Four years after Ulysses S Grant failed to reach Blarney, a future President of the USA, William H Taft, succeeded.
As he recalled in 1908...
“If this humor be the safety of our race, then it is due largely to the infusion into the American people of the Irish brain.
It is now 25 years since I had the pleasure of visiting the Emerald Isle, and I remember its beauties well. We landed at Queenstown (Modern day Cobh) very early in the morning of a July day and it seemed to me that nothing was ever greener, nothing was ever sweeter, nothing was ever more attractive than the surroundings of Queenstown harbor at that hour.
Thence we went to Cork and there in the suburbs that historic city we visited Blarney Castle and kissed the stone with all its mellifluous consequences.”