selves naturall Irish. Other great houses there bee of the English in Ireland, which thorough licentious conversing with the Irish, or marrying, or fostering with them, or lacke of meete nurture, or other such unhappy occasions, have [o 1] degendred from their auncient dignities, and are now growne as Irish, as O-hanlans breech, [o 2] as the proverbe there is.
Eudox. In truth this which you tell is a most shamefull hearing, and to be reformed with most sharpe censures, in so great personages to the terrour of the meaner: for if the lords and cheife men degenerate, what shall be hoped of the peasants, and baser people? And hereby sure you have made a faire way unto your selfe to lay open the abuses of their evill customes, which you have now next to declare, the which, no doubt, but are very bad, being borrowed from the Irish, as their apparell, their language, their riding, and many other the like.
Iren. You cannot but hold them sure to be very uncivill; for were they at the best that they were of
- ↑ degendred] This is the manuscript reading, and confirms the use of the word by Spenser on another occasion, See vol. vi. p. 2. The printed copies read degenerated. Todd.
- ↑ as the proverbe there is.] The Manuscripts belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Marquis of Stafford add three " most pittiful examples of this sort," then existing; and the mention of them is made in very severe terms. They are " the Lord Bremingham., the great Mortimer, and the old Lord Courcie." Todd.
