THE CONVICT

OF

CLONMELL.

Translated from the Irish by J. J. CALLANAN,

Our sympathies are strongly stirred by this ballad in favour of the convict. The contrast between his thraldom and the liberty and sports he pines after is very dramatic. In every country where death or imprisonment is inflicted for political offences there is always great general commiseration for the condemned. Such has been the case in Ireland. Such is the case in Italy; and that fact makes Italy, at this moment, an object of European interest.

How hard is my fortune,
And vain my repining!
The strong rope of fate

For this young neck is twining.

My strength is departed;

My cheek sunk and sallow;
While I languish in chains,

In the gaol of Clonmala.*

No boy in the village
Was ever yet milder;
I'd play with a child,

And my sport would be wilder;
I'd dance without tiring

From morning till even,

And the goal-ball I'd striket
To the lightning of heaven.

At

my bed-foot decaying
My hurlbat is lying,

Through the boys of village
My goal-ball is flying;
My horse 'mong the neighbours
Neglected may fallow,-
While I pine in my chains,
In the gaol of Clonmala.

Next Sunday the patron

At home will be keeping,
And the young active hurlers
The field will be sweeping;
With the dance of fair maidens
The evening they'll hallow,
While this heart, once so gay,
Shall lie cold in Clonmala.

Cluan-meala-the sweet retreat; literally, the recess of honey.

+ The goal-ball is that employed in the game of hurling, a pastime of universal practice throughout Ireland, and one demanding great activity, and giving occasion for the exercise not only of agility, but strength; hence the prisoner's boast of the height to which he would drive the ball,

Keeping the patron (pronounced by the peasantry pattern) means the observance of a patron saint's day.

A SPINNING-WHEEL SONG.

J. F. WALLER, LL.D.

MELLOW the moonlight to shine is beginning;
Close by the window young Eileen is spinning;
Bent o'er the fire her blind grandmother, sitting,
Is croning, and moaning, and drowsily knitting-
"Eileen, achora, I hear some one tapping.'

"'Tis the ivy, dear mother, against the glass flapping."
"Eileen, I surely hear somebody sighing."-

"'Tis the sound, mother dear, of the summer wind dying."
Merrily, cheerily, noisily whirring,

Swings the wheel, spins the reel, while the foot's stirring;
Sprightly, and lightly, and airily ringing,

Thrills the sweet voice of the young maiden singing.

"What's that noise that I hear at the window, I wonder ?"-
"'Tis the little birds chirping the holly-bush under."
"What makes you be shoving and moving your stool on,
And singing all wrong that old song of 'The Coolun' ?".
There's a form at the casement-the form of her true-love-
And he whispers, with face bent, "I'm waiting for you, love;
Get up on the stool, through the lattice step lightly,
We'll rove in the grove while the moon's shining brightly."
Merrily, cheerily, noisily whirring,

Swings the wheel, spins the reel, while the foot's stirring;
Sprightly, and lightly, and airily ringing,

Thrills the sweet voice of the young maiden singing.

The maid shakes her head, on her lip lays her fingers,
Steals up from the seat-longs to go, and yet lingers;
A frightened glance turns to her drowsy grandmother;
Puts one foot on the stool, spins the wheel with the other.
Lazily, easily, swings now the wheel round;

Slowly and lowly is heard now the reel's sound;
Noiseless and light to the lattice above her

The maid steps-then leaps to the arms of her lover.

Slower and slower-and slower the wheel swings;
Lower and lower-and lower the reel rings;

Ere the reel and the wheel stopped their ringing and moving,
Thro' the grove the young lovers by moonlight are roving.

This collection of songs is much enriched by many admirable translations from the Irish by Mr. Ferguson. And why are Mr. Ferguson's translations so good?-Because he is a poet himself. His original productions given in this volume, prove, however, that though his merits are great in currying up another man's Pegasus, he is always greatest in riding his own horse. His "Forester's Complaint" is of great beauty, and the following noble Ode has already achieved so high a reputation, that any notice of mine would be impertinent, further than to thank the author, as I do, for all the pleasure I have derived, "over and over again," from its varied beauties; its vigour and tenderness from the truthful minuteness of opening detail, to the final breadth of treatment-while, between those two points, a fertility of illustrated imagery is exhibited, as rapid and as telling as the blows of his own anchorsmiths.

COME, see the Dolphin's anchor forged 'tis at a white heat now:
The bellows ceased, the flames decreased-tho' on the forge's brow
The little flames still fitfully play thro' the sable mound,
And fitfully you still may see the grim smiths ranking round,
All clad in leathern panoply, their broad hands only bare-

Some rest upon their sledges here, some work the windlass there.

The windlass strains the tackle-chains, the black mound heaves below,

And red and deep a hundred veins burst out at

every throe:

It rises, roars, rends all outright-O, Vulcan, what a glow!
'Tis blinding white, 'tis blasting bright-the high sun shines not so!
The high sun sees not, on the earth, such fiery fearful show;
The roof-ribs swarth, the candent hearth, the ruddy lurid row
Of smiths that stand, an ardent band, like men before the foe.
As, quivering thro' his fleece of flame, the sailing monster, slow
Sinks on the anvil-all about the faces fiery grow.

"Hurrah!" they shout, "leap out-leap out;" bang, bang the sledges go:

Hurrah! the jetted lightnings are hissing high and low

A hailing fount of fire is struck at every squashing blow,

The leathern mail rebounds the hail, the rattling cinders strow
The ground around: at every bound the sweltering fountains flow,
And thick and loud the swinking crowd at every stroke pant "ho!"

Leap out, leap out, my masters; leap out and lay on load!
Let's forge a goodly anchor-a bower thick and broad;
For a heart of oak is hanging on every blow, I bode,
And I see the good ship riding, all in a perilous road—
The low reef roaring on her lee-the roll of ocean pour'd
From stem to stern, sea after sea: the mainmast by the board;
The bulwarks down, the rudder gone, the boats stove at the chains!
But courage still, brave mariners-the bower yet remains,
And not an inch to flinch he deigns, save when ye pitch sky high;
Then moves his head, as tho' he said, "Fear nothing-here am I."

Swing in your strokes in order, let foot and hand keep time;
Your blows make music sweeter far than any steeple's chime.
But, while you sling your sledges, sing-and let the burthen be,
The anchor is the anvil king, and royal craftsmen we!

Strike in, strike in the sparks begin to dull their rustling red;
Our hammers ring with sharper din, our work will soon be sped;
Our anchor soon must change his bed of fiery rich array,
For a hammock at the roaring bows, or an oozy couch of clay;
Our anchor soon must change the lay of merry craftsmen here,

For the yeo-heave-o', and the heave-away, and the sighing seaman's cheer;

When, weighing slow, at eve they go-far, far from love and home ; And sobbing sweethearts, in a row, wail o'er the ocean foam.

In livid and obdurate gloom he darkens down at last;
A shapely one he is, and strong, as e'er from cat was cast.
O trusted and trustworthy guard, if thou hadst life like me,
What pleasures would thy toils reward beneath the deep green sea!
O deep Sea-diver, who might then behold such sights as thou?
The hoary-monster's palaces! methinks what joy 't were now
To go plumb plunging down amid the assembly of the whales,
And feel the churn'd sea round me boil beneath their scourging tails!

Then deep in tangle-woods to fight the fierce sea unicorn,
And send him foiled and bellowing back, for all his ivory horn;
To leave the subtle sworder-fish of bony blade forlorn;

And for the ghastly-grinning shark to laugh his jaws to scorn:-
To leap down on the kraken's back, where 'mid Norwegian isles
He lies, a lubber anchorage for sudden shallow'd miles,
"Till, snorting, like an under-sea volcano, off he rolls;
Meanwhile to swing, a-buffetting the far astonished shoals
Of his back-browsing ocean-calves; or, haply in a cove,
Shell-strown, and consecrate of old to some Undiné's love,
To find the long-hair'd mermaidens; or, hard by icy lands,
To wrestle with the Sea-serpent, upon cerulean sands.

O broad-armed Fisher of the deep, whose sports can equal thine ?
The Dolphin weighs a thousand tons, that tugs thy cable line;
And night by night, 'tis thy delight, thy glory day by day,
Through sable sea and breaker white, the giant game to play—
But shamer of our little sports! forgive the name I gave-
A fisher's joy is to destroy-thine office is to save.

O lodger in the sea-kings' halls, couldst thou but understand
Whose be the white bones by thy side, or who that dripping band,
Slow swaying in the heaving wave, that round about thee bend,
With sounds like breakers in a dream blessing their ancient friend-
Oh, couldst thou know what heroes glide with larger steps round
thee,

Thine iron side would swell with pride; thou'dst leap within the sea!

Give honour to their memories who left the pleasant strand,
To shed their blood so freely for the love of Father-land-
Who left their chance of quiet age and grassy church-yard grave,
So freely, for a restless bed amid the tossing wave-

Oh, though our anchor may not be all I have fondly sung,
Honour him for their memory, whose bones he goes among!