1 64 Refinements in Rural Life. 



and on all appropriate occasions, have had 

 wonderful influence on the human mind, and 

 have been made the scenes, no matter whether 

 correctly or not, of splendid and heroic achieve- 

 ments by poets, and sometimes by the more 

 grave recorders of the events of ages past. 

 Multitudes of historical ballads of the ancient 

 hereditary clans and poets are cited by Keating 

 and 0'FIaher.ty, amongst whom Coemannus 

 and Mordudius are celebrated as the chief. All 

 the compositions of these famous bards were in 

 verse, and were therefore called psalters or 

 sonnets. 



Nations whose chief wealth consisted in cattle 

 had much of their time unoccupied; their wants 

 were few, and these were supplied with little 

 thought for the morrow. The introduction of 

 refinements into pastoral communities gave 

 birth to multifarious ideas to invent means for 

 an augmentation to the requisites of life pos- 

 sessed before, and gave a perfectly new charac- 

 ter to most of the countries in Europe. Unfor- 

 tunately for Ireland, the refinements adopted at 

 court have not yet reached the cabin. Here 

 man will be found in a very natural state. The 

 predominant love of ease is sacrificed to nothing 

 but necessity; and while such food as he is con- 

 tent to exist on can be procured, without much 



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