point of style the merits of the original are very considerable. It is superior to any specimen of Irish poetry we have seen as yet, both in chasteness of expression and harmony of language. Of these, however, the English reader can form no idea. In speaking of the process of translating Irish poetry into English, we shall not use Alfieri's figure, by saying that it resembles transferring an air from the harp to the hurdy-gurdy, but we think it has been the impression of all who have attempted the matter, that at best they merely succeeded in rendering the energy of the original, to the exclusion of those graces which are peculiar to the Irish tongue, and which form a part of its mechanical structure. The lament which we subjoin, concludes with a fearful curse on the glen where the accident occurred. He prays that the sun and stars may never shed their light on it; that the curse of the Most High may wither it up; that the 'poison of its treachery' towards him may ever adhere to it, and he baptizes it, 'the glen of ruin' from that day forward,

Like the swan floating on the surge
That murmurs its unwilling dirge.

"Thou Callaghan devoid of sin,

And Charles of the silky skin,
Mary, and Ann my peerless flower,

Entombed within an hour.

"My four sweet children fair and brave,

Laid in one grave;

Wound of my soul that I should say,

Your death song in one day!

"Vain was the blood Eiver's race,

And every opening grace,

And youth uudarkened by a cloud,

Against an early shroud!

"Mute are the tongues that sang for me

In joyful harmony;

Cold are the lips whose welcome kiss

To me was heavenly bliss."

because, in one night, it made an old man of him in the bloom of his youth."

Felix Mac Carthy appears, like "Ned of the Hills" (Edward Ryan), to have been one of those unfortunate outlaws whom the political struggle between James II and William III compelled to take up arms; and though he was evidently a partizan of the former, few, if any of those whose forefathers supported the latter, will now object to his having espoused "the right cause." But, to use the words of Sir John Harrington,

"Treason can never prosper: what's the reason?
Why, if it did, none dare to call it treason."

The accomplished Miss Brooke, in her "Reliques of Irish Poetry" (Dublin, 1789), speaking of Ryan, states, that concerning him “many stories are still circulated, but no connected account has been obtained, further than that he commanded a company of those unhappy freebooters called Rapparees, who after the defeat of the Boyne, were obliged to abandon their dwellings and possessions, 'hoping' (says Mr. O'Halloran) 'for safety within the precincts of the Irish quarters; but they were too numerous to be employed in the army, and their miseries often obliged them to prey alike upon friend and foe. At length some of the most daring of them formed themselves into independent companies, whose subsistence chiefly arose from depredations committed on the enemy.

"It was not choice but necessity, that drove them to this extreme. I have heard ancient people, who were witnesses to the calamities of those days, affirm, that they remembered vast numbers of these poor Irish, men, women, and children, to have no other beds but the ridges of potato gardens, and little other covering than the canopy of heaven; they dispersed themselves over the counties of Limerick, Clare, and Kerry, and the hardness of the times at length shut up all bowels of humanity, so that most of them perished by the sword, cold, or famine.'"*

* O'Halloran's Int. to the Hist. and Ant. of Ireland, 382.

KEEN, BY FELIX MAC CARTHY.

Tho' choaked by tears-I'll try to keen
My heart's beloved, in heart-felt woe,
Mine is the heavy loss I ween,

And nature's fullness will o'erflow.

Small is my prop, this Easter day,

This day that pierces through my breast!From friends, from all I love, away, A lonely wanderer in the West.

By bursting pangs compelled to speak,
Let me deplore my endless grief;
With rambling head from pain grown weak
And heart that throbs without relief.

To mine, what is the widow's wail?

Or bridegroom's, for his lonely bed ?—

I face alone the winter's gale

A nestless bird-my young ones, dead!—

So, like the swan, on stormy waves
Sad, sweet, and sullen be my dirge,
The song of death—that dying braves,
And murmurs music thro' the surge.

My Callaghan-O dark downfall—
And Charles of the silky skin,
Mary; and Ann, best loved of all-

All crushed, a ruined heap within.

My children four -as pure as light,
Of lineage fair-in one sad day
I saw them dead-oh fatal sight,

That rends my heart with sore dismay.

Branches, from Heber's noble tree*

In life's spring time-all love and truth—
My children!-gone are they from me
In the full joyousness of youth.

Though of a prouder stock-yet they

With Sythia's kings could kindred claim;—
And kings of Spain in pride array

As of the stock from whence they came.t

With many a true Milesian bold

A near connexion could they trace; ‡

* In a poem of a hundred and twenty-four verses, composed by Teige Mac Daire (a bard of the seventeenth century) during the memorable contest of the bards, he endeavoured to show that the Munster tribes had a right to precedence before those of the other provinces, as being descended from Heber, the eldest son of Milesius, while the latter are the progeny of Ereman and Ir, the younger sons.

† Milesius, the colonizer or conqueror of Ireland, is said, in a poem supposed to be composed in the middle of the seventh century, to have departed from Scythia, "Do luidh Golamh (Milesius) asm Scitia," for Spain, from whence he went into Ireland. -See Iberno-Celtic Transactions, xlvii.

"The peasantry of Kerry are generally tall and well-proportioned. Swarthy complexions, dark eyes, and long black

And they from chronicles of old

To Saxon kings could link their race.

Sweet were their voices to my ear,

As they would sport in childhood's mirth,
But now no merry words I hear-

Their lips are silent as the earth.

And who can tell their mother's smart?
For children loved with ardent love,
Nursed at the fountain of her heart-
Her's is all other grief above.

The white palms of her hands are sore
From striking them in her despair,
Great tears her eyes unceasing pour,
And wild her heart is, as her hair.

Yet strange 'twould be if less her wail-
She who the prop of life has lost;
Nor is there one in Innisfail

By sorrows crosses so much cross'd.—

Upon that valley sad and dark,

When nearly maddened grew my brain,

hair, are common amongst them; in which features some persons pretend to trace the origin of their race from Spain; and the appellation of Milesians, from Milesius, who led a colony from that country, is given to them; this reputed distinction from the other inhabitants of Ireland is eagerly maintained amongst the lower orders."-Weld's Killarney.