Often have I raised my voice to its shrillest pitch, that I might hear its echoes rebounding in the bottom of the green and still glen, where silence, so to speak, was deepened by the continuous murmur of the cascade above; and when the cuckoo uttered her first note from among the hawthorns on its side, with what trembling anxiety did I, an urchin of some eight or nine years, look under my right foot for the white hair, whose charm was such, that by keeping it about me the first female name I should hear was destined, I believed in my soul, to be that of my future wife.* Sweet was the song of the thrush, and mellow the whistle of the blackbird, as they rose in the stillness of evening over the “hirken shaws” and green dells of this secluded spot of rural beauty.  Far, too, could the rich voice of Owen M’Carthy be heard along the hills and meadows, as, with a little chubby urchin at his knee, and another in his arms, he sat on a bench beside his own door, singing the “Trouglia”. in his native Irish; whilst Kathleen his wife, with her two maids, each crooning a low song, sat before the door milking the cows, whose sweet breath mingled its perfume with the warm breeze of evening.

Owen M’Carthy was descended from a long-line of honest ancestors, whose names had never, within the memory of man, been tarnished by the commission of a mean or disreputable action.  They were always a kind-hearted family, but stern and proud in the common intercourse of life.  They believed; themselves to be, and probably were, a branch of the MacCarthy More stock; and, although only the possessors of a small farm, it was singular to observe the effect which this conviction produced upon their bearing and manners.  To it might, perhaps, be attributed the high and stoical integrity for which they were remarkable.  This severity, however, was no proof that they wanted feeling, or were insensible to the misery and sorrows of others:  in all the little cares and perplexities that chequered the peaceful neighborhood in which they lived, they were ever the first to console, or, if necessary, to support a distressed neighbor with the means which God had placed in their possession; for, being industrious, they were seldom poor.  Their words were few, but sincere, and generally promised less than the honest hearts that dictated them intended to perform.  There is in some persons a hereditary feeling of just principle, the result neither of education nor of a clear moral sense, but rather a kind of instinctive honesty which descends, like a constitutional bias, from father to son, pervading every member of the family.  It is difficult to define this, or to assign its due position in the scale of human virtues.  It exists in the midst of the grossest ignorance, and influences the character in the absence of better principles.  Such was the impress which marked so strongly the family of which I speak.  No one would ever think of imputing a dishonest act to the M’Carthys; nor would any person acquainted with them, hesitate for a moment to consider their word as good as the bond of another.  I do not mean to say, however, that their motives of action were not higher than this instinctive honesty; far from it:  but I say, that they possessed it in addition to a strong feeling of family pride, and a correct knowledge of their moral duties.