himself pyramidally on the other two; and thus laden she crossed the river in a high swell, with as much ease as you would pass over a Dublin kennel only encumbered with your own Magazine. I hope your readers won't think I have given you too heavy a burden for the effect of my contrast. Her passengers often afterwards blamed themselves for trusting their lives to her capricious cruelty; and Bettheen herself confessed that she was strongly tempted to disencumber herself of her load in the middle of the stream, and was only restrained by the dread of losing her sack of corn in the attempt. Not long after the murder of Watkins the Brynes were cut short in their career of plunder and massacre, being hanged at Cork for manifold crimes and misdemeanors, on the evidence of one John Cashel, who had, I believe, been in some degree implicated in their outrages. Their conduct at the place of execution evinced the most hardened depravity no sign of penitence, no token of remorse, told their sorrow for their past offences. They died hoping nothing, believing nothing, and fearing nothing!' The only appearance of any thing like remorse was that one of them, during the period between the passing and the execution of his sentence, was heard to observe that he could wish Keating and Ryland had not been executed so guiltless of any crime: but the carelessness with which the observation was made, and the quickness with which the feeling passed away, like a faint gleam of light through the gloom of a dungeon, only served to display the darkness it could not dispel. Bettheen, who was present at the execution, bore the scene with amazing firmness: not a tear was in her eye -not a shadow crossed her cheek not a word of sorrow passed her lip; and, but for a slight shuddering and a stifled groan at the moment they were launched into eternity, you would have thought her the most unconcerned spectator in the thronging multitude that crowded around the place of execution. But when she returned to her native hills she gave unbounded vent to her fury; roaming from mountain to mountain, raging like a whelp-reft tigress, and vowing vengeance against the author of her brothers' deaths. Few dared venture within her sight until the first paroxysm of her madness had passed away; even the very cattle fled from her presence; and she spent many days and nights without food or a habitation, living, it is thought, on berries or the bark of shrubs, and sleeping (if she did sleep) on the mountain heath. At length her rage subsided into what appeared a melancholy torpor, though the event showed that it was only the gloom of settled determined vengeance; and Cashel, who for some time skulked about the city of Cork, returned to the mountains at the end of two years, imagining that_grief had broken down the spirit of Betty, and that he might rest undisturbed, save by the worm that dieth not.' When she heard of his arrival, her eyes, which had long seemed quenched in ideot torpor, flamed with the anticipation of near and quick revenge. She started from the position which she had not quitted for months before, except to totter from the chimney corner to her scanty bed at the far end of the cabin, and rushed with the strength and rapidity of other times to execute her wrath. It was dinner-time when one of the inmates of the house where Cashel then was discovered Betty hastening to the place. The alarm was given, and he had just secreted himself under a bed when she entered. She screamed wildly when she missed him from the table; but, fastening the door, she first searched round the outer apartment, whence, hastening to the bed-room, she drew the devoted trembling wretch from his skulkingplace, and, flinging him across her back with his head downward, rushed with her prey to the glen below. A labourer who was working on a cliff over the glen (for the people of the house were too much terrified to stir beyond the threshold) was the only person who witnessed the terrible catastrophe. He was alarmed, he said, by the half-stifled shrieks of Cashel, and, looking, he beheld Bettheen stalking up, the glen with her victim flung behind her. She paused when she reached a sharp jutting rock, which rose out of the middle of the stream; and, addressing a few words, unintelligible by the distance, to the wretch who seemed petitioning for mercy, she dashed his head against the projecting rock, and his last cry of agony and despair was drowned in the savage yell of fiendish exultation which was echoed from the hills around as she hailed the completion of her vengeance. Then, flinging the body on the sands, she sat above it, muttering execrations, watching the last throb of life in his quivering limbs, and laughing, in wild delirium of horrid delight, when some strong contortion of fiercer pain bore evidence of his increasing agony. At length, when all was over, and no more of life remained to glut her insatiate vengeance, she snatched the body from the earth, and, piercing into the depths of the mountains, is supposed either to have buried it in some enexplored chasm, or to have torn it limb from limb, and hidden the fragments in some exhausted turfpit, as no traces of the body were ever after discovered. She returned to the place of her abode without any marks of her exploit, except that some spots of fresh blood were still visible on her garments; the flash of revenge yet lingered in her eye, and something like a smile of triumphant malice was perceptible on her countenance: but they soon subsided, and she sunk again into that stupid listlessness from which revenge had for a moment aroused her. I expressed my astonishment, at this part of the story, that the law did not take cognizance of her conduct: but they told me that it was thought the effect of insanity; and, as people would rather have nothing to do with her, no one would busy himself in setting on foot an investigation. I was surprised to find some even speak of her with a kind of pity, when they described the ravages which grief is said to have made upon her frame and countenance; but pity for the unfortunate, however their misfortunes may have been caused, is a leading trait in the character of the Irish peasantry. Bettheen continued some years in this state of insensibility,never making any greater exertion than from her bed to the fire-place, her mind appa. rently closed against any external impression, except when her brothers or Cashel were named; and care was taken to prevent any allusion to the subject, for on such occasions her eye would lighten up into a wild unearthly fury, she foamed at the mouth, laughed savagely as when she sat above the corse of her victim, and then sunk again into her accustomed stupor. Some short time before her death, to the astonishment of those who beheld her, she walked out towards the glen, the scene of her last bloody performance: and those who traced her steps described her as sitting on the rock against which she had dashed the head of Cashel, and acting over in imagination the by-gone tragedy; gazing on the sand where the body had lain; tossing her withered arms (for grief had wrought a rapid change in her frame) in frightful gesture; and shouting, less loudly indeed, but not less appallingly, than when her savage yell first announced the triumph of revenge. This custom she continued until prevented by her death-sickness, which occurred soon after, and bore her to answer on high for the conduct of which man had taken no cognizance. Such is the story of Bettheen-aVryne, as related by almost every peasant on the mountains of Araglen: and even now, when the wintry flood comes down, and the wind whistles shrilly through Macrona's wood, the cottage girls, as they gather closer round the fire, whisper, There's Bettheen murdering Cashel.' When the story was concluded I walked down towards the bridge, and, as I leant over its battlements, felt that I never beheld a spot so calculated to excite superstitious fears, and conjure up the visions of the dreary past. This bridge, forming a part of a new line of road which runs through the mountains east of Kilworth, has been only lately erected over a small, but wild, mountain stream, which discharges itself into the Araglen. In summer, like the river into which it runs, it is but a scanty stream, scarcely murmuring over its rocky bed; but, like its moody recipient, when the winters torrents swell its force, it sweeps from side to side of the glen, bearing large stones, heaps of heath-bound earth, and torn shrubs, along its rapid course. The scene, as I then gazed upon it, seemed to have acquired a new and wilder charm from the tale with which it was associated. To the north of the bridge, at the other side of the Araglen, the wood of Macrona lifted its leafless branches: behind me, towards Kilworth, an interminable waste of heath-clad swelling hills lay spread in dim extension. Glenfinishk, (Anglice, the glen of the fair waters), stretched deep into the mountains beside me, its waters at one time foaming over some hidden rock, giving back the moonbeam in a thousand broken reflections; then stealing calmly in unchequered beauty, save when now and again some fairy spark of diamond light started up for a moment from its glassy surface Whilst I gazed upon this scene, so lonely, so tranquil, yet so wildwhilst I marked the grey rocks that lifted themselves up into the moonlight in various and fantastic forms, or the fleecy wreaths of smoke that rose from some unseen hovel in the glen beneath-I felt that I would scarcely start to meet a spirit there.' My thoughts went forth from me, and joined themselves with the things around me, and, whilst I apostrophized the scene, and my own sensations, in the following stanzas, with which I shall conclude my communication. I understood what our late lamented poet meant when he asksAre not the mountains, seas, and skies, a part Of me and my soul, as I of them?' Glenfinishk! where thy waters mix with Araglen's wild tide, "Tis sweet, when in the deep blue vault the moon is shining bright, Oh! if departed spirits e'er to this dark world return, Ye shadowy race! if we believe the tales of legends old, Ye've sometimes held high converse with those of mortal mould; THE TRUANT. THE heart of a poet once wandered from home, Where flowers with the hues and the fragrance of Heaven, To look for a lodging was then his first thought; By A chamber to let' on a door;-so he knock'd, And the maid who admitted him look'd far less shock'd He knew not who 'twas had the chamber to let ; Again on the world, sans mistress, sans bed, And for some quiet weeks in this house he found rest: More than once, on our heart, looked at least graciously. Yet somehow it was that mistakes would occur; Either she mistook him, or else he mistook her : For she sometimes said 'No' when her eyes answered 'Yes': So to give up this riddle he then did resolve; And when he, one morn, asked Miss Prude Should he go?' He left her, and afterwards lodged with Miss Chief, With Miss Fortune, Miss Chance; but with none he missed grief; From his master, with whom he was happy at home; He wished he'd ne'er given his hopes to the sex, Who were born, it should seem, poets' hearts to perplex; Ah! my master,' exclaimed our poor penitent heart, C. O'F. DUBLIN AND LONDON MAGAZINE. OCTOBER, 1825. THE FATHER OF THE FORTESCUES. IN TWO CHAPTERS.-CHAPTER I. Years have gone, since, through the church of Clone, Years have past on since last I trod the spot, * YEARS, indeed, have gone away since I visited the place which I have endeavoured to describe in the lines above quoted; but years cannot alter the impression made upon me by that visit. The church of Clone was, and I believe is still, a beautiful ruin; there is a mixture of freshness and of age in the appearance of the walls. The churchyard, though latterly neglected, is pretty there is about it a rural neatness, an air of comfort, that might almost induce a stranger to stop and die near it, that his remains might rest there. The headstones are thinly scattered through the place; and the openings between them are occupied by a number of beautiful shrubs, that seem to have been placed there by a sort of melancholy foresight. Some of them, no doubt, were planted merely to ornament the spot where a beloved brother, or son, or friend, was laid; but many more of them were probably VOL. I.-No. 8. fixed there by the trembling fingers of those who intended, in the progress of the after-years, to repose beneath their congenial shelter. It was in the delightful season of autumn that I paid my last visit to that interesting neighbourhood: the old church was not far from the place of my residence, and after dusk I generally took a stroll in that direction. I have sat there for hours upon some grassy grave, thinking to myself of the hopes and the fears, of the wishes and the disappointments, of those who then rested in loneliness around me. I have lingered there in the gentle light of the young harvest moon, tracing upon the weather-beaten flags the half-worn inscriptions, and smiling at the weakness of those who could think that, by such means, a trifling name might be rescued from ob scurity. I may have spent many idle hours there; but, in that spot, I never passed a guilty one. These 2 x |