the remains of the castle were blown up by Carew with the gunpowder found therein.'

Few episodes of Irish history have been more warmly eulogized than this heroic defence of Dunboy; nor would it be easy to find in the history of any country one more largely calculated to excite sympathy and admiration. Dr. Robert Dwyer Joyce, in his published volume of Ballads, Romances, and Songs, contributes a truly graphic poem on the subject. Subjoined are the concluding stanzas:

THE SACK OF DUNBUL,

Nearer yet they crowd and come,

With taunting and yelling and thundering drum,
With taunting and yelling the hold they environ,
And swear that its towers and defenders must fall,
While the cannon are set, and their death-hail of iron
Crash wildly on bastion and turret and wall;
And the ramparts are torn from their base to their brow;
Ho! will they not yield to the murderers now?
No! its huge towers shall float over Cleena's bright sea,
Ere the Gael prove a craven in lonely Dunbui.

Like the fierce god of battle, Mac Geoghegan goes

From rampart to wall, in the face of his foes,

Now his voice rises high o'er the cannon's fierce din,
Whilst the taunt of the Saxon is loud as before,

But a yell thunders up from his warriors within,

And they dash through the gateway, down, down to the shore,
With their chief rushing on. Like a storm in its wrath,
They sweep the cowed Saxon to death in their path;

Ah! dearly he'll purchase the fall of the free,
Of the lion-souled warriors of lonely Dunbui!

Leaving terror behind them, and death in their train,
Now they stand on their walls 'mid the dying and slain,
And the night is around them-the battle is still-
That lone summer midnight, ah! short is its reign;

For the morn springeth upward, and valley and hill

Fling back the fierce echoes of conflict again.

And see how the foe rushes up to the breach,

Towards the green waving banner he yet may not reach,
For look how the Gael flings him back to the sea,
From the blood-reeking ramparts of lonely Dunbui!

Night cometh again, and the white stars look down,
From the hold to the beach, where the batteries frown;
Night cometh again, but affrighted she flies,

Like a black Indian queen from the fierce panther's roar,
And morning leaps up in the wide-spreading skies,
To his welcome of thunder and flame evermore ;

For the guns of the Saxon crush fearfully there,
Till the walls and the towers and ramparts are bare.
And the foe make their last mighty swoop on the free,
The brave-hearted warriors of lonely Dunbui!

Within the red breach see Mac Geoghegan stand,
With the blood of the foe on his arm and his brand,
And he turns to his warriors and "fight we," says he,
"For country, for freedom, religion, and all;

Better sink into death, and forever be free,

Than yield to the false Saxon's mercy and thrall !”

And they answer with brandish of sparth and of glaive:

"Let them come: we will give them a welcome and grave;
Let them come from their swords could we flinch, could we flee,
When we fight for our country, our God, and Dunbui ?"

They came, and the Gael met their merciless shock-
Flung them backward like spray from the lone Skellig rock;
But they rally, as wolves springing up to the death
Of their brother of famine, the bear of the snow-

He hurls them adown to the ice fields beneath,

Rushing back to his dark Norland cave from the foe ;-
So up to the breaches they savagely bound,

Thousands still thronging beneath and around,

Till the firm Gael is driven-till the brave Gael must flee

In, into the chambers of lonely Dunbui !

In chamber, in cellar, on stairway and tower,

Evermore they resisted the false Saxon's power;

Through the noon, through the eve, and the darkness of night The clangor of battle rolls fearfully there,

Till the morning leaps upward in glory and light.

Then, where are the true-hearted warriors of Beare ?
They have found them a refuge from torment and chain,
They have died with their chief, save the few who remain,
And that few-oh, fair Heaven! on the high gallows tree,
They swing by the ruins of lonely Dunbui!

Long, long in the hearts of the brave and the free
Live the warriors who died in the lonely Dunbui--
Down time's silent river their fair names shall go,
A light to our race towards the long coming day;
Till the billows of time shall be checked in their flow.

Can we find names so sweet for remembrance as they !
And we will hold their memories forever and aye,

A halo, a glory that ne'er shall decay,

We'll set them as stars o'er eternity's sea,

The names of the heroes who fell at Dunbui!

During the progress of the siege at Dunboy, Carew had despatched a force to Dursey island, which, landing in the night, succeeded in overpowering the small and indeed unwary garrison left there; "so that," as a historian remarks, "no roof now remained to the Lord of Bearhaven." Donal, collecting his people, one and all, men, women, and children, as well as all the herds and removable property of the clan, now retired eastward upon his great natural stronghold of Glengariffe. Here he defied and defeated every attempt to dislodge him. For three months he awaited with increasing anxiety and suspense the daily-expected news from spain. Alas! In the words of one of our historians, "the ill-news from Spain in September, threw a gloom over those mountains deeper than was ever cast by equinoctial storm." But here we must pause for awhile to trace the movements of O'Donnell and O'Neill after the parting at Innishannon.

* On one occasion a fierce and protracted battle ensued between him and the com. bined forces of Wilmot, Selsby, and Slingsby: "A bitter fight," says Carew, "maintained without intermission for sixe howers; the Enemy not leaving their pursuit until they came in sight of the campe; for whose reliefe two regiments were drawne forth to gieve countenance, and Downings was sent with one hundred and twenty choisse men to the succour of Barry and Selby, who in the reare were so hotly charged by the Rebels that they came to the Sword and Pike; and the skirmish continued till night parted them." Notwithstanding their immense superiority in numbers, night was a welcome relief to the English; for it not only saved them from a perilous position, but enabled them to get off an immense spoil of cattle, which early in the day they had taken from the Irish. Brilliant as was the victory for O'Sullivan in other respects, the loss thus sustained must have been most severe-two thousand cows, four thousand sheep, and one thousand horse, according to Carew; a store of sheep and kine which, even in these days of "cattle shows" and " agricultural societies," it would be difficult to collect in the same locality.

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX ANL TILDEN FOUNDATIONS