"Why," remarks Jimmy, "_why_ they were built, no one can tell--they don't look like any thing Christian; but the man that undoubtedly built some of them was the Gubbaun Seare." "Who was he, Jimmy?" asked all. "Why, then, your honor, myself doesn't know much about the Gubbaun Seare, only as the owld people tell us." "Well, Jimmy, that don't make what the old people tell us of no account; for with all our new improvements, (I had been explaining a rail-road to them the evening before,) we are obliged to retain nearly all their inventions also; so you may as well tell us what you know about the Gubbaun Seare, for you may depend there must be some truth and value in it." "Why, then, that's true for your honor," said another; a sentence, by the bye, which always greets you when you utter an opinion, correct or incorrect. "Well, then," said Jimmy, "in them owld times, I believe, when the round towers was building, there was a mason--and if there was, he was as fine a mason as ever lived, or ever will again--and, indeed, your honor, you know the round towers would prove that, if he built them--for where is the mason-work that's equal to what's on them? That one at Glendalough is a fine one, to be sure--and there's many finer than that. Well, he lived in a fine cottage, somewhere in Munster, and I don't know exactly where. "He had been married, and had an only son--and proud was he of him, you may depend. Well, it was given up to the Gubbaun, that he was not only the best mason in all the world, but along with that, sir, he was the cutest man known, and the greatest hand at all kinds of plans and contrivances. He was able for every one, and any one; and nobody ever had to boast that they had gained the least advantage over _him_." "I suppose, Tom, that with all this wisdom of the father, the son must have been as wise as he was himself, or may be wiser?" "Why, to be sure, so one would imagine; but it was far from him to be as _good_ a boy as the father--and that the father knew right well, for he was always trying to make him sensible of the scaming; but the son was always too honest, and that vext the father.