At my bed-foot decaying, Through the boys of the village Next Sunday the patron At home will be keeping, Shall be cold in Cluanmeala. H THE LAMENT OF O'GNIVE1 Translated from the Irish. OW dimmed is the glory that circled the Gael And fall'n the high people of green Innisfail; The sword of the Saxon is red with their gore; And the mighty of nations is mighty no more! 2 1 Fear flatha O'Gniamh was family olamh or bard to the O'Neil of Clanoboy about the year 1556. The poem of which these lines are the translation commences with "Ma thruagh mar ataid' Goadhil."-M. F. M'Carthy. 2 land. Innisfail, the island of destiny, one of the names of Ire Like a bark on the ocean, long shattered and tost, O where is the beauty that beamed on thy brow? Bright shades of our sires! from your home in the skies O blast not your sons with the scorn of your eyes! For thy freemen are slaves, and thy mighty are weak! 2 O'Neil of the Hostages; Con, whose high name On a hundred red battles has floated to fame, Let the long grass still sigh undisturbed o'er thy sleep; Arise not to shame us, awake not to weep. In thy broad wing of darkness enfold us, O night! Withhold, O bright sun, the reproach of thy light! 1 Gollam, a name of Milesius, the Spanish progenitor of the Irish O's and Macs. 2 Nial of the Nine Hostages, the heroic monarch of Ireland in the fourth century, and ancestor of the O'Neil family. 3 Con Cead Catha, Con of the Hundred Fights, monarch of the island in the second century. Although the fighter of a hundred battles, he was not the victor of a hundred fields; his valorous rival Owen, King of Munster, compelled him to a division of the kingdom. For freedom or valour no more canst thou see Affliction's dark waters your spirits have bowed, And oppression hath wrapped all your land in its shroud, Since first from the Brehon's1 pure justice you strayed And bent to those laws the proud Saxon has made. We know not our country, so strange is her face; For the stranger now rules in the land of the Gael. Where, where are the woods that oft rung to your cheer, Where you waked the wild chase of the wolf and the deer? Can those dark heights, with ramparts all frowning and riven, Be the hills where your forests waved brightly in heaven? O bondsmen of Egypt, no Moses appears To light your dark steps thro' this desert of tears! To lead you to freedom, or teach you to die! 1 Brehons, the hereditary judges of the Irish septs. 'T JOSEPH CAMPBELL NEWTOWNBREDA IS pretty tae be in Ballylesson, 'Tis pretty tae be in green Malone; The cummers are out wi' their knitting and spinning, O! fair are the fields o' Ballylesson, 'Tis pleasant tae saunter the gray clachan thoro' O! brave are the haughs o' Ballylesson, And cracks cam' down frae the days of old. 'Tis pretty tae be in Ballylesson, And pretty tae be in green Malone; 'Tis prettier tae be in Newtownbreda, Becking under the eaves in June. The cummers are out wi' their knitting and spinning, THE FRIAR'S BUSH The Friar's Bush gives name to the old Catholic buryingground situate on the left-hand side of the road leading out from Beul-feirste to Srath-milis, on the rise of the hill just before you come to Mount Pleasant. I never knew how the place got its name until told by my mother, who is a repository of all the quaint traditional stories of Lagan Vale. I tell her story in versified form below. N penal times, as peasants tell, IN A friar came with book and bell To chaunt his Mass each Sabbath morn Beneath Srath-milis' trysting-thorn. He came in sun, he came in flood To house the scripts of Clann-Aedha-buidhe. But that was in the golden age |