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The Last of the Corbes, Or, the Macmahons' Country
The Last of the Corbes Or the Macmahons' Country Author:John Wright General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1835 Subjects: History / Europe / Ireland Travel / Europe / Ireland Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to M... more »illion-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER III. " And albeit we were to pass through the wastest and wildest parts of all the North, yet had we only for our guard six or seven score foot, and fifty or three score horse, which is an argument of a good time, and a confident deputy; for in former times, when the state enjoyed the best peace and security, no Lord Deputy did ever adventure himself into those parts without an army of eight hundred or one thousand men." -- Sir John Daviei. On the day before the introduction of this new order of things, Bryan Oge Hugh Macmahoune had assembled the heads of his kindred at his fastness in Conagh in the barony of Dartrey. This ancient seat of the Macmahounes has nothing in its present appearance to recall the remembrance of regal residence, or to remind you of grandeur or strength. It adds to the certainty that the native Irish in the north did not delight in architectural magnificence. So late as the year 1611, the chief of thisIrish county had his habitation constructed of hurdles and mud walls, and his floors covered with rushes instead of carpets. His attendants, who were numerous, were lodged in smaller edifices of similar materials, placed so as to give the appearance of an encampment on a sloping hill of some extent, at the foot of which ran the river Finn in a semicircular course, so as to enclose a considerable part of the hill with a deep stream, leaving the front open to theadjacent grounds, which were covered with wood. The chief of this Irish county had his habitation constructed of hurdles,« less