I give you this story only at second-hand; but you have it in substance–and he wasted few words over it–as Paul Devereux told it me. It was not the only queer story he could have told about himself if he had chosen, by a good many, I should say. Paul’s life had been an eminently […]

Imagine to yourself an old, rambling, red-brick house, with odd corners and gables here and there, all bound and clasped together with ivy, and you have Craymoor Grange. It was built long before Queen Elizabeth’s time, and that illustrious monarch is said to have slept in it in one of her royal progresses–as where has […]

Hush! what was that cry, so low but yet so piercing, so strange but yet so sorrowful? It was not the marmot upon the side of the Righi–it was not the heron down by the lake; no, it was distinctively human. Hush! there it is again–from the churchyard which I have just left! Not ten […]

“I have made a point all my life,” said the doctor, “of believing nothing of the kind.” Much ghost-talk by firelight had been going on in the library at Fordwick Chase, when Doctor Feversham made this remark. “As much as to say,” observed Amy Fordwick, “that you are afraid to tackle the subject, because you […]

Yes, I have been haunted!–haunted so fearfully that for some little time I thought myself insane. I was no raving maniac; I mixed in society as heretofore, although perhaps a trifle more grave and taciturn than usual; I pursued my daily avocations; I employed myself even on literary work. To all appearance I was one […]

They were three. It was in the cheap night-service train from Paris to Calais that I first met them. Railways, as a rule, are among the many things which they do not order better in France, and the French Northern line is one of the worst managed in the world, barring none, not even the […]

Some few years ago one of those great national conventions which draw together all ages and conditions of the sovereign people of America was held in Charleston, South Carolina. Colonel Demarion, one of the State Representatives, had attended that great national convention; and, after an exciting week, was returning home, having a long and difficult […]

Giraudier, pharmacien, premiere classe, is the legend, recorded in huge, ill-proportioned letters, which directs the attention of the stranger to the most prosperous-looking shop in the grand place of La Croix Rousse, a well-known suburb of the beautiful city of Lyons, which has its share of the shabby gentility and poor pretence common to the […]

Being a third Extract from the legacy of the late Francis Purcell, P. P. of Drumcoolagh. There is something in the decay of ancient grandeur to interest even the most unconcerned spectator–the evidences of greatness, of power, and of pride that survive the wreck of time, proving, in mournful contrast with present desolation and decay, […]

Being a Fourth Extract from the Legacy of the late F. Purcell, P. P. of Drumcoolagh. ‘All this HE told with some confusion andDismay, the usual consequence of dreamsOf the unpleasant kind, with none at handTo expound their vain and visionary gleams,I’ve known some odd ones which seemed really plannedProphetically, as that which one deems“A […]

Being a second Extract from the Papers of the late Father Purcell. ‘The earth hath bubbles as the water hath–And these are of them.’ In the south of Ireland, and on the borders of the county of Limerick, there lies a district of two or three miles in length, which is rendered interesting by the […]

Being a Seventh Extract from the Legacy of the late Francis Purcell, P. P. of Drumcoolagh. You will no doubt be surprised, my dear friend, at the subject of the following narrative. What had I to do with Schalken, or Schalken with me? He had returned to his native land, and was probably dead and […]

In looking over the papers of my late valued and respected friend, Francis Purcell, who for nearly fifty years discharged the arduous duties of a parish priest in the south of Ireland, I met with the following document. It is one of many such; for he was a curious and industrious collector of old local […]

Being a Sixth Extract from the Legacy of the late Francis Purcell, P. P. of Drumcoolagh. In a sequestered district of the county of Limerick, there stood my early life, some forty years ago, one of those strong stone buildings, half castle, half farm-house, which are not unfrequent in the South of Ireland, and whose […]

Being a Fifth Extract from the Legacy of the late Francis Purcell, P.P. of Drumcoolagh. The following paper is written in a female hand, and was no doubt communicated to my much-regretted friend by the lady whose early history it serves to illustrate, the Countess D—-. She is no more–she long since died, a childless […]

Being a Twelfth Extract from the Legacy of the late Francis Purcell, P.P. of Drumcoolagh. As I rode at a slow walk, one soft autumn evening, from the once noted and noticeable town of Emly, now a squalid village, towards the no less remarkable town of Tipperary, I fell into a meditative mood. My eye […]

Let the reader fancy a soft summer evening, the fresh dews falling on bush and flower. The sun has just gone down, and the thrilling vespers of thrushes and blackbirds ring with a wild joy through the saddened air; the west is piled with fantastic clouds, and clothed in tints of crimson and amber, melting […]

Being a Ninth Extract from the Legacy of the late Francis Purcell, P.P. of Drumcoolagh. Jim Sulivan was a dacent, honest boy as you’d find in the seven parishes, an’ he was a beautiful singer, an’ an illegant dancer intirely, an’ a mighty plisant boy in himself; but he had the divil’s bad luck, for […]

Being a Tenth Extract from the Legacy of the late Francis Purcell, P.P. of Drumcoolagh. INTRODUCTION. In the following narrative, I have endeavoured to give as nearly as possible the ipsissima verba of the valued friend from whom I received it, conscious that any aberration from HER mode of telling the tale of her own […]

Being an Eighth Extract from the Legacy of the late Francis Purcell, P. P. of Drumcoolagh. I have observed, my dear friend, among other grievous misconceptions current among men otherwise well-informed, and which tend to degrade the pretensions of my native land, an impression that there exists no such thing as indigenous modern Irish composition […]