On
that very morning, for instance, she had not recovered from her painful
apprehensions of the thunder-storm which had occurred on the preceding
night. Of thunder, but especially of lightning, she was afraid even to
pusillanimity; indeed so much so, that on such occurrences she would
bind her eyes, fly down stairs, and take refuge in the cellar until the
I hurly-burly in the clouds was over. This, however, was not so much
to be wondered at by those who live in our present and more enlightened
days; as our readers will admit when they are told that the period of
our narrative is in the reign of that truly religious monarch, Charles
the Second, who, conscious of his inward and invisible grace, was known
to exhaust himself so liberally of his virtue, when touching for the
Evil, that there was very little of it left to regulate that of his own
private life. In those days Ireland was a mass of social superstitions,
and a vast number of cures in a variety of diseases were said to be
performed by witches, wizards, fairy-men, fairy-women, and a thousand
other impostors, who, supported by the gross ignorance of the people,
carried that which was first commenced in fraud and cunning into a
self-delusion, which, in process of time, led them to become dupes to
their own impostures.
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