From Cork the regiment marched to Fermoy; having been on duty, which detained me some hours after the corps, I set out alone to perform the journey. When half way, I overtook a countryman travelling the same road, with whom I entered into conversation. We had not gone far together when my attention was attracted by a wild cry, which seemed to be borne on the wind from some distance; it burst on my ear like the cry of a person in distress—then, gradually sinking to a low moan, it ceased for a few moments, when again the despairing shriek swelled to the utmost pitch of the human voice,—again it sank to the plaintive murmur, and melted into air. There was something uncouth in the notes, but they were expressively wild and melancholy, and I felt myself powerfully affected without being able to account for it. I stopped for a moment to listen, and asked my companion the meaning of what I heard. ‘Oh, it’s some poor creature going to his long home,’ said he, ‘that they are keening over.’ We had not gone far, when at a turning of the road, the melancholy procession opened on our view,—a countryman driving a car, on which was placed a coffin. One solitary mourner, (an old woman,) clung to it with one hand, while the other was raised in a despairing attitude; her gray hair hung in dishevelled tresses about her face and shoulders, and intense grief was depicted in her haggard countenance. My companion requested me to wait a moment, while he turned back a short way with the corpse. ‘Well,’ said he to me when he returned, ‘many’s the funeral I have seen; but never one like that,’—they haven’t a single neighbour with them: when the poorest creature would have half the parish, but that comes of the boy’s own behaviour—God be merciful to his soul!’ ‘Why, what harm did he do?’ ‘So much that I believe his poor father and mother will never be able to hold up their heads again: he was the means of bringing two of his own relations to the gallows, that but for him might have been alive and well to-day; they were all three laid up for taking arms from a gentleman’s house near this, and there was no clear proof against them, but they wheedled over this boy that’s dead now, to turn king’s evidence, and save his own life; but he never did a day’s good after, and he died the other day of fever, and not one of his neighbours would attend his wake—God help his poor people!’