CANTICLE OF DELIVERANCE.
1This spirited Jacobite song was composed by Andrew Magrath, the witty and eccentric Mangaire Sugach, as were also the drinking stanzas, p. 192, first vol. of this work. He was a native of Limerick, and author of numerous poems and songs of a jovial, amatory, and political nature, which are current and popular, chiefly in the Province of Munster. As a poet, he not only excelled the mob of English gentlemen who formerly wrote with ease, but also many of those whom Doctor Johnson has designated English poets. He led a wandering sort of life, and was much dreaded for the caustic severity of his wit. His habits and writings closely resembled those of Prior. Like him, the Mangaire "delighted in mean company. His life was irregular, negligent, and sensual. He has tried all styles, from the grotesque to the solemn, and has not so failed in any as to incur derision or disgrace."—Johnson. Our bard was living within the last 40 years, and died at an advanced age.
2"Too long have the churls in dark bondage oppressed me."
We have already noticed p. 119, the expressions of derision used by the Irish towards their unwelcome visitors, the English invaders, whom they contemptuously called the impure refuse of the ocean, "Impurum maris ejectamentum"—Rutgeri Herman, Brit. Mag. p. 379.—"Bos ubi Scotus erat," was likewise a common phrase among them. Some curious instances of the use of the term "Churl," are recorded. When Athenry, in the County of Galway, was burned in 1596, by Hugh ruadh O'Donnell, one of the Irish leaders who was requested to spare the church as it contained the bones of his mother, replied, "I care not even were she alive in it, I would sooner burn them both together, than that any English churl should fortify there." O'Nial, Earl of Tyrone, when marching by Castlemore in the County of Cork, in the year 1600, on his way to Kinsale
