Rappa Castle Where We Arrived With A Beggarly Feeling Of Having Exhausted Our Adjectives Is A Large Comfortable Building Not Very Much Like One's Idea Of A Castle.

We drove up to the rear entrance - it is always prudent to take the lowest room - and waited on the car while a messenger was despatched with our request.

Presently the messenger came back with directions to us to drive round to the hall door. We were received by a respectable servant in plain dark clothes, who looked like a minister or a mild edition of a churchwarden. He ushered us from the entrance hall - a comfortably furnished apartment - across a second, into the crowning glories of a third, where we were requested to wait till Captain Knox made his appearance, which was not a long time.

The owner of Rappa Castle, a landlord against whom nothing in the way of blame is said, was assuredly of as much interest to us as the relics which his house possessed. A tall, fine looking, kindly faced man, rosy with health, courteous and pleasant, came into the room. We told our errand and the Captain went for the Mias Tighernain and placed it in our hands. It is evidently only part of the original dish, the socket where the upper part rested being still there. It is very heavy, formed of three layers of thin bronze bound at the edge with brass - evidently a later thought, and done for preservation. There are three bands of silver across it, which show the remains of rich figuring. There was originally a setting of three stones, one of which still remains and looks as if it might be amber. It is as large as a soup plate. Something is among the layers of metal which rattles when shaken. It is one of the oldest relics in the country. Whoever made it had no mean skill in the art of working metals. According to a certain Father Walsh it was used to wash the saint's hands in at mass. This dish, after lying at the bottom of Lough Conn for a hundred years, came up to the surface and revealed itself. It has been used as a revealer of secrets ever since it came into the hands of the Knox family. We requested afterwards to see the clock of Moyne Abbey, and were taken by the courteous captain across other rooms to the flagged kitchen, where the clock ticked as it has done for three hundred years - or since the Abbey was dismantled, how long before history hath not recorded. The case is of some dark wood beautifully carved. I thought it was bog oak; Captain Knox said mahogany, which would make the case to be much younger than the clock. The Captain assured us that it was the best time-keeper in the world. It only requires winding once a month; used to show the day of the month, but some meddler disarranged that part of the machinery.

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