Freemans Journal 4th June 1900
Lord O’Brien of Kilfenora was, as everybody knows, more than once a candidate for Parliamentary honours in his native county of Clare. It was, we believe, on the occasion of the death of Lord Francis Conyngham, one of the earliest and staunchest supporters of Isaac Butt in the early agitation for Home Rule, that Mr. O’Brien made a tour of the county and introduced himself personally to the electors. His manner was suave and his speech conciliatory in the extreme. Some of the electors were doubtful as to whether the “man of law” from Ballinalacken was with Isaac Butt or against him. In their perplexity they went to consult Biddy Early, a woman skilled in the suture, who delivered oracles in a sequestered glen between Lough Greany and O’Callaghan’s Mills. Biddy arranged her philtres, put on her sagest look, and deliberately pronounced that the cattle of any man who voted for a recreant descendant of Boru would die of black quarter. Further than this she could not be induced to go. The people were by no means satisfied, for they thought the O’Gorman man bore a much greater family likeness to Brian Boru than the man from Lisdoonvarna.