A Literary History of Ireland from Earliest Times to the Present Day

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T.F. Unwin, 1903 - Irish literature - 654 pages
 

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Page 205 - There beneath the dewy hillside sleep the noblest Of the clan of Conn, Each below his stone with name in branching Ogham And the sacred knot thereon. There they laid to rest the seven Kings of Tara, There the sons of Cairbre sleep — Battle-banners of the Gael, that in Kieran's plain of crosses Now their final hosting keep. And in Clonmacnois they laid the men of Teffia, And right many a lord of Breagh ; Deep the sod above Clan Creide and Clan Conaill, Kind in hall and fierce in fray.
Page 523 - An awful, a tremendous night is this meseems ! The floodgates of the rivers of heaven, I think, have been burst wide — Down from the overcharged clouds, like unto headlong ocean's tide, Descends grey rain in roaring streams.
Page 382 - D'Arbois de Jubainville has I think proved, the list of one hundred and eightyseven historic tales contained in the Book of Leinster, was really drawn up at the end of the seventh or beginning of the eighth century, we find that even then Finn or his contemporaries were the subjects of or figure in several of them, as in the story of the Courtship of Ailbhe, daughter of King Cormac mac Art, by Finn...
Page 588 - What did not clash with the Word of God in the written law and in the New Testament, and with the consciences of the believers, was confirmed in the laws of the Brehons by Patrick and by the ecclesiastics and the chieftains of Erin; for the law of nature had been quite right, except the faith, and its obligations and the harmony of the church and the people. And this is the Senchus Mor.
Page 591 - This is another factor which may have caused local cultivation of grain to increase in the second half of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century.
Page 620 - THE religion of the Papists is superstitious and idolatrous, their faith and doctrine erroneous and heretical, their church, in respect of both, apostatical : to give them therefore a toleration, or to consent, that they may freely exercise their religion, and profess their faith and doctrine, is a grievous sin...
Page 563 - Every one who is black-haired, who is a tattler, guileful, taletelling, noisy, contemptible, every wretched, mean, strolling, unsteady, harsh, and inhospitable person, every slave, every mean thief, every churl, every one who loves not to listen to music and entertainment, the disturbers of every council and every assembly, and the promoters of discord among people, these are of the descendants of the Firbolg, of the Gailiuns," of Liogairne, and of the Fir Domhnann in Erin. But, however, the descendants...
Page 636 - I THANK the goodness and the grace Which on my birth have smiled, And made me, in these Christian days, A happy English child.
Page 505 - The tuneful tumult of that bird, The belling deer on ferny steep — This welcome in the dawn he heard, These soothed at eve his sleep. Dear to him the wind-loved heath, The whirr of wings, the rustling brake, Dear the murmuring glens beneath, And sob of Droma's lake. The cry of hounds at early morn, The pattering o'er the pebbly creek, The cuckoo's call, the sounding horn, The swooping eagle's shriek.
Page 177 - How swiftly we travel ! there is a grey eye Looks back upon Erin, but it no more Shall see while the stars shall endure in the sky Her women, her men, or her blessed shore.

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