e made a very pleasant
summer halting-place for Americans landing at Queenstown, who now go
further and probably fare worse. One Western wanderer, with his family,
Father Keller told me, did last year establish himself here, a Catholic
from Boston, to whom a son was born, and who begged the Father to give
the lad a local name in baptism, "the oldest he could think of."

I should have thought St. Declan would have been "old" enough, or St.
Nessan of "Ireland's Eye," or Saint Cartagh, who made Lismore a holy
city, "into the half of which no woman durst enter," sufficiently
"local," but Father Keller found in the Calendar a more satisfactory
saint still in St. Goran or "Curran," known also as St. Mochicaroen _de
Nona_, from a change he made in the recitation of that part of the Holy
Office.

The drive from Youghal to Lismore along the Blackwater, begins,
continues, and ends in beauty. In the summer a steamer makes the trip by
the river, and it must be as charming in its way as the ascent of the
Dart from Dartmouth to Totness, or of the Eance from Dinard to St.
Suliac. My jarvey was rather a taciturn fellow, but by no means
insensible to the charms of his native region. About the Ponsonby estate
and its troubles he said very little, but that little was not entirely
in keeping with what I had heard at Youghal. "It was an old place, and
there was no grand house on it. But the landlord was a kind-man."
"Father Keller was a good man too. It was a great pity the people
couldn't be on their farms; and there was land that was taken on the
hills. It was a great pity. The people came from all parts to see the
Blackwater and Lismore; and there was money going." "Yes, he would be
glad to see it all quiet again. Ah yes! that was a most beautiful place
there just running out into the Blackwater. It was a gentleman owned it;
he lived there a good deal, and he fished. Ah! there's no such river in
the whole world for salmon as the Blackwater; indeed, there is not!
Everything was better when he was a lad. There was more money going, and
less talking. Father Keller was a very good man; but he was a new man,
and came to Youghal from Queenstown."

We passed on our way the ruins of Dromaneen Castle, the birthplace of
the lively old Countess of Desmond, who lies buried at Youghal. Here,
too, according to a local tradition, she met her death, having climbed
too high into a famous cherry-tree at Affane, near Dromaneen, planted
there by Sir Walt