or it has
been declared before the same committee, that they have scrupulously
repaid the loans which were given them formerly; and they are willing to
work, for when they can get boats and nets, _they do work_. These are
facts. Shakspeare has said that facts are "stubborn things;" they are,
certainly, sometimes very unpleasant things. Yet, we are told, the Irish
have no real grievances. Of course, starvation from want of work is not
a grievance!

Within the few months which have elapsed since the publication of the
first edition of this History and the present moment, when I am engaged
in preparing a second edition, a fact has occurred within my own
personal knowledge relative to this very subject, and of too great
importance to the history of Ireland in the present day to be omitted. A
shoal of sprats arrived in the bay of ---- and the poor people crowded
to the shore to witness the arrival and, alas! the departure of the
finny tribe. All their nets had been broken or sold in the famine year;
they had, therefore, no means of securing what would have been a
valuable addition to their poor fare. The wealthy, whose tables are
furnished daily with every luxury, can have but little idea how bitter
such privations are to the poor. Had there been a resident landlord in
the place, to interest himself in the welfare of his tenants, a few
pounds would have procured all that was necessary, and the people,
always grateful for kindness, would long have remembered the boon and
the bestower of it.

[55] _Commerce_.--"Phoenices a vetustissimis inde temporibus frequenter
crebras mercaturae gratia navigationes instituerunt."--Diod. Sic. vers.
Wesseling, t.i.

[56] _Confessio_.--Dr. O'Donovan states, in an article in the _Ulster
Archaeological Journal_, vol. viii. p. 249, that he had a letter from the
late Dr. Prichard, who stated that it was his belief the ancient Irish
were not anthropophagi. He adds: "Whatever they may have been when their
island was called _Insula Sacra_, there are no people in Europe who are
more squeamish in the use of meats than the modern Irish peasantry, for
they have a horror of every kind of carrion;" albeit he is obliged to
confess that, though they abuse the French for eating frogs, and the
English for eating rooks, there is evidence to prove that horseflesh was
eaten in Ireland, even in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

CHAPTER V.

Landing of the Milesians--Traditions of the Tuatha De Dananns in S