marvellous; and it has been half insinuated that such
is his love for diablerie, that he is content to wander a
mile out of his way, in order to meet a fiend or a goblin,
and thus to sacrifice all regard for truth and accuracy
to the idle hope of affrighting the imagination, and thus
pandering to the bad taste of his reader. He begs
leave, then, to take this opportunity of asserting his
perfect innocence of all the crimes laid to his charge,
and to assure his reader that he never PANDERED TO HIS
BAD TASTE, nor went one inch out of his way to introduce
witch, fairy, devil, ghost, or any other of the grim fraternity
of the redoubted Raw-head-and-bloody-bones. His
province, touching these tales, has been attended with
no difficulty and little responsibility; indeed, he is
accountable for nothing more than an alteration in the
names of persons mentioned therein, when such a step
seemed necessary, and for an occasional note, whenever
he conceived it possible, innocently, to edge in a word.
These tales have been WRITTEN DOWN, as the heading of
each announces, by the Rev. Francis Purcell, P.P., of
Drumcoolagh; and in all the instances, which are many,
in which the present writer has had an opportunity of
comparing the manuscript of his departed friend with
the actual traditions which are current amongst the
families whose fortunes they pretend to illustrate, he
has uniformly found that whatever of supernatural
occurred in the story, so far from having been
exaggerated by him, had been rather softened down, and,
wherever it could be attempted, accounted for.