollen by mountain torrents, a deep and rapid stream, its channel at present was completely dried up.
“Sometimes, misguided by the tuneful throng,
I look for streams immortalized in song,
That lost in silence and oblivion lie;
Dumb are their fountains, and their channels dry.”
Judging from what remains, the original form of Kilcolman was an oblong square, flanked by a tower at the south-east corner. The apartment in the basement story has still its stone arched roof entire, and is used as a shelter for cattle; the narrow, screw-like stairs of the tower are nearly perfect, and lead to an extremely small chamber, which we found in a state of complete desolation.