“The fact was, that in consequence of his being stripped, and covered by so much blood and dust, she know him not; and, impelled by her feelings to avenge herself on the murderer of her lover, to whom she doubly owed her life, she struck him a deadly blow, without knowing him to be her brother.  The shock produced by seeing her lover murdered, and the horror of finding that she herself, in avenging him, had taken her brother’s life, was too much for a heart so tender as hers.  On recovering from her convulsions, her senses were found to be gone for ever!  Poor girl! she is still living; but from that moment to this, she has never opened her lips to mortal.  She is, indeed, a fair ruin, but silent, melancholy, and beautiful as the moon in the summer heaven.  Poor Rose Galh! you and many a mother, and father, and wife, and orphan, have had reason to maledict the bloody Battles of the Factions.

“With regard to my grandfather, he says that he didn’t see purtier fighting within his own memory; not since the fight between himself and Big Mucklemurray took place in the same town.  But, to do him justice, he condemns the scythe and every other weapon except the cudgels; because, he says, that if they continue to be resorted to, nate fighting will be altogether forgotten in the country.”

[It was the original intention of the author to have made every man in the humble group about Ned M’Keown’s hearth narrate a story illustrating Irish life, feeling, and manners; but on looking into the matter more closely, he had reason to think that such a plan, however agreeable for a time, would ultimately narrow the sphere of his work, and perhaps fatigue the reader by a superfluity of Irish dialogue and its peculiarities of phraseology.  He resolved therefore, at the close of the Battle of the Factions, to abandon his original design, and leave himself more room for description and observation. ]