AN GAODHAL.
227
For ’t is reason to love her, and death to defend.
Unpriz'd are her sons till they've learn'd to betray,
Undistinguish'd they live, if they shame not their
sires;
And the torch, that would light them thro' digni¬
ty's way,
Must be caught from the pile where their country
[expires.
Then blame not the bard, if, in Pleasure's soft
dream,
He should try to forget what he never can heal;
Oh ! give but a hope — let a vista but gleam
Through the gloom of his country, and mark how
he'll feel!
That instant, his heart at her shrine would lay
down
Every passion it nurs'd, every bliss it ador'd;
While the myrtle, now idly entwin'd with his crown
Like the wreath of Harmodius, should cover his
sword.
But tho' glory be gone, and tho' hope fade away,
Thy name, loved Erin, shall live in his songs:
Not ev'n in the hour, when his heart is most gay,
Can he lose the remembrance of thee and thy
wrongs.
The stranger shall hear thy lament on his plains ;
The sigh of thy harp shall be sent o'er the deep,
Till the masters themselves as they rivet thy chains
Shall pause at the song of their captive, and weep!
Shame on you, Gaelic Society of New York. A
few boys start a social club and run a journal to
advertise themselves. You know no such move¬
ment as yours can progress without being adverti¬
sed. You should be ashamed of yourselves not to
have even a quarterly journal, which would not
cost you $5 a year each. Commence in earnest.
During the campaign just closed a party named
John Byrne, of 47 Wall Street, New York, made
the assertion that Irishmen have no ill-feeling to
England. That man knew that he lied when he
made the assertion, or he takes the Irish (he says
he was born in America of Irish parents) to be as
low as the dog that licks the hand that smites him.
Hence, we produce the above song as it shows
plainly what this man is — an Irish-American lep¬
rous thrall who, for the perishable monetary con¬
sideration he may have received, and an entrance to
polluted English society, would defame his kindred
The Fox never burrows for himself but when he
wants a cover, he soils in the entrance to the Bad¬
ger's habitation, and he, being a very clean animal,
there-after shuns it, this leaving the wily reynard
in indisputed possession.
WHAT ELECTED CLEVELAND? — The Orange A¬
merican Mechanic element who heretofore suppor¬
ted the Republican party voted for him "o down
Tammany," and the English to help their home
manufactures. The purely Irish districts of this
city, such as the 1, 2, 5, 6, 13, 14 and 26th polling
districts of the 6th, and the 7, 8, 9, 10. 12 and 14th
of the 9th ward gave Harrison an increase of 6 per
cent, over Cleveland's, whereas Cleveland gained
over 14 per cent. in the banner Republican wards,
basing the calculation on last year's vote. But we
think the contract to down the Tammany tiger an
up hill one; and the Orange and English elements
weak reeds to rest upon when English interests are
involved. We said this before; we say it again.
Every Englishman voted for Cleveland on the
8th; one of them told us so. Hence the "land¬
slide." But, that is their privilege.
O'Curry's Lectures.
ON THE
MANUSCRIPT MATERIAL OF ANCIENT IRISH HIS¬
TORY.
LECTURE VII.
[Delivered July 3, 1856.]
The Annals (continued). 10. The Annals of the
Four Masters. The "Contention of the Bards."
Of Michael O'Clery. Of the Chronology of the
Four Masters.
Father John Colgan, in his preface to bis Acta
Sanctorum Hiberniae, published at Lauvain in
1645, after speaking of the labours of Fathers Fle¬
ming and Ward, in collecting and elucidating the
Lives of the Irish Saints, and their subsequent
martyrdom in 1632, writes as follows of their reli¬
gious Brother Michael O'Clery.
"That those whose pious pursuits he imitated,
our third associate, Brother Michael O'Clery, also
followed to the rewards of their merits, having died
a few months ago, a man eminently versed in the
antiquities of his country, to whose pious labours,
through many years, both this and the other works
which we labour at are in a great measure owing.
For, when he was a layman, he was by profession
an Antiquarian, and in that faculty esteemed am¬
ongst the first of his time; after he embraced our
Seraphic Order, in this convent of Louvain, he was
employed as coadjutor, and to this end, by obe¬
dience and with the permission of his superiors, he
was sent back to his country to search out and ob¬
tain the lives of the saints and other sacred anti¬
quities of his country, which are, for the greater
part, written in the language of his country, and
very ancient.
"But, in the province entrusted to him, he la¬
boured with indefatigable industry about fifteen
years; and in the meantime he copied many lives
of saints from many very ancient documents in the
language of the country, genealogies, three or four
martyrologies, and many other monuments of great
antiquity, which, copied anew, he transmitted hi¬
ther to P. Vardens. At length, by the charge of
the superiors, deputed to this, he devoted his mind
to clearing and arranging, in a better method and
order, the other sacred as well as profane histories
of his country, from which, with the assistance of
three other distinguished antiquarians (whom, from
the opportunity of the time and place, he employ¬
ed as colleagues, as seeming more fit for that duty)
he compiled, or, with more truth, since they had
been composed by ancient authors, he cleared up,
digested, and composed, three tracts of remote an¬
tiquity, by comparing many ancient documents.
The first is of the Kings of Erinn, succintly record¬
ing the kind of death of each the years of their
reign, the order of succession, the genealogy, and
the year of the world, or of Christ, in which each
departed, which tract, on account of its brevity
ought more properly be called a catalogue of those
kings, than a history. The second of the genea¬
logy of the Saints of Erinn, which he has divided
into thirty-seven classes or chapters, bringing back
each saint, in a long series, to the first author and
progenitor of the family from which he descends,
which, therefore, some have been pleased to call
Sanctilogium Genealogicum (the genealogies of
the saints), and others Sancto-Genesis. The third
