Folklore:The Memory Expressed in the Language
of the Culture
From the still hot ashes of history tellers of the
culture forge lasting accounts-tales which shall outlast the written word
and which turn from history into art. A collection of stories relating
to the 12th are to be found below. Have you any to add?-Let us know!
The intriguing Paypishes surround this loyal and ancient town
They tried you know not long ago to pull the Bible down
And to destroy it root and branch they often have combined
But from Sandy Row we made them fly like chaff before the wind.
If I had a penny
Do you know what I would do?
I would buy a rope
And hang the pope
And let King Billy through!
Do you think that I would let
A dirty fenian cat
Destroy the leaf of a lilly-o
For there’s not a flower in Ireland
Like King Billy’s orange -lilly-o
To the goose that grew the feather
To the hand that wrote No Surrender
Sir Edward Carson had a cat,
He sat it by the fender
And every time it caught a mouse
It shouted, No Surrender
Harbinson,Robert, No Surrender:An Ulster Childhood.,Faber and
Faber,London,1960
Sarsfield Surrenders and Rory Takes to the Hills
Donegal
Seumas MacManus 1952
My uncle Donal used to tell me how his grandfather often told him
that when Limerick at last surrendered to William of Orange and there looked
nothing more to fight for, and that the French flag was set on one hill
and William’s
flag on another for choice of the Irish fighters as they marched
out; and when these thronged solid to the French,with brave Patrick Sarsfield
at their head, one rough fellow,Rory, who in the fighting had drawn everyone’s
admiration, so reckless he was -this Rory struck away on his own. A captain
of Sarsfield’s headed for King Louis’s flag seeing Rory strike off by himself,
called “Rory, aren’t you coming with us to France!”
“No!” Rory answered, shortly.
“You’re surely not going to William?”
“No,no! said Rory
“In the Lord’s Name, are you making no choice?”
“I’m choosing Ireland,” Rory said, like that, “And I’m to fight
for her.”
“But you haven’t even a handful behind you, and England has a hundred
thousand.”
“Ill have behind me an army more plentiful,” says Rory,”than the
hairs on your head.”
“What do you mean?”
“Every angel God can spare He will strap a sword on and send me
to my helping-and England’s hundred thousand will melt like the mists before
us.”
“When?” asked the captain with a chuckle.
“In God’s own good time. Maybe in a year, maybe five hundred years;but
,be it soon or be it long, Rory wins”.
And, his gun on his shoulder, Rory turned away and headed to the
hills.
Glassie,Henry,ed.Irish Folktales., Penguin,1987
pp115-116
The Stuarts
As to the Stuarts, there are no songs about them and no praises
in the West.whatever there may be in the South. Why would there, and they
running away and leaving the country the way they did? And what good did
they ever do?James the Second was a cowa rd. Why didn’t he go into the
thick of the battle like the Prince of Orange? He stopped on a hill three
miles away, and rode off to Dublin, bringing the best of his troops with
him. There was a lady walking in the street in Dublin when he got there,
and h e told her the battle was lost, and she said.”Faith you made good
haste; you made no delay on the road.”So he said no more after that. The
people liked James well enough before he ran;they didn’t like him after
that.
Another Story
Seumas Salach, Dirty James, it is he brought all down. At the time
of the battle there was one of his men said,”I have my eye cocked and all
the nations will be done away with,” and pointing his cannon.”Oh!” said
James, “Don’t make a widow of my daug hter.”If he didn’t say that, the
English would have been beat. It was a very poor thing for him to do. I
used to hear them singing”The White Cockade” through the country-”King
James was beaten and all his well-wishers;my grief, my boy, that went with
the m!” But I don’t think the people had ever much opinion of the Stuarts;but
in those days they were all prone to versify. But the Famine did away with
all that. Sure King James ran all the way from the Boyne to Dublin after
the battle. There was a verse mad e about him. “It was the coming of King
James that struck down Ireland With his one shoe Irish and his one shoe
English, He that wouldn’t strike a blow and that wouldn’t make a peace,
he has left trouble for ever on the Gael”.
Gregory,Lady Agusta.,The Kiltartan Books Comprising the Kiltartan
Poetery History and Wonder Books.,New York,Oxford University Press,1971
. p.89
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