Moreover, the State Papers in the Public Record Office, quoted in the Journal of the Royal Society of Irish Antiquaries for September 1893, p. 266, prove beyond question that Nicholas de Huse or Hussy and his father, Herbert de Huse, were land-owners of some importance in Kerry in 1307.  Stirring times they must have been, of which we have no fiction under the guise of history, though then men had to fight hard to preserve their lives and maintain their dignity.  We can imagine the tussle, even in these degenerate days when no challenge follows the exchange of insults, even in the House of Commons, and when the perpetration of the most cowardly outrage in Ireland has to be induced by preliminary potations of whisky.  Of course, those old times were bad times, but the badness was at least above board and the warfare pretty stoutly waged.  There is some sense in fighting your foe hand to hand, but to-day when a battle is contested by armies which never see one another, and are decimated by silent bullets, the courage needed is of a different character, and the wicked murder of such combats is obvious.

But let us quit war and confiscation for the equally stormy region known as politics, wherein it may be noted that in 1613 Michael Hussey was Member of Parliament for Dingle.

Now for a coincidence in Christian names.

Only two Husseys forfeited in the Desmond Rebellion, and they were John and Maurice.

In the Irish Parliament of James II., when Kerry returned eight members, two of them were Husseys, and their names were John and Maurice.

My grandfather’s name was John, and his father before him was Maurice, and I christened my two surviving sons John and Maurice.

We do not go in for much variety of nomenclature in our family.

My grandfather, John Hussey, lived at Dingle, his mother being a member of the well-known Galway family of Bodkin.  He was an offshoot of the Walter Hussey who had been converted into an animated projectile by the underground machinations of Cromwell’s colonels.  He was a very little man, who had a landed property at Dingle, did nothing in particular, and received the usual pompous eulogy on his tombstone.  I never heard that he left any papers or diaries, and I do not think that he ever went out of Kerry—­he had too much sense.

A rather diverting story in which his sister was the heroine may be worth telling, if only because it was so characteristic of the period.

In those days, as now, Husseys and Dennys were closely associated, and both my great-aunt and Miss Denny, known locally as the ’Princess Royal,’ were going to a ball.  At that time it was the fashion for the girls of the period to wear muslin skirts edged with black velvet.  The muslin was easily procured; not so the velvet, which was eventually obtained by sacrificing an ancient pair of nether garments belonging to my great-grandfather.

After the early dinner then fashionable, each of the damsels was departing for the Castle, with a swain at the door of her sedan-chair, when our kinswoman, Lady Donoughmore, who was on the door-step watching them off, enthusiastically shouted:—­