Are more familiar than these five-foot lines!

As noon approached how, on the villagegreen,

An ass, gigantic, of portentous mien, Came, harnessed to his car-the fatal car Heaped with the horrid implements of

war;

Stout sticks, adapted or to break or bend, Thonged at the wrist and weighted at the end:

Strange born that ass, unknown to local stack,

His hoofs bore soil of long laborious track. To Mac that ass belonged, and what he bore to Mac.

People pacific mark the tempest nigh, Fear lest it burst, and, ere the bursting, fly:

The drover now, the dealer with his ware, Gather their goods and hurry from the fair;

The pimply shopmen of the village stop The shutters close and bar the fated shop. The danger looms, yet no police appear; Can this be accident, or is it fear?

They stood an armed force some time before,

But vanished since, mayhap to show no

more-

As is their wont-until the need is o'er.'

The Bard of Ballyhack, like his brother of Mantua and the schoolmaster of Chios, delights in preliminary details of the fight. He sketches, with minute and loving hand, full-length portraits of Hector MacKenna and Achilles O'Toole ; and reports the speeches these heroes, imitating their prototypes, address to their following. is a word-painting of that child of victory, the valiant Mac,' as he stands amid 'the tributary chiefs and septs that claim kinship or friendship with his noble name:'

Here

Not much in garb distinguished from the rest,

But beyond all the biggest and the best; From his broad shoulders hangs the Royal frieze,

Reft of a tail and patched in curious wise;
No vest he wears, he never wore a vest;
His shirt falls open on his brawny chest.
A knotty club immense of size he bore
(Hercules fought with such a club of yore),
A sacred legacy from sire to son-
A sceptre and a cudgel, both in one.
Behold his massive calves, in stockings
cased,

Stockings, perhaps, of questionable taste,
Yet adding greatly to the general gay
And debonair appearance of his rai-
Ment, one being gray patched black,
the other black patched gray.'

A youth far more in valour than in years, A generous youth, already known to fame, And Thady Deady his resounding name. On the greensward his sleeveless coat he threw,

Drew through the Macs, and shouted as he drew:

"Hurroo! Whish! Pillelu! More Power! By all

The crosses in a yard of check, the call Of worshipped honour shall not rise unheard;

Resolved am I, and by no fear deterred! Where is the man desirous to profane This sacred garment, yet without a stain? Boys, here's my coat-just foot it if ye like,

An' bless a crathur that's in haste to strike!"

A foe indulgent to the wish exprest Treads on the frieze, and desecrates the vest;

And, as the cudgels crost, the stranger said,

Good-morrow, Thade!"

"Good-mor

Chair-legs, tent-pegs, like hail assail the boys;

Delf jugs, ale-mugs, fly high with clattering noise;

Cracked pans, tin cans, all man's outrageous rage employs!

Five hundred men dispute the narrow ground,

Thump follows thump, and thuds of thumps resound.

Crack, crack! the cudgels go; the fists whack, whack!

Here falls a sturdy O', and there a Mac; While rival slogans shriek upon the gale. "Aboo, MacKenna!" "Farrah! whish!

Bricks whirling fly, kicks cumulate on kicks,

A hundred heads rebound a hundred sticks,

And bricks and kicks and sticks in mangling medley mix!'

'List his discourse of war, and you shall hear a fearful battle rendered you in music,' says the archbishop to the bishop in Henry V. Our poet clearly waxes onomatopoeic; and, following a device of his eminent originals, strings his verse to imitate the clash and clamour of enlivening fight,' just as the boom and hiss of the waves are made to sound in our old friend the poluphloisboio thalasses; or we are supposed to hear the galloping hoofs in the equally familiar quadrupedante, &c.

And here, by the way, it is as well to remark that, when our poet descends to particulars, he finds himself at a serious disadvantage by comparison with his illustrious models. To give him his due, he does not so ill with the material at his command; but there is a great deal in a name, and the alien will not find it easy to associate the romance of war with heroes who are filed on 'Fame's eternal beadroll' as Murphy or MacEvoy, Dunoon or Dooley, O'Reilly or O'Rourke. Now, Homer had no difficulty of this sort to contend

with. The Greek peasant, let alone the Greek prince, had a fine classic name of his own; and if it had been otherwise, if the Attic nomenclature were as 'base, common, and popular' as that of Cork, the great ballad-maker would have found himself heavily handicapped. We have proof. In the translation of "The Battle of the Frogs and Mice,' by Dr. Parnell, friend of Swift and Pope, and ancestor of the reigning Irish Dictator, there is a difficulty pointed out by the critics as a blemish which sinks the rendering fatally below the original. This is that the names of the combatants, which sound imposing in Greek, are simply absurd or vulgar in English. Thus, as was remarked of the Doctor's work long ago, ‘a bacon-eater is a very good name for a mouse, and Pternotractus in Greek was a very good sounding word that conveyed that meaning. Puff-cheek would sound odiously as a name for a frog; and yet Physignathos does admirably well in the original.' It is only just to the present poet to make this reference, the point of which will be immediately apparent if we follow him in his record of individual achievement:

Weary with fighting, and with pain opprest,

MacAuliffe, lurking, seeks a secret rest, Enters a tent, and, with exertion hot, Bespeaks a beaker, and enlips the pot; O'Cagney, marking, strikes the pot beneath,

And sends it crashing through the drinker's teeth.

The treacherous act not unavenged goes by;

MacBride, beholding, lifts his hand on high,

A stone it grasps; O'Cagney hits the stone Full on the ribs, and with such force is thrown

It scarcely leaves him breath enough to groan.'

The ruling passion, strong in difficulties, has furnished a noble and pathetic episode of many a 'glorious and well-foughten field;'

524 but probably valour never found more naïve expression than here:

Thrice laurel-wreathed be their brows that still,

The power to fight being gone, retain the will!

Observe the warrior whose disabled limb, Painful, compels more painful rest to him— He grinds his teeth, he weeps for very spite,

He envies all yet able for the fight; Writhing he lies, and, while the conflict

done!

The fun goes on, and I, unhappy one, Must idly gaze, and cannot join the fun !"'

The curious in such matters will find that in the quaint pastime, known as the 'Stilt-fights of Naumur,' a special feature was the presence of women, who encouraged their relatives to the strife, and ministered to them when overthrown. The ladies played the same part at the old games, called the guerra dei pugni, of Venice. The cry with which they stimulated their champions is still preserved-Would to Heaven it were permitted to us to join in the battle otherwise than as women! the modesty of our sex forbids, though fear does not restrain us.' What sings the Bard of the 'Battle of the Factions'?

But

Daring their blows that hurt and dodges that perplex.'

After this we may cry a parley, and end the fight, which, by the way, is a drawn battle. The poet calls in the police, denounced as

'The mercenaries in viewless green,' who, of course, 'blight the happy scene,' and carry out the behests of sullen order' by arresting, summoning, and finally prosecuting to conviction the actors in this peasant pastime.

A last word on this Irish Iliad. We have a minute description of 'The broken heads, the blood in torrents spilt,

The heroes mangled, and the heroes "kilt."›

'Kilt' being, according to this authority,

'An idiomatic term, which we apply
To people beaten till their senses fly.'

Now it is an interesting fact that this condition of being 'kilt' without being dead is not, or rather was not, peculiar to Ireland. We turn to our Shakespeare, and find Prince John and Prince Henry, after Shrewsbury fight, meeting Falstaff, as the fat knight is carrying off the body of the slain Hotspur, with intent to brag that the Gunpowder Percy' fell to his solitary sword. At sight of old Jack, Prince John says to his brother,

6

'Did you not tell me this fat man was dead?

Prince H. I did. I saw him dead, breathless, and bleeding upon the ground.'

Whereupon Falstaff grants you he was 'down,' but denies that he was dead.

G.

CHAPTER V.

NANCY'S WISDOM.

'If she could only be restored to the perfection of physical form!' Dr. Kinnaird mused, after Amaranth had left him; 'and why not? Science is the one boon to humanity that has no spurious vein of cheap sentiment and philosophy to hurl us back into delusions; it has, at least, reality, experience, and facts to guide us, unmoved by impressions and solely controlled by knowledge.'

Amaranth must no longer be sacrificed to deformity if science could assist in ridding her of her affliction; but, once free of her yoke, would she remain the fair mirror in which his own thoughts and feelings were ever reflected? Would she not rather cease to belong to him altogether, and turn to the world and a life of action ?

He

It seemed to vulgarise her, this thought of her immersion in another sphere; and he wanted her still as the Muse of his solitude, without her hardening into the ordinary type of worldling. adored the semi-tragic pathos of her sorrow that made her so utterly his, whereas another career must inevitably remove her alike from his influence and companionship.

But if Amaranth could be saved it must be accomplished at any price. Dreams were all very well, but they savoured of selfishness, even absurdity, when another creature's happiness for life was at

stake; and if he had long left the world which he hated and despised to give himself up to study and seclusion, it was no reason why Amaranth should be forced to accept a like doom, shrinking in bewilderment and pain from the glance of every eye and the reproaches implied in a smile.

'It must be done,' he mused. 'Yes, yes, we will use the knife if need be, and give her freedom and repose!'

And yet he knew she then would fade from his existence, with, perhaps, little concern or care. Was it not always so? Once restored to beauty and grace, society, the world, ideas widening in depth and extent, must waft her towards that freer atmosphere into which she would carry culture, refinement; while now, defeated by appearance, she was more a spirit than human flesh.

People who live alone always muse over, and often exaggerate, their own emotions. They lack the moral tonic of the quinine and bark of others' tongues. Suppose Amaranth grew hard, heartless, or flippant? ... The experiment was worth the trial; and he wrote at some length to one of the most eminent and experienced surgeons in Europe, stating the case, and soliciting his advice and opinion.

'To be perfected, perhaps, for Clarence. Who knows? Thank Heaven the murderous stain is off these hands, and approaching death ceases to warn me of a crime to