employed is a good answer to
those pessimists who maintain that the curse of the poorer Irish is
the filthiness, laziness, and general slatternliness of the women. In
dress and general bearing the girls of Blarney would compare
favourably with those of many English manufacturing towns; and,
inasmuch as Blarney Mills are successful, their work must be well
done. One reason of course of the comfortable look of the Blarney folk
is that all the family work. Perhaps the husband works at agriculture,
and the wife and daughter at the mill. All work, and hence a good
income, as at Blackburn and other cotton towns, instead of the
starvation which attends a useless woman who, with her string of
helpless children, hangs like a millstone round her husband's neck.
There are no "useless mouths" at Blarney, where everybody helps to
maintain the family roof-tree, and to prove that the Irish of the
south, like those of Connemara, are susceptible of being taught, if
only pains be taken with them. It must be admitted that Blarney Mills
are in the second generation, having been founded by Mr. Mahony, the
father of the late "Father Prout" and of the present proprietor. The
houses of the workpeople at Blarney are neat and trim, white and
clean, and a repose to the eyes of beholders, sick of slouching thatch
and bulging mud walls.

Perhaps, however, the spot of all others in which the sharpest
contrast occurs between the old life of Ireland and that brought about
by "improving" landlords and tenants is the hamlet of Millstreet,
situate on the line of railway between this place and Mallow, once a
kind of Irish Tunbridge Wells, and famous for the "Rakes of Mallow,"
whose virtues are immortalised in verse. When Mallow was the farthest
south-western outpost of civilization it is possible that the "rakes"
who converged upon that pretty spot from the surrounding country
"ranted," "roared," and "drank" to the extent that the poet has
credited them withal. But they are gone now, these rakes, and Mallow
appears to get on very well without them.

It is remarkable for its pretty villas, and for a comfortable hotel,
kept by a self-made man, who has risen from the ranks into prosperity
by sheer industry and foresight. Millstreet is a very different kind
of place from Mallow. The latter has the beautiful Blackwater river to
give it beauty; but Millstreet is chiefly remarkable as the _locale_
of the mill which gives it a name; as the habitation of the Rev