In subsequent times the Hen's Castle reverted to the O'Flahertys, and was repaired and garrisoned by them till the time of Cromwell, when, as we are informed by Roderick O'Flaherty, it was finally dismantled and left to decay. Still, however, enough remains to exhibit its original plan, which was that of an Anglo-Norman castle or keep, in the form of a parallelogram, with three projecting towers on its two longest sides; and the architectural features of the thirteenth century are also visible in some of its beautifully executed windows and doorways. The Hen's Castle is not without its legendary traditions connected with its history anterior to its dilapidation; and the following outline of one of these--and the latest--as told at the cottage firesides around Lough Corrib, may be worth preserving as having a probable foundation in truth. It is said that during the troubled reign of Queen Elizabeth, a lady of the O'Flahertys, who was an heiress and a widow, with an only child, a daughter, to preserve her property from the grasp of her own family and that of the De Burgos or Burkes, shut herself up with her child in the Hen's Castle, attended by twenty faithful followers, of tried courage and devotion to her service, of her own and her husband's family. As such a step was, however, pregnant with danger to herself, by exciting the attention and alarm of the government and local authorities, and furnishing her enemies with an excuse for aggression, she felt it necessary to obtain the queen's sanction to her proceedings; and accordingly she addressed a letter to her majesty, requesting her permission to arm her followers, and alleging as a reason for it, the disaffected state of the country, and her ardent desire to preserve its peace for her majesty. The letter, after the fashion of the times, was not signed by the lady in her acquired matron's name, but in her maiden one, of which no doubt she was more proud; it was Bivian or Bevinda O'Flaherty. The queen received it graciously; but not being particularly well acquainted with the gender of Irish Christian names, and never suspecting, from the style or matter of the epistle, that it had emanated from one of her own sex, she returned an answer, written with her own hand, authorising her good friend "Captain Bivian O'Flaherty" to retain twenty men at her majesty's expense, for the preservation of the peace of the country; and they were maintained accordingly, till the infant heiress, becoming adult, was united to Thomas Blake, the ancestor of the present Sir John Blake of Menlo Castle, and proprietor of the Castle of the Hen. To these brief notices of an ancient castle, not hitherto described, or its age ascertained, we shall only add, that there are few military structures of lime and stone now remaining in Ireland that can boast an equal antiquity. P. OCCUPATIONS FOR THE YOUNG. BY MARTIN DOYLE.