’O Patrick Sarsfield, health be to you, since you went to France
     and your camps were loosened; making your sighs along with the
     king, and you left poor Ireland and the Gael defeated—­Och ochone!

’O Patrick Sarsfield, it is a man with God you are; and blessed is the earth you ever walked on.  The blessing of the bright sun and the moon upon you, since you took the day from the hands of King William—­Och ochone!

’O Patrick Sarsfield, the prayer of every person with you; my own prayer and the prayer of the Son of Mary with you, since you took the narrow ford going through Biorra, and since at Cuilenn O’Cuanac you won Limerick—­Och ochone!

     ’I will go up on the mountain alone; and I will come hither from it
     again.  It is there I saw the camp of the Gael, the poor troop
     thinned, not keeping with one another—­Och ochone!

’My five hundred healths to you, halls of Limerick, and to the beautiful troop was in our company; it is bonfires we used to have and playing cards, and the word of God was often with us—­Och ochone!

     ’There were many soldiers glad and happy that were going the way
     through seven weeks; but now they are stretched down in
     Aughrim—­Och ochone!

’They put the first breaking on us at the Bridge of the Boyne; the second breaking on the Bridge of Slaney; the third breaking in Aughrim of O’Kelly; and O sweet Ireland, my five hundred healths to you—­Och ochone!

     ’O’Kelly has manuring for his land, that is not sand or dung, but
     ready soldiers doing bravery with pikes, that were left in Aughrim
     stretched in ridges—­Och ochone!

     ’Who is that beyond on the hill, Beinn Edair?  I a poor soldier with
     King James.  I was last year in arms and in dress, but this year I
     am asking alms—­Och ochone!’

There are other symbolic songs besides the ‘Visions.’  Mangan’s fine translation of Kathleen ni Houlihan is well known; and it is likely the king is calling to Ireland in ‘Ceann dubh deelish,’ that is beautiful in all translations.  This is An Craoibhin’s:—­

    ’The women of the village are in madness and trouble,
      Pulling their hair and letting it go with the wind;
    They will not take a boy of the men of the country
      Till they go into the rout with the boys of the king.

    ’Black head, darling, darling, darling,
      Black head, darling, move over to me;
    Black head brighter than swan and than seagull,
      It’s a man without heart gives not love to thee.’

But most of the translations have been in the affected style of the early part of the last century twisting the sense to give what was thought to be a romantic turn.  A verse of Seaghan Clarach’s, for instance, the lament of a farmer ’who has been wrestling with the world’:  ’The two that belong to me are without shelter, and my yoke of cattle without grass, without growth; there is misery on my people and their elbows without sound clothes,’ is turned into:—­