The Editor has found it impossible to convey in verse the conclusion of this Keen, which in plain prose stands thus after the line

"But I can never find again, a dear and darling brother."

("The priest comes forward and speaks.) "Hold your tongue, stubborn stranger. Why will you provoke your brother's wife?

(She answers.)

"Hold your tongue, stubborn priest! read your Litany and Confiteor; earn your half-crown and begone.-I will keen my brother."

OH, brother dear! oh, brother dear! your absence long from home

It did not raise you into ease-you left us but to roam, And found a wife-to plague your life, who knew not how to prize

Your mother's boy, your sister's joy-the darling of our eyes.

Come from afar, unknown you are-unknown your

family,

For those who stand, on either hand, are strangers all

to me;

They only know you were a Smith, and of a Smith

Oh if I had, your cold limbs sad-by the Blackwater's

*

side, Or on the banks of the Awbeg, or by the gentle Bride,† Then Mary, Kate, and Julia would, cry for your sad downfall,

Your mother too, would sweetly cry-and I'd cry more than all.

Oh brother dear-oh brother dear, I might have guessed my woes

When brother dear, I did not hear, your strong and heavy blows,

Fall sharp and quick, and close and thick, upon the anvil's head,

Oh brother dear-oh brother here-I should have thought you dead.—

My darling one-my hope that's gone-you had the cruel mark

Of a bad wife-who lived in strife-she left you in the dark;

In summer dry, in winter cold, without a sunday dress, And fasting long-with patient song, your sorrow to express.

* The Mulla of Spenser.

"And Mulla mine whose waves I whilom taught to weep."

Called the North Bride, to distinguish it from another river of the same name, in the county of Cork, which falls into the Lee.

You woman there, my brother's wife-you woman with dry eyes,

You woman who are deaf and dumb, nor heed a sister's

cries,

Go home-go home-go any where-your husband leave to me,

And I will mourn my brother's loss and keen him bitterly.

You woman there, who in that chair, with tearless eye is seen,

Come down, come down, and I will sing for you a proper keen,

A husband you, if young enough, perhaps may find another,

But I can never find again, a dear and darling brother.

KEEN ON MR. SAMUEL HODDER.

TRANSLATED FROM THE IRISH BY THE EDITOR.

And taken down by him from the recitation of Mrs. Leary, April 1829, at Blackrock, near Cork. According to Mrs. Leary, it was composed about twelve or fourteen years before, by Mrs. Mary Hodder, on the death of her husband, Mr. Samuel Hodder, of (the name has escaped my memory), near Carrigaline, who was generally called Frank, and is so designated in the keen, probably after his father, to distinguish him from some other Samuel Hodder-a name which abounds in that district.

To explain the circumstances alluded to, it may be necessary to state, that Mr. Hodder was killed by a fall from his horse at the fair of Carrigaline, a small village in the county of Cork;

and that Mrs. Hodder having gone there soon after, with the intention of joining him, made her way towards a crowd, near which she saw her husband's horse standing, when she found that it had collected around his dead body. On the corpse being laid out in the evening for "waking," she is said to have spoken the following keen, which is singular, because the Hodder family hold a highly respectable rank among the gentry of the county, and, at that time, the custom of keening had fallen into disrepute, and was practised only by the peasantry.

This keen has been printed in Fraser's Magazine, No. II, for March 1830. The first verse of the original, according to its sound on the English ear, may be found at p. xi. of the Introduction.

My heart's love and darling,
My horseman so fearless,

Whose good word has redeemed

From the stone pound so cheerless

The poor widow's cattle,

And has saved from the halter

Young men, who their courses

From evil would alter.

There are ladies so stately,

In rich silken dresses,

With sweet smiles on their lips, And with beautiful tresses. There is mirth and there's feasting, There's all that's entrancing

The sweetest of music,

And the gayest of dancing.

From that house hath departed
Its strength and its splendour,
Since the loss of my darling,
With his eyes full and tender.
The flowers of the valley

In sadness they languish ;

Their heads droop with dew-tears

Of sorrow and anguish.

The cuckoo is silent,

Though the summer's returning—

The fish in the river

Partake of the mourning;

And all that was pleasant,

And made sport and rejoicing,

Lies still-for that mansion

There's now no lord's voice in.

Frank, my heart's love and darling,
I saw you this morning,
With your head neatly powdered,

Your fine horse adorning.