Open [7.9 MB]

20 MUNSTER
1693 when Prince Eugene was beaten: the second
at Ramillies, where in the general disaster the Irish
Brigade not only saved its own colours, but carried
two British standards back to Bruges. The third and
last earl, who had refused restitution to all the estates
and titles if only he would forswear his religion,
led the immortal charge at Fontenoy, when Ireland's
banished men snatched in a desperate feat of arms
fierce requital for the penal laws that had left them
a choice between exile and slavery. Among all the
writers who ever handled that period of history,
whatever their prepossessions, none ever wrote the
name of "Clare's brigade", save with honour and ad-
miration; and no nationalist poet has told their praise
so eloquently as the Unionist, Miss Emily Lawless,
in two sister poems. One of the two depicts
the eve
of Fontenoy in the exiles' camp, and the wild stirring
in men's hearts. "The wind is wild to-night, and it
seems to blow from Clare" blows with a memory in
it and a vision of all that has been left, blows with
a promise of things long hoped for, since "Clare's
brigade may claim its own" wherever the fight rages.
"Send us, ye western breezes, our full, our rightful share,
For faith and home and country and the ruined hearths of Clare."
And the second tells how, on the morrow of the
battle, strange craft with strange
bodiless sailors