THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL. NUMBER 29. SATURDAY, JANUARY 16, 1841. VOLUME I. [Illustration: KILBARRON CASTLE, COUNTY OF DONEGAL.] We think our readers generally will concur with us in considering the subject of our prefixed illustration as a very striking and characteristic one--presenting features which, except among the castles of the Scottish highland chiefs, will only be found on the wild shores of our own romantic island. It is indeed a truly Irish scene--poetical and picturesque in the extreme, and its history is equally peculiar, being wholly unlike any thing that could be found relating to any castle out of Ireland. From the singularity of its situation, seated on a lofty, precipitous, and nearly insulated cliff, exposed to the storms and billows of the western ocean, our readers will naturally conclude that this now sadly dilapidated and time-worn ruin must have owed its origin to some rude and daring chief of old, whose occupation was war and rapine, and whose thoughts were as wild and turbulent as the waves that washed his sea-girt eagle dwelling; and such, in their ignorance of its unpublished history, has been the conclusion drawn by modern topographers, who tell us that it is supposed to have been the habitation of freebooters. But it was not so; and our readers will be surprised when we acquaint them that this lonely, isolated fortress was erected as an abode for peaceful men--a safe and quiet retreat in troubled times for the laborious investigators and preservers of the history, poetry, and antiquities of their country! Yes, reader, this castle was the residence of the ollaves, bards, and antiquaries of the people of Tirconnell--the illustrious family of the O’Clerys, to whose zealous labours in the preservation of the history and antiquities of Ireland we are chiefly indebted for the information on those subjects with which we so often endeavour to instruct and amuse you. You will pardon us, then, if with a grateful feeling to those benefactors of our country to whose labours we owe so much, we endeavour to do honour to their memory by devoting a few pages of our little national work to their history, as an humble but not unfitting monument to their fame.