Cork (4)

From On an Irish Jaunting-Car through Donegal and Connemara (1902)

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On the way down to Queenstown we passed Passage West, a pretty village embosomed in woods, and a considerable place of call, both for travelers and others bound up and down the river. "Father Prout" has sung its praises:

"The town of Passage is both large and spacious,
And situated upon the say;
'Tis nate and dacent, and quite adjacent
To come from Cork on a summer's day.

"There you may slip in and take a dippin'
Forenent the shippin' that at anchor ride;
Or in a wherry cross o'er the ferry
To Carrigaloe, on the other side."

The Kettle is boiling for our Tea

Near here is Monkstown, where Anastasia Gould, wife of John Archdeckan, while her husband was absent in a foreign land, determined to afford him a pleasant surprise by presenting him with a castle on his return. She engaged workmen and made an agreement with them that they should purchase food and clothing solely from herself. When the castle was completed, on balancing her accounts of receipt and expenditure, she found that the latter exceeded the former by fourpence. Probably this is the first example on record of truck practice on a large scale. She died in 1689, and was buried in the ground of the adjoining ruined church of Teampull-Oen-Bryn, in which is a monument to her memory.

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