hich it is our object
to preserve, has been subjected to the charge of dealing too largely
in the marvellous; and it has been half insinuated that such is his
love for _diablerie_, that he is content to wander a mile out of his
way, in order to meet a fiend or a goblin, and thus to sacrifice all
regard for truth and accuracy to the idle hope of affrighting the
imagination, and thus pandering to the bad taste of his reader. He
begs leave, then, to take this opportunity of asserting his perfect
innocence of all the crimes laid to his charge, and to assure his
reader that he never _pandered to his bad taste_, nor went one inch
out of his way to introduce witch, fairy, devil, ghost, or any other
of the grim fraternity of the redoubted Raw-head and bloody-bones. His
province, touching these tales, has been attended with no difficulty
and little responsibility; indeed, he is accountable for nothing more
than an alteration in the names of persons mentioned therein, when
such a step seemed necessary, and for an occasional note, whenever he
conceived it possible, innocently, to edge in a word. These tales have
been _written down_, as the heading of each announces, by the Rev.
Francis Purcell, P.P. of Drumcoolagh; and in all the instances,
which are many, in which the present writer has had an opportunity
of comparing the manuscript of his departed friend with the actual
traditions which are current amongst the families whose fortunes
they pretend to illustrate, he has uniformly found that whatever
of supernatural occurred in the story, so far from having been
exaggerated by him, had been rather softened down, and, wherever it
could be attempted, accounted for.]

THE MURDERED COUSIN

"And they lay wait for their own blood: they lurk privily for
their own lives.

"So are the ways of every one that is greedy of gain; which taketh
away the life of the owner thereof."

This story of the Irish peerage is written, as nearly as possible,
in the very words in which it was related by its "heroine," the late
Countess D----, and is therefore told in the first person.

My mother died when I was an infant, and of her I have no
recollection, even the faintest. By her death my education was left
solely to the direction of my surviving parent. He entered upon his
task with a stern appreciation of the responsibility thus cast
upon him. My religious instruction was prosecuted with an almost
exaggerated anxiety; and I