Page:The Lady of the Lake - Scott (1810).djvu/354

 predatory tribes, to be but the hounds of their hunting priests, who directed their incursions by their pleasure, partly for sustenance, partly to gratify animosity, partly to foment general division, and always for the better security and easier domination of the friars. Derrick, the liveliness and minuteness of whose descriptions may frequently apologize for his doggrel verses, after describing an Irish feast, and the encouragement given, by the songs of the bards, to its termination in an incursion upon the parts of the country more immediately under the dominion of the English, records the no less powerful arguments used by the friar to excite their animosity:

The wreckful invasion of a part of the English pale is then