McC——‘s story runs thus. About sixty years ago, a something Macdermot, true Milesian, pious¹ Catholic, and descendant of king somebody, died somewhere, having managed to keep a comfortable little portion of his ancestors’ royalties² to console him for the loss of their sceptre. He having two sons, and disdaining³ to make anything but estated gentlemen of them, made over in some fictitious⁴ manner (for in those righteous days a Roman Catholic could make no legal will) to his eldest⁵, the estate on which he lived, and to the youngest, that of Ballycloran — about six hundred as bad acres as a gentleman might wish to call his own. But Thaddeus, otherwise Thady Macdermot, being an estated gentleman, must have a gentleman’s residence on his estate, and the house of Ballycloran was accordingly built. Had Thady Macdermot had ready money, it might have been well built; but though an estated gentleman, he had none. He had debts even when his father died; and though he planned, ordered, and agreed for a house, such as he thought the descendant of a Connaught Prince might inhabit without disgrace, it was ill built, half finished, and paid for by long bills. This, however, is so customary in poor Ireland that it but little harassed⁶ Thady. He had a fine, showy house, with stables, &c., gardens, an avenue, and a walk round his demesne⁷; and his neighbours had no more. It was little he cared for comfort, but he would not be the first of the Macdermots that would not be respectable. When his house was finished, Thady went into County Galway, and got himself a wife with two thousand pounds fortune, for which he had to go to law with his brother-in-law. The lawsuit⁸, the continual necessity of renewing the bills with which the builder in Carrick on Shannon every quarter attacked him, the fruitless endeavour to make his

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