men were dragged out of the house, and while preparations were being made to shoot them, one of the McDonalds was compelled to put a burning turf into the thatch of the house, and while doing so his hand was shot off by one of the soldiers. In vain did the old man proclaim the innocence of his sons, while he showed a written protection given them by Captain Ryves of Rathsallagh. The two eldest were ordered to kneel down, their aged parent falling on his knees beside them imploring mercy. They were murdered by his side, while their mother looked on, regardless of all danger from the raging fire behind her. The two younger McDonalds escaped in the confusion, concealed by the smoke of their burning homestead. They were perceived, but escaped unhurt, amidst volleys of bullets from their pursuers, and found a safe retreat in the wild glens and recesses of Church Mountain. The murdered bodies of the young men were concealed, and on the following Sunday, before daybreak, their aged parents carried them in sacks for a hasty burial in the old churchyard of Hollywood.

III.

In the summer of 1812, my informant went with his servants to draw home turf from the bog of Narraghmore. While they were loading their carts, a respectable young man was seen to approach, attended by a servant, who led into the bog a dray and horse, in which was a coffin, with some spades for digging. The young man seemed to look anxiously about him, and after some time began to open the surface of the bog. This very strange proceeding excited the curiosity of the

informant, who with his men came to the place where the stranger was excavating. His labors soon unravelled to some degree the mystery of the coffin. A corpse in perfect preservation lay exposed, but of a tallow-colored hue, owing to the mode and place of burial. The corpse was placed in the coffin, and the young man, before returning homewards with it, told those present that it was the body of his father, who was shot in the "battle of the bog-road" in the year 1798. He also told them that from time to time in his dreams he thought he saw his father come to his bedside, telling him to remove his remains, intimating also where they lay. Urged by the vividness and frequency of these nocturnal warnings, he at last came to the resolution to remove the remains to be mingled with their kindred dust in some cemetery in the neighborhood of Carlow. The young man's name was Brennan; his father was an extensive currier, and at the time of the skirmish happened to be going to Dublin with seven drays laden with merchandise. He was met on the bog road at Narraghmore, was detained by the military, his drays and horses drawn up for a barrier, from behind which they fired on the insurgents. Poor Brennan fell by a random bullet, and his mangled body found a hastily-made grave, where it lay for fifteen years, until removed for Christian interment, by the hands of a devoted child, from its lone and nameless grave in the bog of Narraghmore.

IV.

In August, 1798, some yeomen passed through Donard and went to Kilbelet, to the house of Mr. John Metcalf, known by the soubriquet of "the

Bully." He was descended from a respectable Yorkshire family, a scion of which settled near Donard about a century before. Poor Metcalf, learning his danger, fled up the side of Church Mountain. He was pursued and murdered on the mearings of the townland of Woodenboley. His assassins were two brothers who had been previously in his employment, and, owing to some disagreement about their work, they left him. Taking to illicit courses, they were soon after convicted of sheep-stealing and condemned to the rope, but with the alternative of joining the army, which latter they availed themselves of, to live, as it appears, for the commission of deeper crimes, for which they were allowed to go unpunished.

√.

At the battle of Old Kilcullen, Captain Erskine, while writhing in the agonies of death, by a swordblow, aimed at his assailant, cut right through the pike handle, while its blade pinioned him to the earth. "A long mound in the cemetery of New Abbey," adds Mr. Shearman, "marks the spot where he and his men who fell in the conflict were buried."

REMINISCENCES OF THE REBELLION.

THE same hand which conveyed the foregoing traditional details from the Rev. J. F. Shearman, also brought to us from a venerable old lady, Mrs. Anstace O'Byrne, a packet containing some curious

REMINISCENCES OF THE REBELLION.

363

reminiscences of the rebellion. We insert this document the more readily, inasmuch as it refers to persons and places already named in the text:

AN INFORMER'S SKELETON DANCING A JIG-LORD EDWARD SIRR -A CAMP FROLIC IN '98.

BOND

What strange sights children sometimes get to see! Some years more than half a century ago, the writer made one of a merry group of children who were frequently brought on summer evenings, by the middle-aged attendant who had charge of them, to walk and play in "The Cottage Park.” I do not know if the term is still used in common parlance in Dublin, but it then denoted all the greensward comprised within the boundary walls of Old Trinity, and appeared to be much greater in extent than now, and to hold trees of much larger girth than any to be found there at pres

ent.

One well-remembered evening our play was interrupted; the little stragglers were collected with a great air of mystery; powerful injunctions to silence were inculcated; we were told "we must be very good and quiet, as we were going to see 'The 'Natomy House,'" so the good woman called it, and so we duly called it after her until better instructed. What "The 'Natomy House" meant, we knew or cared not; it involved something hitherto unknown, and we gladly followed our guide. With stealthy steps, and sundry furtive glances around, which puzzled us amazingly, she led us to the door of a gloomy-looking house which, I suppose, it was not en regle that our visitors should enter. It was a square block of building, made, I think, of a decayed-looking, blackish.

stone. I imagine it must have been long since removed, for, on a late research, I vainly essayed to find either it or the site on which it stood. We were admitted to its interior by the guardian spirits of the place, a man and woman who had the care of it, and, I believe, resided there. We soon entered that chamber of horrors, the Anatomical Museum of Trinity College, Dublin. The picture of it retained by my memory is that of a very lofty and very spacious apartment, the centre of which was cumbered and blocked up in some strange way which left only a margin of walk round the sides of the room; these sides had rows of shelves all round, filled with mysteriouslooking glass vases.

My latest piece of reading just then had been a story by Madame de Genlis, in which one of Charlemagne's Paladins had gone on a tour of discovery to some mysterious chamber in search of a vase said to contain the senses of his friend Astolpho, who had gone demented; and which, having secured, he was taking off, when, to his amazement, he perceived another vase as duly labelled, which purported to contain his own senses, which he did not know he had lost. I immediately took it for granted that this was the kind of apartment visited by the renowned Roland, and enjoyed the roam through it very much. I merely record this little item to mark how easily the imagination of a child can be tinged by the mental aliment with which it is supplied.

But the great sight of the evening which our conductress had come to see was the skeleton of Jemmy O'Brien, the informer, dancing with that of an Irish giant; yes, suspended by the necks, there dangled from the ceiling of that apartment