At last, and by a transition that is not always easy to mark, the scene glides into those rich pasture-lands and well-tilled farms that form the wealth of the midland counties.

Gentlemen's seats and waving plantations succeed, and we are in a country of comfort and abundance.
On this border-land between fertility and destitution, and on a tract which had probably once been part of the Bog itself, there stood--there stands still--a short, square tower, battlemented at top, and surmounted with a pointed roof, which seems to grow out of a cluster of farm-buildings, so surrounded is its base by roofs of thatch and slates.

Incongruous, vulgar, and ugly in every way, the old keep appears to look down on them--time-worn and battered as it is--as might a reduced gentleman regard the unworthy associates with which an altered fortune had linked him.

This is all that remains of Kilgobbin Castle.
In the guidebooks we read that it was once a place of strength and importance, and that Hugh de Lacy--the same bold knight 'who had won all Ireland for the English from the Shannon to the sea'-- had taken this castle from a native chieftain called Neal O'Caharney, whose family he had slain, all save one; and then it adds: 'Sir Hugh came one day, with three Englishmen, that he might show them the castle, when there came to him a youth of the men of Meath--a certain Gilla Naher O'Mahey, foster-brother of O'Caharney himself--with his battle-axe concealed beneath his cloak, and while De Lacy was reading the petition he gave him, he dealt him such a blow that his head flew off many yards away, both head and body being afterwards buried in the ditch of the castle.' The annals of Kilronan further relate that the O'Caharneys became adherents of the English--dropping their Irish designation, and calling themselves Kearney; and in this way were restored to a part of the lands and the castle of Kilgobbin--'by favour of which act of grace,' says the chronicle, 'they were bound to raise a becoming monument over the brave knight, Hugh de Lacy, whom their kinsman had so treacherously slain; but they did no more of this than one large stone of granite, and no inscription thereon: thus showing that at all times, and with all men, the O'Caharneys were false knaves and untrue to their word.' In later times, again, the Kearneys returned to the old faith of their fathers and followed the fortunes of King James; one of them, Michael O'Kearney, having acted as aide-de-camp at the 'Boyne,' and conducted the king to Kilgobbin, where he passed the night after the defeat, and, as the tradition records, held a court the next morning, at which he thanked the owner of the castle for his hospitality, and created him on the spot a viscount by the style and title of Lord Kilgobbin.
It is needless to say that the newly-created noble saw good reason to keep his elevation to himself.

They were somewhat critical times just then for the adherents of the lost cause, and the followers of King William were keen at scenting out any disloyalty that might be turned to good account by a confiscation.