Various

“ In a voice broken by sobs and terror, Fernando began to say that he had seen Don Pedro stealing by night to the queen’s chamber, when he was interrupted by Elvira, who again clung to him with frantic earnestness.
“Thou sawest it not! Oh, say thou sawest it not! My boy, the heavy wrath of God will fall upon thee if thou dost not unsay this fearful falsehood. I am not cursing thee, but I would avert the curse. Thou MUST unsay it. It is not possible mine own flesh could all rebel against me. What is it has bewitched thee, Fernando, to do what devils would leave undone? ”

“ Staying his hand, he said,
“Rise, Garcia—for thy father’s sake I spare thee. Thou wilt henceforth avoid the son of the Moorish Caya.” Then taking the lady Blanca, who was fainting with the effects of her terror, once again in his arms, he bore her into the house of Don Pedro, and left the vanquished ravisher in pain of body and mortification of heart.
“Tell me, lady,” said Ramiro, as he leant over the form of the reviving Blanca, “how art thou? Assure me that I leave thee well and happy.” ”

“ Elvira wound her arms about the infante’s form, kissed him without saying a word, and fainted at his feet.
“Her artifices have prevailed with the boy,” said Garcia, with ill-dissembled rage, “but the testimony of others is not to be thus overborne.”
“Wilt thou enter the lists against her champion, if any dare to defend her with his sword?” said the king.
Garcia was silent.
“If thou wilt not,” said Sancho, “Elvira shall be declared innocent, and her accusers traitors.”
“Let her champion appear, then,” replied Garcia. “What my tongue asserts, my sword shall ever prove. ”

“ This fact Garcia laid hold of to sustain him in accusing the queen of adultery with Don Pedro, and he announced to the nobles his intention of so doing on the arrival of his father.
Sancho had been six years away, and had heard of nothing in the interim from Navarre that was not calculated to diminish the little love he ever felt for Elvira, and increase the romantic attachment he felt towards Caya. Ramiro, the offspring of that attachment, he loved beyond all his sons for his nobleness of nature and person, and he secretly wished for some excuse for distinguishing him above the others. ”

“ Don Pedro Sesse was a faithful minister and a merciful viceroy. A gallant soldier in his youth, he was an enemy to treachery and to everything that tended to infringe the laws of chivalry. He it was who had frustrated the designs of Garcia and Gonsalo, and had therefore earned their hatred. Elvira looked to him as her best guide and protector amidst the sorrows of her lot.
In this state was the kingdom of Navarre, when the news came of a great victory gained by Sancho over the Moors of Corduba, a place at that time the metropolis of Moorish Spain. ”

“ If Caya was an ambitious woman, as most of her nation were, or if she had cherished, under an outward show of meekness and contentedness, thoughts and purposes of bringing about by means of her opportunities the establishment of the Moorish dynasty in Christian Spain, she might have drawn hope of success in her schemes from the dissensions of the royal family; at least she might have sought in them some excuse for making her darling Ramiro a sharer in one of those arbitrary partitions of the Spanish kingdoms which the barbarous notions of the times rendered of frequent recurrence. ”

“ Besides the throne of Navarre, he had succeeded to the royalty of Arragon, and the sovereignty of Castile was the dower of his queen. He had married the beauteous Elvira Muna early in life; and before he had reached the full prime of manhood, two of his sons, Garcia and Gonsalo, were able to bear the panoply of a knight; and a third, Fernando, a boy of thirteen, was sighing for the day to come when he too should have the spur upon his heel and the sword upon his thigh. Another son, also, King Sancho boasted of, but not by Donna Elvira. ”

“ It has for a long time appeared to me a desirable object, as regards the history of Ireland and the information of the Irish people, to communicate to the public a correct account of the origin and signification of the proper names, tribe names, and surnames of the people of Ireland; more especially as some of the popular writers of the last century have misled them generally into the most erroneous notions with regard to these classes of names. ”

“ The chiefs of every district were elected from the elder branches of the dynasts; and the kings of the principalities from the senior chief of the subordinate districts, who on their advancement to the dignity obtained the name of the district or clan over which they presided; it being an universal custom amongst all the Celtic tribes to denominate the noblesse, with their other appellations, from the place of their residence; a custom in some measure yet retained in the Highlands of Scotland. The variety of names used by the ancient Irish have occasioned great confusion in their history ”

“ In the case of the flax, the weed grows from seeds deposited in the earth with the seed of the flax, and at first appears as a slender pale thread, twisting about in different directions until it meets with one of the stems of the flax, when it immediately twists itself round it, and produces curious little knobs upon its inner side, which pierce the outer coat or bark of the stalk of the flax, and suck from it the juices which it has drawn from the ground, and prepared for its own nourishment. ”

“ Sancho had taken in fight from a Moorish chieftain a most beautiful horse, which in a short time became such a favourite with him, that, fearing some accident would deprive him of the noble steed amidst the perils of war, he had sent him home to Elvira, with strict injunctions that no one should be suffered to mount him in his absence. These injunctions were forgotten by the queen, who suffered Don Pedro to use the animal occasionally. ”

“ And then rising, and standing before Garcia, she continued—“Man—for son I cannot call thee now—how canst thou be so cruel? Is there no voice in a mother’s misery to touch thy heart?”
Garcia answered not, but desired the officer to proceed and summon the next witness. The officer called out the name of Gonsalo!
Not alone Elvira, but the whole court were surprised to see the king’s second son presenting himself as his mother’s accuser. Gonsalo had a new series of alleged facts to produce. ”

“ The ferocious temper and evil heart of Garcia left him no repose until he had matured a scheme of vengeance to effect the ruin of Ramiro, if possible, before the return of his father. All the more violent means he rejected, as he was unwilling to compass so important an event except by plausible pretexts. He therefore determined to work upon the fears of Elvira, and as far as possible to arouse her jealousies. ”

“ Since, then, they have not been transmitted, how, I would ask, did Mr Beauford discover that such a custom had ever existed? It is true that after the establishment of Christianity in the fifth century, the descendants of the pagan Irish who entered into holy orders, or into the monastic state, had their pagan names sometimes changed, as we learn from the lives of the saints of the primitive Irish church, but no documents now remain to prove, or even suggest, that such a change had been made previous to the introduction of Christianity. ”

“ Let us hope the best rather than fear the worst, and believe that there never was a right thing done, or a wise one spoken in vain, although the fruit of them may not spring up in the place designated, or at the time expected. ”

“ Truth is the most compendious wisdom, and an excellent instrument for the speedy dispatch of business. It creates confidence in those we have to deal with, saves the labour of many inquiries, and brings things to issue in a few words.—Spectator. ”

“ They live a long time, these fellows, but they die at last—all the pills and possets in the world will not avert death. The passenger who sees the hearse and mutes, thinks some rational being has died—the stranger, who reads the tombstone, thinks that a man moulders below. ”

“ In recent numbers of the Penny Journal, Martin Doyle has published two valuable papers upon the necessity of selecting good seed, and I would wish to call the attention of the cultivators of flax, who form so numerous a body amongst the small farmers of the north and west of Ireland, to the absolute necessity of attending to the seed of that plant, and not to purchase the cheaper seed that is sometimes offered to them, in preference to that which, although rather more expensive, is yet free from the seeds of a very noxious weed which are usually mixed with the cheaper flax-seed. ”

“ We think so.—Court Gazette.
Petrarch’s Opinion of Money.—He who expends it properly, is its master; he who lays it up, its keeper; he who loves it, a fool; he who fears it, a slave; and he who adores it, an idolator. ”

“ Looking northwards, the sloping banks of the river, at the opposite sides of an extensive meadow, are thickly planted with larch, fir, beech, and ash, from the midst of which, an aged oak is here and there seen to rise above its younger and less aspiring companions ”

“ He always knows what is to be for dinner, what remains in the larder—and employs his gigantic intellect in considering the best mode of cooking it. He is naturally fretful and peevish, and in cold weather has a helplessness of aspect peculiar to himself. These men never look like Englishmen. They never acquire that manly bluff appearance which is the character of our nation. ”

“ Such an incongruous amalgamation of styles, however, in an architectural composition, is, it must be confessed, not very consistent with refined taste, and cannot be too strongly reprobated; but it has existed for a considerable time, and will unfortunately continue till architects become skilful antiquaries as well as tasteful artists, and their employers acquire such an accurate judgment and knowledge of art as will enable them to form a correct opinion of the capabilities of those they employ, and not take their estimate of them, as now, from fashion or popular reputation. ”

“ The whole of human virtue may be reduced to speaking the truth always, and doing good to others.
Many an acknowledged truth was once a controverted dogma; the basis of every science has been considered a fundamental error. ”

“ God knows what is the matter with them, but they always seem out of sorts. Their features are sharp—their voices are effeminate, and they are nearly all of them “troubled with colds.” The business of life with them is to regulate the affairs of housekeeping—their tastes, habits, thoughts, and rivalries, are womanish. ”

“ The weed to which I refer is one of those curious plants, which, from their peculiar structure, are unable to draw their nourishment directly from the earth, but are obliged to feed themselves by sucking the juices of other plants, and thus destroying them, or weakening them so greatly as to prevent their producing a crop that will repay the cultivator for his labour and expense. ”

“ They were uniformly called Mic Conmara, as being the descendants of Cu-mara, who was chief of the clann Cuileain in the tenth century; and the name Cumara, signifying hero of the sea, was first given to a chief of this family, from his being an expert seaman, not from his dwelling on the sea, for the clann Cuileain or Mac Namaras were not located on the sea, or near the sea, but in an inland territory in the south-east of the county of Clare. ”

“ As for his assertion that in the time of paganism every child at his birth received a name generally from some imaginary divinity under whose protection he was supposed to be, it is another pure fabrication; there is no authority in any of our ancient documents that men were called after their pagan deities, except in three instances, in the darkest period of Irish history ”

“ Here the name Cineal Eoghain, which had been translated genus Eoghain, i.e., race or progeny of Eoghan, by all the early Irish writers, is made to signify the principal division of the northern county of the Oll or Bolgæ. ”

“ They are always complaining; if not positively unwell themselves—a case of rare occurrence—some of their family is sure to be so—or, if all that should fail, then, at least, a dish has been broken, and there is always a number of standing grievances ready to be produced when occasion requires. ”

“ Thus it appears that Beauford’s derivation of the tribe name of Cineal Eoghain is a mere etymological [Pg 328] phantasy, unsupported by history or etymology. I have also to mention that the extent he gives to the territory of this tribe is too great, for it never comprised the one-fourth part of the present county of Donegal, or any part of Armagh. ”

“ We have no instance of men having been named after pagan deities but these three, and I venture to say that they are not sufficient to establish Beauford’s hypothesis. But a stronger argument than this can be urged against his theory, namely, that among all the pagan names of men which have been preserved by our authentic annalists, not one appears to be called after a pagan deity ”