Leap is not a name suggestive of things Irish, yet the place so called is as pure a specimen of the primitive Irish village as one might wish to find. There it was our happiness to spend a holiday in the summer of 1885. During our few weeks’ stay we made the acquaintance of a people whose character and modes of life have the flavour of an age innocent of the civilities of the nineteenth century. The village of Leap is in County Cork, at the extreme south-west corner of Ireland, about eighteen miles to the east of Cape Clear, and about forty to the west of the city of Cork. It stands at the head of Glandore Bay, one of the numberless inlets that are so striking a feature of this part of the Irish coast. Glandore Bay is itself worth a lengthened pilgrimage. In Scotland or England it would have been famous, and would long since have been a fashionable seaside resort. The transatlantic steamers cross its mouth at no great distance; and it is an impressive spectacle to see them flash across in the darkness, with all their portholes lit, and at what appears to be something like railway speed. The village of Leap is cut in two by a streamlet, over which a bridge has now been thrown. Across this stream, we are told, a deer, hard pressed by the hunters, once took a desperate leap; hence the name of the village. In former times, this same stream was the limit of English law in Ireland. ‘Beyond the Leap,’ it used to be said, ‘beyond the law.’ And indeed, the country beyond the Leap is a perfect paradise for outlaws. The very sight of it is sufficient to deter the further progress of the most hot-headed officer of justice. This corner of County Cork, therefore, was the haunt of pirates, smugglers, and various outlawed persons. There is no part of the British isles richer in tales of blood and adventure. The district retained its lawless character down to comparatively recent times; but in modern days, the private manufacture of a little poteen is the extent of its misdemeanours.