The fellow hesitated. “My young mistress?”
“There are enough here to save her, if I will it. Down with the stone, or by the blood——”
He needed not to finish the sentence, for down at the word it came, striking helpless the youth’s right arm, and shivering the frail timber of the boat, which filled at once, and all went down. For an instant an arm re-appeared, feebly beating the water in vain—it was the young chief’s broken one: the other held his Norah in its embrace, as was seen by her white dress flaunting for a few moments on and above the troubled surface. The lake at this point was deep, and though there was a rush of the M’Diarmods towards it, yet in their confusion they were but awkward aids, and the fluttering ensign that marked the fatal spot had sunk before they reached it. The strength of Connor, disabled as he was by his broken limb, and trammelled by her from whom even the final struggle could not dissever him, had failed; and with her he loved locked in his last embrace, they were after a time recovered from the water, and laid side by side upon the bank, in all their touching, though, alas, lifeless beauty! Remorse reached the rugged hearts even of those who had so ruthlessly dealt by them; and as they looked on their goodly forms, thus cold and senseless by a common fate, the rudest felt that it would be an impious and unpardonable deed to do violence to their memory, by the separation of that union which death itself had sanctified. Thus were they laid in one grave; and, strange as it may appear, their fathers, crushed and subdued, exhausted even of resentment by the overwhelming stroke—for nothing can quell the stubborn spirit like the extremity of sorrow—crossed their arms in amity over their remains, and grief wrought the reconciliation which even centuries of time, that great pacificator, had failed to do.
The westering sun now warning me that the day was on the wane, I gave but another look to the time-worn tombstone, another sigh to the early doom of those whom it enclosed, and then, with a feeling of regret, again left the little island to its still, unshared, and pensive loneliness.
ANCIENT IRISH LITERATURE—No. IV.
The composition which we have selected as our fourth specimen of the ancient literature of Ireland, is a poem, more remarkable, perhaps, for its antiquity and historical interest, than for its poetic merits, though we do not think it altogether deficient in those. It is ascribed, apparently with truth, to the celebrated poet Mac Liag, the secretary of the renowned monarch Brian Boru, who, as our readers are aware, fell at the battle of Clontarf in 1014; and the subject of it is a lamentation for the fallen condition of Kincora, the palace of that monarch, consequent on his death.
The decease of Mac Liag, whose proper name was Muircheartach, is thus recorded in the Annals of the Four Masters, at the year 1015:—
“Mac Liag, i. e. Muirkeartach, son of Conkeartach, at this time laureate of Ireland, died.”
A great number of his productions are still in existence; but none of them have obtained a popularity so widely extended as the poem before us.
Of the palace of Kincora, which was situated on the banks of the Shannon, near Killaloe, there are at present no vestiges.