ot the only Son of God angry;
Ochone! The red blood that was poured out yesterday!'

I do not know who the following poem was written about, or if it is
about anyone in particular; but one line of it puts into words the
emotion of many an Irish 'felon.' 'It is with the people I was; it is
not with the law I was.' For the Irish crime, treason-felony, is only
looked on as a crime in the eyes of the law, not in the eyes of the
people:--

'I am lying in prison,
I am in bonds;
To-morrow I will be hanged,
Who am to-night so quiet,
So quiet;
Who am to-night so quiet.

'I am in prison,
My heart is cold and heavy;
To-morrow I will be hanged,
And there is no help for me,
My grief;
Och! there is no help for me.

'I am in prison,
And I did no wrong;
I only did the work
Was just, was right, was good,
I did,
Oh, I did the thing was good.

'It is with the people I was,
It is not with the law I was;
But they took me in my sleep,
On the side of Cnoc-na-Feigh;
And so
To-morrow they will hang me.'

'I am weak in my body,
I am vexed in my heart,
And to-morrow I will be hanged;
Lying beneath the clay,
My sorrow,
Lying beneath the clay.

'May God give pardon
To my vexed, sorrowful soul;
May God give mercy
To me now and forever,
Amen!
To me now and forever.'

But translation is poor work. Even if it gives a glimpse of the heart of
a poem, too much is lost in losing the outward likeness. Here are the
last lines of the lament of a felon's brother:--

'Now that you are stretched in the cold grave
May God set you free:
It's vexed and sorry and pitiful are my thoughts;
It's sorrowful I am to-day!'

I look at them and read them; and wonder why when I first read them,
their sound had hung about me for days like a sobbing wind; but when I
look at them in their own form, the sob is in them still:

Nois ann san uaigh fhuair o ta tu sinte
Go saoraigh Dia thu
Is buaidhcartha, bronach bocht ata mo smaointe
Is bronach me andhiu.

BOER BALLADS IN IRELAND

Yesterday I asked a woman on the Echtge hills, if any of her neighbours
had gone to the war. She said: 'No; but I know a great many that went to
America when the war began--even boys that had business to do at