“--And--Shepherd!--when the heavenly spark Was flickering in its lamp of clay, Before the glassy eye grew dark, What said he more? or said he aught?”-- “--But this--‘The pilgrim goes his way:-- Farewell the beauty of the moon! Farewell the glory of the noon! The home of rest my heart hath sought So long in vain will soon be mine-- Soon will that heart, all quelled and cold, Lie low aneath the trodden mould, Which brings it Peace,--a welcome boon! Yet Love, ah, Love is still divine, And surely Goodness never dies!’-- He said no more--we closed his eyes-- We laid him in the grassy grove-- _He died, he died of slighted love_.” --_Dublin University Magazine._ ROOSHKULUM, OR THE WISE SIMPLETON, A LEGEND OF CLARE. BY J. G. M’TEAGUE. Corney Neylan, our village schoolmaster, when any question of arithmetic may be proposed to him which he is in no humour to answer, and would rather turn off by a joke, has been frequently known to reply to it by asking _another_ question, like this:-- “Now, boys, ye’re striving to puzzle me; and I’ll engage none of ye can answer something that I’ll ask ye, now.” “What is it, Corney? Let’s hear it!” “How many grains of oatenmale are contained in one given square foot of stirabout?” This is, in its turn, a poser; but probably the number of schemes, tricks, and contrivances, in an Irish cranium, might be found as hard to be enumerated as the grains of meal in the aforesaid foot of stirabout! Thus, while around the blazing turf fire, on a winter’s evening, the story, the pipe, and the joke, take their rounds by turn, you will invariably discover that that tale always gains a double share of applause which may contain a relation of some clever successful scheme or trick, or the “sayings and doings” of some remarkably clever fellow, albeit perhaps a great rogue; in fact, such stories as these are suited to the conceptions and tastes of a shrewd and ready-witted people. But without tiring my reader with any more “shanachus,” for so we term “palaver” in Clare, let me endeavour to present him with one of these very stories, which, if it boasteth not of much interest, may perhaps amuse him by its originality. Honour to that man, whomsoever he may be, who first rescued these curious legends from oblivion, and found in our Irish Penny Journal an excellent repository for their safer preservation! The reader must not be surprised if my story contains a slight dash of the marvellous, probably bordering on the hyperbolical; but this, which I verily believe is but a kind of ornament, something superadded by the genius of the narrators, as it has descended, must be taken as it is meant, and will in most instances be found capable of _translation_, as it were, into language easily and naturally to be explained.