“Our annals teem with instances of this romantic bravery and scrupulous honour. My memory, though much impaired, is still faithful to some anecdotes of both. During a war between the Connaught and Munster monarchs, in 192, both parties met in the plains of Lena, in this province; and it was proposed to Goll M’Morni, chief of the Connaught Knights, to attack the Munstei army at midnight, which would have secured him victory. He nobly and indignantly replied: ‘On the day the arms of a knight were put into my hands, I swore never to attack my enemy at night, by surprise, or under _any kind of disadvantage_; nor shall that vow now be broken.’ “Besides those orders of knighthood which I have already named, there are several others * still hereditary in noble families, and the honorable titles of which are still preserved: such as the _White Knights of Kerry_, and the _Knights of Glynn_: that hereditary in my family was the _Knights of the Valley_; and this collar, ** an ornament never dispensed with, was found about fifty years back in a neighbouring bog, and worn by my father till his death. “This gorget,” he continued, taking down one which hung on the wall, and apparently gratified by the obvious pleasure evinced in the countenance of his auditor,--“This gorget was found some years after in the same bog.” *** * The respectable families of the Fitzgeralds still bear the title of their ancestors, and are never named but as the Knights of Kerry and of Glynn. ** One of these collars was in the possession of Mr. O’Halloran. *** In the Bog of Cullen, in the county of Tipperary, some golden gorgets were discovered, as were also some corslets of pure gold in the lands of Clonties, county of Kerry---See Smith’s History of Ireland. “And this helmet?” said I-- “It is called in Irish,” he replied, “_salet_ and belonged, with this coat of mail, to my ancestor who was murdered in this castle.” I coloured at this observation, as though I had been myself the murderer. “As you refer, Sir,” said the priest, who had flung by his book and joined us, “to the ancient Irish for the origin of knighthood, * you will perhaps send us to the Irish _Mala_, for the derivation of the word mail.” * At a time when the footstep of an English invader had not been impressed upon the Irish coast, the celebrity of the Irish knights was sung by the British minstrels. Thus in the old romantic tale of Sir Cauline: In Ireland, ferr over the sea, There dwelleth a bonnye kinge, And with him a young and comlye knight, Men call him Syr Cauline.