"That on the capitulation of the city of Limerick in October, 1651, to the Parliamentarian general Ireton, twenty of the most distinguished of its defenders were excepted from pardon, and reserved for execution. Amongst them were two brothers, George and Francis Woulfe: the former, a military officer; the latter, a friar, who was hanged,—but the captain made his escape. He fled," says Ferrar (p. 350.), "to the north of England, where he settled; and his grandson, General Edward Woulfe, was appointed colonel of the 8th regiment of foot in the year 1745. He transmitted his virtues with additional lustre to his son Major-General James Woulfe, whose memory will be for ever dear to his country, and whose name will be immortalised in history."
Captain Woulfe married, and changed his religion; to which his brother the friar fell a martyr, exhibiting on the scaffold, it is related, far more intrepidity than many of his fellow sufferers of military rank. Ireton, however, finally pardoned several of those originally excepted from the capitulation. Woulfe's family was at that period one of the most eminent in the county of Clare, where it still retains a respectable rank; and one of its members was the late Chief Baron, Stephen Woulfe, a gentleman equally beloved in society as respected on the bench. Another was a chemist of some eminence in London, at the close of the past century. They retained the u in the name, which most others, like the captain's descendants, laid aside; as Bonaparte did during his triumphant campaign in Italy, in order to un-Italianise and Frenchify his patronymic Buonaparte. The Chief Justice Wolfe, who was so barbarously murdered in Dublin at the outbreak of young Emmet's rebellion in 1803, was of a different branch. Edward, the general's father, had distinguished himself under Marlborough, as did the son in 1747, at the battle of Lawfelst on the continent. My own family, I may add, has been brought into close connexion with that of the subsisting Irish branch of the general's stock by intermarriage.
J. R. (Cork.)
The Violin (Vol. iv., p. 101.).
—This article reminds me of a distich said to have been inscribed on the violin of Palestrina, the "Musicæ Princeps" of the sixteenth century:—
"Viva fui in sylvis; sum dura occisa securi;
Dum vixi tacui; mortua dulce sona."
Thus translated into French:
"La hache m'arracha mourant du ford des bois;
Vivant, j'étais muet; mort, on vante ma voix."