'I told her then with the truest words I could tell her, it was not
right for her to be joined with a common clumsy churl; and the man
that was three times fairer than the whole race of the Scots,
waiting till she would come to him to be his beautiful bride.

'At the sound of my words her pride set her crying; the tears were
running down over the kindling of her cheeks. She sent a lad to
bring me safe from the place I was in. She is the brightness of
brightness I met in the path of loneliness.'

Sometimes the Stuart is almost forgotten in the story of sorrows and the
indictment of England. O'Heffernan complains in one of his songs that
many of the heroes of Ireland have passed away, and their names have
never been put in a song by the poets; 'and they even leave their verses
without any account of Charles the wanderer, though I promise you they
are not satisfied without giving some lines on Seaghan Buidhe' (one of
the names for England). Yet he himself, when very downhearted, 'on the
edge of the great wood under a harsh cloak of sorrow,' is cheered by the
pleasant sound of a swarm of bees in search of their ruler; and with the
pleasant thought that 'the harvest will be a bad one and with no joy in
it to Seaghan. George will be sent back over the sea, and the tribe that
was so high up will be left without gold or townlands; and I not pitying
their sorrow.' And he winds up: 'In Shronehill, if I were stretched at
rest under a hard flag, and to hear this story moving about so
pleasantly, by force and strength of my shoulders I would throw the sod
off me; and I coming back leaping to hear the news.'

And another writer, Seaghan Clarach, looks forward to seeing 'timid
George tame upon the road, without wine, without meat, without thread
for his shoes.' And his last verse, his 'binding,' is, 'I beseech of
God, I ask and I pray very hard, to cast out the gluttons that tormented
the generous race of the Gael, from the island of the west, under hard
bonds, and to banish the foreign devils from us.'

For poets and people found it hard to forget Cromwell; and how 'the sons
of the Gael are scorched, tormented, pitchforked, put under the yoke, by
boors that are used to doing treachery.'

When the Stuarts come to mind, they are given fair words enough. 'The
prince and heart-secret Charles that is sorrowful now and under
weariness ... will be under esteem; and the Gael pleasant in the
lime-w