Let Erin remember the days of old.
Ere her faithless sons betrayed her;
When Malachi wore the collar of gold,[1]
Which he won from her proud invader.
When her kings, with standard of green unfurled,
Led the Red-Branch Knights to danger;[2]
Ere the emerald gem of the western world
Was set in the crown of a stranger.
On Lough Neagh's bank as the fisherman strays,
When the clear cold eve's declining,
He sees the round towers of other days
In the wave beneath him shining:
Thus shall memory often, in dreams sublime,
Catch a glimpse of the days that are over;
Thus, sighing, look thro' the waves of time
For the long-faded glories they cover.[3]
[1] "This brought on an encounter between Malachi (the Monarch of Ireland
in the tenth century) and the Danes, in which Malachi defeated two of
their champions, whom he encountered successively, hand to hand, taking a
collar of gold from the neck of one, and carrying off the sword of the
other, as trophies of his victory."--_Warner's "History of Ireland,"_
vol. i. book ix.
[2] "Military orders of knights were very early established in Ireland;
long before the birth of Christ we find an hereditary order of Chivalry in
Ulster, called _Curaidhe na Craiobhe ruadh_, or the Knights of the
Red Branch, from their chief seat in Emania, adjoining to the palace of
the Ulster kings, called _Teagh na Craiobhe ruadh_, or the Academy of
the Red Branch; and contiguous to which was a large hospital, founded for
the sick knights and soldiers, called _Bronbhearg_, or the House of
the Sorrowful Soldier."--_O'Halloran's Introduction_, etc., part 1,
chap. 5.
[3] It was an old tradition, in the time of Giraldus, that Lough Neagh had
been originally a fountain, by whose sudden overflowing the country was
inundated, and a whole region, like the Atlantis of Plato, overwhelmed. He
says that the fishermen, in clear weather, used to point out to strangers
the tall ecclesiastical towers under the water.