’I told her then with the truest words I could tell her, it was not right for her to be joined with a common clumsy churl; and the man that was three times fairer than the whole race of the Scots, waiting till she would come to him to be his beautiful bride.

’At the sound of my words her pride set her crying; the tears were running down over the kindling of her cheeks.  She sent a lad to bring me safe from the place I was in.  She is the brightness of brightness I met in the path of loneliness.’

Sometimes the Stuart is almost forgotten in the story of sorrows and the indictment of England.  O’Heffernan complains in one of his songs that many of the heroes of Ireland have passed away, and their names have never been put in a song by the poets; ’and they even leave their verses without any account of Charles the wanderer, though I promise you they are not satisfied without giving some lines on Seaghan Buidhe’ (one of the names for England).  Yet he himself, when very downhearted, ’on the edge of the great wood under a harsh cloak of sorrow,’ is cheered by the pleasant sound of a swarm of bees in search of their ruler; and with the pleasant thought that ’the harvest will be a bad one and with no joy in it to Seaghan.  George will be sent back over the sea, and the tribe that was so high up will be left without gold or townlands; and I not pitying their sorrow.’  And he winds up:  ’In Shronehill, if I were stretched at rest under a hard flag, and to hear this story moving about so pleasantly, by force and strength of my shoulders I would throw the sod off me; and I coming back leaping to hear the news.’

And another writer, Seaghan Clarach, looks forward to seeing ’timid George tame upon the road, without wine, without meat, without thread for his shoes.’  And his last verse, his ‘binding,’ is, ’I beseech of God, I ask and I pray very hard, to cast out the gluttons that tormented the generous race of the Gael, from the island of the west, under hard bonds, and to banish the foreign devils from us.’

For poets and people found it hard to forget Cromwell; and how ’the sons of the Gael are scorched, tormented, pitchforked, put under the yoke, by boors that are used to doing treachery.’

When the Stuarts come to mind, they are given fair words enough.  ’The prince and heart-secret Charles that is sorrowful now and under weariness ... will be under esteem; and the Gael pleasant in the lime-white house.’ ...  ’It is friendly, fair bright, companionable, loving, brave, Charles will be, with sway, without a mist about him.’

And in one of Red Owen’s ‘Visions’ he is told not to forget James, who is ’persevering, well-tempered, affectionate, stout, sweet, kind, poetical.’

Yet the Stuart seems to be always a faint and unreal image; a saint by whose name a heavy oath is sworn.  There are no personal touches such as I find in a song taken down from some countryman, on Patrick Sarsfield, the brave, handsome fighter, the descendant of Conall Cearnach, the man who, after the Boyne, offered to ’change kings and fight the battle again.’  This ballad seems to have more of Connaught simplicity than of Munster luxuriance in it:—­