Charlotte Grace O'Brien

“I found a mass of it growing together only on the southern exposure under the great wall. Now this plant is said to exist only as an introduced species in the British Isles. To account for it, therefore, on this utterly lonely and desolate hilltop, we must look back through the centuries and see the sacred plant in the monastery garden at Askeaton, the first Geraldine home in Desmond. We must think how the seed may, in fact, have been carried up to this watch tower, perhaps by some long-haired daughter of the Geraldines, sent for safety to the mountain fortress. We must imagine how its frail growth (only annual) took hold on the sheltered side; we must see generation after generation of men swept away, the monastery torn down and desecrated, the name of Desmond almost forgotten, the great Geraldine race broken and destroyed: we must see the almost impregnable castle blown to pieces and left as a trampling ground for summer-heated cattle; more wonderful than all, we must realize that time has so gone, that no record is left us of that great downfall and destruction nothing nothing but a few pieces of nine-foot-thick wall, a few earth mounds, and the sacred plant. Irishmen! What national history lies in one seed of that plant!””