Note 5 — Chapter I

The Brontës in Ireland, by Dr. William Wright, 1893, and The Brontë Homeland, by J. Ramsden, 1897, though they conflict, deal interestingly with Patrick Brunty's, or Brontë's, relations. "Patrick ... after being a linen weaver secured the post of teacher in the Glascar School, Ballynaskeagh, then that of teacher at Drumballyroney." Eventually he got a scholarship and entered St. John's College, Cambridge, where he graduated and took Holy Orders. His father was a Hugh Brunty, who married a Roman Catholic, Alice McClory, or M'Clory. She is said to have become a Protestant, as was her husband. Of this marriage there were ten children, the eldest being Charlotte Brontë's father, who early took to "larnin'," to quote the Irish hearsay. The Brontës in Ireland has been challenged as presenting many statements impossible of verification. The assertion that an Irish Brunty foundling story suggested the foundling of Wuthering Heights raised a harsh and voluminous controversy. The Rev. Angus Mackay, in his little brochure The Brontës—Fact and Fiction, 1897, controverted Dr. Wright, as did others elsewhere. The matter is summed up succinctly by Mr. Horsfall Turner, the Yorkshire genealogist, in The Rev. Patrick Brontë's Collected Works, 1898, where, speaking of the Irish Brontës and the foundling story, he says:—"The only one who could transmit this story was Hugh Brunty, and not one of his descendants ever heard of it before Dr. Wright's book was issued, not even the vaguest tradition."