CHAPTER XLIII THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The Irish of the eighteenth century being almost wholly deprived by law of all possibilities of bettering their condition, and having the necessary means of education rigidly denied them, turned for solace to poetry, and in it they vented their wrongs and bitter grief. I have met nothing more painful in literature than the constant, the almost unvarying cry of agony sent out by every one of the Irish writers during the latter half of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century.

There seems to have been very great literary activity amongst the natives in almost every county of Ireland during this period, and the poets it produced were countless; during this period, too, the Irish appear to have translated many religious books from French and Latin into Irish. In one way the work of the eighteenth century is of even more value to us than that of any earlier age, because it gives us the thoughts and feelings of men who, being less removed from ourselves in point of time, have probably more fully transmitted their own nature to their descendants—the Irish of the present day. Unhappily, however, though many volumes of the work of the eighteenth century have survived, yet countless others have[Pg 592] been lost during the last fifty years, and the only body in Ireland competent to secure Irish manuscripts by purchase, takes unfortunately not the slightest heed of any modern Irish writings, which are daily perishing in numbers.

Of the poets of what I have called the New School, towards the end of the seventeenth century, the most noted was certainly David O'Bruadar, or Broder, whose extant poems would fill a volume. They are in the most various forms of the new metres, but their vocabulary and word-forms are rather those of the more ancient bards, which renders his poetry by no means easy of translation. He appears to have been the bard par excellence of the Williamite wars, and bitter is his cry of woe after the Boyne and Aughrim.

    "One single foot of land there is not left to us, even as alms from the State; no, not what one may make his bed upon, but the State will accord us the grace—strange! of letting us go safe to Spain to seek adventures!

    "They [the English] will be in our places, thick-hipped, mocking, after beating us from the flower of our towns, full of pewter, brass, plates, packages—English-speaking, shaven, cosy, tasteful.[1]

    "There will be a beaver cape on each of their hags, and a silk gown from crown to foot; bands of churls will have our fortresses, full of Archys (?), cheeses and pottage.

    "These are the people—though it is painful to relate it—who are living in our white moats, 'Goody Hook' and 'Mother Hammer,' 'Robin,' 'Saul,' and 'Father Salome'!

    "The men of the breeches a-selling the salt,[2] Gammer,' 'Ruth,' and 'Goodman Cabbage,' 'Mistress Capon,' 'Kate and Anna,' 'Russell Rank,' and 'Master Gadder'!

    "[They are now] where Déirdre, that fair bright scion used to roam, where Emer[3] and the Liath Macha[4] used to be, where Eevil[5][Pg 593] used to be beside the Crag, and the elegant ladies of the Tuatha De Danann.

    "Where the poet-schools, the bards, and the damsels were, with sporting, dance, wine and feasts, with pastime of kings and active champions."

For a moment, after the accession of James II. and during the viceroyalty of Tyrconnel, courage and hope returned to the natives. Their poetry, wherever preserved, is a veritable mirror wherein to read their transitions of feeling.

    "Thanks be to God, this sod of misery
    Is changed as though by a blow of wizardry;
    James can pass to Mass in livery,
    With priests in white and knights and chivalry."[6]

    "Where goes John [i.e., John Bull], he has no red coat on him [now], and no 'who goes there' beside the gate, seeking a way [to enrich himself], contentiously, in the teeth of law, putting me under rent in the night of misfortune.[7]

    "Where goes Ralph and his cursed bodyguard, devilish prentices, the rulers of the city, who tore down on every side the blessed chapels, banishing and plundering the clergy of God.

    "They do not venture [now] to say to us, 'You Popish rogue;' but our watchword is, 'Cromwellian Dog.'

    "The cheese-eating clowns are sorrowful, returning every greasy lout of them to their trades, without gun, or sword, or arm exercise; their strength is gone, their hearts are beating....

    "After transplanting us, and every conceivable treachery, after transporting us over-sea to the country of Jamaica, after all whom they scattered to France and Spain.

    "All who did not submit to their demands, how they placed their heads and hearts on stakes! and all of our race who were valiant in spirit, how they put them to death, foully, disgustingly!

    "After all belonging to our church that the Plot hanged, and after the hundreds that have died in fetters from it, and all whom they[Pg 594] had deep down in the jail of every town, and all who were bound in the tower of London.

    "After all their disregard for right, full of might and injustice, without a word [for us] in the law, who would not even write your name, but ever said of us 'Teigs and Diarmuids,' disrespectfully.

    "There is many a Diarmuid now, both sensible and powerful! and many a Teig, too, both merry and jubilant! in the county of Eber, who is strong on the battlefield—the foreigners all everlastingly hated that name....

    "Friends of my heart, after all the thousands we lost, I cry impetuously to God in the heavens, giving thanks every day without forgetting, that it is in the time of this king[8] we have lived....

    "Having the fear of God, be ye full of almsgiving and friendliness, and forgetting nothing do ye according to the commandments; shun ye drunkenness and oaths and cursing, and do not say till death 'God damn' from your mouths," etc.

But Aughrim and the Boyne put an end to the dream that the Irish would ever again bear sway in their own land, and the carefully-devised Penal laws proceeded to crush all remaining independence of spirit out of them, and to grind away their very life-blood. Once more their poets fell back into lamentations over the past and impotent prophecies of the return of the Stuarts and the resurrection of Erin. Despite their sentimental affection for the paltry Stuarts, who ever used them as their tools, many of the poets were perfectly clear-sighted about them.

    "It is the coming of King James that took Ireland from us,
    With his one shoe English and his one shoe Irish.
    He would neither strike a blow nor would he come to terms,
    And that has left, so long as they shall exist, misfortune upon the Gaels."[9]

    "Our case," says another poet, "is like the plague of Egypt; whoever chooses to break your lease, breaks it, and there is no good for you to go arguing your right."

    [Pg 595]

    "King's rent, country's rent, clergy's rent, rent for your nose, rent for your back, rent for warming yourself, head-money at the head of every festival, hearth money, and money for readying roads![10]

    "His goods are not taken from any one all at once, at one time; he must pay for being allowed to keep them first, and be forced to sell them afterwards.

    "If you happen to be alive, then you are the 'Irish rogue,' if you happen to be dead, then there's no more about you, except that your soul is [of course] in the fetters of pain, like the bird-flock that is among the clouds.

    "It is the King of Kings—and King James, the Pope, the friars, and the fasting, and King Louis, who put Christendom under a settlement, that sent this ban upon the children of Milesius."

Every poet describes the condition of the native Irish in almost the same strains.

    "Their warriors are no better off than their clergy; they are being cut down and plundered by them [the English] every day. See all that are without a bed except the furze of the mountains, the bent of the curragh, and the bog-myrtle beneath their bodies.

    "Under frost, under snow, under rain, under blasts of wind, without a morsel to eat but watercress, green grass, sorrel of the mountain, or clover of the hills. Och! my pity to see their nobles forsaken!

    "Their estates were estimated for, and are now in the hands of robbers, their towns are under the control of English-speaking bastards, their title deeds which were firm for a while, are now in the hands of foreigners, whose qualities are not mild.

    "Their forts are under the sway of tradespeople; none of their fortresses is to be seen remaining for them, but black prisons and the houses of the fetters, and some of their heads parted from their tender bodies.

    "And some of them in the clutch of famine so that they die, and some of them hunted to Connacht of the slaughter, [shut in], under the lock of the Shannon, not easy to open, and without provision to feed their mouths there—their warm dwellings under the control of the perjurers."

The feelings of the native Irish, smarting under the[Pg 596] cowardice, selfishness, and incompetence of James II., were but moderately excited by the rather feeble attempt of his son to regain his father's kingdom by the sword. One or two stray bards, however, saluted his undertaking with poems:

"Long in misery were we,
No man free from English gall,
Now our James is on the sea
We shall see revenge for all.[11]

Flowering branch of royal blood,
Soon his bud shall burst to flame,
James our friend is on the flood,
Learned and good and first in fame.

Luther's louts, and Calvin's clan,
Every man who loved to lie,
Boar-hounds of the bloody fang
We shall see them hang on high."

But this and its fellows were only spasmodic rhapsodies. The Irish kept their real enthusiasm for the gallant attempt of Charles Edward, and the Jacobite poems of Ireland would, if collected, fill a large-sized volume.[12] So popular did Jacobite poetry become that it gave rise to a conventional form of its own,[13] which became almost stereotyped, and which seems to have been adopted as a test subject in bardic contests, and by all new aspirants to the title of poet. This form introduces the poet as wandering in a wood or by the banks of a river,[Pg 597] where he is astonished to perceive a beautiful lady approaching him. He addresses her, and she answers. The charms of her voice, mien, and bearing are portrayed by the poet. He inquires who and whence she is, and how comes she to be thus wandering. She replies that she is Erin, who is flying from the insults of foreign suitors and in search of her real mate. Upon this theme the changes are rung in every conceivable metre and with every conceivable variation, by the poets of the eighteenth century. Some of the best of these allegorical pieces are distinctly poetic, but they soon degenerated into conventionalism, so much so that I verily believe they continued to be written even after the death of the last Stuart. The possibility of a Jacobite rebellion gave rise to some fine war-songs also, calling upon the Irish to break their slumbers, but they were too exhausted and too thoroughly broken to stir, even in the eventful '45.

One of the earliest writers of Jacobite poetry, and perhaps the most voluminous man of letters of his day amongst the native Irish, was JOHN O'NEAGHTAN of the county Meath, who was still alive in 1715. One of his early poems was written immediately after the battle of the Boyne, when the English soldiery stripped him of everything he possessed in the world, except one small Irish book. Between forty and fifty of his pieces are enumerated by O'Reilly, and I have seen others in a manuscript in private hands.[14] These included a poem in imitation of those called "Ossianic," of 1296 lines, and a tale written about 1717 in imitation of the so-called Fenian tales, an amusing allegoric story called the "Adventures of Edmund O'Clery," and a curious but extravagant tale called the "Strong-armed Wrestler." Hardiman had in his possession a closely-written Irish treatise by O'Neaghtan of five hundred pages on general geography, containing many interesting particulars concerning Ireland, and a volume of Annals of Ireland from[Pg 598] 1167 to about 1700.[15] He also translated a great many church hymns and, I believe, prose books from Latin. His elegy on Mary D'Este, widow of James II., is one of the most musical pieces I have ever seen, even in Irish—

"SLOW cause of my fear
NO pause to my tear.
The brIghtest and whItest
LOW lIes on her bier.

FAIR Islets of green,
RARE sIghts to be seen,
Both hIghlands and Islands
THERE sIgh for the Queen."

TORLOUGH O'CAROLAN, born in 1670, and usually called "the last of the bards," was one of the best known poets of the first half of the eighteenth century. He was really a musician, not a bard, and his advent marked the complete break-down of the old Gaelic polity, according to which bard and harper were different persons. Carolan was born in Meath, but usually resided in Connacht, and having become blind from small-pox in his twenty-second[16] year he was educated as a harper, and achieved in his day an enormous renown. He composed over two hundred airs, many of them very lively, and usually addressed to his patrons, chiefly to those of the old Irish families. He composed his own words to suit his music, and these have given him the reputation of a poet. They are full of curious turns and twists of metre to suit his airs, to which they are admirably wed, and very few are in regular stanzas. They are mostly of a Pindaric nature, addressed to patrons or to fair ladies; there are some exceptions, however,[Pg 599] such as his celebrated ode to whiskey, one of the finest bacchanalian songs in any language, and his much more famed but immeasurably inferior "Receipt for Drinking." Very many of his airs and nearly all his poetry with the exception of about thirty pieces are lost.[17] He died in 1737 at Alderford, the house of the Mac Dermot Roe.

    "When his death was known," says Hardiman, "it is related that upwards of sixty clergymen of different denominations, a number of gentlemen from the surrounding counties, and a vast concourse of country people, assembled to pay the last mark of respect to their favourite bard. All the houses in Ballyfarnon[18] were occupied by the former, and the people erected tents in the fields round Alderford House. The harp was heard in every direction. The wake lasted four days. On each side of the hall was placed a keg of whiskey, which was replenished as often as emptied. Old Mrs. Mac Dermot herself joined the female mourners who attended, 'to weep,' as she expressed herself, 'over her poor gentleman, the head of all Irish music.' On the fifth day his remains were brought forth, and the funeral was one of the greatest that for many years had taken place in Connacht."

Another good poet was TEIG O'NAGHTEN, who lived in Dublin, and is well known for a voluminous manuscript Irish-English dictionary, at which he worked from 1734 to 1749. Some twenty or thirty of his poems remain. Another learned poet and lexicographer was HUGH MAC CURTIN of the County Clare. With the assistance of his friend, a priest called Conor O'Begley, he produced a great English-Irish dictionary in Paris in 1732. He had previously published a grammar at Louvain in small octavo in 1728. This was no work to commend him to the powers that were, and he[Pg 600] appears to have been cast into prison, for in a touching note at p. 64 of the last edition of his grammar he asks the reader's pardon for confounding an example of the imperative with the potential mood, which he was caused to do "by the great bother of the brawling company that is round about me in this prison."[19] What became of him eventually I do not know.

Contemporaneous with him lived O'GALLAGHER, bishop of Raphoe, who had the unique distinction of publishing a book—a volume of Irish sermons—which went through over twenty editions. He, also, pursued letters in the midst of difficulties, at one time escaping from the English soldiers who were sent out to take him by the start of only a few minutes, the parish priest O'Hegarty of Killygarvan being captured in his stead, and promptly shot dead by the officer in command so soon as a rescue was attempted. His Irish is remarkable for its simplicity and its careless use of English and foreign words, carefully eschewed by men like Mac Curtin and O'Neaghtan.

Amongst the Southerns JOHN "CLáRACH" MAC DONNELL was perhaps the finest poet of the first half of the eighteenth century, but his pieces have never been collected. It was in his house, near Charleville in the County Cork, that the poets of the south used to meet in bardic session to exercise their genius in public. He wrote part of a history of Ireland in Irish and translated a portion of Homer into Irish verse, but these are probably lost. He, too, cultivated letters under difficulty, and had, according to Hardiman, "on more occasions than one to save his life by hasty retreats from his enemies the bard-hunters." Some of his poems give dreadful[Pg 601] descriptions of the state of the Irish and the savage cruelty of their new masters. Here is how he describes one of them:—

    "Plentiful is his costly living in the high-gabled lighted-up mansion of Brian, but tight-closed is his door, and his churlishness shut up inside with him, in Aherlow of the fawns, in an opening between two mountains, until famine cleaves to the people, putting them under its sway.

    "His gate he never opens to the moan of the unhappy wretches, he never answers their groans nor provides food for their bodies; if they were to take so much as a little faggot or a scollop or a crooked rod, he would beat streams of blood out of their shoulders.

    "The laws of the world, he used to tear them constantly to pieces, the ravening, stubborn, shameless hound, ever putting in fast fetters the church of God, and Oh! may heaven of the saints be a red-wilderness for James Dawson!"[20]

It would be impossible to enumerate here all the admirable and melodious poets produced—chiefly by the province of Munster—during the latter half of the eighteenth century and the beginning of this. A few of them, however, I must notice.

MICHAEL COMYN, of the County Clare, was the author of the prose story called "The Adventures of Torlogh, son of Starn, and the Adventures of his Three Sons,"[21] and he revived the Ossianic muse by his exquisite version—evidently based upon traditional matter—of "Ossian in the Land of the Young."[22]

BRIAN MAC GIOLLA MEIDHRE, or Merriman, whose poem of the "Midnight Court," contains about a thousand lines with four rhymes in each line, was another native of the County Clare. This amusing and witty poem, one certainly[Pg 602] not intended "virginibus puerisque," is a vision of Aoibhill [Eevil], queen of the Fairies of Munster, holding a court, where, when the poet sees it, a handsome girl is in the act of complaining to the queen that in spite of her beauty and fine figure and accomplishments she is in danger of dying unwed, and asking for relief. She is opposed by an old man, who argues against her. She answers him again, and the court finally pronounces judgment. Standish Hayes O'Grady once characterised this poem as being "with all its defects, perhaps the most tasteful piece in the language,"[23] and it is certainly a wonderful example of sustained rhythm and vowel-rhyme. It was written in 1781.

TADHG [TEIG] GAOLACH O'SULLIVAN, of the County Cork, was another of the most popular poets in his day. His earlier poems contained certain indiscretions for which, in later life, he made ample amends by devoting himself solely to religious poetry, and attempting to turn the force of public opinion against vice in every shape, especially drunkenness and immorality. A small volume of his religious poems, probably the best of the kind produced by any of the New School, was printed during his own lifetime in Limerick, and repeatedly afterwards, at Cappoquin, and I believe elsewhere, in Roman letters, and finally by O'Daly, of Anglesea Street, in Dublin, 1868. His poems are very musical and mellifluous, but abound in "Munsterisms," which make them difficult to readers from other provinces. He died in 1800.

Another fine poet of the County Clare was DONOUGH MAC[Pg 603] CONMARA, or Macnamara, as he is usually called in English. He was educated at Rome for the priesthood, but being of a wild disposition he was expelled from the ecclesiastical college there, and returning to Ireland, made his way to a famous school in the county Waterford at Slieve Gua, in the neighbourhood of which the people of the surrounding districts had for over a hundred years been accustomed to support "poor scholars" free of charge. He himself also opened a successful school, but a young woman of the neighbourhood, whom he had satirised, put a coal in the thatch and burnt him out. He led a rambling existence after that. He went to America and spent two summers and a winter in Newfoundland, which was then largely planted by the Irish. He appears to have also wandered a good deal about the Continent. The longest of his poems is a kind of mock Aeneid, describing his voyage to America and how the ship was chased by a French cruiser. Eevil, the fairy queen of Munster, brings him away in a dream to Elysium, where instead of Charon he finds "bald cursing Conan" the Fenian acting as ferryman. But he is best known by his beautiful lyric, "The Fair Hills of Holy Ireland," which he composed apparently when on the Continent. He led a ranting, roving, wild life, changed his religion a couple of times with unparalleled effrontery, but becoming blind in his old age, he repented of his sins and his misspent life, and died some time about the beginning of this century.[24] He was, like all these poets, a good scholar, as a Latin epitaph of fourteen verses, which he wrote over the pious Teig Gaolach proves—

"Plangite Pierides, vester decessit alumnus,
Eochades[25] non est, cuncta-que rura silent."

[Pg 604]

Perhaps the best known at the present day of all the Munster poets is the witty, wicked OWEN ROE O'SULLIVAN from Slieve Luachra, in Kerry, whose sayings and songs have been proverbial for three generations, and whose fame has penetrated into many counties besides his own. All the poets I have mentioned hitherto, except perhaps the pious Teig Gaolach, were almost professional wits, but Owen Roe, to judge from the number of his bons mots that are still preserved, must have surpassed them all. All the poets I have mentioned were also Jacobite poets, but in elaboration of the usual Jacobite theme of the Lady Erin, Owen Roe is easily first. His denunciations of the foreigner were incessant. He was originally a working man, and laboured hard with plough and spade. His poem called the "Mower" is well known. His explanation of a Greek passage, which puzzled his employer's son fresh from a French college,[26] first brought him into repute, and he opened a school in the neighbourhood of Charleville as a teacher of Latin and Greek. As was the case with very many of the Munster bards, his passion for the frail sex was the undoing of him. He was denounced from the altar, and his school was given up. He died, still young, about the year 1784.

WILLIAM DALL O'HEFFERNAN, JOHN O'TOOMY "the Gay," ANDREW MAC GRATH (surnamed the Mangairè Súgach, or Merry Merchant, the frailest and wildest of all the bards), EGAN O'RAHILLY, of Slieve Luachra in Kerry, OWEN O'KEEFE, parish priest of Doneraile, and JOHN MURPHY, of Rathaoineach, are a few of the names that instantly suggest themselves to all readers of the Irish manuscripts of Munster.[27]

The north of Ireland produced a great number of poets also[Pg 605] during the eighteenth century, of whom PATRICK LINDON and ART MAC CúMHAIDH, both of the County Armagh, PHILLIP BRADY, of the County Cavan, and JAMES MAC CUAIRT, of the County Louth, a friend of Carolan's, were some of the best known, but owing to the fatal loss of Irish manuscripts, chiefly those of the northern half of Ireland, and the apparent determination of the Royal Irish Academy not to use any of the funds (granted by Government for the prosecution of Irish studies) in the preservation of any modern texts, it is to be feared that a great portion of their works and of those of at least a hundred other writers of the eighteenth century is now lost for ever.

It would be interesting to take a retrospect of the splendid lyrical outburst produced by our brothers of the Scotch Highlands contemporaneously with that of the poets I have just mentioned, but it would extend the scope of this work too much. There seems to me to be perhaps more substance and more simplicity and straightforward diction in the poems of the Scotch Gaels, and more melody and word play, purchased at the expense of a good deal of nebulousness and unmeaning sound, in those of the Irish Gaels; both, though they utterly fail in the ballad, have brought the lyric to a very high pitch of perfection.

In Connacht during the eighteenth century the conditions of life were less favourable to poetry, the people were much poorer, and there was no influential class of native schoolmasters and scribes to perpetuate and copy Irish manuscripts, as there was all over Munster, consequently the greater part of the minstrelsy of that province is hopelessly lost, and even the very names of its poets with the exception of CAROLAN, NETTERVILLE, MAC CABE, MAC GOVERN, and a few more of the last century, and MAC SWEENY, BARRETT, and RAFTERY of this century, have been lost. That there existed, however, amongst the natives of the province a most widespread love of song and poetry, even though most of their[Pg 606] manuscripts have perished, is certain, for I have collected among them, not to speak of Ossianic lays and other things, a volume of love poems and two volumes of religious poems,[28] almost wholly taken from the mouths of the peasantry. This love of poetry and passion for song, which seems to be the indigenous birthright of every one born in an Irish-speaking district promises to soon be a thing of the past, thanks, perhaps partly, to the apathy of the clergy, who in Connacht almost always preach in English, and partly to the dislike of the gentry to hear Irish spoken, but chiefly owing to the far-reaching and deliberate efforts of the National Board of Education to extirpate the national language.

Upon the present century I need not touch. Its early years, during which Irish was the general language of the nation, witnessed little or no attempts at its literary cultivation, except amongst the people themselves, who, too poor to call the press to their aid, kept on copying and re-copying their beautiful manuscripts with a religious zeal, and producing poetry—but of no very high order—over the greater part of the country. Then came the famine, and with it collapse. In the sauve-qui-peut that followed, everything went by the board, thousands of manuscripts were lost, and the old literary life of Ireland may be said to have come to a close amidst the horrors of famine, fever, and emigration.

The advent of Eugene O'Curry and John O'Donovan, however, gave a great impetus to the work begun by O'Reilly and Hardiman, and men arose like Petrie and Todd to take a literary interest in the nation's past, and in the language that enshrined it. Meanwhile that language was fast dying as a living tongue without one effort being made to save it. It is only the last few years that have seen a real re-awakening of[Pg 607] interest amongst the people in their hereditary language, and the establishment of a monthly and a weekly paper, chiefly written in Irish.[29] The question whether the national language is to become wholly extinct like the Cornish, is one which must be decided within the next ten years. There are probably a hundred and fifty thousand households in Ireland at this moment where the parents speak Irish amongst themselves, and the children answer them in English. If a current of popular feeling can be aroused amongst these, the great cause—for great it appears even now to foreigners, and greater it will appear to the future generations of the Irish themselves—of the preservation of the oldest and most cultured vernacular in Europe, except Greek alone, is assured of success, and Irish literature, the production of which—though long dribbling in a narrow channel—has never actually ceased, may again, as it is even now promising to do, burst forth into life and vigour, and once more give that expression which in English seems impossible, to the best thoughts and aspirations of the Gaelic race.
********
[1] "Béidhid féin 'n ár n-áit go másach magaidh
D'éis ár sáruighthe, i mbláth ár mbailteadh,
Go péatrach, prásach, plátach, pacach,
Go béarla, beárrtha, bádhach (?) blasta."

[2] I.e., Refusing hospitality except for payment.

[3] Cuchulain's wife.

[4] Cuchulain's grey steed. See ch. XXVI, note 13.

[5] Aoibhioll [Eevil] of the Grey Crag, a queen of the Munster fairies. See ch. XXXII, notes 28, and 31.

[6] This is the metre of the poem, a very common one among the New School. The poet is one Diarmuid Mac Carthy. I forget whence I transcribed his poem.

[7] "Cá ngabhann Seón? ní'l cóta dearg air,
Ná "who goes there" re taebh an gheata 'ge,
Ag iarraidh slighe anaghaidh dlighe go spairneach,
Dom' chur fá chíos i n-oidhche an acarainn."

[8] James II.

[9] "'Sé tigheacht Righ Séamas do bhain dínn éire
Le n-a leath-bhróig gallda 's a leath-bhróig gaedhealach.
Ni thiubhradh sé buille uaidh ná réidhteacht
'S d'fág sin, fhad's mairid, an donas ar Ghaedhealaibh."

[10] "Cíos righ, cíos tire, cíos cléire,
Cíos sróna, cíos tóna, cios teighte
Airgiod ceann i gceann gach féile
Airgiod teallaigh as bealaigh do réightiughadh."

I forget whence I copied this, but such pieces are innumerable.

[11] "Fada sinn i ngalar buan
Faoi smacht cruaidh measg na nGall
O tá Séamas óg ar cuan
Bhéarfaid uatha díol d'á cheann," etc.
From a manuscript of my own.

[12] Hardiman printed about fifteen Jacobite poems in the second volume of his "Irish Minstrelsy," and O'Daly about twenty-five more in his "Irish Jacobite Poetry," 2nd edition.

[13] Or rather to the resurrection of an ancient theme long lost, for as Dr. Sigerson has shown, one of the Monks of St. Gall had already treated it in Latin nine hundred years before. See Constantine Nigra's "Reliqui? Celtic?," and Dr. Sigerson's "Bards of the Gael and Gall," p. 413.

[14] Bought by my friend Mr. David Comyn at the sale of the late Bishop Reeves's MSS.

[15] In a MS. note by Hardiman in my copy of O'Reilly, he attributes to him a piece called "Jacobidis and Carina," and the "Battle of the Gap of the Cross of Brigit," which are unknown to me.

[16] In his fifteenth year, according to O'Reilly; his eighteenth, according to Hardiman's "Irish Minstrelsy," but Hardiman seems to have changed his opinion, for I have a note in his handwriting in which he states that Carolan was twenty-two years old when he became blind.

[17] Hardiman has printed twenty-four of his poems in his "Ancient Irish Minstrelsy," and I printed about twelve more, mostly from manuscripts in my own possession. The late bookseller, John O'Daly, of Anglesea Street, had, I believe, a number of poems of Carolan in his possession, but the Royal Irish Academy did not buy them—or indeed any other of his unique stock of manuscripts—at his sale, and I fear they are now hopelessly lost.

[18] A small village on the border of the County Sligo.

[19] O'Curtin's note runs—"As tré shiothbhuaireadh na cuideachtan cullóidighe atá timchioll orm annsa gcarcairse, do chuir mé an sompla déigheanach so do bheanas ris an Modh gcomhachtach so ionar ndiaigh, annso, san Modh foláirimh." This note was pointed out to me by my friend, Father Ed. Hogan, S.J., who has also been unable to trace the cause of Curtin's imprisonment, or his subsequent fate.

[20] I printed the whole of this ferocious poem in the Cork Arch?ological Journal.

[21] Recently printed without a translation by Patrick O'Brien, of 46, Cuffe Street, Dublin.

[22] First printed nearly forty years ago by the Ossianic Society, and since then by my friend Mr. David Comyn, with a prose translation and glossary, and recently by my friend Mr. O'Flannghaoile, with translations in verse and prose.

[23] See Ossianic Society, vol. iii. p. 36. It was printed with the following curious title-page, "Medi? noctis consilium, auctore Briano Mac-Gilla-Meidhre, de comitatu Clarensi, in Momonia, A.D. MDCCLXXX. Poema heroico-comicum, quo nihil aut magis gracile aut poeticum aut magis abundans in hodierno Hiberni? idiomati exolescit. Curtha a gclódh le Tomás mhic Lopuis ag Loch an chonblaigh Oghair, MDCCC." But both place and date are fictitious. It was almost certainly printed by O'Daly of Anglesea Street, for after his death I found amongst some papers of his the proof-sheets corrected with his own hand! My friend, Mr. Patrick O'Brien, of Cuffe Street, has since printed another edition with a brief vocabulary.

[24] His "Eachtra Giolla an Amarain" was published in 1853 by "S. Hayes," and recently with a number of his other poems translated into English, and republished with the late John Fleming's Irish life of the poet, by my friend Tomás O'Flannghaoile.

[25] I.e., the descendant of Eochaidh Muighmheadhoin, father of Niall of the Nine Hostages. See above, p. 33.

[26] All the Irish of the eighteenth century had, when not secretly educated at home, to go abroad in pursuit of knowledge.

[27] Specimens of their poetry may be found in O'Daly's two excellent volumes, "The Poetry of Munster," and in his "Jacobite Relics" and in Walsh's "Popular Songs," but most of them are still in manuscript.

[28] These are my "Religious Songs of Connacht," quoted more than once in this book as though published. They were meant to have been published simultaneously with it, but unfortunately the plates of both volumes were melted down, while I was revising these proofs, in the great fire at Sealy, Bryers and Walker's, Dublin.

[29] Conducted by the Gaelic League.