Page:A View of the State of Ireland - 1809.djvu/331

 in one Battle, either utterly to weede out the Gyants, or to die free. Peace therefore concluded among themselves, for any private grudge hitherto maintayned, all sorts brake truce and amity with the Gyants, and straited them up so, that from all corners of the land, they must needes assemble into one field and fight for the better, maynelie they tugged certaine houres, but in conclusion the lawfull Kings prevayled, the miscreants done to death. See now the mockery of Fortune, Victors they were, and promised themselves a security. Anger & insolencie over-turned all, for what with spoiling the dead carcases, what with murthering the remaynder of that generation, man, woman, and childe, in all parts of the Realme, vouchsafing them no buryall, but casting them out like a sort of dead dogges, there ensued through the stench of those carryons such a mortall pestilence, infecting not onely the places where they lay, but the ayre round about by contagion, that beside those few which by sea returned homeward, few escaped alive, and heereby hangeth a tale, From this plague (say the Irish) was preserved Ruanus the Gyant, who from time to time kept true record of their histories, else utterly done away by sundry casualties of death, warre, spoyle, fire, forraine victories, and he (forsooth) continued till the yeare of Christ 430. and told S. Patrick all the newes of the country requiring of him to bee baptized, and so died, when he had lived no more but two thousand and forty