352 Timehri. 
“ Sometimes there trembled through the strain, 
‘A song like falling tears 
And then it rose and burst again 
Like sudden, clashing spears. ” 
At the head of the column rides, lean and j.ollow-cheeked, some young yet 
grizzled and bearded veteran of eleven bitter years. His ample Irish cloak, 
the last relic of the national dress, unless he clings to the barret-cap, partly 
hides the dinted cuirass and the stained buff-coat. Like their owner they bear 
the tokens of nights of watching by rampart and bivouac. The slouched 
Spanish hat hides a sword-cut on the temple, partly hides a scar upon the cheek, 
hides brows scorched with the powder of a recent siege-explosion. The first 
recalls the Break of Benburb ; a Westland Whig gave it him and the waters of 
the Oona flow over the Covenanter now. The next was from the snaphance 
of Colonel Zeal of the Lord Busy at the storming of Clonmel and the Round- 
head died in the breach in the North wall. The last recalls the petards which 
sprang the bridges at the in-take of Limerick. That broad brim too hides 
hard grey Irish eyes that are now dim with something else besides the steadily 
fallngrain. Was this the last stroke for Banba? Was this out-march the end 
of all the heroism and the sacrifice, of all the watching and the starving of 
eleven weary years. Perhaps we can see him, dimly down the centuries, 
check his chain bridle on the miry causeway amid the low, grey, rounded hills 
and in the hearing of the western sea, fling off the sombre Spanish mask 
which was the pose of the Irish Officer of the time, and cry to his marching 
clan almost in the words of thechorus to Electra: ‘‘ Courage, children, (a 
chlanna) ; time is with us. We shall come back.’ And sounding up the years 
comes the wild answering yell, ‘“ True for you, MacArt,’’ (or MacPhilip or 
MacShane or whatever patronymic his clan knew him by) “ we shall come 
back and see their backs again and the people will make way for us at the 
altar.” The haggard eyes flash but again grow hard: again the sharp order in 
the Gaelic.: our own eyes are dim, perhaps with the visionary rain, and when 
we look again we see only the darkening moorland and the watching stars. 
Future marshals and captains-general, fathers and grandfathers to be, of 
viceroys, princes and governors, grandees of Spain, Austria and France, rode 
beside the retreating columns. Honour and fame awaited some over-sea whither 
they were marching, penniless and defeated, vocal only in an unknown 
Gaelic speech, bearing the dinted swords and tattered standards of 
a lost cause, but bearing, too the heritage of unconquered hearts, of 
stainless names, of sinews of iron. Of a few we know something. 
Condé alone had a corps of 5,000. Mortara had still more in Spain but he or 
King Philip IV. treated them badly and paid for it. Spain they loved but 
poor Spain was sickening of her long illness. Many went for Poland and 
fought the Turk and Cossack. Others were for the Low Countries. Philip 
O'Reilly and Black Hugh O’Neill, the valiant defender of Limerick, Owen Roe’s 
greatest nephew, became Generals in the Spanish service, and Hugh lived long 
enough to claim the Earldom of Tyrone and the estates of the Arch-Earl after 
the Restoration. Owen himself had died at Clough Oughter Castle as the 
