The songs which were in vogue among the young and enthusiastic Fenians were, as might be supposed, of an entirely different nature. They were not peasants, but half-educated artisans. The proscribed _National Cork Songster_ contains probably more rant and fustian than any similar number of printed pages in existence. The verses, of course, bear a family resemblance to those that appeared in the _Nation_ for a couple of years previous to the events of '48, and in many instances are reproductions. Those of a modern date are still more extravagant, if possible, than that deluge of enthusiastic pathos; for among the _Nation_ poets were Thomas Davis and James Clarence Mangan, while among those of the Fenians of 1866 there is but one that deserves the slightest shred of laurel. Charles J. Kickham, now under sentence of fourteen years' penal servitude in her Britannic Majesty's prisons, has written two or three pieces of genuine ballad-poetry of great merit, which the people have at once adopted as household songs. "Rory of the Hill" is of remarkable spirit. It begins: "That rake up near the rafters, Why leave it there so long? The handle of the best of ash Is smooth and straight and strong. And mother, will you tell me Why did my father frown, When to make hay in summer-time I climbed to take it down? She looked up to her husband's eyes, While her own with light did fill, 'You'll shortly know the reason why,' Said Rory of the Hill." The love-songs, that are sung by the _colleens_ at the soft dewy dawn, as they sit beside the sleek cows just arisen from beneath the hedge, the nimble finger streaming the white milk into the foaming pail, while the lark's song melts down from that speck beneath the cloud, and the blackbird and thrush warble with ecstasy in the hedge, the morning light shining across the dewy green fields; or at "Eve's pensive air,"