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Stephen had turned his smiling eyes towards his friend's face, flattered by his confidence and won over to sympathy by the speaker's simple accent. I was away all that day from my own place over in Buttevant. I don't know if you know where that is at a hurling match between the Croke's Own Boys and the Fearless Thurles and by God, Stevie, that was the hard fight.
I thought most favourably of Buttevant, but on prudently inquiring the guard's opinion, he said it was not a comfortable place for an invalid lady, and that Mallow was much more the thing. At Limerick Junction, then, we all alighted, and in the ten minutes' wait saw Benella escorted up the hotel stairway by a sympathetic head waiter.
In these crumbling remains, you read, almost as in a book, the history of the ancient prosperity and power of Ireland, and of its gradual destruction by wars, sieges, famine, and pestilence, till it was brought to its present state of poverty and desolation. We passed through, or in sight of, several famous old places, such as Kildare, the Rock of Dunamase, Cashel, Kilmallock, and Buttevant.
Often he might not realize that a brigade was made up of regiments, but if he knew and answered, for instance, "The Dublins," he was more likely than not to be shipped off to the Curragh, where the reserve of the regular battalions was kept, instead of to Buttevant, where our Dublins were in training.
When such was the spirit of the town populations, we are not surprised to learn that, in the rural districts, almost exclusively Catholic, the people entered upon the use of many of their old Churches, and repaired several Abbeys among the number, Buttevant, Kilcrea, and Timoleague in Cork; Quin Abbey in Clare; Kilconnell in Galway; Rosnariell in Mayo, and Multifarnham in West-Meath.
I cannot help fancying that Irish foxes are even more cunning than their brethren in other parts of the world, I have heard so many accounts of their wonderful doings. Near Buttevant, where some of Mrs F 's family resided, there happened to be a hole in the thatch of the fowl-house. A fox, finding it out, sprang down through the aperture, and slew and feasted all the night to his heart's desire.
"So young Fitzgerald and the divine Clara are to hit it off, are they?" said Captain Donnellan, who had driven over from Buttevant barracks to breakfast at Hap House on a hunting-morning.
Near Buttevant are the ruins of Kilcoleman Castle, at which the great poet Spenser lived, and which was burned by the Irish in a rebellion. The youngest child of the poet perished in the flames. Cork is usually ranked as the second city of Ireland, and is a handsome, pleasant, prosperous looking place. It has not many interesting antiquities, but some of its modern buildings are very fine.
Then you can take up the afternoon train and go to let me see how would you like Buttevant? It is a garrison town, and there is a military hotel. Then in the vicinity is Kilcolman, where Spenser wrote the Faerie Queene: so there is the beginning of your literary pilgrimage the very first day, without any plotting or planning.
Kilmallock, now all in ruins, was once a city of great beauty and consideration. It was destroyed by the troops of Cromwell, the desolater of Ireland. Kilmallock was the seat of the ancient and powerful race of the Desmonds. Buttevant is a poor little place, but containing the ruins of a fine old abbey.
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