"There has been thrown open, out of the bosom of the clouds, the doors of the waters of the air. It has made of little linns a sea; the firmament has belched forth her destructiveness." The metre of the last line in this verse is wrong, for it contains nine not seven syllables.
[16] O'Reilly mentions eight Mac-an-bháirds or Wards, eleven O'Clerys, seven O'Coffeys, eight O'Hĭginnses, nine O'Mulconrys and no less than twenty-eight O'Dalys, who were by far the most numerous and perhaps the ablest bardic tribe in all Ireland.
[17] The metre of the original is hepta-syllabic, each line ending in a dissyllable, and there is no regular beat or accentuation in the verse, which though printed as a four-line stanza, would really run some way thus—
"Foobon on ye,
Cringe cowards,
Are your powers
Departed?
Galls your country
Are tearing,
Overbearing,
Flint-hearted."
The Irish themselves, either through the influence of English verse or through the natural evolution of the Irish language, changed this metre in the next century into one not unlike my English verses above.
[18] This piece is taken from a manuscript of my own; I have never met this fine poem elsewhere. The word fooboon, upon which the changes are so rung, is new to me, and is not contained in any Irish or Scotch-Gaelic dictionary, the nearest approach to it is O'Reilly's fúbta, "humiliation"; but I find the words fubub fubub in the sense of "shame," "fy," in the Turner MS., "Reliquiæ Celticæ," vol. ii. p. 325. The metre of this poem is Little Rannaigheacht, and the first verse runs thus—
"Fúbún fúibh a shluagh Gaoidheal
Ni mhair aoin-neach agaibh
Goill ag comh-roinn bhur gcríche
Re sluagh sithe mar [i.e. bhur] samhail."
Literally: "Fooboon to you, O host of the Gaels, not a man of you is alive: the Galls are together-dividing your lands, while ye are [unsubstantial] like a fairy host. The Clan Carthy of Leath Mogha [i.e., Southern Ireland], and to call them out down to one man, there is not—and sad is the disgrace—one person of them imitating the [old] Gaels," etc.
[19] Yohy is the pronunciation of the Irish Eochaidh, genitive Eochach, or even Eathach. The Eochaidh here alluded to is Eochaidh Muigh-mhea-dhon [Mwee-va-on], father of Niall of the Nine Hostages. He came to the throne in 356, and from his son Brian the O'Conors, O'Rorkes, O'Reillys, MacDermots, etc., of Connacht are descended, who all went under the generic name of the Ui Briain, as the families descended from his other son, Niall of the Nine Hostages are the Ui Neill. See above, pp. [33] and [34].