thought it time the story to be done,
he lost his head.... The next James--sharp blame to him--gave his
daughter to William as woman and wife; made the Irish English, and the
English Irish, like wheat and oats in the month of harvest. And it was
at Aughrim on a Monday many a son of Ireland found sorrow, without
speaking of all that died.'

So I went to ask some of the wise old neighbours, who sit in wide
chimney-nooks by turf fires, and to whom I go to look for knowledge of
many things, if they knew of any songs in praise of the Stuarts. But
they were scornful. 'The Stuarts?' one said; 'no, indeed; they have no
songs about them here in the West, whatever they may have in the South.
Why would they, running away and leaving the country? And what good did
they ever do it?' And another, who lives on the Clare border, said: 'I
used to hear them singing "The White Cockade" through the country.
"King James was beaten, and all his well-wishers; my grief, my boy that
went with them!" But I don't think the people had ever much opinion of
the Stuarts; but in those days they were all prone to versify. But the
famine did away with all that.' And then he also was scornful, and said:
'Sure King James ran all the way from the Boyne to Dublin, after the
battle. There was a lady walking in the street at Dublin when he got
there; and he told her the battle was lost; and she said: "Faith you
made good haste; you made no delay on the road." So he said no more
after that.'

And then he told me of the Battle of Aughrim, that is still such a
terrible memory; and how the 'Danes'--the De Danaan--the mysterious
divine race that were conquered by the Gael, and who still hold an
invisible kingdom--'were dancing in the raths around Aughrim the night
after the battle. Their ancestors were driven out of Ireland before; and
they were glad when they saw those that had put them out put out
themselves, and every one of them skivered.'

And another old man said: 'When I was a young chap knocking about in
Connemara, I often heard songs about the Stuarts, and talk of them and
of the blackbird coming over the water. But they found it hard to get
over James making off after the Battle of the Boyne.' And another says
of James: 'They liked him well before he ran; they didn't like him after
that.'

And when I looked through the lately gathered bundle of songs again, and
through some old collections of Jacobite songs in Irish, I found they
almost all belonged