Page:Irish minstrelsy, vol 2 - Hardiman.djvu/142

 130 Irish. The last, and it is hoped it will be the last, signal act of treachery in Ireland was committed by the descendant of a settler, Colonel Henry Luttrell, who "sold the pass" at Limerick to King William's forces. Lord Westmeath afterwards endeavoured, but ineffectually, to acquit this unhappy man of the charge; see Ferrar's History of Limerick, 354. He survived, an object of general execration, until the year 1717, when he was shot in a sedan chair in Stafford-street, Dublin. The following Epigram was composed on his death—

If heaven be pleased when mortals cease to sin. And hell be pleased when villains enter in, If earth be pleased when it entombs a knave, All must be pleased, now Luttrell's in his grave.

$5$Samhain, the 1st of November. "The festival of Samen, or Baal-samen is called the Oiche-samhin by the ancient Irish. Pliny remarks, that the Druids counted their years not by days, but nights. The Irish word Coigtighois, meaning a fortnight in modern acceptation, means really Coig-deagoiche, or fifteen nights, shewing that the Pagan Irish counted lunations of thirty days, and divided them into two periods of fifteen nights each."—''O'Conor Cat. Stow MSS. p.'' 25.

This alludes to the treaty of Limerick. So much has been said and written about this celebrated breach of military honor and political faith, that it only remains here to observe, that no single circumstance connected with the affairs of these Islands tended so much as this to estrange the minds of the Irish people from the English government, particularly during the last century. Even the massacres at Mullamast, the carnage at Drogheda, and the murders of the Scotch at Glenco have been forgotten, but this unparalelledunparalleled [sic] dereliction of all principle is still remembered with horror.