"Anno 1651.--Among the many strange and rare vicissitudes of our own present age, the Marquis of Clanricarde, Lord Deputy of Ireland, the Earl of Castlehaven, and Earl of Clancarty, driven out of the rest of Ireland, were entertained, as they landed on the west shore of this lake for a night's lodging, under the mean roof of Mortough Boy Branhagh, an honest farmer's house, the same year wherein the most potent monarch of Great Britain, our present sovereign, bowed his imperial triple crown under the boughs of an oak tree, where his life depended on the shade of the tree leaves." There are several of the official letters of the Marquis preserved in his Memoirs, dated from Aughnanure, and written during the stormy period of which we have made mention. The Castle of Aughnanure has passed from the family to whom it originally belonged; but the representative and the chief of his name, Henry Parker O'Flaherty, Esq. of Lemonfield, a descendant in the female line from the celebrated Grania Waille, still possesses a good estate in its vicinity. P. THE IRISH IN ENGLAND. NO. 1.--THE WASHERWOMAN. BY MRS S. C. HALL. The only regular washerwomen extant in England at this present moment, are natives of the Emerald Isle. We have--I pray you observe the distinction, gentle reader--laundresses in abundance. But washerwomen!--all the _washerwomen_ are Irish. The Irish Washerwoman promises to wash the muslin curtains as white as a hound's tooth, and as sweet as "new mown hay;" and she tells the truth. But when she promises to "get them up" as clear as a kitten's eyes, she tells a story. In nine cases out of ten, the Irish Washerwoman mars her own admirable washing by a carelessness in the "getting up." She makes her starch in a hurry, though it requires the most patient blending, the most incessant stirring, the most constant boiling, and the cleanest of all skillets; and she will not understand the superiority of powder over stone blue, but snatches the blue-bag (originally compounded from the "heel" or "toe" of a stocking) out of the half-broken tea-cup, where it lay companioning a lump of yellow soap since last wash--squeezes it into the starch (which, _perhaps_, she has been heedless enough to stir with a dirty spoon), and then there is no possibility of clear curtains, clear point, clear any thing. "Biddy, these curtains were as white as snow before you starched them." "Thrue for ye, ma'am dear." "They are _blue_ now, Biddy." "Not all out." "No, Biddy, not all over--only _here_ and _there_." "Ah, lave off, ma'am, honey, will ye?--'tisn't that I mane; but there's a hole worked in the blue-rag, bad luck to it, and more blue nor is wanting gets out; and the weary's in the starch, it got lumpy." "It could not have got 'lumpy' if it had been well blended." "It was blended like butther; but I just left off stirring one minute to look at the soldiers." "Ah, Biddy, an English laundress would not 'run after the soldiers!'"