Purcell Papers/The Bridal of Carrigvarah

THE BRIDAL OF CARRIGVARAH.
Being a Sixth Extract from the Legacy of the late Francis
Purcell, P. P. of Drumcoolagh.
In a sequestered district of the
county of Limerick, there stood
my early life, some forty
years ago, one of those strong stone
buildings, half castle, half farm-house,
which are not unfrequent in the South of
Ireland, and whose solid masonry and
massive construction seem to prove at
once the insecurity and the caution of the
Cromwellite settlers who erected them.
At the time of which I speak, this
building was tenanted by an elderly man,
whose starch and puritanic mien and
manners might have become the morose
preaching parliamentarian captain, who
had raised the house and ruled the
household more than a hundred years
before; but this man, though Protestant
by descent as by name, was not so in
religion; he was a strict, and in outward
observances, an exemplary Catholic; his
father had returned in early youth to the
true faith, and died in the bosom of the
church.
Martin Heathcote was, at the time of
which I speak, a widower, but his house-keeping was not on that account altogether
solitary, for he had a daughter, whose age
was now sufficiently advanced to warrant
her

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