Chapter CLXXIX

_Innisfail and Other Poems_ (Macmillan & Co., 1877), and _Poetical Works_, six vols. (Macmillan & Co., 1884). By permission of author and publishers.

‘The Little Black Rose’ (l. 1) and ‘The Silk of the Kine’ (l. 5) were mystical names applied to Ireland by the bards. Athenry (l. 12), in county Galway, was the scene of a battle in which the Irish under Felim O’Conor were defeated by the English forces under Sir William de Burgh (1316).

CLXXX-CLXXXI

The first appeared in _The Nation_, 1st April 1843, and both are included in _Sonnets and Other Poems_ (A. & C. Black, 1900). By permission of author and publishers.

CLXXXII-CLXXXIII

_Bards of the Gael and Gall_ (T. Fisher Unwin, 1897). By permission of author and publisher. Both are translations from Irish poems of the seventeenth century.

As to the first,--O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, and O’Donnell, Earl of Tyrconnell, hearing that the Government had determined to seize them on a charge of conspiracy, apparently groundless, suddenly left Ireland, sailing from Rathmullan, on Lough Foyle, to France (1607). Their estates were confiscated, and ‘The Plantation of Ulster’ began.