h's forge; or as the sole of a shoe left in
white halls; it was you put that darkness over my life.

'You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me;
you have taken what is before me and what is behind me; you have
taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me; and my fear is
great that you have taken God from me!

1901.

JACOBITE BALLADS.

I was looking the other day through a collection of poems, lately taken
down from Irish-speaking country people for the _Oireactas_, the great
yearly meeting of the Gaelic League; and a line in one of them seemed
strange to me: '_Prebaim mo chroidhe le mo Stuart glegeal_,' 'my heart
leaps up with my bright Stuart'; for I did not know there was still a
memory of James and Charles among the people. The refrain of the poem
was: 'Och, my grief, my friend stole away from me!' and these are some
of its verses:--

'There are young girls through the whole country would sit
alongside of me through a half-hour, till we would be telling you
the story together of what it was put myself under trouble; I make
my complaints, wanting my comrade. Och, my grief, my friend stole
away from me!

'Where are my people that were wise and learned? Where is the troop
readying their spears, that they do not smooth out this knot for
me? Och, my grief, my friend stole away from me!

'I was for a while airy and beautiful, and all my treasure with my
pleasant James.... On the top of all, my Stuart to leave me. Och,
my grief, my friend stole away from me!

'It is the truth I cannot sleep in the night, fretting for my
comrade; I to be lying down, and he weak under cold. My heart leaps
up with my bright Stuart. Och, my grief, my friend stole away from
me!

'It is hard for me to lie down after that; it is an empty thing to
be crying the loss of my comrade, and I lying down with the mean
people; it is my death the Stuart not to come at all. Och, my
grief, my friend stole away from me!'

I had not heard any songs of this sort in Galway, and I remembered that
our Connaught Raftery, whose poems are still teaching history, dealt
very shortly with the Royal Stuarts. 'James,' he says, 'was the worst
man for habits.... He laid chains on our bogs and mountains.... The
father wasn't worse than the son Charles, that left sharp scourges on
Ireland. When God and the people