"James Fitz-Garret, son of the great Earl of Desmond, had been sent to England, when a child, as a hostage, and was for seventeen years kept a prisoner in the Tower, and educated in the Queen's religion. James Fitz-Thomas, the 'Sugane Earl,' having meantime assumed the title and prerogatives of Earl of Desmond, the Queen sent her captive to Ireland, attended by persons devoted to her, and provided with a _conditional_ patent for his restoration .... As the young earl walked to church, it was with difficulty that a guard of English soldiers could keep a path open for him. From street and window and housetop every voice urged him to fidelity to his ancestral faith. The youth, who did not even understand the language in which he was adjured, went on to the Queen's church, as it was called; and with loud cries his clan rushed away and abandoned his standard for ever. Shortly afterward he returned to England, where, within a few months, he died. Strew the bed and strew the bier (Who rests upon it was never man) With all that a little child holds dear, With violets blue and violets wan. Strew the bed and strew the bier With the berries that redden thy shores, Corann; His lip was the berry, his skin was clear As the waxen blossom--he ne'er was man. Far off he sleeps, yet we mourn him here; Their tale was a falsehood; he ne'er was man! 'Tis a phantom funeral! Strew the bier With white lilies brushed by the floating swan. They lie who say that the false queen caught him A child asleep on the mountains wide; A captive reared him, a strange faith taught him;-- 'Twas for no strange faith that his father died! They lie who say that the child returned A man unmanned to his towers of pride; That his people with curses the false Earl spurned: Woe, woe, Kilmallock! they lie, and lied! The clan was wroth at an ill report. But now the thunder-cloud melts in tears. The child that was motherless played. "'Twas sport." A child must sport in his childish years! Ululah! Ululah! Low, sing low! The women of Desmond loved well that child! Our lamb was lost in the winter snow; Long years we sought him in wood and wild. How many a babe of Fitzgerald's blood In hut was fostered though born in hall! The old stock burgeoned the fair new bud, The old land welcomed them, each and all! {86} Glynn weeps to-day by the Shannon's tide, And Shanid and she that frowns o'er Deal; There is woe by the Laune and the Carra's side, And where the knight dwells by the woody Feale. In Dingle and Beara they chant his dirge: Far off he faded--our child--sing low! We have made him a bed by the ocean's surge, We have made him a bier on the mountain's brow.