O'DONNELL'S* FAREWELL TO ERIN! BY MRS. CRAWFORD. LAND of beauty, land of sorrow, Wert thou all my prayers would have thee, I should sorrow less to leave thee, Yet 'gainst thee the bolt was hurled : But 'tis vain to look behind us, Lead me on my path of duty, Far from Erin's lovely bowers. "Red Hugh" O'Donnell, Prince of Tirconnel, one of the greatest patriots unhappy Ireland ever produced; and consequently, one of a very different grade to the modern champion of that ill-fated country. † Dr. Johnson observes, that "Ireland was anciently the school of the west, the quiet habitation of sanctity and learning. In ages when other European nations were immersed in a state of comparative ignorance, Ireland was the land of light." The Saxon princes and nobles were sent to Ireland, to receive the benefit of a liberal education, and the most eminent teachers of northern and southern Britain received their instruction, gratuitously, in the Irish schools of learning. The most gifted of the Welsh minstrels, also, went to Ireland to improve themselves in bardic craft; and the skill of harp-playing, A TALE OF THE IRISH REBELLION. "Post equitem sedit atra cura."-HORACE. IN foreign wars victory terminates the contest, and no deadly feud or rancorous hatred survives; but in civil war, where the virulence of party spirit is substituted for feelings of national honour, the hour of triumph is often but the commencement of persecution and cruelty. Never, perhaps, was the power of oppression lodged in such merciless hands as when, in 1798, the Catholic peasantry of Ireland were placed under the military rule of the yeomanry corps; a force composed of persons chosen from the opposition of their political and religious opinions to the mass of the population, and of others, who, tempted by the impunity of military licence, deserted the cause and the religion which they believed to be right, when they saw it environed with dangers. To troops thus formed of private enemies and unprincipled renegadoes was the purification of Ireland committed; and many a deed of blood, and lust, and wanton cruelty, was sanctioned by authority and protected by the law. After the isolated and unsupported rising in the county of Wexford, in the autumn of 1798, the insurgents had been defeated, and the county was again reduced under the iron rule of the English government. Parties of yeomanry were moving about in various directions, for the purpose of overawing the population, seeking victims among those who had lately been arrayed against them, and judging their prisoners according to the dictates of their passions or caprice. One of these detachments had taken up their quarters in a building, from which its persecuted inhabitants had been recently driven. It was situated on a peninsula, or, rather, island, joined to the mainland by a narrow causeway, which afforded the only access to the building. An archway passing through the building communicated with a small chapel and burial-ground, dedicated to the Virgin, which, together with a small garden, occupied the remainder of this little island. But the garden was now neglected and trampled down, and the walls of the chapel were seared with fire, and its roof-trees and rafters were a heap of cinders. But its two pointed gables, one of them surmounted by a small picturesque belfry, still formed prominent features in the landscape as they showed in dark relief against the evening sky. Around the Lady's Island, for by that name it was and is still known, the quiet lake rippled its mimic waves, and farther back the green hills sloped gently down to its margin. One would have imagined that such a spot had been formed by nature for peaceful seclusion and religious contemplation, and that the storms of war and the tumults of faction would have swept by and left the holy island unharmed, untouched, unnoticed; or that the very beauty of the scene would have quenched the torch and stayed the hand of the destroyer. We strike the prepared foe with clenched teeth and nerved arm, but the suppliant's form of beauty will often arrest the blow that would have crushed the strong, the resisting, and the brave. But civil war knows no pity, religious fanaticism feels no remorse. This little island, sacred in the estimation of the neighbouring population, whom its bell had tolled to church, and whose forefathers had been one by one quietly entombed within its cemetery, was now in the occupation of the bitterest enemies of their religion. The officer commanding these troops was sitting in a room over the archway, sipping his wine and looking at the fire, when a sergeant knocked at the door. "What now, Dennis ?" said the officer. "Plase yer honor, we've taken Patrick O'Darcy: I have ordered a file of men to load, and I just called in to take yer honour's orders before I had him shot." "Have we got the law on our side, do you think, Dennis ?" "Just as your honour plases about the law: it's only just shooting a man that is both a rebel and a papist. If your honour likes to have him put out of the way, it is not he that will trouble you again :-besides, he slept away from home last night, and that's crime enough anyhow." "Do you know where he slept ?" asked the officer. "Why, for the matter of that, I hear that he went to see his twin brother that's a sailor, and just come home in a ship to Wexford ;— but that ar'n't giving a satisfactory account of himself-unless your honour plases. Will I have him shot, your honour ?" "Why, Dennis, I think as we have got him, we had better put him out of the way." "I shall see," said the sergeant, and withdrew. When the officer was left to himself, unpleasant thoughts came creeping over his mind, at having thus doomed an innocent man to an ignominious death merely to gratify a private pique. After hesitating for some time, he went out with the intention of stopping the execution. But just as he had crossed the causeway and had set his foot upon the mainland, the report of musketry fell upon his ear, followed by a faint shriek from some of the peasantry who had been looking on in the distance. A few yards farther brought him within view of the executioners and the body of the unfortunate victim. It was that of a tall young man, and had on one of those loose great-coats so much worn by the lower orders of the Irish. As he lay extended on his back, a certain rigidity and slight distortion of feature showed that life had not parted from him without a pang. The officer gazed on the body for a few seconds, and then retired, not with the satisfied feelings of gratified revenge, but overcome with remorse and with the fear of the consequences that might be entailed upon him; for cruelty and fear are ever nearly allied. Among the more remote spectators of this brutal tragedy was the twin brother, with whom Patrick O'Darcy had spent the preceding evening. After the fatal shot had been fired, he turned his steps towards the cottage where his brother's widow lived, muttering vows of vengeance against the murderers of his brother,-dooming their houses to the flames, their properties to destruction, and themselves to death, threats that in Ireland are not always empty words. He had not long arrived there before a gentle knock and a low voice were heard at the door. "It's the priest," said one of the children, and instantly he was admitted. The interior of the cottage presented a singular scene. The brother of the deceased was trying to mend the lock of an old rusty pistol, while two of the elder children were melting lead in a ladle over the fire. The unfortunate widow sat in the arm-chair by their side in a state of mental paralysis, her grief too deep to find relief in tears, too intense to vent itself in exclamation. The man of peace cast a look of horror round the room when he saw the deadly preparations that were carrying on. "Is it a murder that you are going to commit ?" said he to the brother of the deceased. "It's my brother that they have basely murthered, innocent, and in cold blood," replied the sailor, and he again continued hammering the old pistol-lock. The priest then entered into a long exhortation upon the heinousness of shedding blood, and the unchristian spirit of revenge, and intreated him to leave the avenging of his wrongs to the Almighty Power above, promising him, that the yeomanry officer would continue a constant prey to his conscience, which, while he lived, would not suffer him to rest in quiet either by day or by night, and that when he died he would suffer eternal torments. The sailor replied, sometimes by shaking his head, sometimes by a short observation, and then recommenced perversely hammering the old pistollock. At length, after pausing for some time, as if in deep thought, he said, "I believe you are right; it's his conscience that shall do it. I will promise you that I will not raise my hand against him :" and thus ended the conversation. In the evening, the officer was sitting brooding over his recent crime, when the sergeant rushed into the room,-his face pale as death, and his hair standing on end. He laid a letter upon the table; it was directed in a scarcely legible hand, and was sealed with black wax, the impression appearing as if made by a human thumb. The letter contained the following words : "Patrick O'Darcy, died the 1st of October, 1798. Here followed a signature totally illegible, and apparently not written in Christian characters. "Who brought this letter?" said the officer. "Patrick O'Darcy himself, your honour," said the sergeant with great emphasis. "Patrick O'Darcy is dead, you fool," was the reply. "Myself saw him shot and his body sunk into the lake," said the sergeant ; "but if it was the last word I had to speak, I swear it was himself brought the letter." O'Gunnell tried to calm his superstitious fears by persuading himself that it was merely a trick played off upon him, and after a week or two had passed, he had ceased to think much about it: but on the 1st of November the landlady of his lodgings in Dublin, where he was then residing, brought him up a letter which, she said, had been left at the door by a tall Irishman in a grey frieze great-coat. The letter was in all respects similar to the one he had received at the Lady's Island, with the exception that the words "eleven months" were substituted for "twelve months." All his superstitious fears now returned; his evil conscience again preyed on his mind. The scene of blood was never absent from his thoughts; and in addition to his other horrors, came the fear of death thus twice mysteriously threatened him. How could any human being have discovered his residence? He had arrived from Wexford only the day before. He had told no one of his intended journey. His servant boy had only had sufficient notice to enable him to pack up his clothes. If the communication was not from man, it was evident that it was not from Heaven, and he shuddered to think of the other place. He lost his spirits, his appetite forsook him: he grew pale and emaciated. He tried to obtain relief by engaging in a variety of pursuits, by seeking society, and joining in convivial parties: but his mortal enemy was within him, and followed him through all his turnings. On the first of December he was at a large Orange dinner, and was in the act of proposing the toast of the "Glorious and immortal memory," in what he considered to be a highly eloquent and loyal speech, when the waiter put a letter into his hand: it was sealed, apparently, with the impression of a thumb or finger. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth-he sank back speechless into his chair. His companions stared at one another in astonishment, then looked at him, then at the letter. Could it contain the announcement of the death of a near relation; but it was evident that this was not the case, for he had not seen the contents. It could not be a writ to arrest him, for there was no bailiff; besides, the paper did not look like a writ. It was evident that it could not be a challenge that so affected him, for no Irishman cares more for a pistol-shot than he does for a pinch of snuff. It looked more like a tailor's bill than any thing else, but nobody cares about bills over a bowl of punch; besides, he showed more feeling than a thing of that sort could possibly occasion. At length O'Gunnell left the room under the plea of illness, leaving the curiosity of his friends altogether unsatisfied. The mysterious letter became, for a time, a common topic of conversation among his acquaintance. Some even attempted to draw his secret from him, while others remarked his pale looks and melancholy air. To support life in his present miserable condition, was sufficiently hard; but to have his secret grief become the remark of all who met him, was more than he could bear. He left Dublin under the pretence of a shooting expedition into the mountains of Wicklow, accompanied alone by his servant boy. Many occupy themselves with sports and pastime, with an eagerness and perseverance that occasions surprise to the rest of the world: but it is not always the pursuit of pleasure that leads them on; there is oftentimes behind and unseen a fear of ennui, unpleasant thoughts, or a bad conscience, which persecute them in their hours of repose, and goad them on to occupation and excitement. No thoughts of pleasure, amusement, or relaxation, tempted O'Gunnell into the glens of Wicklow. Happiness of every shade and in every form he looked |