Sister Agnes and the Portrait
When Ultor De Lacy died, his daughter Alice found among his effects a
small box, containing a portrait such as I have described. When she
looked on it, she recoiled in horror. There, in the plenitude of its
sinister peculiarities, was faithfully portrayed the phantom which lived
with a vivid and horrible accuracy in her remembrance. Folded in the
same box was a brief narrative, stating that, "A.D. 1601, in the month
of December, Walter De Lacy, of Cappercullen, made many prisoners at the
ford of Ownhey, or Abington, of Irish and Spanish soldiers, flying from
the great overthrow of the rebel powers at Kinsale, and among the number
one Roderic O'Donnell, an arch traitor, and near kinsman to that other
O'Donnell who led the rebels; who, claiming kindred through his mother
to De Lacy, sued for his life with instant and miserable entreaty, and
offered great ransom, but was by De Lacy, through great zeal for the
queen, as some thought, cruelly put to death. When he went to the
tower-top, where was the gallows, finding himself in extremity, and no
hope of mercy, he swore that though he could work them no evil before
his death, yet that he would devote himself thereafter to blast the
greatness of the De Lacys, and never leave them till his work was done.
He hath been seen often since, and always for that family perniciously,
insomuch that it hath been the custom to show to young children of that
lineage the picture of the said O'Donnell, in little, taken among his
few valuables, to prevent their being misled by him unawares, so that he
should not have his will, who by devilish wiles and hell-born cunning,
hath steadfastly sought the ruin of that ancient house, and especially
to leave that _stemma generosum_ destitute of issue for the transmission
of their pure blood and worshipful name."
Old Miss Croker, of Ross House, who was near seventy in the year 1821,
when she related this story to me, had seen and conversed with Alice De
Lacy, a professed nun, under the name of Sister Agnes, in a religious
house in King-street, in Dublin, founded by the famous Duchess of
Tyrconnell, and had the narrative from her own lips. I thought the tale
worth preserving, and have no more to say.