The Wild Irish Girl: A National TaleMorgan, Lady (Sydney)
General
The Wild Irish Girl: A National Tale
Morgan, Lady (Sydney)
British -- Ireland -- Fiction; Celts -- Fiction; Ireland -- Fiction; Love stories; Princesses -- Fiction
This is post day, and this packet is at last destined to be finished
and dispatched. On looking it over, the title of princes and princess
so often occur, that I could almost fancy myself at the court of some
foreign potentate, basking in the warm sunshine of regal favour, instead
of being the chance guest of a poor Irish gentleman, who lives on the
produce of a few rented farms, and, infected with a species of pleasant
mania, believes himself as much a prince as the heir apparent of
boundless empire and exhaustless treasures.
Adieu! Direct as usual: for though I certainly mean to accept the
invitation of a Prince, yet I intend, in a few days, to return home,
to obviate suspicion, and to have my books and wardrobe removed to the
Lodge, which now possesses a stronger magnet of attraction than when I
first fixed on it as my headquarters.
LETTER VII.
TO J. D. ESQ., M. P.
This is the sixth day of my convalescence, and the first of my descent
from my western tower; for I find it is literally in a tower, or turret,
which terminates a wing of these ruins, I have been lodged. These good
people, however, would have persuaded me into the possession of a slow
fever, and confined me to my room another day, had not the harp of
Glorvina, with “supernatural solicitings,” spoken more irresistibly to
my heart than all their eloquence.
I have just made my _toilette_, for the first time since my arrival at
the castle; and with a black ribbon of the nurse’s across my forehead,
and a silk handkerchief of the priest’s supporting my arm, with my
own “customary suit of solemn black,” tintless cheek, languid eye, and
pensive air, I looked indeed as though “melancholy had marked me for
her own or an excellent personification of pining atrophy” in its last
stage of decline.
While I contemplated my _memento mori_ of a figure in the glass, I heard
a harp tuning in an underneath apartment. The Prince I knew had not yet
left his bed, for his infirmities seldom permit him to rise early; the
priest had rode out; and the venerable figure of the old harper at that
moment gave a fine effect to a ruined arch under which he was passing,
led by a boy, just opposite my window. “It is Glorwna then,” said I,
“and alone!” and down I sallied; but not with half the intrepidity that
Sir Bertram followed the mysterious blue flame along the corridors of
the enchanted castle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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