poor unfortunates on the roads, who sold buttermilk and a little oaten bread. After having passed this river, we came to sleep at Castle Dairmon (Castle Dermot), a little village under the dominion of the Catholics. It is twelve miles from Racoul.23

The third day we went to Kinkakoul ( )24 then to Balinhoulan (Ballylaughan), where there is 25 a fine castle, of which the governor was of the English nation, and lately converted to the Catholic

"marched [from Naas] to Kilcullen, burning in their march the villages in the way, which belonged to the Rebels, and quartered at Kilcullen that night." This district therefore appears to have remained waste for upwards of two years.-C.

23 Another mistake about Rathcool, which is here substituted for Kilcullen Bridge.-C. Castle Dermot is 27 miles from Rathcool, and 18 miles from Naas, but precisely 12 from Kilcullen Bridge.-R.

24 This may be either Old Leighlin or Carlow, more probably the latter, then called Catherlow, and by no means too remote in sound from Kinkakoul to mean the same place with French authors of that period.-R.

May it not be Killcolle? which I observe on a map of the County of Carlow, nearly north-east of Carlow, and due north of Leighlin Bridge.-C.

25 Ballylaughan Castle, near Leighlin Bridge. There is a view of it in Grose's Antiquities of Ireland, Vol. ii. p. 10, and its present state is minutely described in Ryan's History of Carlow, p. 328. The Governor mentioned in the text was probably Colonel Walter Bagnell, great-grandson of Marshal Sir Henry Bagnell, who was killed at the battle of Blackwater in 1598, and to whom Sir Walter Scott alludes in his poem of Rokeby.-C.

"Ballylaghan Castle presents a gateway between two lofty circular towers, in the style of Tunbridge Castle."-The Scientific Tourist in Ireland, Booth, 1818.

religion. This village is distant thirteen miles from Castle d'Airmon.

The fourth day we arrived at Kilkinik (Kilkenny), the Catholic capital, the seat of the Confederation of Ireland. This city is the size of Orleans, 26 seated on a small river which empties itself into the sea at eighteen miles distance.27 Its castle 28 is placed on

26 See Note VII. in Appendix.-R. C.

27"The rapid and beautiful Nore," as Mr. Wakefield calls it, or to use the not perfectly accurate words of the poet Spenser"the stubborn Newre, whose waters grey,

By fair Kilkenny and Rosse-pont broad

-,"

does not exactly empty itself into the sea. It falls into the river Barrow, about eighteen miles below Kilkenny, which feels the influence of the tide nearly to this point, although distant upwards of twenty miles from the sea.-C.

28 The Castle of Kilkenny is said to have been originally built in 1172 by Strongbow, the leader of the English Conquest of Ireland ; to have been destroyed by the Irish in the year following; re-built by their opponents 22 years afterwards, and in 1391 purchased by James Butler, the third Earl of Ormond, from which period to the present time, this Castle has continued the chief residence of that illustrious family. In 1399, Richard II. was entertained here for fourteen days. In 1650, the Castle, after a brave defence by Sir Walter Butler, surrendered to the irresistible Cromwell; at the close of the same century, it was re-edified by the first Duke of Ormond, (the Lord Lieutenant at the period of M. le Gouz's visit to Ireland,) and Kilkenny Castle has been in our times restored (as it is called), and adorned by an architect of considerable reputation, Mr. Robertson. An account of Kilkenny Castle previous to Mr. Robertson's restoration, and of the many interesting pictures preserved there, may be found in Ledwich's Antiquities of Ireland, pp. 479-483, and views of Mr. Robertson's restoration, in Fisher's "Ireland Illustrated," p. 32.-C.

the river. There are monasteries of Jacobins, 29 of Recolets,30 and a college of Jesuits,31 who are in great honour among the people.

At the gates of the city they seized upon me and led me to the mayor,32 who judging by my physiognomy that I was English, told me that I was a spythat my figure, my speech, and carriage were those of a native of England. I maintained that he was

29 In the Rue St. Jaques, Paris, the Dominican order possessed its first and primary establishment; hence the popular name for the Dominicans in France, was Jacobins, à sancto Jacobo. When their Convent became the national property at the general confiscation in 1790, the Club of Robespierre held its meetings in the Church of the Dominicans, and were sarcastically called Jacobins, a name which they have rendered execrable to mankind.-M.

"Some chapters of the order were held here, [at the Black Abbey of Kilkenny, founded about 1225,] in 1643, when the whole was repaired."-Ledwich, p. 492.-C.

30 Recollects, quasi recollecti, being a branch of the order of St. Francis, but professing a stricter rule than the general body of Franciscans. They are also called Strictioris observantiæ, or Observantines. And in another passage of these travels (p. 25), they are termed Zoccolant friars from zoccolo or sock, a sort of sandal which they wore tied up with leather thongs, and a sort ofjuste milieu between going bare foot altogether and wearing a shoe such as is generally worn.-M.

31 The heads of the House or College of the Jesuits in Kilkenny, at this period, (according to Walsh,) were Henry Plunket, Robert Bath, Christopher Maurice, William St. Leger, William Dillon, and John Usher, and they seem to have possessed themselves of the Augustinian Abbey, which in 1645, the following year, was confirmed to them by the Pope's nuncio Rinuccini.-See Ledwich, pp. 449 -450.-C.

32 A manuscript which I have seen in the library of Sir William Betham, would furnish the name of this predecessor of Lavater.-C.

mistaken, and as politely as I could contradicted him, telling him I was of the French nation, and a good Catholic; that the passports I had from the King of England were proof of what I advanced, that he might read them and inform himself of my profession. He took them rudely enough from my hands, and reading only the superscription in English, "Mestre le Gouz, his passe," which signifies the pass of Mounsieur le Gouz, he was confirmed in his error, and said to the company, "See, if this name be not English, and if I have not judged rightly that this fellow is a spy. Let the soldiers come and take him to prison; we do not so easily suffer these sort of ramblers; we will soon discover the truth." The impertinence of this Lord 33 shocked me: I replied to him, "You say I am English without any foundation, but your imagination. Is there no Frenchman here who can judge if the French language is not natural to me, and English strange? As for my name, it is English ;34 and it may be that my ancestors formerly came from England to live in Brittany, after the invasion of the Saxons, as those of many other French families did."

33"Lord" is the word used in the original text, and it is not impossible that the title of Lord Mayor was assumed by the Mayor of Kilkenny at this period, in consequence of the town being the seat of the supreme Council of the Confederate Catholics of Ireland. The person referred to, however, may not be the Mayor, but Lord Montgarret, the President of the Council.-C.

34 It would appear from the sound to have been Gooche or Goose. -R.

He sent in search of an inhabitant, a native of Caen, in Normandy, who assured him that I was French. I had leave to withdraw; and owing to the Catholic Council which was held in this town the hotels were so full,35 that if I had not met with a Norman, called Beauregard, I should have been forced to lie in the

streets.

35 The Confederate Catholics, as the General Assembly of Deputies from all the Provinces of Ireland, first met at Kilkenny on the 2 4th of October, 1642. See Note VIII. in Appendix.-C.