Various

“ I am content to stand still at the age to which I am arrived—to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I do not want to be weaned by age, or drop, like mellow fruit, as they say, into the grave! Any alteration on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, puzzles and discomposes me. My household gods plant a terribly fixed foot, and are not rooted up without blood. ”

“ The simple devotee who poured his orisons to God beneath its holy shade believed that the hands of guardian spirits pruned its luxuriance and developed its form of beauty—that dews from heaven were sprinkled by angel hands to produce its rich and beautiful blossoms, which, like those of the thorn of Glastonbury, loaded the black winds of December with many a token of holy fragrance, in welcome of the heavenly advent of Him who left his Father’s throne to restore to the sons of Adam the lost inheritance of heaven. ”

“ The poor tailor’s own feelings were, however, at the time much more akin to mortal terror than to mirth or humour, as he found at the same time his mind burdened with an unwished-for, terrible, and dangerous secret, and himself in company with the murderer, who might at any moment change his mind, repent his confession, and take his life too. ”

“ Sun and sky, and breeze and solitary walks, and summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the cheerful glass, and candle-light, and fire-side conversations, and jests and irony—do not these things go out with life? Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides when you are pleasant with him?—Life and Remains of Charles Lamb.
A man cannot get his lesson by heart so quick as he can practise it: he will repeat it in his actions. ”

“ On the other hand, it is well known that persons, no matter how restless or uneasy they may have been previously, almost invariably sleep soundly on the night before execution. All doubts and uncertainty are then over: the mental struggle has ceased.
Rumours, indeed, were afloat that Cuffe had witnessed the commission of the suicide, and that M’Gennis had urged him to do the like also, in order not to give their enemies and the crowd the gratification of witnessing their execution. But how could this circumstance be known, as Cuffe himself did not admit it? ”

“ Next day, when M’Adam signified his intention of removing the whitethorn of Kildinan, his people stood aghast at his impiety, and one and all declared they would suffer a thousand deaths rather than perpetrate so audacious a sacrilege. Now, M’Adam was a man of high blood and haughty bearing, and accustomed at all times to the most rigid enforcement of his commands. ”

“ Many a biting March has passed over the heads of men since Colonel Barry lived at Lisnegar. He was of the true blood of the old Strongbow chiefs, who became sovereign princes in the land; and forming alliances with the ancient owners of the soil, renounced the Saxon connection and name. This noble family gloried in the title of M’Adam; [3] and the colonel did not shame his descent. He kept open house for all comers, and every day an ox was killed and consumed at Lisnegar. All the gentlemen of the province thronged thither, hunting and hawking, and feasting and coshering ”

“ I care not to be carried with the tide that smoothly bears human life to eternity, and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth—the face of town and country—the unspeakable rural solitudes—and the sweet security of streets. ”

“ At this wrathful denunciation the terrified man falls prostrate to deprecate the fearful malediction, and awakes with a cry of terror which alarms the listeners. As he proceeds to reveal the terrible vision which his sleeping eyes beheld, the crash of thunder, the flash of lightning, and the sweep of the whirlwind, envelope them. As the day dawns, they are found senseless, at a considerable distance from the spot where they had lain the preceding night to guard the fatal tree. ”

“ And here, if we could venture to raise a smile in the course of so revolting a detail, we would observe, that it must have been a ludicrous sight to see the tailor, who was but a meagre specimen of humanity, trailing along the all but giant frame of the murderer. ”

“ He is wrong in giving Morogh as the name of a modern barony, for there is none such in existence; and we have the most indisputable evidence to prove that the territory of Conmaicne mara, now called Connamara, never since the dawn of authentic history comprised more than one barony. It is to be regretted that these etymological phantasies of Mr Beauford about the country of O’Flaherty are received as true history by the O’Flahertys themselves, and repeated in modern topographical and literary productions of great merit. ”

“ The fierce whirlwind, that in mockery of human daring had tossed them, like the stubble of the field, had realized the dream of the sleeper, and borne off their long profuse hair in its vengeful sweep. ”

“ The records of crime in our own and other countries contain numerous striking examples of the detection of murder by singular and sometimes apparently trivial means. These have appeared in a variety of published forms, and are of course generally known; but we shall select a few unpublished instances which have come within our own cognizance, and seem to us to possess peculiar and striking features of their own, in the hope that they may be found to possess some interest for the readers of the Irish Penny Journal. ”

“ The space we have limited ourselves to, prevents us from saying more in this number of Cuffe, whose crime was of a much more national character, and occupied a good deal the attention of the government of the period; and whose detection, after a lapse of twenty-four years—in fact, after his having declined gradually from the prime of manhood to hoary-headed age—seems to go farther in supporting the popular prejudice that the murderer can never escape detection. ”

“ Now, to any one acquainted with the manner in which compound words are formed in the Irish language, it will be obvious that the name Flaithbheartach is not derived from a locality or territory, but that it is formed from flaith, a chief, and beart, a deed or exploit, in the following manner: flaith, a lord or chief, flaithbheart, a lordly deed or exploit; and by adding the adjective and personal termination ach (which has nearly the same power with the Latin ax) , we have flaithbheartach, meaning the lordly-deeded, or a man of lordly or chieftain-like exploits. ”

“ The young man may die quickly, but the old man cannot live long; the young man’s life by casualty may be abridged, but the old man’s term by no physic can be long adjourned; and therefore, if green years should sometimes think of the grave and the judgment, the thoughts of old age should continually dwell on the same.—Remains of Sir Walter Raleigh. ”

“ It appears from the authentic Irish annals, and the whole tenor of Irish history, that the Irish people were distinguished by tribe names only up to the period of the monarch Brian Boru, who published an edict that the descendants of the heads of tribes and families then in power should take name from them, either from the fathers or grandfathers, and that these names should become hereditary and remain fixed for ever. ”

“ Shortly after the discovery of the suicide, we among others visited the cell to see the body, when, in a conversation with the acute and highly intelligent physician to the prison, he observed what iron nerves the murderer must have possessed to effect such a suicide, as from his own height, and the lowness of the latch, he must, in order to complete the strangulation, have persevered for several minutes in keeping his neck strained, during any one of which, up to the last few, he might have readily recovered himself. ”

“ Again, the territory of Cairbre Aobhdha is not the barony of Kenry, neither is it a hilly district, but one of the most level plains in all Ireland; and lastly, the name O’Donovan does not moan “chiefs of the hilly district on the river,” for this family name was called after Donovan, the son of Cathal, chief of the Hy Figeinte, a people whose country extended from the river Shannon to the summit of Slieve Logher in the county of Kerry, and from Bruree and the river Maigue westwards to the verge of the present county of Kerry. ”

“ Our Attachment to Life.—The young man, till thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. He knows it indeed, and if needs were, he could preach a homily on the fragility of life; but he brings it not home to himself any more than in a hot June we can appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of December. ”

“ Conmaicne does not mean the chief tribe, but the race of a chieftain called Conmac; Conmaicne mara, which is now anglicised Connamara, was never called Conmaicne ira, and Conmaicne mara and Iar Connaught are not now coextensive, nor were they considered to be so at any period of Irish history. Conmaicne mara was never called Hy Iartagh, and O’Flaherty was not the ancient chief of Conmaicne mara, for O’Flaherty was located in the plains of Moy Seola, lying eastwards of Lough Corrib, until he was driven across that lake into the wilds of Connamara by the De Burgos in the 13th century. ”

“ The father of the present proprietor of the land had planted the whole space with fir-trees, and these flourishing in the rich soil formed by decomposed human bodies for many a foot beneath, have shot up to an unusual size, and furnish a proof that even in death man is not wholly useless, and that, when his labour is ended, his carcase may fertilize the sod impoverished by his greedy toil. ”

“ Colonel Redmund Barry, Jonas Devonshire, and James Barry, gentlemen, being overseers thereof.’”
The Influence of Women.—How often have I seen a company of men, who were disposed to be riotous, checked all at once into decency by the accidental entrance of an amiable woman; while her good sense and obliging deportment charmed them into at least a temporary conviction that there is nothing so beautiful as female excellence, nothing so delightful as female conversation. To form the manners of men, nothing contributes so much as the cast of the women they converse with. ”

“ The affrighted tailor having of course readily taken the required oaths, M’Gennis confessed to him the murder of his wife, using at the same time horrible imprecations, that if ever a word on the subject escaped the tailor’s lips, he would, dead or alive, take the most deadly vengeance on him. He then proceeded to cut and dinge his hat in several places, and inflict various scratches on his hands and face, directing the tailor to assert that he had found him attacked by four men on the road, on his return from Claremorris ”

“ The case we shall first select, not so much for the manner of the murderer’s detection as for the singular plan he struck out to escape suspicion, and the strange circumstances connected with the crime and its punishment altogether, is that of a man named M’Gennis, for the murder of his wife. ”

“ The Castle of Antrim, or Massarene, as it is now generally called, appears to have been originally erected early in the reign of James I., by Sir Hugh Clotworthy, who, by the establishment of King James I. had the charge of certain boats at Massarene and Lough Sidney, or Lough Neagh, with an entertainment of five shillings Irish by the day, and 18 men to serve in and about the said boats, at ten-pence Irish by the day each. This grant was made to him by patent for life, in 1609 ”

“ Those who are most associated with women of virtue and understanding will always be found the most amiable characters. Such society, beyond everything else, rubs off the protrusions that give to many an ungracious roughness ”

“ Previously to this reign the Irish people were divided into various great tribes commanded by powerful chieftains, usually called kings, and these great tribes were further sub-divided into several minor ones, each commanded by a petty chieftain, but who was subject to the control of the Righ, or head of the great tribe. Thus, in Thomond the name of the great tribe was Dal Cais, from Cormac Cas, the progenitor of the regal family, and of all the sub-tribes into which this great race was divided. ”

“ Moreover, Giolla-Phadruic, the name of this chieftain, does not mean “chief of the country between the rivers,” as Mr Beauford would have us believe, but servant of Saint Patrick, which, as a man’s name, became very common in Ireland shortly after the introduction of Christianity, for at this time the Irish were accustomed to give their children names not only after the Irish apostle, but also after other distinguished saints of the primitive Irish church ”