The late Rev. C. P. Meehan, author of “The Confederation of Kilkenny,” who gave more attention to that period of his country’s story than any other writer, says, on page 26 of his interesting work: “After the battle of Kilrush, one bright name disappears [he mentions O’More in a foot-note]; the last time the inspiriting war-shout of his followers fell on his ear was on that hillside. What reasons there may have been for the retirement of the gallant chief, whose name was linked with that of God and Our Lady, are not apparent; but it is said, upon authority, that he proceeded to Ferns, and devoted the rest of his days to peaceful pursuits in the bosom of his family.” The historian Coote says that he died at Kilkenny. This was, surely, a “lame and impotent conclusion” to such a career. The defeat of his countrymen may have destroyed his hopes, or he may have had reason to doubt the loyalty of his allies of the Pale. We are inclined to believe an old Leinster tradition, which says that he died of a broken heart immediately after the lost battle, on which he had built such high hopes. Such a spirit as his could not have remained inactive during the nine long years of the struggle, inaugurated by himself, which followed the disaster at Kilrush. We can not dismiss this extraordinary man from our pages without quoting the following introduction to a ballad dealing with his career in Edward Hayes’s remarkable collection of poetry, called “The Ballads of Ireland,” vol. I, page 173: “Roger, or Rory, O’More, is one of the most honored and stainless names in Irish annals. Writers who concur in nothing else agree in representing him as a man of the loftiest motives and the most passionate patriotism. In 1640, when Ireland was weakened by defeat and confiscation, and guarded with a jealous care, constantly increasing in strictness and severity, O’More, then a private gentleman with no resources beyond his intellect and courage, conceived the vast design of rescuing her from England, and accomplished it. In three years England did not retain a city in the island but Dublin and Drogheda. For eight years her power was merely nominal, the land was possessed and the supreme authority exercised by the Confederation created by O’More. History contains no stricter instance of the influence of an individual mind. Before the insurrection broke out the people had learned to know and expect their Deliverer, and it became a popular proverb, and the burden of national songs, that the hope of Ireland was in ‘God, the Virgin, and Rory O’More.’ It is remarkable that O’More, in whose courage and resources the great insurrection had its birth, was a descendant of the chieftains of Leix, massacred by English troops at Mullaghmast a century before. But if he took a great revenge, it was a magnanimous one. None of the excesses which stained the first rising in Ulster is charged upon him. On the contrary, when he joined the northern army, the