of fish, and shall starve. Without hands, without feet I shall roam. (Oh, my sorrow!)"
The old woman finished her dirge-like song, and became deeply thoughtful. The rest were deeply moved, and the silence which had fallen remained unbroken. Suddenly, from afar, a faint cry was heard, probably that of a bird. I heard one of the boys whisper:—"Hark! It is the cry of the woman!"
County Clare Folk-Tales and Myths, IV. (Concluded).
9. The Sixteenth Century.
The great religious changes of this period, although ever since constantly before the people in religious teaching and polemical literature, have left no clear independent tradition. It is usually "Cromwell," not Henry the Eighth, "who destroyed the Abbeys," just as in County Limerick the Cromwellian war has obliterated the remembrance of the far more cruel Desmond wars. The stories of Henry and Luther were usually comic, pretending to no historic character and of no wide acceptance. The only curious, and probably native, tale is that already told about "Anne Bulling" winning and keeping the love of Henry by means of the pennywort.[1] Her enemies put her in prison where she could not get it, and Henry turned against her and hanged her, "as she deserved." This I heard both near Sixmilebridge about 1877, and some five years later near Carrigogunnell in County Limerick, but the penalties incurred by me for inadvised introduction of anti-Protestant stories and rebel songs (gathered from my kind friends among the peasantry) into my very Protestant and loyal family circle have obliterated the little I heard before my juvenile researches were nipped in the bud. Queen Mary had no place in Clare story, but Queen Elizabeth was widely remembered as the Cailleach or "Hag," and as "The Red Hag," but I can recall no
- ↑ Vol. xxii., p. 456.
