bleeding, sometimes in a state of loathsome decay, were torn to pieces and swallowed without salt, bread, or herbs. Those marauders who preferred boiled meat, being often in want of kettles, contrived to boil the steer in his own skin. An absurd tragicomedy is still extant, which was acted in this and the following year at some low theatre for the amusement of the English populace. A crowd of half naked savages appeared on the stage, howling a Celtic song and dancing round an ox. They then proceeded to cut steaks out of the animal while still alive and to fling the bleeding flesh on the coals. In truth the barbarity and filthiness of the banquets of the Rapparees was such as the dramatists of Grub Street could scarcely caricature. When Lent began, the plunderers generally ceased to devour, but continued to destroy. A peasant would kill a cow merely in order to get a pair of brogues. Often a whole flock of sheep, often a herd of fifty or sixty kine, was slaughtered: the beasts were flayed; the fleeces and hides were carried away; and the bodies were left to poison the air. The French ambassador reported to his master that, in six weeks, fifty thousand horned cattle had been slain in this manner, and were rotting on the ground all over the country. The number of sheep that were butchered during the same time was popularly said to have been three or four hundred thousand.[1]
- ↑ King, iii. 10; The Sad Estate and Condition of Ireland, as represented in a Letter from a Worthy Person who was in Dublin on Friday last, March 4, 1689; Short View by a Clergyman, 1689; Lamentation of Ireland, 1689; Compleat History of the Life and Actions of Richard, Earl of Tyrconnel, 1689; The Royal Voyage, acted in 1689 and 1690. This drama, which, I believe, was performed at Bartholomew Fair, is one of the most curious of a curious class of compositions, utterly destitute of literary merit, but valuable as showing what were then the most successful claptraps for an audience composed of the common people. "The end of this play," says the author in his preface, "is chiefly to expose the perfidious base, cowardly, and bloody nature of the Irish." The account which the fugitive Protestants give of the wanton destruction of cattle is confirmed by Avaux in a letter to Lewis, dated April 13/23, 1689, and by Desgrigny in a letter to Louvois, dated May 17/27, 1690. Most of the despatches written by Avaux during his mission to Ireland are contained in a volume of which a very few copies were printed some years ago at the English Foreign Office. Of many I have also copies made at the French Foreign Office. The letters of Desgrigny, who was employed in the Commissariat, I found in the Library of the French War Office. I cannot too strongly express my sense of the liberality and courtesy with which the immense and admirably arranged storehouses of curious information at Paris were thrown open to me.
