Know, Protestants of Ireland, That, doomed among mankind- Life's ever-shifting currents Brave men put forth to try; They wait beside the ebbing tide SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY C. G. DUFFY was born in Monaghan, 1816. He was educated in that town, and entered journalism in Dublin at a very early age. In 1842 he launched The Nation newspaper. In the words of Mr. Martin MacDermott, the great gift which he brought to the National movement was 'the power of initiation and organisation, without which, notwithstanding Davis's splendid talents, there never would have been a Nation newspaper or a Young Ireland party.' THE LIBRARY OF IRELAND and in later days THE NEW IRISH LIBRARY were originated by him, and his BALLAD POETRY OF IRELAND is an invaluable collection of Irish verse. He was arrested in 1848, but after several abortive trials, in which the anxiety of the Crown to obtain a conviction overreached itself, he was released. After the Famine, he projected and carried out a national agitation for land reform, in which political differences on other questions were laid aside, and entered Parliament in connection with this movement. It failed when apparently on the eve of success, owing largely to the opposition of Cardinal Cullen and some of the Catholic hierarchy, who supported Sadlier and Keogh-deserters from the Tenant League camp. Duffy then emigrated to Australia, where he became Premier of Victoria and received the honour of K.C.M.G. on the visit of the Prince of Wales in 1873. In his later years he has lived at Nice, and has busied himself chiefly in recording-in volumes as fascinating as they are instructive—the history of the Irish movements in which he was engaged. None of the Young Irelanders wrote in rhyme and metre with more sinewy force than Duffy. His lines smite home, like the axe of an Irish Gallowglass; and though his mind, as his whole career shows, was eminently that of a statesman, he clearly thought and felt as a reckless fighter when he faced the enemies of his cause with the keen blade of verse in his hand. The rising of 1641 and the brigandage of the Rapparees were among the features of the secular resistance of Ireland with which the National cause was most often reproached, and for which its leaders were expected to apologise. And those were the very things that Duffy chose to flaunt before his shocked (or delighted) readers, for the apologetic attitude then so prevalent in Ireland, the tacit admission that the English conquest was in any sense a triumph of civilisation over barbarism, was utterly repugnant to him and his colleagues, and their first object was to make their countrymen understand the whole truth about their history and be proud of it. Duffy's lyre had other strings too, which he touched with skill, as in the 'Lay Sermon' and other poems collected in the NEW SPIRIT OF THE NATION, but it is in these warlike strains that his verse has most strength and character. Sir Charles Duffy's principal works are: YOUNG IRELAND; THE LEAGUE OF THE NORTH AND SOUTH (the Tenant League); LIFE OF THOMAS DAVIS; A SHORT LIFE OF THOMAS DAVIS (New Irish Library'); and an edition of IRISH BALLAD POETRY (1843). He has lately published his Reminiscences. THE MUSTER OF THE NORTH A.D. 1641 We deny and have always denied the alleged massacre of 1641. But that the people rose under their chiefs, seized the English towns and expelled the English settlers, and in doing so committed many excesses, is undeniable-as is equally their desperate provocation. The ballad here printed is not meant as an apology for these excesses, which we condemn and lament, but as a true representation of the feelings of the insurgents in the first madness of success.-Author's note. Joy! joy! the day is come at last, the day of hope and prideAnd see! our crackling bonfires light old Bann's rejoicing tide, And gladsome bell and bugle-horn from Newry's captured towers, Hark! how they tell the Saxon swine this land is ours-is OURS! Glory to God! my eyes have seen the ransomed fields of Down, My ears have drunk the joyful news, 'Stout Phelim hath his own.' Oh! may they see and hear no more!-oh! may they rot to clay !— When they forget to triumph in the conquest of to-day. Now, now we'll teach the shameless Scot to purge his tnievish maw; Now, now the Court may fall to pray, for Justice is the Law; Now shall the Undertaker' square, for once, his loose accountsWe'll strike, brave boys, a fair result, from all his false amounts. Come, trample down their robber rule, and smite its venal spawn, Their foreign laws, their foreign Church, their ermine and their lawn, With all the specious fry of fraud that robbed us of our own; Our standard flies o'er fifty towers, o'er twice ten thousand men ; Pity! no, no, you dare not, priest-not you, our Father, dare spare ; To spare his blood, while tombless still our slaughtered kin implore 'Graves and revenge' from Gobbin cliffs and Carrick's bloody shore ! 3 The Scotch and English adventurers planted in Ulster by James I. were called Undertakers.' 2 Leland, the Protestant historian, states that the Catholic priests ' laboured zealously to moderate the excesses of war,' and frequently protected the English by concealing them in their places of worship and even under their altars. The scene of the massacre of the unoffending inhabitants of Island Magee by the garrison of Carrickfergus. Pity could we 'forget, forgive,' if we were clods of clay, Our martyred priests, our banished chiefs, our race in dark decay, And, worse than all-you know it, priest-the daughters of our land With wrongs we blushed to name until the sword was in our hand? Pity well, if you needs must whine, let pity have its way— We in the open field will fight fairly for land and life; But, by the dead and all their wrongs, and by our hopes to-day, One of us twain shall fight their last, or be it we or they. They banned our faith, they banned our lives, they trod us into earth, Until our very patience stirred their bitter hearts to mirth. Even this great flame that wraps them now, not we but they have bred : Yes, this is their own work; and now their work be on their head! Nay, Father, tell us not of help from Leinster's Norman peers, Then let them stay to bow and fawn, or fight with cunning words ; Our rude array's a jagged rock to smash the spoiler's pow'r— Down from the sacred hills whereon a saint' communed with God, Up from the vale where Bagenal's blood manured the reeking sod, Out from the stately woods of Truagh, M'Kenna's plundered home, Like Malin's waves, as fierce and fast, our faithful clansmen come. Then, brethren, on! O'Neill's dear shade would frown to see you pause Our banished Hugh, our martyred Hugh, is watching o'er your cause His generous error lost the land-he deemed the Norman true; Oh, forward! friends, it must not lose the land again in you! THE IRISH RAPPAKEES A PEASANT BALLAD When Limerick was surrendered and the bulk of the Irish army took service with Louis XIV., a multitude of the old soldiers of the Boyne, Aughrim and Limerick, preferred remaining in the country at the risk of fighting for their daily bread; and with them some gentlemen, loath to part from their estates or their sweethearts. The English army and the English law drove them by degrees to the hills, where they were long a terror to the new and old settlers from England, and a secret pride and comfort to the trampled peasantry, who loved them even for their excesses. It was all they had left to take pride in. Author's note. RIGH SHEMUS he has gone to France and left his crown behind :- Our luck, they say, has gone to France. do?' What can poor Ireland Oh, never fear for Ireland, for she has so'gers still, For Remy's boys are in the wood, and Rory's on the hill; St. Patrick, whose favourite retreat was Lecale, in the County Down. 2 After the Treaty of Limerick, Patrick Sarsfield, Lord Lucan, sailed with the Brigade to France, and was killed while leading his countrymen to victory at the battle of Landen, in the Low Countries, July 29, 1693. |