Page:Irish minstrelsy, vol 2 - Hardiman.djvu/164

152 man-eaters: have a tradition among them, that when the Devill shewed our Saviour all the Kingdomes of the Earth and their glory, that he would not shew him Ireland, but reserved it for himself: it is probably true, for he hath kept it ever since for his own peculiar; the old Fox foresaw that it would eclipse the glory of all the rest: he thought it wisdom to keep it for a Boggards for himself, and all his unclean spirits employed in this Hemisphere, and the people, to doe his son and heire, I mean the Pope, that service for which Lewis the eleventh kept his barber Oliver, which makes them so blood-thirsty. They are the very offall of men, Dregges of mankind, reproache of Christendome, the Bots that crawle on the Beasts taile. I wonder Rome itself is not ashamed of them.

"I begge upon my hands and knees, that the expedition against them may be undertaken while the hearts and hands of our soul-diery are hot, to whom I will be bold to say briefly: Happy is he that shall reward them as they have served us: and cursed be he that shall doe that work of the Lord negligently! Cursed be he that holdeth hack his sword from blood!!! yea, Cursed be he that maketh not his sword starke drunk with Irish blood!!! that doth not recompense them double for their hellish treachery to the English! that maketh them not heaps upon heaps!! and their Country a dwelling-place for Dragons, an astonishment to Nations! Let not that eye look for pity, nor that hand to be spared, that pities or spares them! and let him be accursed, that curseth them not bitterly!!!"

Within less than two years after this worse than Turkish manifesto, Cromwell landed in Ireland, with 10,000 men, all breathing slaughter. They soon made their swords "starke drunk with Irish blood," and the awful results have been well described by our Bards.

As a relief from this appalling subject, I turn to our poem, of which I present the Irish reader with an additional stanza. There are many inferior verses current as part of it, but the following are, perhaps, among the best.—