Killarney — The Races — Muckross.

The races were as gay as races could be, in spite of one or two untoward accidents that arrived at the close of the day’s sport. Where all the people came from that thronged out of the town was a wonder; where all the vehicles, the cars, barouches and shandrydans, the carts, the horse and donkey-men could have found stable and shelter, who can tell? Of all these equipages and donkeypages I had a fine view from Mrs. Macgillicuddy’s window, and it was pleasant to see the happy faces shining under the blue cloaks as the carts rattled by.

A very handsome young lady — I presume Miss MacG. — who gives a hand to the drawing-room and comes smiling in with the teapot — Miss MacG., I say, appeared to-day in a silk bonnet and stiff silk dress, with a brooch and a black mantle, as smart as any lady in the land, and looking as if she was accustomed to her dress too, which the housemaid on banks, of Thames does not. Indeed, I have not met a more ladylike young person in Ireland than Miss MacG.; and when I saw her in a handsome car on the course, I was quite proud of a bow.

Tramping thither, too, as hard as they could walk, and as happy and smiling as possible, were Mary the coachman’s wife of the day before, and Johanna with the child, and presently the other young lady: the man with the stick, you may be sure: he would toil a year for that day’s pleasure. They are all mad for it: people walk for miles and miles round to the race; they come without a penny in their pockets often, trusting to chance and charity, and that some worthy gentleman may fling them a sixpence. A gentleman told me that he saw on the course persons from his part of the country, who must have walked eighty miles for the sport.

For a mile and a half to the racecourse there could be no pleasanter occupation than looking at the happy multitudes who were thronging thither; and I am bound to say that on rich or poor shoulders I never saw so many handsome faces in my life. In the carriages, among the ladies of Kerry, every second woman was handsome; and there is something peculiarly tender and pleasing in the looks of the young female peasantry that is perhaps even better than beauty. Beggars had taken their stations along the road in no great numbers, for I suspect they were most of them on the ground, and those who remained were consequently of the oldest and ugliest It is a shame that such horrible figures are allowed to appear in public as some of the loathsome ones which belong to these unhappy people.

On went the crowd, however, laughing and as gay as possible; all sorts of fun passing from car to foot-passengers as the pretty girls came clattering by, and the “boys” had a word for each. One lady, with long flowing auburn hair, who was turning away her head from some “boys” very demurely, I actually saw, at a pause of the cart, kissed by one of them. She gave the fellow a huge box on the ear and he roared out, “O murther!” and she frowned for some time as hard as she could, whilst the ladies in the blue cloaks at the back of the car uttered a shrill rebuke in Irish. But in a minute the whole party was grinning, and the young fellow who had administered the salute may, for what I know, have taken another without the slap on the face by way of exchange.

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