my Land.  It had a short stem; and the cup
part, having the bottom rounded, rose
cylindrically, and, being of a capacity to
contain a whole bottle of claret, and almost
as narrow as an old-fashioned ale glass, was
tall to a degree that filled me with wonder.
As it obliged the rider to extend his arm
as he raised the glass, it must have tried a
tipsy man, sitting in the saddle, pretty
severely.  The wonder was that the
marvellous tall glass had come down to our
times without a crack.

There was another glass worthy of remark
in the same drawing-room. It was gigantic,
and shaped conically, like one of those
old-fashioned jelly glasses which used to
be seen upon the shelves of confectioners.
It was engraved round the rim with the
words, "The glorious, pious, and immortal
memory;" and on grand occasions, was
filled to the brim, and after the manner of
a loving cup, made the circuit of the Whig
guests, who owed all to the hero whose
memory its legend celebrated and invoked.

It was now but the transparent phantom
of those solemn convivialities of a generation,
who lived, as it were, within hearing
of the cannon and shoutings of those stirring
times.  When I saw it, this glass had
long retired from politics and carousals,
and stood peacefully on a little table in
the drawing-room, where ladies' hands
replenished it with fair water, and crowned
it daily with flowers from the garden.

Miss Anne Baily's conversation ran
oftener than her sister's upon the legendary
and supernatural; she told her stories
with the sympathy, the colour, and the
mysterious air which contribute so powerfully
to effect, and never wearied of answering
questions about the old castle, and
amusing her young audience with
fascinating little glimpses of old adventure
and bygone days.  My memory retains the
picture of my early friend very distinctly.
A slim straight figure, above the middle
height; a general likeness to the full-length
portrait of that delightful Countess D'Aulnois,
to whom we all owe our earliest and
most brilliant glimpses of fairy-land; something
of her gravely-pleasant countenance,
plain, but refined and ladylike, with that
kindly mystery in her side-long glance and
uplifted finger, which indicated the
approaching climax of a tale of wonder.

Lough Guir is a kind of centre of the
operations of the Munster fairies. When
a child is stolen by the "good people,"
Lough Guir is conjectured to be the place
of its unearthly transmutation from the
human to the fairy state.  And beneath its
waters lie enchanted, the grand old castle
of the Desmonds, the great earl himself,
his beautiful young countess, and all the
retinue that surrounded him in the years
of his splendour, and at the moment of his
catastrophe.

Here, too, are historic associations.  The
huge square tower that rises at one side
of the stable-yard close to the old house, to
a height that amazed my young eyes,
though robbed of its battlements and one
story, was a stronghold of the last rebellious
Earl of Desmond, and is specially
mentioned in that delightful old folio, the
Hibernia Pacata, as having, with its Irish
garrison on the battlements, defied the
army of the lord deputy, then marching
by upon the summits of the overhanging
hills.  The house, built under shelter of
this stronghold of the once proud and
turbulent Desmonds, is old, but snug, with a
multitude of small low rooms, such as I
have seen in houses of the same age in
Shropshire and the neighbouring English
counties.

The hills that overhang the lakes
appeared to me, in my young days (and I
have not seen them since), to be clothed
with a short soft verdure, of a hue so dark
and vivid as I had never seen before.

In one of the lakes is a small island,
rocky and wooded, which is believed by the
peasantry to represent the top of the highest
tower of the castle which sank, under a
spell, to the bottom. In certain states of
the atmosphere, I have heard educated
people say, when in a boat you have reached
a certain distance, the island appears to rise
some feet from the water, its rocks assume
the appearance of masonry, and the whole
circuit presents very much the effect of the
battlements of a castle rising above the
surface of the lake.

This was Miss Anne Baily's story of the
submersion of this lost castle:

THE MAGICIAN EARL.

It is well known that the great Earl of
Desmond, though history pretends to
dispose of him differently, lives to this hour
enchanted in his castle, with all his
household, at the bottom of the lake.

There was not, in his day, in all the
world, so accomplished a magician as he.
His fairest castle stood upon an island in
the lake, and to this he brought his young
and beautiful bride, whom he loved but too
well; for she prevailed upon his folly to risk
all to gratify her imperious caprice.