From this circumstance it was called Tubber
Derg, or the Red Well. In the meadow where the glen terminated, was
another spring of delicious crystal; and clearly do I remember the
ever-beaten pathway that led to it through the grass, and up the green
field which rose in a gentle slope to the happy-looking house of Owen
M'Carthy, for so was the man called who resided under its peaceful roof.
I will not crave your pardon, gentle reader, for dwelling at such length
upon a scene so clear to my heart as this, because I write not now so
much for your gratification as my own. Many an eve of gentle May have
I pulled the Maygowans which grew about that well, and over that smooth
meadow.
Often have I raised my voice to its shrillest pitch, that I might hear
its echoes rebounding in the bottom of the green and still glen, where
silence, so to speak, was deepened by the continuous murmur of the
cascade above; and when the cuckoo uttered her first note from among the
hawthorns on its side, with what trembling anxiety did I, an urchin of
some eight or nine years, look under my right foot for the white hair,
whose charm was such, that by keeping it about me the first female name
I should hear was destined, I believed in my soul, to be that of my
future wife.* Sweet was the song of the thrush, and mellow the whistle
of the blackbird, as they rose in the stillness of evening over the
"hirken shaws" and green dells of this secluded spot of rural beauty.
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