initiated a movement in Irish verse that lasted for a long time. 32. Dirge on the Death of Art O'Leary (Page 225). This lament, with its improvisations and its heart-rending reminiscences, is the typical Irish Caoine. But the sweep of personal feeling in it puts it apart from all the others. Art O'Leary, like many of the Irish gentry of the time, had been abroad; he was an officer in the Hungarian service. He married Eileen of the Raven Hair, the daughter of O'Connell of Derrynane, whose grandson was to be Daniel O'Connell the Liberator. Her parents were against the marriage. The immediate cause of the tragedy was the winning by O'Leary's mare of a race. At the time Irish Catholics were not permitted to own a horse that was worth more than five pounds. The English planter whose horse had been beaten offered O'Leary five pounds for his. He refused the offer. Thereupon he was declared an outlaw and was afterwards shot through the heart. This was in 1773. The first intimation that his wife received of the tragedy was the arrival of the mare without her rider. 33. Lament for Thomas Davis (Page 244). Thomas Osborne Davis was one of the leaders of the Young Ireland party. He died just as his work was beginning to have an extraordinary effect. Ferguson, who had not joined the Young Ireland party, but who was in sympathy with Davis's ideas, received the news of his death while he himself was ill; many poems were written in memory of Thomas Davis, but Ferguson's is the most exalted in feeling as well as the most Gaelic in structure. 34. The Downfall of the Gael (Page 261). This poem was written by the bard of Shane O'Neill, O'Gnive. He accompanied O'Neill to London in 1562. The poem is written in the difficult_Deibhidh metre, the dignity of which is not reproduced in Ferguson's translation. 35. Lament for Banba (Page 264). Banba is Ireland in the heroic aspect, as Fodhla is Ireland in the intellectual and spiritual aspect, as Eire is Ireland geographically. Egan O'Rahilly was one of the Munster poets of the eighteenth century. His poems are published by the Irish Texts Society. 36. Dark Rosaleen (Page 269). Mangan's version is much greater than the original poem. It is supposed to be Hugh O'Donnell's address to Ireland at a time when the Irish chiefs were expecting help from Spain and from the Pope. 37. Roisin Dubh (Page 272). "The Little Dark Rose." This poem of Aubrey De Vere's was one of a series written in time of catastrophe-during the famine of 1846-47. See the note on the "Ballad of Douglas Bridge." The author of "The Irish Rapparees" makes the following note on his poem: "When Limerick was surrendered, and the bulk of the Irish army took service with Louis XIV, a multitude of the old soldiers of the Boyne, Aughrim and Limerick preferred remaining in the country at the risk of fighting for their daily bread; and with them some gentlemen, loth to part from their estates or their sweethearts, among whom Redmond O'Hanlon is, perhaps, the most memorable. The English army and the English law drove them by degrees to the hills, where they were long a terror to the new and old settlers from Limerick, and a secret pride and comfort to the trampled peasantry, who loved them even for their excesses. It was all they had left to take pride in." 39. I Am Raftery (Page 291). Raftery, a Connacht peasant poet, while at some festivity, heard someone asking who he was. He was then blind and a fiddler. Turning around he made this perfect utterance. Raftery died in 1835. His poems have been collected, edited and translated by Dr. Douglas Hyde. 40. Night (Page 293). Blanco White was born in Seville of an exiled Irish family. 41. Nepenthe (Page 294). Robert Bridges makes this note upon "Nepenthe": "The Phoenix personifies the earth life of sun-joys, i.e., the joys of the sense. She is sprung of the Sun and is killed by the Sun. It is of the essence of sun-joys to be, in their sphere, as eternal as their cause; and their personification is without ambition to transcend them. The Phoenix is melancholy as well as glad; the sun-joys would not be melancholy if they did not perish in the using: but they are ever created anew. Their inherent melancholy would awaken ambition in the spirit of man. In the last stanza Mountainless means 'void of ambition,' and unechoing means ‘awakening no spiritual echoes.' A. E., 286, 308, 309 ANONYMOUS, 69, 72, 74, 77, 79, BANIM, JOHN, 284 CALLANAN, JEREMIAH J., 235, CAMPBELL, JOSEPH, 24, 30, 161 DARLEY, GEORGE, 294 EGLINTON, JOHN, 312 FERGUSON, SIR SAMUEL, 40, 43, Fox, GEORGE, 192 Fox, MOIREEN, 142 FURLONG, ALICE, 143, 155, 327 FURLONG, THOMAS, 172 GORE-BOOTH, Eva, 164 138 GRIFFIN, GERALD, 296 HACKETT, FRANCIS, 253 HULL, ELEANOR, 65, 115, 121, HYDE, DOUGLAS, 23, 59, 124, 170, INGRAM, John Kelly, 282 JOHNSON, LIONEL, 277, 310 KETTLE, THOMAS, 248 KICKHAM, CHARLES JOSEPH, 191 LARMINIE, WILLIAM, 160 LESLIE, SHANE, 165 MACDONAGH, THOMAS, 34, 42, MACGILL, PATRICK, 341 MEYER, KUNO, 111 |