In Carte’s “Life of Ormond,” he attributes the castle’s loss to treachery, but except in a local tradition this does not appear. It is said that the garrison running short of water sent an old woman to the river to fetch some, but that she was taken prisoner by some of the soldiers, and brought to the hostile camp. She was promised her life and a reward if on the following night she would show by a torch on the battlements the position of the stairway where the walls were thinnest. The legend runs she fulfilled the conditions and that, the cannonade at once beginning, she was the first to lose her life through her own treachery. The manor passed from the Earl of Thomond’s family, on account of an unredeemed mortgage, to a Mr. Hamilton, M.P., who, in 1729, brought his case before Parliament for having been deprived of the castle yard during the time of privilege. The castle was leased in 1814 to a Dr. Middleton. This gentleman intended to convert it into a lunatic asylum, and endeavoured to enlarge the windows and lessen the thickness of the walls by the then little known process of blasting. The results were disastrous. One morning, at about nine o’clock, while the workmen were fortunately at breakfast, the huge pile began slowly to totter to its fall. An eye-witness who had time to escape from the threatened destruction said: “After viewing the portentous and amazing nodding of the towers, the immense pile gradually disparted into vast masses, which broke with difficulty into fragments less mighty.” AUTHORITIES CONSULTED. J. Ryan, “History of County Carlow.” Brewer, “Beauties of Ireland.” State Documents. State Papers. Book of Howth, Carew MSS. Parliamentary Gazetteer. Lord Walter Fitzgerald, “Kilkea Castle,” in _Journal of Kildare Archæological Society_. R. Malcomson, “Cromwell at Carlow”; J. O’Meagher, “Diary of Dr. Jones”; E. Shirley, “Extracts from Journal of Thomas Dineley”; and J. Mills, “Accounts of the Earl of Norfolk’s Estates in Ireland”: all in _Journal of Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland_. MS. Ordnance Survey of Ireland. _CARRICKFERGUS CASTLE_ It is popularly believed that Carrickfergus derived its name from a king called Fergus having been lost there in a storm about 320 B.C., whose body was washed up on the rocky peninsular where the castle stands. The name is, however, more likely to be a corruption of _Carraig na Fairge_, signifying “rock of the sea.” It is often erroneously called Knockfergus in ancient documents. The town is situated on the northern shore of Belfast Lough, about ten miles distant from that city. The castle occupies the whole of a tongue of rock at the south end of the town, which was at one time surrounded on three sides by water.