LET fools waste the night, That was made for delight, In wrangling on Church or on State; We care not a fig About Tory or Whig, Or puzzle our heads with debate. But laugh, And quaff, And send the song gaily about: For Tories and Whigs may be right or be wrong, But we ALL like a bottle, a friend, and a song.1 2 This couplet to be repeated in singing. II. Where virtue is seen, Be it Orange or Green, That virtue we love and respect; No distinction we know, Of a friend or a foe, By the nicknames of party or sect. We leave the great, &c. III. Then, away with the ass, Of Green or of Orange to-night! For good fellows like us Only care to discuss The merits of red and of white. We leave the great, &c. May 26th, 1837. EPIGRAM, On a big-mouthed Glutton. "Give me some place to stand?" Archimedes once cried "And I'll move the whole earth at my will."— Had you the same thing, Ned, your mouth is so wide, You might swallow the globe as a pill. March 27th, 1829. A CONTRAST FOR THE CHURCH, Suggested by reading, during a season of famine and pestilence in the West of Ireland, of some tithe-seizures of potatoes, potato-pots, &c. attended with a legalized slaughter of their miserable owners in consequence of an attempt at a rescue. "1 THE ancient natives of Marseilles, The Church's reign of wealth and crime Should be upheld with guiltless blood 1 The apparently excessive violence of the lines on this subject cannot be more appropriately justified, than by adverting to the single narrative, among many such scenes, of the "Battle of Skibbereen," the name given by Cobbett to the tithe-massacre perpetrated by Parson Morrit, of Skibbereen, in the county of Cork, on his Popish parishioners, in 1821, a year of scarcity and pestilence. No less than thirty persons are stated to have been "sent to ano. ther world" on this occasion, by the "man of God," who was both a Parson and Magistrate, and, as such, ordered the Police to fire! The people's resistance to his decimating Reverence arose from their having left him the tenth perch of every potato-ridge in their fields, the produce of which he refused to dig and carry away, insisting on taking his tithe out of the potatoes they had stored up and which were the ONLY food they had to live upon! Amongst other affecting circumstances, on this occasion, the following instance occurred. A fine boy, about 14 years old, the only child of a poor widow, who resided in a miserable hut on the road-side, in the neighbourhood of this military Pastor, having run out to ascertain the cause of the volleys of musketry, was fired at and shot through the body; and, having crawled for refuge to the furze-bush of an adjoining ditch, died there and remained undiscovered till he was washed down by the floods upon the road between Rosscarbery and Skibbereen, where a friend of the writer of these lines beheld the unfortunate mother, lamenting over the disfigured corpse, with feelings which it is so much more easy to imagine than it ever could be to describe. Such were the "spiritual functions" performed, in the name of the religion of meekness and poverty, by this anointed specimen of the "union of Church and State," whose sanctified exclamation, when sallying forth upon his predatory mission, is stated to have been, My Decreed, at each year's termination, With richest food his wants supplied. 1831. TITHES or BLOOD!" It was this worthy subject for satire which suggested the following parody in one of the early numbers of the Comet. PARSON MORRIT'S ADDRESS TO THE POLICE BEFORE THE 66 "Warriors and chiefs! should the shaft or the sword."-HEBREW MELODIES. I. Brave Peelers, march on, with the musket and sword, And fight for my tithes, in the name of the Lord! Away with whoever appears in your path And seize all each peasant in Skibbereen hath ! II. Hesitate not-the law is on our side you know! 'Tis a doom good enough for the PAPISTS to meet! III. The rebels refuse their last morsel to part Let your bullets and bay'nets be fleshed in each heart! I'LL get ALL my tithes, or I'll PERISH to-day! BRING ME WINE!-BRING ME WINE! The keenest pangs the wretched find, Are rapture to the dreary void, The leafless desert of the mind, The waste of feelings unemploy'd. I. Byron. BRING me wine!-bring me wine!—for my sad spirits sink I sigh o'er the past-from the future I shrink- The future, is shrouded in darkness and fear But let ALL life's evils against me combine I'll defy them to-night!-bring me wine!-bring me wine ! II Bring me wine!-bring me wine! Ah! how wrongly they deem, Who think that my days pass in one happy dream. Though foremost, in Pleasure's and Beauty's gay throng, I join in the laugh, in the dance, and the song, In solitude, oh, what dejection is mine! But, away with all gloom !—bring me wine!—bring me wine! |