The Irish of the eighteenth century being almost wholly deprived by law of all possibilities of bettering their condition, and having the necessary means of education rigidly denied them, turned for solace to poetry, and in it they vented their wrongs and bitter grief. I have met nothing more painful in literature than the constant, the almost unvarying cry of agony sent out by every one of the Irish writers during the latter half of the seventeenth and the first half of the eighteenth century.

There seems to have been very great literary activity amongst the natives in almost every county of Ireland during this period, and the poets it produced were countless; during this period, too, the Irish appear to have translated many religious books from French and Latin into Irish. In one way the work of the eighteenth century is of even more value to us than that of any earlier age, because it gives us the thoughts and feelings of men who, being less removed from ourselves in point of time, have probably more fully transmitted their own nature to their descendants—the Irish of the present day. Unhappily, however, though many volumes of the work of the eighteenth century have survived, yet countless others have[Pg 592] been lost during the last fifty years, and the only body in Ireland competent to secure Irish manuscripts by purchase, takes unfortunately not the slightest heed of any modern Irish writings, which are daily perishing in numbers.

Of the poets of what I have called the New School, towards the end of the seventeenth century, the most noted was certainly David O'Bruadar, or Broder, whose extant poems would fill a volume. They are in the most various forms of the new metres, but their vocabulary and word-forms are rather those of the more ancient bards, which renders his poetry by no means easy of translation. He appears to have been the bard par excellence of the Williamite wars, and bitter is his cry of woe after the Boyne and Aughrim.

    "One single foot of land there is not left to us, even as alms from the State; no, not what one may make his bed upon, but the State will accord us the grace—strange! of letting us go safe to Spain to seek adventures!

    "They [the English] will be in our places, thick-hipped, mocking, after beating us from the flower of our towns, full of pewter, brass, plates, packages—English-speaking, shaven, cosy, tasteful.[1]

    "There will be a beaver cape on each of their hags, and a silk gown from crown to foot; bands of churls will have our fortresses, full of Archys (?), cheeses and pottage.

    "These are the people—though it is painful to relate it—who are living in our white moats, 'Goody Hook' and 'Mother Hammer,' 'Robin,' 'Saul,' and 'Father Salome'!

    "The men of the breeches a-selling the salt,[2] Gammer,' 'Ruth,' and 'Goodman Cabbage,' 'Mistress Capon,' 'Kate and Anna,' 'Russell Rank,' and 'Master Gadder'!

    "[They are now] where Déirdre, that fair bright scion used to roam, where Emer[3] and the Liath Macha[4] used to be, where Eevil[5][Pg 593] used to be beside the Crag, and the elegant ladies of the Tuatha De Danann.

    "Where the poet-schools, the bards, and the damsels were, with sporting, dance, wine and feasts, with pastime of kings and active champions."

For a moment, after the accession of James II. and during the viceroyalty of Tyrconnel, courage and hope returned to the natives. Their poetry, wherever preserved, is a veritable mirror wherein to read their transitions of feeling.

    "Thanks be to God, this sod of misery
    Is changed as though by a blow of wizardry;
    James can pass to Mass in livery,
    With priests in white and knights and chivalry."[6]

    "Where goes John [i.e., John Bull], he has no red coat on him [now], and no 'who goes there' beside the gate, seeking a way [to enrich himself], contentiously, in the teeth of law, putting me under rent in the night of misfortune.[7]

    "Where goes Ralph and his cursed bodyguard, devilish prentices, the rulers of the city, who tore down on every side the blessed chapels, banishing and plundering the clergy of God.

    "They do not venture [now] to say to us, 'You Popish rogue;' but our watchword is, 'Cromwellian Dog.'

    "The cheese-eating clowns are sorrowful, returning every greasy lout of them to their trades, without gun, or sword, or arm exercise; their strength is gone, their hearts are beating....

    "After transplanting us, and every conceivable treachery, after transporting us over-sea to the country of Jamaica, after all whom they scattered to France and Spain.

    "All who did not submit to their demands, how they placed their heads and hearts on stakes! and all of our race who were valiant in spirit, how they put them to death, foully, disgustingly!

    "After all belonging to our church that the Plot hanged, and after the hundreds that have died in fetters from it, and all whom they[Pg 594] had deep down in the jail of every town, and all who were bound in the tower of London.

    "After all their disregard for right, full of might and injustice, without a word [for us] in the law, who would not even write your name, but ever said of us 'Teigs and Diarmuids,' disrespectfully.

    "There is many a Diarmuid now, both sensible and powerful! and many a Teig, too, both merry and jubilant! in the county of Eber, who is strong on the battlefield—the foreigners all everlastingly hated that name....

    "Friends of my heart, after all the thousands we lost, I cry impetuously to God in the heavens, giving thanks every day without forgetting, that it is in the time of this king[8] we have lived....

    "Having the fear of God, be ye full of almsgiving and friendliness, and forgetting nothing do ye according to the commandments; shun ye drunkenness and oaths and cursing, and do not say till death 'God damn' from your mouths," etc.

But Aughrim and the Boyne put an end to the dream that the Irish would ever again bear sway in their own land, and the carefully-devised Penal laws proceeded to crush all remaining independence of spirit out of them, and to grind away their very life-blood. Once more their poets fell back into lamentations over the past and impotent prophecies of the return of the Stuarts and the resurrection of Erin. Despite their sentimental affection for the paltry Stuarts, who ever used them as their tools, many of the poets were perfectly clear-sighted about them.

    "It is the coming of King James that took Ireland from us,
    With his one shoe English and his one shoe Irish.
    He would neither strike a blow nor would he come to terms,
    And that has left, so long as they shall exist, misfortune upon the Gaels."[9]

    "Our case," says another poet, "is like the plague of Egypt; whoever chooses to break your lease, breaks it, and there is no good for you to go arguing your right."

    [Pg 595]

    "King's rent, country's rent, clergy's rent, rent for your nose, rent for your back, rent for warming yourself, head-money at the head of every festival, hearth money, and money for readying roads![10]

    "His goods are not taken from any one all at once, at one time; he must pay for being allowed to keep them first, and be forced to sell them afterwards.

    "If you happen to be alive, then you are the 'Irish rogue,' if you happen to be dead, then there's no more about you, except that your soul is [of course] in the fetters of pain, like the bird-flock that is among the clouds.

    "It is the King of Kings—and King James, the Pope, the friars, and the fasting, and King Louis, who put Christendom under a settlement, that sent this ban upon the children of Milesius."

Every poet describes the condition of the native Irish in almost the same strains.

    "Their warriors are no better off than their clergy; they are being cut down and plundered by them [the English] every day. See all that are without a bed except the furze of the mountains, the bent of the curragh, and the bog-myrtle beneath their bodies.

    "Under frost, under snow, under rain, under blasts of wind, without a morsel to eat but watercress, green grass, sorrel of the mountain, or clover of the hills. Och! my pity to see their nobles forsaken!

    "Their estates were estimated for, and are now in the hands of robbers, their towns are under the control of English-speaking bastards, their title deeds which were firm for a while, are now in the hands of foreigners, whose qualities are not mild.

    "Their forts are under the sway of tradespeople; none of their fortresses is to be seen remaining for them, but black prisons and the houses of the fetters, and some of their heads parted from their tender bodies.

    "And some of them in the clutch of famine so that they die, and some of them hunted to Connacht of the slaughter, [shut in], under the lock of the Shannon, not easy to open, and without provision to feed their mouths there—their warm dwellings under the control of the perjurers."

The feelings of the native Irish, smarting under the[Pg 596] cowardice, selfishness, and incompetence of James II., were but moderately excited by the rather feeble attempt of his son to regain his father's kingdom by the sword. One or two stray bards, however, saluted his undertaking with poems:

"Long in misery were we,
No man free from English gall,
Now our James is on the sea
We shall see revenge for all.[11]

Flowering branch of royal blood,
Soon his bud shall burst to flame,
James our friend is on the flood,
Learned and good and first in fame.

Luther's louts, and Calvin's clan,
Every man who loved to lie,
Boar-hounds of the bloody fang
We shall see them hang on high."

But this and its fellows were only spasmodic rhapsodies. The Irish kept their real enthusiasm for the gallant attempt of Charles Edward, and the Jacobite poems of Ireland would, if collected, fill a large-sized volume.[12] So popular did Jacobite poetry become that it gave rise to a conventional form of its own,[13] which became almost stereotyped, and which seems to have been adopted as a test subject in bardic contests, and by all new aspirants to the title of poet. This form introduces the poet as wandering in a wood or by the banks of a river,[Pg 597] where he is astonished to perceive a beautiful lady approaching him. He addresses her, and she answers. The charms of her voice, mien, and bearing are portrayed by the poet. He inquires who and whence she is, and how comes she to be thus wandering. She replies that she is Erin, who is flying from the insults of foreign suitors and in search of her real mate. Upon this theme the changes are rung in every conceivable metre and with every conceivable variation, by the poets of the eighteenth century. Some of the best of these allegorical pieces are distinctly poetic, but they soon degenerated into conventionalism, so much so that I verily believe they continued to be written even after the death of the last Stuart. The possibility of a Jacobite rebellion gave rise to some fine war-songs also, calling upon the Irish to break their slumbers, but they were too exhausted and too thoroughly broken to stir, even in the eventful '45.

One of the earliest writers of Jacobite poetry, and perhaps the most voluminous man of letters of his day amongst the native Irish, was JOHN O'NEAGHTAN of the county Meath, who was still alive in 1715. One of his early poems was written immediately after the battle of the Boyne, when the English soldiery stripped him of everything he possessed in the world, except one small Irish book. Between forty and fifty of his pieces are enumerated by O'Reilly, and I have seen others in a manuscript in private hands.[14] These included a poem in imitation of those called "Ossianic," of 1296 lines, and a tale written about 1717 in imitation of the so-called Fenian tales, an amusing allegoric story called the "Adventures of Edmund O'Clery," and a curious but extravagant tale called the "Strong-armed Wrestler." Hardiman had in his possession a closely-written Irish treatise by O'Neaghtan of five hundred pages on general geography, containing many interesting particulars concerning Ireland, and a volume of Annals of Ireland from[Pg 598] 1167 to about 1700.[15] He also translated a great many church hymns and, I believe, prose books from Latin. His elegy on Mary D'Este, widow of James II., is one of the most musical pieces I have ever seen, even in Irish—

"SLOW cause of my fear
NO pause to my tear.
The brIghtest and whItest
LOW lIes on her bier.

FAIR Islets of green,
RARE sIghts to be seen,
Both hIghlands and Islands
THERE sIgh for the Queen."

TORLOUGH O'CAROLAN, born in 1670, and usually called "the last of the bards," was one of the best known poets of the first half of the eighteenth century. He was really a musician, not a bard, and his advent marked the complete break-down of the old Gaelic polity, according to which bard and harper were different persons. Carolan was born in Meath, but usually resided in Connacht, and having become blind from small-pox in his twenty-second[16] year he was educated as a harper, and achieved in his day an enormous renown. He composed over two hundred airs, many of them very lively, and usually addressed to his patrons, chiefly to those of the old Irish families. He composed his own words to suit his music, and these have given him the reputation of a poet. They are full of curious turns and twists of metre to suit his airs, to which they are admirably wed, and very few are in regular stanzas. They are mostly of a Pindaric nature, addressed to patrons or to fair ladies; there are some exceptions, however,[Pg 599] such as his celebrated ode to whiskey, one of the finest bacchanalian songs in any language, and his much more famed but immeasurably inferior "Receipt for Drinking." Very many of his airs and nearly all his poetry with the exception of about thirty pieces are lost.[17] He died in 1737 at Alderford, the house of the Mac Dermot Roe.

    "When his death was known," says Hardiman, "it is related that upwards of sixty clergymen of different denominations, a number of gentlemen from the surrounding counties, and a vast concourse of country people, assembled to pay the last mark of respect to their favourite bard. All the houses in Ballyfarnon[18] were occupied by the former, and the people erected tents in the fields round Alderford House. The harp was heard in every direction. The wake lasted four days. On each side of the hall was placed a keg of whiskey, which was replenished as often as emptied. Old Mrs. Mac Dermot herself joined the female mourners who attended, 'to weep,' as she expressed herself, 'over her poor gentleman, the head of all Irish music.' On the fifth day his remains were brought forth, and the funeral was one of the greatest that for many years had taken place in Connacht."

Another good poet was TEIG O'NAGHTEN, who lived in Dublin, and is well known for a voluminous manuscript Irish-English dictionary, at which he worked from 1734 to 1749. Some twenty or thirty of his poems remain. Another learned poet and lexicographer was HUGH MAC CURTIN of the County Clare. With the assistance of his friend, a priest called Conor O'Begley, he produced a great English-Irish dictionary in Paris in 1732. He had previously published a grammar at Louvain in small octavo in 1728. This was no work to commend him to the powers that were, and he[Pg 600] appears to have been cast into prison, for in a touching note at p. 64 of the last edition of his grammar he asks the reader's pardon for confounding an example of the imperative with the potential mood, which he was caused to do "by the great bother of the brawling company that is round about me in this prison."[19] What became of him eventually I do not know.

Contemporaneous with him lived O'GALLAGHER, bishop of Raphoe, who had the unique distinction of publishing a book—a volume of Irish sermons—which went through over twenty editions. He, also, pursued letters in the midst of difficulties, at one time escaping from the English soldiers who were sent out to take him by the start of only a few minutes, the parish priest O'Hegarty of Killygarvan being captured in his stead, and promptly shot dead by the officer in command so soon as a rescue was attempted. His Irish is remarkable for its simplicity and its careless use of English and foreign words, carefully eschewed by men like Mac Curtin and O'Neaghtan.

Amongst the Southerns JOHN "CLáRACH" MAC DONNELL was perhaps the finest poet of the first half of the eighteenth century, but his pieces have never been collected. It was in his house, near Charleville in the County Cork, that the poets of the south used to meet in bardic session to exercise their genius in public. He wrote part of a history of Ireland in Irish and translated a portion of Homer into Irish verse, but these are probably lost. He, too, cultivated letters under difficulty, and had, according to Hardiman, "on more occasions than one to save his life by hasty retreats from his enemies the b............