"_Barum_" and "_Sarum_" (Vol. ii., p. 21.)--The formation of the first
of these words has not yet been accounted for. I must premise my attempt
to supply an explanation by admitting that I was not aware it was in
common use as a contraction for Barnstaple. I think it will be found
that the contracted form of that name is more usually "Berdest,"
"Barnst". In trying further to contract the word, the two last letters
would be omitted, and it would then be "Barñ", with the circumflex
showing the omission of several letters. Having reduced it to this
state, an illiterate clerk would easily misread the circumflex for the
plain stroke "-," expressing merely the omission of the letter "m", and,
perhaps ignorant of the name intended, think it as well to write at full
length "Barum."
J. Br.
_Countess of Desmond_ (Vol. ii., p. 153.)--It is stated in Turner's
_Sacred History_, vol. iii. p. 283., that the Countess of Desmond died
in 1612, aged 145. This is, I presume, the correct date of her decease,
and not 1626 as mentioned by your querist K.; for in Lord Bacon's
_History of Life and Death_, originally published in 1623, her death is
thus alluded to:--
"The Irish, especially the Wild Irish, even at this day, live
very long. Certainly they report that within these few years the
Countess of Desmond lived to a hundred and forty years of age,
and bred teeth three times."
The manner of her death is recorded by Mr. Crofton Croker, in his
agreeable volume of _Researches in the South of Ireland_, 4to. London,
1824. {187} Speaking of Drumana, on the Blackwater, a little above
Youghall, as the "reputed birth-place of the long-lived Countess of
Desmond," he says,--
"In this part of the country, her death is attributed to a fall
whilst in the act of picking an apple from a tree in an orchard
at Drumana."
In the _Olla Podrida_, a volume of miscellanies, printed for private
distribution, by Mr. Sainthill of Cork, there is a portrait of the "old
countess," from an etching made by Mr. Crofton Croker (if I mistake not)
in his early days.