* This is a line of a song of one Dignum, who composed in his native language, but could neither read nor write nor spoke any language but his own. “I have seen,” said the celebrated Edmund Burke (who in his boyish days had known him) “some of his effusions translated into English, but was assured, by judges, that they fell far short of the originals; yet they contained some graces, ‘snatched beyond the reach of ark’ “--Vide Life of Burke.
“Faith and it’s themselves that are; but few indeed trouble them, though none are denied. I used to get to mass myself sometimes, but it is now too far to walk for me.”
This was sufficient, I waited to hear no more, but repaid my communicative companion for his information, and rode off, having inquired the road to Inismore from the first man I met.
It would be vain, it would be impossible to describe the emotion which the simple tale of this old man awakened. The descendant of a murderer! The very scoundrel steward of my father revelling in the property of a man who shelters his aged head beneath the ruins of those walls where his ancestors bled under the uplifted sword of mine.
Why this, you will say, is the romance of a novel-read schoolboy. Are we not all, the little and the great, descended from assassins; was not the first born man a fratricide? and still, on the field of unappeased contention, does not “man the murderer, meet the murderer, man?”
Yes, yes, ‘tis all true; humanity acknowledges it and shudders. But still I wish _my_ family had never possessed an acre of ground in this country, or possessed it on other terms. I always knew the estate fell into our family in the civil wars of Cromwell, and, in the world’s language, was the well-earned meed of my progenitor’s valour; but I seemed to hear it now for the first time.
I am glad, however, that this old Irish chieftain is such a ferocious savage; that the pity his fate awakens is qualified by aversion for his implacable, irascible disposition. I am glad his daughter is _red headed_, a pedant, and a romp; that she spouts Latin like the priest of the parish, and cures sore fingers; that she avoids genteel society, where her ideal rank would procure her no respect, and her unpolished ignorance, by force of contrast, make her feel her real inferiority; that she gossips among the poor peasants, over whom she can reign liege Lady; and, that she has been brought up by a jesuitical priest, who has doubtlessly rendered her as bigoted and illiberal as himself. All this soothes my conscientous throes of feeling and compassion; for oh! if this savage chief was generous and benevolent, as he is independent and spirited; if this daughter was amiable and intelligent, as she must be simple and unvitiated! But I dare not pursue the supposition, It is better as it is.