Burke Manuscript

Burke Manuscript: Page 289

Transcript

Not a great many are left who remember the old Royal in Stewart’s days. The old Scot left the scene in the middle fifties. A Highlandman and a soldier he was a noticeable man. Vigorous, erect and with few decided words, were some of his characteristics. Woe to the one who disputed his authority in his own Royal castle. The Avon frontage has been added to by I think one of the publican family of Oram’s. Then the house had a low squat appearance with its row of bedrooms on the left, which I fancy still remains, but extended. The enclosure in a hawthorn fence reached to Montreal St. The Royal was the fashionable house of the three or four licensed houses. The sheep fraternity mustered there and in the billiar room, its frequenters were the first flight of the old Home men, athletic, educated, with the real old “Home polish”. Men who afterwards passed into the ranks of politicians and men of note were to be seen, and many a poor fellow whose ideal colonial life, as imagined by himself and friends, had been sadly reversed by contact with every day experience. At the rear was the bar half a chain or more from Tuam St and was not an inviting place to look at, but then, the frequenters did not expect plate glass windows and shining polished glass bottomed pots with a beer; although they had to pay six pence for it, they drank it in full with enjoyment out of a crockery pot.