Another poem is a splendid war-song by Angus O'Daly on a victory of the O'Byrnes over the English. "I rejoice that not one was left of the remnant of the slaughter but the captive who is in hand in bondage:"[17] "the blaze of the burning country makes day out of midnight for them."
A remarkable poet of the end of this century was another Angus O'Daly, the Red Bard, or Angus of the Satires, as he was called. He seems to have been employed by the English statesmen, Lord Mountjoy and Sir George Carew, for the deliberate purpose of satirising all the Gaelic families in the kingdom, and those Anglo-Normans who sympathised with them. Angus travelled the island up and down on this sinister mission. It was indeed an evil time. The awful massacres of Rathlin and Clanaboy in Ulster, the hideous treachery of Mullaghmast in Leinster, the revolting deeds of Bingham in the west, and the unspeakable horrors that followed on the Geraldines rebellion in the south, had reduced the Irish nobles to a condition of the direst poverty. This poverty and the inhospitality which he connected with it—points on which the Irish were particularly sore—were the mark at which Angus aimed his arrows. He usually polished off each house or clan in a single rann or quatrain. His Irish rhymes are peculiarly happy. Here are some specimens of his satire. He says of Thomas Fitzgerald, Knight of Glynn, that he looked so grudgingly at him as he ate his supper that the piece half-chewed stuck in his throat at the very sight of the other's eyes. Of Limerick he says the only thing he was thankful for was the bad roads which would prevent him from ever seeing it again. Of the Fitzmaurices he says that he will neither praise them nor satirise them, for they are just poor gentlemen—admirable satire, and it cannot be doubted that they keenly felt the point of it! Often, however, Angus is only abusive—thus of Maguire of Enniskillen he says that "he is a badger for roughness and greyness, an ape for stature and ugliness, a lobster for the sharpness of his two eyes, a fox for the foulness of his breath,"[18] a verse in which the happiness of the Irish rhyming carries off the poverty of the sentiment. He harps on the blindness of the Mac Ternans,[19] the misanthropy of the Mac Gillycuddy, the inborn evil of the Fitzgibbons,[20] the poverty of the O'Callaghans, the bad wines of the O'Sullivans, the decrepitude of the O'Reillys, and so on.
The Red Bard went on with his satires on the men of the four provinces, with none to say him nay, until he came to Tipperary, where he was misguided enough to satirise the chief of the O'Meaghers, whose servant, stung out of all control, forgot that the person of a bard was sacred, and instantly thrust a knife into his throat, thus putting an end to him and his satires. Angus, however, even as he died, uttered one rann in which, for the good of his soul, he revoked all his former verses: "All the false judgments I have passed upon the men of Munster I recant them; the meagre servant of the grey Meagher has passed as much of a false judgment upon me."
So greatly had the literary production of Ireland passed into the hands of the bards during the period we are now considering, that it will be well to study the evolution of the bardic body down to the close of the sixteenth century, in a separate chapter.
[1] "Truagh mo thuras ar Loch Dearg
A righ na gceall a's na gclog,
Do chaoineadh do chneadh 's do chréacht
'S nach dtig déar thar mo rosg."
See "Gaelic Journal," vol. iv. p. 190.
[2] "Ná tréig mo theagasg a mhic
Cidh baogh'lach lá an chirt do chách
Ag sgaoileadh dhóib ó an tsliabh
Rachaidh tu le Dia na ngrás."
See my "Religious Songs of Connacht," p. 28.
[3] Literally: "Do not forsake my teaching, my son, and although dangerous be the Day of Right for all, on their scattering from the Mount, thou shalt go with God of the graces.