Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/184

 1 64 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 42. O'Briens and the Clanrickards shared without disputing for them the glens and moors of Galway, Clare, and / Mayo. The richer counties of Munster were a prize to excite a keener competition ; and when the English Government was no longer in a position to interfere, the feud between the Butlers and the Geraldines of the south burst like a volcano in fury, and like a volcano in ^r the havoc which it spread. Even now the picture drawn by Sir Henry Sidney and repeated by Spenser can scarcely be contemplated without 'emotion. The rich limestone pastures were burnt into a wilderness ; through Kilkenny, Tipperary, and Cork, ' a man might ride twenty or thirty miles nor ever find a house stand- ing ; ' * and the miserable poor were brought to such wretchedness that any stony heart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glens they came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs could not bear them ; they looked like anatomies of death ; they spoke like ghosts crying out of their graves ; they did eat the dead carrions, happy where they could find them ; yea, they did eat one another soon after, insomuch as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of their graves ; and if they found a plot of watercresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for a time. Yet were they not all long to continue therewithal, so that in short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country was suddenly left void of man and beast ; yet surely in all that war there perished not many by the