State Library of NSW
[Page 173]
Now the difficult part is to explain to you how we did it. On reaching the Top of the old Castle almost breathless with slipping up the musty circular stairway and my heart going fast with the exertion. The sisters who had reached there before immediately greeted me with "Well Are you going to kiss the Blarney Stone?" Oh yes surely if others could, I could and without hesitation or realising how perilous the task was took off my coat tied my scarfs around my waist for one to hold then lie flat down. My ankles are held like grim death by the others, in fact, I thought they would never let me reach down far enough and kept appealing to them to let me go. I did just manage it & was quickly hauled back. On glancing around there is one sister in a corner as white as a ghost and another kneeling down, leaning her hand on a rail & almost fainting. The feat as far as I can explain it is this. The part to kiss is at the lower edge of a long slab of stone looking 10ft, by 3ft the kissing part being 3ft lower down than the level on which you lie & extends out towards & over an open space on the green lawn 120ft below. There are two iron bars running down the face of the rock onto which you hold. This stone one Father says is the most valuable of Irelands Ancient Glory – and to those who kiss it is supposed to convey suavity of speech. Its origin is of the remotest Antiquity & was supposed to have been brought over by the Tyrians in 883B.C.Our uniform attracts a good deal of attention in these parts – and as we sit in a carriage on the return journey & at one of the station a young urchin peers in at us for the
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