We wished we had known the day before how near we were to it, for we could have claimed a night's lodging at the ladies' guest-house, where all creeds, classes, and nationalities are received with a cead-mile-failte, [*] and where any offering for food or shelter is given only at the visitors pleasure.

The Celtic proverb, 'Melodious is the closed mouth,' might be written over the cloisters; for it is a village of silence, and only the monks who teach in the schools or who attend visitors are absolved from the vow.
*A hundred thousand welcomes.
Next came Dromana Castle, where the extraordinary old Countess of Desmond was born,--the wonderful old lady whose supposed one hundred and forty years so astonished posterity.

She must have married Thomas, twelfth Earl of Desmond, after 1505, as his first wife is known to have been alive in that year.

Raleigh saw her in 1589, and she died in 1604: so it would seem that she must have been at least one hundred and ten or one hundred and twelve when she met her untimely death,--a death brought about entirely by her own youthful impetuosity and her fondness for athletic sports.

Robert Sydney, second Earl of Leicester, makes the following reference to her in his Table-Book, written when he was ambassador at Paris, about 1640:-- 'The old Countess of Desmond was a marryed woman in Edward IV.