Rapparee Cove is known to have borne that name certainly as far back as 1598, when it appears to have originated in some obscure connection with the Earl of Tyrone’s rebellion in Ireland, where the bulk of the rebels were armed with a species of small pike, called “raparys.” North Devon seems to have been in general a refuge for the fugitives from Ireland, and Ilfracombe, as a recognised port for the south of Ireland, to have been particularly favoured by them. Neighbouring Combemartin retained until 1837 an odd reminiscence of that time, suggested, no doubt, by the refugees. This was an annual pageant, or merry-making, the hunting of the Earl of “Rone”; in which hobby-horses, much rough music, and a considerable deal of drunkenness figured. Rapparee Cove was in 1782 the scene of the disastrous wreck of a large vessel, variously stated to have been a prize captured from the Spanish by Rodney, or a Bristol slave-ship. For long afterwards, following storms, the beach was a happy hunting-ground for gold and silver coins, and for the less desirable relics of the many drowned, in the shape of skulls and bones. The entrance to Ilfracombe harbour has been lighted from the earliest times by a beacon on the hill overlooking it, called, from that friendly gleam for the incoming mariner, “Lantern Hill.” Whose care it was, thus to befriend the sailor, we are not told; but, from the old-time readiness of the Church to perform such-like good deeds, and from the undoubted fact that the building on the hilltop was once a chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas, it would seem that those who tended the light were no mere secular lighthouse men. Whatever may have been the character of the old chapel in past ages, the interior is no longer of any interest, disclosing only a plain whitewashed room. The time-worn exterior, partly overgrown with ivy, and the lantern, crowned with a fish for weather-vane, afford more satisfaction. A light is still shown at nights, from the end of September until the beginning of May. The harbour, long, like Ilfracombe in general, the manorial property of the Bourchiers, Earls of Bath, in succession to the Champernownes, Bonvilles, Nevilles, and others, and then of the Bourchier Wreys, now belongs, together with Lantern Hill, to the Corporation. [Illustration: IN THE HARBOUR, ILFRACOMBE.]