THE LAST OF THE O'NEILS.

"Ultimus Romanorum."

THE description of real life, and of civilized manners and characters, seems to fall within the province of Prose-writers, while Poetry appropriates to herself the romantic, the wild, and the barbarous. But her delineations are often so unfaithful, she is so prone to sacrifice truth to her great objects of exciting admiration, and presenting what is sublime or pathetic, that it becomes needful to expose her exaggerations and partialities. How egregious have been the misrepresentations of the pastoral poets! how sadly have they duped the luckless wights, who, enraptured by their glowing descriptions of rural felicity, have extricated themselves from their happy urbane occupations, to endure a total wreck of happiness in a country solitude! Since Johnson, however, in his lordly prose, has rebuked those quacks and deceivers, they have been less successful in imposing upon the credulity of mankind; and it is pleasant to remark, that since his time this wicked species of poetry has had few or no cultivators. But, then, there is another criminal class of poets, who up to the present hour carry on their operations with unabated vigour and resolution. These dishonest gentlemen are in the habit of delineating cut-throats, robbers, and savages, as the most noble and amiable of the species. The criminality of one poet, in this respect, has been so flagrant that his offences will immediately occur to the mind of every reader, while the Corsair, the Giaour, and half a dozen other of his heroes, rise in review. The Autalissi, also, of a certain poet, who shall be nameless, may be remembered as represented (though a mere Indian barbarian, who, it may be averred, had never heard a sermon, or been taught so much of Mrs. Barbauld or Mrs. Trimmer, as any of our own children ten years old) to have demeaned himself with a dignity, and to have been inspired with such pure and noble sentiments, as would do honour to the most civilized creature of Europe. The sins of another popular writer are, if possible, yet greater. We have in one work an old drunken harper (who would undoubtedly have fallen within the strict letter of the vagrant act, and been committed by the mildest justice that ever presided in Marlborough-street) depicted as a most venerable and engaging personage. In another work, we have a termagant Highlander-but there is no end to the evil of those fine ballads which go by the name of " Sir Walter Scott's poetical works." And in those other works, which (whosesoever they be) do not go by that title, but are yclept "Novels, by the author of Waverley," being in truth a species of poem without metre, if the philologist will allow the description, the deceptions practised on the novice in human nature are manifold. In the gallant Rob Roy, who, that did not know what a cow-stealer is, could recognize an object fit for the gallows? And who in the courteous Cleveland could discover a worthy mate for the three pirates, who, with the help of iron chains, harlequinade it in the air on the banks of the Thames, opposite the Isle of Dogs? The representation of Tom and Jerry has not been productive of half the damage to Charlies and Jarvies, that such delineations of human character may occasion to the artless and inexperienced. But I despair of bringing poetical delinquents to a proper sense of their errors, and must con

tent myself with only letting the reader peruse the following true, full, and particular account of "The last of the O'Neils," in which may be found some antidote to the pestilent potions of those who dole out the waters of Helicon. Of the sept of O'Neil there were several distinct tribes that of Tir Oen, that of Clandeboy, and that of the Fews. I believe that of the two first no direct descendants survive: the peer who bears the name, springs from a collateral and inferior branch of the Clandeboy O'Neil. I am to narrate the fate of the present representative of the third.

To the west of a noble mountain, in the county of Armagh, which bears the name of Sheir Guillan, lies a wide expanse of low and boggy lands; which formerly sheltered in their secure fastnesses many of the families of ancient Irish, who after the battle of the Boyne were forced to flee. Its inhabitants at this day may claim the melancholy and somewhat strange distinction of being at once representatives of the noblest of the ancient families of their country, and among the most abject of its present peasantry. The northern part of Armagh is comparatively prosperous; but there is, perhaps, in no part of Ireland more misery than in the southern part where the Fews extend. On the frontier of this district next to Monaghan lies the townland of ** *, which, even in that desolate and wretched region, is noted as peculiarly possessing those characteristics. It is almost entirely a bog, traversed by causeways connecting the various spots where rock appears and affords a sure foundation for a cabin. One of the most extensive of these rocks is the site of a long range of hovels, which were lately occupied by Barney More O'Neil and his family. In this sequestered place his progenitor in the third or fourth degree, a gentleman of courtly manners, took up his abode. He was amongst the adherents of James II., and instead of fleeing with that unhappy monarch to France, was seduced, by the attachment to the place of their nativity for which the Irish are so distinguished, to shelter himself in the Fews. In the residence which he fixed upon he was within a short distance of the ancient seat of his family. The neighbouring lake of Ross (Lough Ross), one of those small lakes which form so beautiful a feature in the scenery of Ireland, contains an island, on which may yet be seen the ruins of a castle once constituting that seat. As far as the happiness of the individual himself was immediately concerned, the indulgence of this predilection for his country was, perhaps, not injudicious. It may be that, amid all his distresses and sufferings, he derived an ample consolation from the sympathy of his companions in exile, and from the thought that he remained to abide, with his country, all that the wrath of Heaven might inflict upon her. But in the fine language of Chief Justice Crew (in the famous case of De Vere)-"I suppose there is no man who hath any apprehension of gentry or nobleness" but will compare with regret the destiny of his descendant, which I am about to relate, with the prosperity of another branch of the family which emigrated, and whose representative bore, in 1790, the dignities of Captain-general of the Infantry of Spain, and Viceroy of Arragon!

It was the policy of the grantees of forfeited lands in Ireland to give leases for long terms of years to individuals of native extraction, who were, from their personal interest with the tenantry, better enabled than strangers to make the properties productive. But when time made

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the proprietors themselves acquainted with the country and people, and as the dominion of law became more stable and certain, this practice of subinfeudation ceased with the necessity in which it had originated; and on the expiration of their terms, which were often very beneficial interests, the holders found themselves deprived of their sole means of subsistence. Such had been the fate of Barney More O'Neil's progenitors. In each successive generation some characteristic of their former condition was lost, till in him nothing remained but the fantastical assemblage of incongruous qualities, which made him a felon, but make it impossible to think upon his doom without pity. He was the only son of his father, by whom he was left, in the first dawn of manhood, sole master and tenant of the long range of dilapidated buildings which have been before noticed, together with ten acres of wet marshy land on the verge of the great bog in which those buildings stood these were his possessions, these and the proud inheritance of one of the first names in Irish story. While yet his soul was chastened and humbled by the death of his surviving parent, the toilsome and melancholy labour of his hands won for him from his scanty territory, the rent at which it was held, together with a niggard subsistence; but as the heaviness of grief passed away, his untamed spirit spurned the base occupation, and in sullen desperation he threw down his mattock. Want came, and with it came wilder and fiercer thoughts. He engaged in some enterprise of violence and crime. Its fruits were large, and he enjoyed them in security. His character became fixed: no sense of pride or self-respect checked his career; he roamed abroad a savage without compunction or misgiving. He married; and with reckless satisfaction saw children spring up around him without other prospect than that of engaging in their father's lawless practices. He enjoyed a long course of impunity: all the peasants around were ready and happy to shelter him from his pursuers. He was besides, though fierce and ungovernable, endowed with a great portion of his countrymen's sagacity. In extricating himself from danger he was not less wary, subtle, and provident, than he was rash, careless, and hasty in plunging into it. His influence with his associates was unbounded. Over them all he constantly asserted that supremacy, which, if successfully assumed, is the surest and strongest bond upon human nature. He treated them occasionally with the utmost scorn and contempt; nay, often surrendered individuals to the ministers of justice; yet such was the ascendancy of his character, so complete the thraldom in which he held his companions by alternate insolence and familiarity, by rudely and fiercely scoffing them, or indulging the pleasant comic humour with which Nature also had gifted him, that for a long series of years not one was found to betray where Barney More lay hid, or had been recently seen. When first he entered upon his career he was a bold high-spirited ardent youth, with fierce passions, no doubt, and a determined spirit; but without any alloy of baseness or meanness in his composition. Long habits, however, of crime and outrage, while they farther exacerbated his spirit, deadened the generous spark which glowed in it at first; necessity enforced compliances, which became gradually familiar, and terminated in meanness. Deception was needful, and made him an hypocrite, and a base and fawning liar. Guilt made him fearful, and he became a coward. Pride alone remained of

aught that was even remotely allied to what was good. Premature old age succeeded habits of alternate toil and riot; and when I saw Barney More in the year 18-, he presented one of the most singular appearances I have ever witnessed. In the summer of that year I made an excursion, in the course of which I became for a short time resident in the neighbourhood of this uncommon man's habitation. His name reached me, and with it many a tale of plundered flocks, rifled bleach-greens, and eloigned cattle. The counties of Monaghan and Armagh are in part divided by a river, which in the fanciful language of the country is called "Owin Cuugger,"-" the Whispering River." A series of hills, of that beautiful undulation for which the high lands of Monaghan are distinguished, skirts its banks; and though no overhanging woods grace them, there are places where some scattered trees and bushes yield their clothing and embellishment. It was a fine summer evening, and the sun was setting with his last rays full upon the bank, along which I walked with a friend, when the form of a man extended at his full length struck us, as we turned round a projection which introduced us to one of those favoured spots which I have just described. His quick eye seemed to have anticipated ours, and without discomposing himself he awaited our approach. Some exclamation of surprise broke from my friend's lips as he recognized Barney More; who, raising himself upon his arm, accosted my friend with the usual salutation in Irish, God save you! The response was in English: "Ah, Barney More, you here! a good penny worth this meeting would be to Jem Macken, the constable!"-" True for you, master; but the rook scents surely the smell of the powder; and I knew well they who came up the river carried none."-"You're a bold impudent fellow, Barney, and it were a good deed to lodge you in the strong walls of Monaghan- -a pretty job it was for you to rob Craigh Kuran, after having been let off before by the people.”— "And who says Barney More did it? and if I did, the magers! is an old ewe and her two brats of lambs so mighty a matter, when the children were hungry at home?"-" They said you had left the country, and I think you had better do so: you may rely you will be taken and get no mercy."—" And what for should I not get mercy? But be that as it may I'll never leave the old sod, while I have a hand to grasp a hazel that grows on it. I don't matter those Craigh Kuran magers a rush; and if there was nothing else out against me I would not care to face judge and jury to-morrow."-"You're a wicked old fellow-I think the fate of your old companion, Larry Donnellan, ought to warn you."-" Larry Donnellan, the beggar! and well he deserved what he got the vermin! I tell you, master, if there had not been another cord in the province to hang that Larry with, I'd have lent them this;"-and so saying he bared his breast, and exhibited the cord of St. Francis, with which superstitious Catholics sometimes gird themselves, by way of dedicating themselves to the Saint. All the violence of his nature seemed roused by this Donnellan's name; and as if no longer brooking his former inert posture, he arose. He appeared above six feet high, powerfully made, with huge bones, and large coarse lineaments. The character of his form was gauntness; it seemed as if hardship or excess had reduced the huge shape to its present lankness. His complexion appeared to have been once fair, and

his hair, where age had not impressed its own colour, was of the fiery red which characterized the O'Neils. He was meanly clad, and upon his shoulders hung, in the Spanish fashion, a large frize cloak of the grey colour usual in the garments of the Irish peasantry. I marked his visage intently; and methought could read there all that formed the character of the owner: I saw the ferocity about the nose; and in the flexible expressive mouth could trace the eloquence and quick sensibility; in the brow I observed the pride and sternness and determination; and in the glowing quick-moving eye all the unquenchable ire and wild profligacy which belonged to him. We passed forward; and my friend explained to me that Donnellan, the person in whose punishment Barney More signified so much satisfaction, had been a contumacious member of his gang; and had, by treachery, put his leader into considerable jeopardy. I learned also the meaning of the cognomen, More-which means. large, and had been acquired from his bulk by Barney. Nothing, my companion assured me, could subdue the native wildness of that man's. disposition; nothing could reduce him to the condition of a regular and industrious labourer. His delinquencies had been a thousand times overlooked, and had even served to introduce him to the notice of, and to procure him the good offices and counsels of, the objects of his depredations. He had been often in prison, often tried, frequently acquitted from default of prosecution, and at other times dismissed with punishments of peculiar leniency. Over all, kindness and forbearance, and the most earnest exertions for his benefit, the indomitable barbarity of his nature had prevailed. In the enterprises which fell within his sphere there was little occasion for the exertion of those qualities of courage and intrepidity which, under all circumstances, have something in them grand and interesting; but if there was no romance in his pilferings and thievings there was much in his habits. He was not, like the mean vagrant of more civilized countries, addicted to frequenting pot-houses, and the company of the vile refuse of society. Barney More did, it must be owned, indulge in an occasional debauch, and he was necessarily often in the places appropriated to the reception of the wretches with whom he concerted his schemes of plunder; but his inclination led him to haunt scenes of a different character. It was his chief delight to loiter along the banks of the softflowing river I have mentioned, and he would pass whole days in a favourite dell, watching the shadows as they fell upon the waters. He loved to bask in the noontide sun; and at night would often pass many an hour at the end of his sheeling looking upon the moon. But nothing would induce him to work; and he was heard to say, with something of pride, that though a poor cotter, his hand had not grasped a spade for forty years. Of his name and descent he was vain to the highest degree; and notwithstanding all his crimes and wretchedness, there was that about him which distinguished him from the herd of ignoble malefactors.

Shortly after my rencontre with this wild Irishman, a gentleman from a distant part of the county arrived at the house of my friend one evening at a very late hour. His stable had been broken open a few nights previous, and two valuable horses stolen; information had reached him that Barney More was concerned in the robbery, and his