wives, saying good-bye, begged their husbands
'not to be too hard on the Boers.' Anyhow, a 'Mother's lament for her
son gone to the war,' that was sung at Galway Races the other day, shows
more impartiality than most of the ballads:--

'When the battle rages fiercely, our boys are in the van;
How I do wish the blows they struck were for dear Ireland!
But duty calls, they must obey, and fight against the Boer,
And many a cheerful Irish lad will fall to rise no more.

'I wish my boy was home again! Oh! how I'd welcome him,
With sorrow I'm broken-hearted, my eyes are growing dim;
The war is dark and cruel, but whoever wins the fight,
I pray to save my noble lad, and God defend the right!'

But it is the small farmers of Ireland who look with special sympathy on
their fellows in the Transvaal. They give them a warning:--

'England sends her grabbers,
From far across the sea,
To rob you of your friends and home,
Likewise your liberty.'

And the Boers say in answer:--

'When we came to this country,
'Twas but a barren plain;
But the honest hand of labour
Was rewarded for its pain.
We found the precious metal,
And of it we have great store;
But Britain came to rob us
As she often done before.
As she thought to do before,
As she thought to do before;
But Britain comes to rob us,
As she often done before.'

Another ballad explains:--

'Those Boers can't be blamed, as you might understand;
They are trying to free their own native land,
Where they toil night and day by the sweat of their brow,
Like the farmers in Ireland that follow the plough.
Farewell to Old Ireland, we are now going away,
To fight the brave Boers in South Africa;
To fight those poor farmers we are not inclined:
God be with you, Old Ireland, we are leaving behind.'

Some verses--'The Boer's Prayer'--that I have not seen on a
ballad-sheet, but in a weekly paper, give better expression to this
feeling of farmer sympathy:--

'My back is to the wall;
Lo! here I stand.
O Lord, whate'er befall,
I love this land!

'This land that I have tilled,
This land is mine;
Would, Lord, that Thou hadst willed,
This heart were Thine!

'This land to us Thou gave
In days of old;
They seek to make a grave
Or field of gold!

'To us, O Lord, Th