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| TOWN OF KINSALE, CO. CORK. -Kinsale town, like Athenry, Oldbridge and Aughrim, is to Ireland "a place of skulls." The sketch shows it, as it stands today, commonplace in appearance, above the estuary of Bandon river. But the Muse of History is behind its work-a-day aspect and its 5,000 hard-working souls. Something of its story has been told in another sketch, as the scene of Ireland's fatal overthrow in 1602, and the landing of James II from France in 1689. Baron Kinsale -an offshoot of the De Coureys -is the only subject permitted to remain covered in the presence of royalty, because of a service rendered by one of the family when the Plantagenets ruled in England. The chief industry of Kinsale is fishing. It is chiefly noticeable, however, as the scene of Ireland's most disastrous defeat. Thus sings of it Aubrey De Vere: What a man can stand amid a place of tombs Nor yearn to that poor vanquished dust beneath?- Above a notaion's grave no violent blooms; A vanquished nation lies in endless death. 'Tis past!-the dusk is dense with ghost and vision; All lost!-the air is thronged with moan and wail; But one day more, and hope had been fruition;- O Athunree, thy fare o'erhung Kinsale! And echoing this wail of the poet, comes a cry of agony from the cathedral of Valladolid, and the convent of St. Isadore, where "the firey hand that rent the ensign on Sr. George on the plains of Ulster has moldered into dust!" |
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