Notes.

1. And now thy vitals tear: "Nothing civil or sacred. escaped the fury of these (the early English) commanders; churches and religious houses were plundered and destroyed without mercy and distinction; murders, rapes, tyranny, and the most unconscionable oppressions, were the recreation of these foreigners, who, without remorse or regret, confounded everything, human and divine, and made the island a most deplorable scene of bloodshed and misery. The Earl of Strangwell (Strongbow), Robert Fitz Stephen, Hugo de Lacy, John de Courcy, and William Aldelmel were severe instruments in the hands of Providence to chastise the divided natives; . . . But divine vengeance, notwithstanding they raged with impunity, fixed a mark of infamy upon the families of these plunderers, for scarce a man of them left a son behind him to enjoy the effects of their father's oppression; as Stanihurst expressly testifies of the Earl of Strangwell, who, after he had committed inexpressible outrages upon the natives, ravaged and destroyed churches and monasteries, and expelled the clergy, regular and secular without distinction, died miserably at Dublin, in the year of Christ 1177, after a tyranny of seven years from his first landing in the country." Keating Hist.

"De Courcy rapidly overran Ulidia, overthrew the allied troops, slew the Fermanagh chieftain, then ⚫ marched

against Armagh pillaged and burned.”

which he assailed, stormed

"Meanwhile, the English of Munster continued to devastate the country of Desmond from the river Shannon to the Eastern sea." The Abbe MacGeoghegan, Hist. ch. XIX.

"The progress of the British armies in Ulster, as well as in the other provinces of the kingdom, was ruinous to the churches and monasteries of the country.

And now various literary works, which had escaped the ravages of the merciless Danes, were destroyed in the libraries of the monks." Stuart's Armagh, p. 160-3.

"The end will, I assure me, be very short and much sooner than can be in so great a trouble as it seemeth hoped for, although there should none of them fall by the sword, nor be slain by the soldier, yet thus being kept from manurance, and their cattle from running abroad, by this hard restraint, they would quickly consume themselves and devour one another. The proof whereof I saw sufficiently exampled in these late wars of Munster; for, notwithstanding that the same was a most rich and plentiful country, full of corn and cattle, that you would have thought they should have been able to stand long, yet ere one year and a half they were brought to such wretchedness, as that any stony heart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them; they looked like anatomies of death, they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves, they did eat the dead carrions, happy where they could thus find them, yea, and one another soon after, insomuch as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a plot of watercresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able long to continue there

withal; that, in short space, there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man and beast; yet sure in all that war, there perished not many by the sword, but all by the extremity of famine, which they themselves had wrought."

"Therefore by all means it must be foreseen and assured, that after once entering into this of reformation, there be afterwards no remorse nor drawing back from the sight of any such rueful objects as must thereupon follow, nor for compassion of their calamities; seeing that by no other means is it possible to cure them, and that these are not of will, but of very urgent necessity." A View of the State of Ireland, by Edmund Spencer, author of "The Faerie Queen."

"The English nation was shuddering over the atrocities of the Duke of Alva. The children in the nurseries were being inflamed to patriotic rage and madness by the tales of the Spanish tyranny. Yet Alva's bloody sword never touched the young, the defenceless, or those whose sex even dogs can recognize and respect.'

"Sir Peter Carew has been murdering women and children, and babies that had scarcely left the breast, but Sir Peter Carew was not called on to answer for his conduct, and remained in favour with the Deputy. Gilbert, who was left in command at Kilmallock, was illustrating yet more signally the same tendency. He regarded himself as dealing rather with savage beasts than with human beings, and when he tracked them to their dens, he strangled the cubs and rooted out the entire broods."

"The Gilbert method of treatment (in the time of Elizabeth), had this disadvantage, that it must be carried out to the last extremity, or it ought not be tried at all. The dead do not come back; and if the mothers and the babes are slaughtered with the men, the race gives no further trouble; but the work must be done thoroughly; partial

and fitful cruelty lays up only a long debt of deserved and ever deepening hate." Froude, Hist. Eng., vol. X, p.

507-12.

2. Crom Cruah: "The great Idol of Milesian pagan worship, the Delphos of our Gadelian ancestors, from the time of their first coming into Erin until the destruction of the idol by St. Patrick." O'Curry, M. S. Materials, p. 103.

"King Tiernmas, with three parts of his subjects perished, by the judgment of heaven, at Moy Slaght upon the eve of the festival of Samhuin as he was worshiping his idol Crom Cruah, the same god that Zoroaster adored in Greece. The Irish antiquarians agree, that Tiernmas was the first that introduced idolatry, and erected pagan altars in the island, about a hundred years after the Milesians arrived in the country." Keating, Hist. Ire. Dr. Charles O'Conor, Prol., part 1, p. 22. O'Flaherty,

Ogygia, part 3, p. 194.

And

"Patrick after that went over the water to Magh Slecht, where stood the chief Idol of Eirin, i. e., Cenn Cruaich, ornamented with gold and with silver, and twelve other idols ornamented with brass around him.. he called upon all the people cum rege Leaghuire; they it was that adored the idol. And all the people saw him (i. e., the demon), and they dreaded their dying if Patrick had not sent him to Hell." O'Curry, M. S. Materials, p. 539.

3. In Fohla's ancient code: "In one of Claudian's poems, Britain, personified as Britania, speaks of Stilico, the Roman general, protecting her from neighbouring nations when the Scots moved all Ierne, and the sea foamed

with hostile oars." O'Curry. Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish. vol. 1. p. 14.

"In the fifth campaign, Agricola, crossing over in the first ship, subdued, by frequent and successful engagements, several nations, till then unknown; and stationed roops in that part of Britain which is opposite to Ireland, rather with a view to future advantage, than from any apprehension of danger from that quarter. For the possession of Ireland, situated between Britain and Spain, and lying commodiously to the Gallic sea, would have formed a very beneficial connection between the most powerful parts of the empire. This Island is less than Britain, but larger than those of our sea. Its soil, climate, and the manners and dispositions of its inhabitants, are little different from those of Britain. Its ports and harbours, from the concourse of merchants for the purpose of commerce, are better known." Tacitus. "Vita Agricolae." ch. 24.

4. His mansion stood: "The public schools, namely, Bangor, Ardmach, Lismore, Ros Ailithir, otherwise Ros Carbery, Clonard, etc." MacGeoghegan, Hist. Ire. ch. XII.

"We know that multitudes of students flocked to the college of Lismore, from all parts of Europe. Even so early as the time of the famous Irish scholar Catald, its reputation is believed to have been firmly established. That philosopher presided over the academy; and from the classic lines written by Bonaventura Moronus, a Tarentine by birth, we learn that multitudes from all the nations who inhabited the borders of the Rhine and Elbe; that the Teutonici, the people of Guelderland, the Bohemians, the Arverni, the Batavians, as well as the Genevese, the Helvetians, the Scottish Islanders, etc., flocked to Lismore to