“Coming, sir!” replied Sam, running up-stairs.
“How long you have been!” said Mr. Pickwick.
“There was something behind the door which perwented our getting it open for ever so long, sir,” replied Sam.
And this was the first passage of Mr. Weller’s first love.
The custom of kissing the Blarney Stone is explained as follows: In the year 1602, when the Spaniards were inciting the Irish chieftains to harass the English authorities, Cormac MacCarthy held, among other dependencies, the Castle of Blarney, and had concluded an armistice with the Lord-President, on condition of surrendering this fort to an English garrison. Day after day did his lordship look for the fulfillment of the compact, while the Irish Pozzo di Borgo, as loath to part with his stronghold as Russia to relinquish the Dardanelles, kept protocolizing with soft promises and delusive delays, until at last Carew became the laughing stock of Elizabeth’s ministers, and “Blarney talk” proverbial.
A popular tradition attributes to the Blarney Stone the power of endowing whoever kisses it with the sweet, persuasive, wheedling eloquence so perceptible in the language of the Cork people, and which is generally termed blarney. This is the true meaning of the word, and not, as some writers have supposed, a faculty of deviating from veracity with an unblushing countenance, whenever it may be convenient.
The curious traveler will seek in vain the real stone, unless he allows himself to be lowered from the northern angle of the lofty castle, when he will discover it about twenty feet from the top, with the inscription, “Cormac MacCarthy fortis me fierifecit, A. D. 1446.” As the kissing of this would be somewhat difficult, the candidate for Blarney honors will be glad to know that at the summit, and within easy access, is another real stone, bearing the date of 1703.
In Blarney Castle, on a crumbling tower,
There lies a stone (above your ready reach),
Which to the lips imparts, ’tis said, the power