a spirit. They have ever been famous for beauty, and I have read that
the mother of the present Lord Cloncurry was of their tribe.


[FN#8] I have since heard that it was not the Kirwans, but their
predecessors at Castle Hacket, the Hackets themselves, I think, who
were descended from a man and a spirit, and were notable for beauty. I
imagine that the mother of Lord Cloncurry was descended from the
Hackets. It may well be that all through these stories the name of
Kirwan has taken the place of the older name. Legend mixes everything
together in her cauldron.


John Kirwan was a great horse-racing man, and once landed in Liverpool
with a fine horse, going racing somewhere in middle England. That
evening, as he walked by the docks, a slip of a boy came up and asked
where he was stabling his horse. In such and such a place, he answered.
"Don't put him there," said the slip of a boy; "that stable will be
burnt to-night." He took his horse elsewhere, and sure enough the
stable was burnt down. Next day the boy came and asked as reward to
ride as his jockey in the coming race, and then was gone. The race-time
came round. At the last moment the boy ran forward and mounted, saying,
"If I strike him with the whip in my left hand I will lose, but if in
my right hand bet all you are worth." For, said Paddy Flynn, who told
me the tale, "the left arm is good for nothing. I might go on making
the sign of the cross with it, and all that, come Christmas, and a
Banshee, or such like, would no more mind than if it was that broom."
Well, the slip of a boy struck the horse with his right hand, and John
Kirwan cleared the field out. When the race was over, "What can I do
for you now?" said he. "Nothing but this," said the boy: "my mother has