CONTENTS
The Ancient Times
Goban, the Builder
A Witty Wife
An Advice She Gave
Shortening the Road
The Goban's Secret
The Scotch Rogue
The Danes
The Battle of Clontarf
The English
The Queen of Breffny
King Henry VIII.
Elizabeth
Her Death
The Trace of Cromwell
Cromwell's Law
Cromwell in Connacht
A Worse than Cromwell
The Battle of Aughrim
The Stuarts
Another Story
Patrick Sarsfield
Queen Anne
Carolan's Song
'Ninety-Eight
Denis Browne
The Union
Robert Emmet
O'Connell's Birth
The Tinker
A Present
His Strategy
The Man was Going to be Hanged
The Cup of the Sassanach
The Thousand Fishers
What the Old Women Saw
O'Connell's Hat
The Change He Made
The Man He Brought to Justice
The Binding
His Monument
A Praise Made for Daniel O'Connell by Old Women and They Begging
at the Door
Richard Shiel
The Tithe War
The Fight at Carrickshock
The Big Wind
The Famine
The Cholera
A Long Remembering
The Terry Alts
The '48 Time
A Thing Mitchell Said
The Fenian Rising
A Great Wonder
Another Wonder
Father Mathew
The War of the Crimea
Garibaldi
The Buonapartes
The Zulu War
The Young Napoleon
Parnell
Mr. Gladstone
Queen Victoria's Religion
Her Wisdom
War and Misery
The Present King
The Old Age Pension
Another Thought
A Prophecy
NOTES
THE KILTARTAN HISTORY BOOK
THE ANCIENT TIMES
"As to the old history of Ireland, the first man ever died in Ireland
was Partholan, and he is buried, and his greyhound along with him, at
some place in Kerry. The Nemidians came after that and stopped for a
while, and then they all died of some disease. And then the Firbolgs
came, the best men that ever were in Ireland, and they had no law but
love, and there was never such peace and plenty in Ireland. What
religion had they? None at all. And there was a low-sized race came that
worked the land of Ireland a long time; they had their time like the
others. Many would tell you Grania slept under the cromlechs, but I
don't believe that, and she a king's daughter. And I don't believe she
was handsome either. If she was, why would she have run away? In the old
time the people had no envy, and they would be writing down the stories
and the songs for one another. But they are too venemous now to do that.
And as to the people in the towns, they don't care for such things now,
they are too corrupted with drink."
GOBAN, THE BUILDER
"The Goban was the master of sixteen trades. There was no beating him;
he had got the gift. He went one time to Quin Abbey when it was
building, looking for a job, and the men were going to their dinner, and
he had poor clothes, and they began to jibe at him, and the foreman said
'Make now a cat-and-nine-tails while we are at our dinner, if you are
any good.' And he took the chisel and cut it in the rough in the stone,
a cat with nine tails coming from it, and there it was complete when
they came out from their dinner. There was no beating him. He learned no
trade, but he was master of sixteen. That is the way, a man that has the
gift will get more out of his own brain than another will get through
learning. There is many a man without learning will get the better of a
college-bred man, and will have better words too. Those that make
inventions in these days have the gift, such a man now as Edison, with
all he has got out of electricity."
