PATRICK SARSFIELD

“Sarsfield was a great general the time he turned the shoes on his horse.  The English it was were pursuing him, and he got off and changed the shoes the way when they saw the tracks they would think he went another road.  That was a great plan.  He got to Limerick then, and he killed thousands of the English.  He was a great general.”

QUEEN ANNE

“The Georges were fair; they left all to the Government; but Anne was very bad and a tyrant.  She tyrannised over the Irish.  She died broken-hearted with all the bad things that were going on about her.  For Queen Anne was very wicked; oh, very wicked, indeed!”

CAROLAN’S SONG

“Carolan that could play the fiddle and the harp used to be going about with Cahil-a-Corba, that was a tambourine man.  But they got tired of one another and parted, and Carolan went to the house of the King of Mayo, and he stopped there, and the King asked him to stop for his lifetime.  There came a grand visitor one time, and when he heard Carolan singing and playing and his fine pleasant talk, he asked him to go with him on a visit to Dublin.  So Carolan went, and he promised the King of Mayo he would come back at the end of a month.  But when he was at the gentleman’s house he liked it so well that he stopped a year with him, and it wasn’t till the Christmas he came back to Mayo.  And when he got there the doors were shut, and the King was at his dinner, and Queen Mary and the three daughters, and he could see them through the windows.  But when the King saw him he said he would not let him in.  He was vexed with him and angry he had broken his promise and his oath.  So Carolan began to give out a song he had made about the King of Mayo and all his family, and he brought Queen Mary into it and the three daughters.  Then the Queen asked leave of the King to bring him in, because he made so good a song, but the King would not give in to it.  Then Carolan began to draw down the King of Mayo’s father and his grandfather into the song.  And Queen Mary asked again for forgiveness for him, and the King gave it that time because of the song that had in it the old times, and the old generations went through him.  But as to Cahil-a-Corba, he went to another gentleman’s house and he stopped too long in it and was driven out.  But he came back, having changed his form, that the gentleman did not know him, and he let him in again, and then he was forgiven.”

’NINETY-EIGHT