362 



Small was the present she made us, 

 Its loss to her was not great, 

 Let her have payment from us in a poem, 

 Let her not refuse the poet's gratitude ! 



You mice, which are in the roof of the house, 



Arise all of you, and fall down. 

 ***** 



" And thereupon ten mice fell dead on the floor from the 

 roof of the house, in Senchan's presence. And Senchan said 

 to them : It was not you that should have been satirized, but 

 the race of cats, and I will satirize them. And Senchan 

 then pronounced a satire, but not a deadly one, on the chief 

 of the cats of Erinn, who kept his princely residence in the 

 cave of Knowth, near Slane, in the county of Meath." 



To enumerate the various instances of the power of satire 

 to be met with in the ancient records of Ireland would extend 

 this communication to an inconvenient length. The power was 

 very generally supposed to be most efficacious in its application 

 to rats ; and the following story, which Mr. Curry relates from 

 his own knowledge of some of the circumstances, shows that 

 the superstition has existed down to our own times. 



" About the year 1776 a priest of the Roman Catholic 

 Church, named John O'Mulconry, became a convert to the Es- 

 tablished Church, and was appointed curate of Kilrush, in the 

 county of Clare. He was descended from the branch of the 

 O'Mulconry family, who were hereditary satirists and poets ; 

 and, notwithstanding his apostacy, was still much respected 

 by the Roman Catholic inhabitants of Kilrush and Kilferagh, 

 in the latter of which parishes, near Kilkee, he was in the 

 habit of officiating on all Sundays. The burying ground of 

 Kilferagh Church was at this time so infested with rats that 

 serious accidents occurred there at interments, from the anx- 

 iety of men to kill them, and of the women to fly from them, 

 as it was said that of bodies newly interred nothing but the 

 bones remained after one day. It was generally believed and 



