The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

Iriel the Priest arose and said:
‘The just cause never shall prosper by wrong!
The ill cause battens on blood ill shed;
'Tis Virtue only makes Justice strong.

‘I have hidden the Sassanach's wife and child
Beneath the altar; behind the porch;
O'er them that believe not these hands have piled
The copes and the vestments of Holy Church!

‘I have hid three men in a hollow oak;
I have hid three maids in an ocean cave:’
As though he were lord of the thunder-stroke
The old Priest lifted his hand—to save.

But the people loved not the words he spake;
And their face was changed for their heart was sore:
They spake no word; but their brows grew black
And the hoarse halls roar'd like a torrent's roar.

‘Has the Stranger robb'd you of house and land?
In battle meet him and smite him down!
Has he sharpen'd the dagger? Lift ye the brand!
Has he bound your Princes? Set free the clown!

‘Has the Stranger his country and knighthood shamed?
Though he 'scape God's vengeance so shall not ye!
His own God chastens! Be never named
With the Mullaghmast slaughter! Be just and free!’

But the people received not the words he spake,
For the wrong on their heart had made it sore;

And their brows grew black like the stormy rack
And the hoarse halls roar'd like the wave-wash'd shore.

Then Iriel the Priest put forth a curse!
And horror crept o'er them from vein to vein;—
A curse upon man and a curse upon horse,
As forth they rode to the battle-plain.

And there never came to them luck or grace
No Saint in the battle-field help'd them more
Till O'Neill who hated the warfare base
Had landed at Doe on Tirconnell's shore.

Dr. Leland and other historians relate that the Catholic clergy frequently interfered for the protection of the victims of that massacre, which took place at an early period of the Ulster rising of 1641. They hid them beneath their altars. From the landing of Owen Roe O'Neill all such crimes ceased. They disgraced a just cause, and, doubtless, drew down a Divine punishment. A lamentable list of the massacres committed in the same year, at the other side—massacres less generally known—will be found in Cardinal Moran's ‘Persecutions suffered by the Catholics under Cromwell and the Puritans,’ p. 168. It is compiled from a contemporary record.

It was intended that Inisfail should represent in the main the songs of the old Irish Bards (if only they could have been preserved), as the best exponent of the Emotions and Imagination of the Race during the centuries of her affliction, but there must have been also many Priests, like Iriel, who were exponents not less true of the Conscience of that Race. To such may be attributed the counsels urged upon them in many parts of Inisfail, and especially towards its close, respecting the forgiveness of injuries, obedience to the Divine Will, Penitence, especially from p. 125 to p. 129 a Hope that nothing could subdue, and those trials connected with the day of Prosperity which are more dangerous than any which Adversity knows.

University of Virginia Library

THE INTERCESSION.

ULSTER.

A.D. 1641.