ue, should be taken by
one of his auditors to be an Irish _cure_, particularly as the French
_cure_ is, I believe, the equivalent of the Irish "parish priest"?

In the next place, the "Canadian priest" declares that the story "is as
old as the Round Towers of Ireland," and that M. de Mandat Grancey
represents him as making himself the hero of the tale. As a matter of
fact, M. de Mandat Grancey does nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he
expressly says that the _cure Irlandais_, who told the story, gave it to
his hearers as having occurred not to himself at all, but "to one of his
colleagues." Furthermore he is at the pains to add (_Chez Paddy_, p. 43)
that the story, which was not to the taste of some of the French
ecclesiastics who heard it, was related "as a simple pleasantry."
"But," he adds, and this I suspect is the sting which has so exasperated
the "Canadian priest," "he gave us to understand at the same time that
this pleasantry struck the keynote of the state of mind of many Irish
priests, and, he said, that he was himself the President of the League
in his district."

In connection with Colonel Turner's statements as to the conduct of
Father White at Milltown Malbay, and with the accounts given me of the
conduct of Father Sheehan at Lixnaw, this side-light upon the relations
of a certain class of the Irish clergy with the most violent henchmen of
the League, is certainly noteworthy. I happen to have had some
correspondence with friends of mine in Paris, who are friends also of M.
de Mandat Grarncey, about his visit to Ireland before he made it, and I
am quite certain that he went there, to put the case mildly, with no
prejudices in favour of the English Government or against the
Nationalists. Perhaps the extreme bitterness shown in the pamphlet of
the "Canadian priest" may have been born of his disgust at finding that
the sympathy of French Catholics with Catholic Ireland draws the line at
priests who regard the assassination of "bailiffs and tax-collectors" as
a pardonable, if not positively amusing, excess of patriotic zeal.

It was late when I reached Parsonstown, known of old in Irish story as
Birr, from St. Brendan's Abbey of Biorra, and now a clean prosperous
place, carefully looked after by the chief landlord of the region, the
Earl of Rosse, who, while he inherits the astronomical tastes and the
mathematical ability of his father, is not so absorbed in star-gazing as
to be indifferent to his terres