as Hooker states, not only to eat horses, dogs, and dead carrion, but human flesh, and even to take carcasses from their graves.* It is a fact manifest, that some older people had been in that starving condition, that they murdered and eat children, for a long time together, and were at last discovered and executed for that barbarity. In short, the famine of Jerusalem did not exceed that amongst the rebels of Ireland.""" "And as for the great companies of soldiers, gallowglasses, kerne, and the common people, who followed this rebellion, the numbers of them are infinite, whose bloods the earth drank up, and whose carcasses the fowls of the air and the ravening beasts of the field did consume and devour. After this followed an extreme famine: and such whom the sword did not destroy, the same did consume and eat out; very few or none remaining alive, excepting such as were fled over into England: and yet the store in the towns was far spent, and they in distress, albeit nothing like in comparison to them who lived at large; for they were not only driven to eat horses, dogs, and dead carrions; but also did devour the carcasses of dead men, whereof there be sundry examples; namely, one in the county of Cork, where, when a malefactor was executed to death, and his body left upon the gallows, certain poor people secretly came, took him down, and did eat him; likewise in the bay of Smeereweeke, or St. Marieweeke, the place which was first seasoned with this rebellion, there happened a ship to be there lost, through foul weather, and all the men being drowned, were there cast on land. "The common people, who had a long time lived on limpets, orewads, and such shell-fish as they could find, and which were now spent; as soon as they saw these bodies, they took them up, and most greedily did eat and devoure them: and not long after, death and famine did eat and consume them. The land itselfe, which before those wars was populous, well inhabited, and rich in all the good blessings of God, being plente 97 Cox, 449. worthy of observation, that Spencer coolly and deliberately proposed a plan for reducing the country, by the introduction of a new famine, which would force the natives" to devour one another," "* and renew the horrible scenes that had ous of corne, full of cattell, well stored with fish and sundrie other good commodities, is now become waste and barren, yielding no fruits, the pastures no cattell, the fields no corne, the aire no birds, the seas (though full of fish) yet to them yielding nothing. Finallie, every waie the curse of God was so great, and the land so barren both of man and beast, that whosoever did travell from the one end to the other of all Munster, even from Waterford to the head of Smeerweeke, which is about six score miles, he would not meet anie man, woman, or child, saving in townes and cities; nor yet see anie beast, but the very wolves, the foxes, and other like ravening beasts; many of them laie dead, being famished, and the residue gone elsewhere." 1198 *"The end will (I assure me) bee very short, and much sooner than it can be in so great a trouble, as it seemeth hoped for, although there should none of them fall by the sword, nor bee slain by the souldiour; yet thus being kept from manurance, and their cattle from running abroad, by this hard restraint they would quietly consume themselves, and devoure one another; the proofe whereof I saw sufficiently in these late warres of Munster; for notwithstanding that the same was a most rich and plentiful countrey, full of corn and cattle, that you would have thought they should have been able to stand long, yet in one yeare and a halfe they were brought to such wretchednesse, as that any stony heart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glynnes they came creeping forth upon their handes, for their legges could not beare them; they looked like anatomies of death; they spake like ghosts crying out of their graves; they did eate the dead carrions, happy where they could find them, yea, and one an 98 Hollinshed, VI. 459. taken place during, and subsequent to, the hostilities against the earl of Desmond and his adherents, of which he draws such a hideous picture as makes the hair stand on end. There is nothing in the horrors of the French revolution, to exceed the calamitous events of this war of extermination. NOTE VI. ON CHAPTER II. F P. 36. Better suited incarnate demons.] To palliate those enormities, of which the preceding notes afford some slight specimens, and to prove that the Irish were undeserving of any other fate than what they suffered, the English writers have exhausted the powers of language, in their reprobation and reproaches of the nation. From their accounts, it would appear that they were among the worst of the human species,* * other soone after, insomuch as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves; and if they found a plot of water-cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time; yet not able long to continue therewithall; that in short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country SUDDAINLY LEFT VOYDE OF MAN AND BEAST." 9999 *"And here you may see the nature and disposition of this wicked, effrenated, barbarous, and unfaithful nation, who (as Cambrensis writeth of them) they are a wicked and perverse generation, constant in that they be always inconstant, faithful in that they be always unfaithful, trusty in that they be always 99 Spencer, 165. and combined together nearly all the bad qualities of all other nations. Among the most treacherous and untrusty. They do nothing but imagine mischief, and have no delight in any good thing. They are always working wickedness against the good, and such as be quiet in the land. Their mouths are full of unrighteousness, and their tongues speak nothing but curses. Their feet are swift to shed blood, and their hands imbrued in the blood of innocents. The ways of peace they know not, and in the, paths of righteousness they walk not. God is not known in their land; neither is his name called rightly upon among them: their queen and sovereign they obey not; and her government they allow not: but as much as in them lieth, do resist her imperial crown and dignity. It was not much above a year past, that captain Gilbert with the sword so persecuted them, and in justice so executed them, that then they in all humbleness submitted themselves, craved pardon, and swore to be for ever true and obedient; for such a perverse nature they are of, that they will be no longer honest and obedient, than that they cannot be suffered to be rebels. Such is their stubbornness and pride, that with a continual fear it must be bridled; and such is the hardness of their hearts, that with the rod it must still be chastised and subdued; for no longer fear, no longer obedience; and no longer than they be ruled with severity, no longer will they be dutiful and in subjection; but will be, as they were before, false, truce-breakers, and traitorous. Being not much unlike to mercury, called quicksilver, which let it by art be ne'er so much altered and transposed, yea and with fire consumed to ashes; yet let it but rest awhile untouched, nor meddled with, it will return again to its own nature, and be the same as it was at the first: and even so, daily experience teacheth it to be true, in these people. For withdraw the sword, and forbear correction, deal with them in courtesie, and intreat them gently, if they can take any advantage, they will surely skip out; and as the dog to his vomit, and the sow to the dirt and |
