showing the omission of several letters. Having reduced it to this
state, an illiterate clerk would easily misread the circumflex for the
plain stroke "-," expressing merely the omission of the letter "m", and,
perhaps ignorant of the name intended, think it as well to write at full
length "Barum."

J. Br.


_Countess of Desmond_ (Vol. ii., p. 153.)--It is stated in Turner's
_Sacred History_, vol. iii. p. 283., that the Countess of Desmond died
in 1612, aged 145. This is, I presume, the correct date of her decease,
and not 1626 as mentioned by your querist K.; for in Lord Bacon's
_History of Life and Death_, originally published in 1623, her death is
thus alluded to:--

"The Irish, especially the Wild Irish, even at this day, live
very long. Certainly they report that within these few years the
Countess of Desmond lived to a hundred and forty years of age,
and bred teeth three times."

The manner of her death is recorded by Mr. Crofton Croker, in his
agreeable volume of _Researches in the South of Ireland_, 4to. London,
1824. {187} Speaking of Drumana, on the Blackwater, a little above
Youghall, as the "reputed birth-place of the long-lived Countess of
Desmond," he says,--

"In this part of the country, her death is attributed to a fall
whilst in the act of picking an apple from a tree in an orchard
at Drumana."