Blair Collection > Celtic gleanings, or, Notices of the history and literature of the Scottish Gael

158 LECTURE IV.
And Charlie, Prince Charlie, the King of the Island,
Will force the usurping old German to yield.
1 this is the joy, this the revel in earnest,
The story to tell to the ends of the earth,
That our youths have uprisen, resolving with sternest
Intention to fight for the land of their birth.
We will drive out the stranger from green-valleyed Erin,
King George and his crew will be scarce in the land,
And the crown of this kingdom shall he alone wear in
The Islands, — our Prince, the man born to command I
The following lines are from another Irish
Jacobite song. We give only the translation : —
And ! the deep gloom of my wild throbbing heart,
That men, who should die to avenge her,
See fair Erin smitten, evicted, oppressed,
In chains of the treacherous stranger.
And ! that the doom of the tyrant were come,
And the salt drops were dried that now fall free,
And a proud nation's force could procure a divorce
From the dull plodding plunderer, " Shane Buy."*
Is it any wonder, that with such poetry circu-
lating freely among the people and recited in
every hamlet, Ireland should be what it is ; and
yet the vast mass of the current popular poetry
of the native Irish is of this character — per-
vaded by the most intense hatred of England
* " Shane Buy " is a soubriquet by which the native Irish de-
signate the English, — it means " Yellow John."