In the time of Queen Elizabeth, however, upon the suppression of what is known in history as the Geraldine rebellion, the vast estates of the Earl of Desmond and those of the MacCarthys and one hundred and forty other chiefs and landowners in Munster were confiscated by a parliament that met in Dublin, and were given to English adventurers for two pence and three pence an acre and sometimes for no price at all, upon agreements that they would colonize the lands with Englishmen. The head of the house at that date was imprisoned in the Tower of London with Sir Walter Raleigh, accused of treason, and it was he who outwitted Queen Elizabeth with his "deludering" until she coined the word "blarney" to describe his fluent conversation. [Illustration: BLARNEY CASTLE, COUNTY CORK] The famous Blarney stone is as well known as the King of England, and the superstition is that whoever kisses it becomes instantly endowed with wonderful persuasion of speech. But very few people and only the most daring athletes have ever tried the experiment. The miraculous stone is the sill of a window, which projects from the main wall near the top of the tower. As it is eight or ten inches below the level of the floor and across an open space of about twenty or twenty-four inches, it is not only difficult, but dangerous to attempt to reach it. A slip would send you head first to the ground, one hundred and twenty feet below. The only way in which it can be done is for the person who tries to support himself over the edge of the wall by straps from the top, and, with his face upward, draw himself across until his lips can reach the stone. Almost everybody that visits Blarney Castle comes home with a tale of the time he had in kissing the Blarney stone, but no one has seen him doing so for years, and it can only be done by carrying tackle to the castle. Mrs. Hanna Ford, a gentle and considerate old lady, who has been custodian of the place for more than thirty-six years, told me that she had never known but half a dozen people to kiss the stone in all that time. Sir George Colthurst, the owner, charges a sixpence of every visitor and collects scarcely enough to pay the expenses of keeping the place in order. The visitors average about one hundred a day during the summer months, but nobody ever goes out there during the winter.