The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere :: :: University of Virginia Library

A BARD SONG.

I

Our Kings sat of old in Emania and Tara:
Those new kings whence come they? Their names are unknown!
Our Saints lie entomb'd in Ardmagh and Killdara;
Their relics are healing; their graves are grass-grown.
Our princes of old, when their warfare was over,
As pilgrims forth wander'd; as hermits found rest:
Shall the hand of the stranger their ashes uncover
In Benchor the holy, in Aran the blest?

II

Not so, by the race our Dalriada planted!
In Alba were children; we sent her a man.

Battles won in Argyle in Dunedin they chanted;
King Kenneth completed what Fergus began.
Our name is her name: she is Alba no longer:
Her kings are our blood, and she crowns them at Scone;
Strong-hearted they are, and strong-handed, but stronger
When throned on our Lia Fail, Destiny's stone.

Innumerable authorities—Irish, English, and Scotch— record that beginning of Scotch, as distinguished from Caledonian, history, the establishment of an Irish colony in Western Scotland, at that time named Alba—a colony from which that noble country derived its later name, the chief part of its population, and its Royal House, from which, through the Stuarts, our present Sovereign is descended. This settlement is recorded by the Venerable Bede.