--_A View of the present State of Ireland_. But his connexion with
Munster not unnaturally brought him also an accession of fortune. When
Ralegh and the "Somersetshire men" were dividing among them the County
of Cork, the Clerk of the Council was remembered by some of his friends.
He was admitted among the Undertakers. His name appears in the list,
among great statesmen and captains with their seignories of 12,000
acres, as holding a grant of some 3000. It was the manor and castle of
Kilcolman, a ruined house of the Desmonds, under the Galtee Hills. It
appears to have been first assigned to another person.[79:5] But it came
at last into Spenser's hands, probably in 1586; and henceforward, this
was his abode and his home.

Kilcolman Castle was near the high road between Mallow and Limerick,
about three miles from Buttevant and Doneraile, in a plain at the foot
of the last western falls of the Galtee range, watered by a stream now
called the Awbeg, but which he celebrates under the name of the Mulla.
In Spenser's time it was probably surrounded with woods. The earlier
writers describe it as a pleasant abode with fine views, and so Spenser
celebrated its natural beauties. The more recent accounts are not so
favourable. "Kilcolman," says the writer in Murray's Handbook, "is a
small peel tower, with cramped and dark rooms, a form which every
gentleman's house assumed in turbulent times. It is situated on the
margin of a small lake, and, it must be confessed, overlooking an
extremely dreary tract of country." It was in the immediate
neighbourhood of the wild country to the north, half forest, half bog,
the wood and hill of Aharlo, or Arlo, as Spenser writes it, which was
the refuge and the "great fastness" of the Desmond rebellion. It was
amid such scenes, amid such occupations, in such society and
companionship, that the poet of the _Faery Queen_ accomplished as much
of his work as was given him to do. In one of his later poems, he thus
contrasts the peace of England with his own home:--

No wayling there nor wretchednesse is heard,
No bloodie issues nor no leprosies,
No griesly famine, nor no raging sweard,
No nightly bordrags [= border ravage], nor no hue and cries;
The shepheards there abroad may safely lie,
On hills and downes, withouten dread or daunger:
No ravenous wolves the good mans hope destroy,
Nor outlawes fell affray the forest raunger.

FOOTNOTES:

[54:1] Froude,