Ask ye where are my people-
The true and the trusty?
Are their guns wrapped in straw;
Or their swords are they rusty?

They but bide for a little,

And wait for my telling

Till they've laid my poor child
In her last silent dwelling.

Then will follow the season,

The time of my pleasure,

When my cup of revenge

Shall be filled brimming measure

When my friends and my faction

Around me shall rally,

G 2

And drive the destroyer

As a wolf from the valley.

The summer is coming,

And with it is bringing
Fine crops-God be praised

For the hemp that is springing!

But I pray to His throne,

That the rope now is making,
Which, before the year's gone,

Will be Henry's life taking!

KEEN ON YOUNG RYAN.

TRANSLATED FROM THE IRISH BY THE EDITOR,

AND was procured by him in July 1821. It appears to be an address from a mother to the keeners, who were hired to attend her child's funeral, and was probably delivered as the procession was about to depart from her house to the burial-ground.

The name of the subject of this lamentation was said to be Ryan; and, judging from the allusion to the River Dowr, it may be presumed that he was a resident in the eastern part of the county of Cork. Some of the verses were printed in the first volume of "The Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland," as illustrative of the superstitious belief in the Banshee.

MAIDENS, sing no more in gladness
To your merry spinning wheels;
Join the keeners' voice of sadness;
Feel for what a mother feels!

See the space within my dwelling,

'Tis the cold, blank, space of death!
"Twas the Banshee's voice came swelling
Slowly o'er the midnight heath.

Keeners-let your voices blending
Long and loudly mourn my boy,
Through six counties* proudly sending
Song as great as that of Troy.†

He was as the Christmas mummer,‡
Bounding like a ball in play;
He was as the dancing summer,
Bright and merry as the May.

What was motion, now is starkness
What was comfort, now is none;
What was sunshine, now is darkness:
My heart's-music-it is gone!

There's a grief that few can measure,
All absorbing-deep and dim,
'Tis a grief makes death a pleasure,

And that grief I feel for him.

* A literal translation-probably meaning the province of Munster.

† Or as lasting as Homer's verse. The comment made upon this line to the Editor, by the reciter, a miserably poor country schoolmaster, was, "Opus vatum durat-Glory be to God for that same."

Dark as flows the buried Dowr*
Where no ray can reach its tide,
So no bright-beam has the power
Thro' my soul's cold stream to glide.

Did your eyes like holy fountain
Gush with never-failing spring ;†
Had
ye voices like the mountain,
Then my lost child ye might sing!

Keeners, let your song not falter,—
He was as the hawthorn fair;
Lowly at the Virgin's altar

Will his mother kneel in prayer.

Prayer is good to calm the spirit,

When the keen is sweetly sung ;

Death, though mortal flesh inherit,

Why should age lament the young?

* Dr. Smith, in his History of Cork, mentions, that "about a mile south-east of Castle-martyr, a river called the Dowr breaks out from a limestone rock, after taking a subterraneous course near half a mile, having its rise near Mogeely." It has been remarked, that "the original" (of this verse) "would seem to have suggested to Mr. Moore the notion of that touching song in his Irish melodies:

&c.

"As a beam o'er the face of the waters may glow,
While the tide runs in darkness and coldness below,'
A holy well or fountain, is supposed never to dry up.

'Twas the Banshee's lonely wailing,
Well I knew the voice of death,
On the night wind slowly sailing
O'er the bleak and gloomy heath.

Thro' the holy Mother Mary,

And her babe-our Saviour bless'd,
Hearts that of this world are weary,
Will in Heaven find joy and rest.

THE SMITH'S KEEN.

TRANSLATED FROM THE IRISH BY THE EDITOR.

THE original was obtained from Mrs. Harrington, in 1818, and is here versified after the prose translation which appeared in "Researches in the South of Ireland," where the following introduction was prefixed to it :-" The account given of this lamentation, called 'the Smith's Keenan,' is at once simple and romantic. A young man (a smith), left his widowed mother and sisters, who resided at Killavullen on the Blackwater, and married in a distant part of the country. Some time after, one of his sisters, hearing that he was ill, set out to see him; but before she reached her destination, the night came on, which compelled her, being ignorant of the way, to seek shelter at a cottage on the road side; here she found the inmates preparing to proceed to a wake in the village where her brother resided, and going forward with them, on arrival discovered it to be her brother's wake, at the sight of whose lifeless body she burst into the following exclamations. The conclusion is singular, nor is it possible for a translation to do justice to the strain of powerful sarcasm of the original, directed against the wife of the deceased."