ntity
of cowhides, of wool and of tallow as the gang which had plundered him
chose to give him. The consequence was that, while foreign commodities
were pouring fast into the harbours of Londonderry, Carrickfergus,
Dublin, Waterford and Cork, every mariner avoided Limerick and Galway as
nests of pirates. [75]

The distinction between the Irish foot soldier and the Irish Rapparee
had never been very strongly marked. It now disappeared. Great part of
the army was turned loose to live by marauding. An incessant predatory
war raged along the line which separated the domain of William from
that of James. Every day companies of freebooters, sometimes wrapped in
twisted straw which served the purpose of armour, stole into the English
territory, burned, sacked, pillaged, and hastened back to their
own ground. To guard against these incursions was not easy; for the
peasantry of the plundered country had a strong fellow feeling with the
plunderers. To empty the granary, to set fire to the dwelling, to drive
away the cows, of a heretic was regarded by every squalid inhabitant
of a mud cabin as a good work. A troop engaged in such a work might
confidently expect to fall in, notwithstanding all the proclamations
of the Lords justices, with some friend who would indicate the richest
booty, the shortest road, and the safest hiding place. The English
complained that it was no easy matter to catch a Rapparee. Sometimes,
when he saw danger approaching, he lay down in the long grass of the
bog; and then it was as difficult to find him as to find a hare sitting.
Sometimes he sprang into a stream, and lay there, like an otter, with
only his mouth and nostrils above the water. Nay, a whole gang of
banditti would, in the twinkling of an eye, transform itself into a
crowd of harmless labourers. Every man took his gun to pieces, hid the
lock in his clothes, stuck a cork in the muzzle, stopped the touch hole
with a quill, and threw the weapon into the next pond. Nothing was to be
seen but a train of poor rustics who had not so much as a cudgel among
them, and whose humble look and crouching walk seemed to show that their
spirit was thoroughly broken to slavery. When the peril was over, when
the signal was given, every man flew to the place where he had hid his
arms; and soon the robbers were in full march towards some Protestant
mansion. One band penetrated to Clonmel, another to the vicinity of
Maryborough; a third made its den in a woody islet