It occurred to me, too, as I was going through the School of Housewifery, that our government might do worse than establish similar schools in the Southern States for training colored girls in the same way, but I suppose the Supreme Court would pronounce such a scheme unconstitutional.
A house by the roadside now occupied by a farmer named McSweeny is pointed out as the birthplace of Robert Emmet.
Lord Kitchener was born about nineteen miles from here, at Crotto House, Tralee, where his father and mother were stopping for the summer. His father was a colonel in the army and was on leave from his regiment at the time of Kitchener’s birth.
The great Daniel O’Connell was also born in the neighborhood, and his nephew, Sir Maurice O’Connell, lives in a stately mansion that overlooks the lower lake in the middle of a beautiful grove.
Muckross Abbey ranks with Melrose Abbey in Scotland and Kenilworth Castle in England as among the most picturesque and interesting ruins in the world. The walls and the Gothic windows, the tower and several other distinctive features are well preserved, and the ivy drapery makes it an exquisite picture. The abbey stands within the park of two hundred and ninety acres that surrounds Muckross House and is the property of Lord Ardilaun, who has many beautiful places in different parts of Ireland, and cannot possibly enjoy them all; but none is so beautiful as Muckross House.
Muckross Abbey, Killarney
He purchased the property of the Herbert family who inherited it from Florence MacCarthy More, who, in 1750 married Agnes, daughter of Edward Herbert of this county, and they had one son who was the last MacCarthy More in the direct line, and that famous family became extinct, for he died without issue in 1770, and the estate passed into the possession of his mother’s family, being the nearest relatives. The Honorable Arthur Herbert died in 1866, and a beautiful Celtic cross has been erected to his memory upon the highest hill in the neighborhood, overlooking the park that he prized so highly, and where he enjoyed so much pleasure. His widow and daughters lived there for thirty years until they expired, when the place was offered at auction and Lord Ardilaun bid it in for £63,000 for the estate, and paid £10,000 more for furniture, pictures, live stock, and other property, making it cost him altogether about £73,000. And now he offers it for sale—the whole thing, a house of thirty-two rooms, a park of two hundred and ninety acres, the ruins of Muckross Abbey, and history and legends galore—for £75,000. And perhaps he would take less from the proper person. In 1907 a syndicate was organized to purchase the place and turn it into a Monte Carlo. They proposed to make the handsome old mansion a gambling-house and erect a large hotel with all possible allurements near by; but when Lord Ardilaun learned of the scheme, he instructed his solicitors to insert in the deed a clause stipulating that it should be used for residential purposes only, and that made it worthless to the syndicate. So Muckross Abbey and its beautiful surroundings are still in the market.
The abbey dates back to the dawn of Christianity in Ireland, and its site was originally occupied in the fourth or fifth century by a monastery founded by St. Finian of Innisfallen and his monks. The present building, however, was erected by Donald MacCarthy More, Prince of Desmond, in 1330, and was finished by his son in 1340 for the Franciscan friars, who occupied it as a monastery and as a college. There was some kind of an institution on the same site between the monastery of St. Finian and the present one, for an ancient manuscript in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, gives an account of its destruction by fire in the eleventh century. The founder, Donald MacCarthy More, built the beautiful chapel as a burial place for himself and his posterity. It is also the burial place of the O’Donaghues of the Glens, and in the very center of the choir is a large square tomb in which was deposited the body of “The Great O’Donaghue,” the chieftain of the lakes, of whom Mr. Maurice R. Moriarity, the custodian, gives many interesting legends in his history of the ruins.