The Irish poem I give this translation of was printed in the _Revue
Celtique_ some years ago, and lately in _An Fior Clairseach na
h-Eireann_, where a note tells us it was taken from a manuscript in the
Gottingen Library, and was written by an Irish priest, Shemus Cartan,
who had taken orders in France; but its date is not given. I like it for
its own beauty, and because its writer does not, as so many Irish
writers have done, attribute the many griefs of Ireland only to 'the
horsemen of the Gall,' but also to the faults and shortcomings to which
the people of a country broken up by conquest are perhaps more liable
than the people of a country that has kept its own settled rule.