“Woe is me! her hands now weak
With smiting her white palms so meek.
Wet her eyes at noon, and broken
Her true heart with grief unspoken.”
A lament for Kilcash, or rather for its patroness, is also very powerful.
The romantic love-tales are few in comparison with the number among the Irish street-ballads of to-day. The rich young nobleman who falls in love with the pretty girl milking her cow, and the fair lady of great estate who picks out her lover from the tall young men in her own service, make but few appearances. The only ballad of this kind in the collection is not after the usual pattern. The heir to “land and long towers white” certainly falls in love with a rustic maiden, but, instead of flying with him on his roan steed and becoming mistress of his castle, she tells him with great prudence that he will find other maidens better suited to his degree:
“I’m not used at my mother’s to sit with hosts,
I’m not used at the board to have wines and toasts,
I’m not used to dance-halls with music bold,
Nor to couches a third of them red with gold.”