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38
MUNSTER
root among the mountains of Kerry and of Clare.
The builder of Darrynane that is of the original habi-
tationwas a Daniel or Donal who married a daughter
of the O'Donoghues another great Kerry
clan. This
lady Maire Dubh was a fruitful mother of children
she bore twenty-two of them and brought twelve to
full age; but she was also notable as a poetess in
the Irish tongue. Her second son, Maurice, inherited
Darrynane, and was known all over the country as
Hunting Cap O'Connell, for a tax was put on beaver
hats, and from that day he wore nothing but the
velvet cap
in which he was used to hunt hare and
fox on the mountains of Iveragh. Daniel O'Connell,
his nephew, was a great votary of that sport, and
I have talked with a man who had hunted in his
company. And still in autumn you may see the
harriers out on these hills and a namesake and
descendant of his hallooing them on.
Old Hunting Cap as head of the family played a
great part in his nephew's youth, providing,
it would
seem, for the later stages of his education. The early
one was cheap enough,
for he was fostered on the
mountains in the cabin of his father's herd (that tie
of fosterage bound Catholic Ireland together, gentle
and simple, with a strange intimacy), and he got his
first lessons in one of the hedge schools which flour-
ished in defiance of penal laws. It was no less typical