Thomond

“ P. M. of Alicia, wife of the before-mentioned Nicholas Thosmound. In the Abbreviatio Rotulorum Originalium of England, in 15 Edw. II., is the expression "Regalitatem de Totamon," applied to the district of Thomond in Ireland. It seems not unlikely that the two cotemporary individuals mentioned above were sons or grandsons of Turloch, or Tirrèlagh, O'Brien, sovereign of Thomond from 1367 to 1370, when he was supplanted by his nephew Brien O'Brien, ancestor of the Marquis of Thomond. For this Turloch was in some favour with the government, by whom his distress was sometimes relieved. ”

“ There were of course some great Protestant landowners as Lord Barrymore in Cork, Lord Kerry, and Lord Thomond who, as was well known to everyone, were Protestants and had either fought for the parliament, or else had been absent from Ireland during the war. They no doubt got back their estates as a matter of course. But for the others, they had first to prove that they were Protestants, and then meet the awkward question since what date. For the parliamentary authorities had noticed that since 1652 quite a number of landowners had been struck with the advantages of the reformed religion. ”

“ Old Lady Thomond, for instance, upon being reproached by some stricter co-religionist for thus imperilling her soul, asked with quick scorn whether it was not better that one old woman should burn than that the Thomonds should lose their own. The head of the house would thus often present himself or herself at the parish church, while the other members of the family kept to the old faith, and the chaplain, under the name of the tutor or secretary, celebrated mass in the harness-room or the servants' hall. ”

“ If Bellingham could thus treat the most powerful men in England, he was not likely to mince matters with those whom he could touch. ‘Bring yourself,’ said the Lord Deputy to O’Molloy, who had wrongfully detained the property of a kinswoman, ‘out of the slander of the people by making prompt restitution, or have your contempt punished as to your deserts shall appertain.’ To the Earl of Thomond, who had promised to bring in Calough O’Carroll but had not done so, he wrote a noble letter, but a very imprudent one, considering the character and position of the chief whom he addressed. ”

“ He wrote a history of the wars of Thomond from 1194 to 1318, called ‘Cathreim Thoirdhealbhaigh.’ This is not a chronicle, but a finished historical composition, giving a very full account from contemporary sources of the long struggle for the possession of Clare with the De Clares, which ended in the defeat and death of Robert de Clare and his son, and the final expulsion of the Normans and their allies at the battle of Disert O'Dea in 1318. Important events are celebrated in verse, which is as good as the admirable prose which makes up the great part of the book. ”

“ Had raised the cross, and where the deep night ruled,
Splendour had sent of everlasting light,
Sole peace of warring hearts, to Munster next,
Thomond and Desmond, Heber’s portion old,
He turned; and, fired by love that mocks at rest
Pushed on through raging storm the whole night long,
Intent to hold the Annunciation Feast
At Cashel of the Kings. The royal keep
High-seated on its Rock, as morning broke
Faced them at last; and at the selfsame hour
Aengus, in his father’s absence lord,
Rising from happy sleep and heaven-sent dreams
Went forth on duteous tasks. ”

“ The poet then recited a verse of four lines accepting O'Donnell's severities as a just revenge for the destruction, four hundred years before, of Oilech by O'Brien, and yet so artfully worded that, while O'Donnell might take it as approval, the earl of Thomond could not deny that it might be interpreted as a bald statement of fact. ”

“ His eldest brother, Lucius, became 13th Baron Inchiquin in 1855, as heir male to the 3rd marquis of Thomond, at whose death in 1855 the marquisate of Thomond and the earldom of Inchiquin became extinct. ”

“ He passed his youth in fighting against the Danes, who were constantly ravaging Munster, the northern part of which district was the home of Brian’s tribe, and won much fame in these encounters. In 976 his brother, Mathgamhain or Mahon, who had become king of Thomond about 951 and afterwards king of Munster, was murdered; Brian avenged this deed, became himself king of Munster in 978, and set out upon his career of conquest. ”

“ THE CONFISCATION OF CONNAUGHT AND ORMOND
There remained of purely Irish territories untouched by confiscation or English settlement the province of Connaught less the County of Leitrim, Clare and the districts east of the Shannon in Tipperary and Limerick which had formed down to the time of Henry VIII. part of the Kingdom of Thomond, the MacCarthy lands in west Cork and south Kerry, Monaghan and some districts in Down and Antrim, and some small parts of Leinster. [1] From time to time we hear of the possibility of further plantations in these districts ”

“ Tyrone, O'Donnell, and others, were not proof against his cunning. The first renounced his title of prince and the glorious name of O'Neill, to receive in return that of Earl of Tyrone. Manus O'Donnell was made Earl of Tyrconnel. Both received back the lands which they had offered to the king, and their example was followed by a great number of inferior lords. Among them, two Magenisses were dubbed knights; Murrough O'Brien, of North Munster, was made Earl of Thomond and Baron of Inchiquin ”

“ Chugungatte straightened up. "Out of thy youth, Keen, come the words of thy mouth. As for ourselves, O Tantlatch, we be old men and we understand. We, too, have looked into the eyes of women and felt our blood go hot with strange desires. But the years have chilled us, and we have learned the wisdom of the council, the shrewdness of the cool head and hand, and we know that the warm heart be over-warm and prone to rashness. We know that Keen found favor in thy eyes. We know that Thom was promised him in the old days when she was yet a child. ”

“ You clutched at form and gripped shadow, gave yourself to a man and bedded with the wraith of a man. In such manner, of old, did the daughters of men whom the gods found fair. And, Thom, Thom, I should not like to be John Fairfax in the night-watches of the years to come, in the night-watches, when his eyes shall see, not the sun-gloried hair of the woman by his side, but the dark tresses of a mate forsaken in the forests of the North. ”

“ Well, Mr Thom, you are very unlike your master, for he was content to ride on an ass.’ ‘An ass,’ says Mr Thom, ‘there’s no sic a beast to be gotten now-a-days.’ ‘Ay, how’s that?’ said they, ‘Because,’ replied Mr Thom, ‘they now make them a’ justices of the peace. ”

“ Objects so vast and magnificent as planets rolling with even pace through their orbits, comets rushing along their devious track, light springing from its unexhausted source, mighty rivers formed in their subterranean beds, do not require, or even admit, a heightening from the fancy. The most faithful pencil here produces the noblest pictures; and Thomson, by strictly adhering to the character of the poet of Nature, has treated all these topics with a true sublimity, which a writer of less knowledge and accuracy could never have attained. ”

“ In his new life, and amidst his many duties and responsibilities, he entirely forgot the existence of his attendant, who had been his constant companion for three years; therefore his absence passed unrecorded and unnoticed; for what the King forgets the courtiers must never be unwise enough to remember.
At the end of thirty years, when the King was getting old, he remembered Thomana, and wondered greatly where he might be. ”

“ I might have gone to my long home without taking so much trouble; for what is London to me? But Arthur, hearing that the lads of the town were to try their skill at the quintain before the Prince of Wales, would come, reason or none."
"To see the display," suggested Thomelin.
"No, to try his own hand; and trust me, if I know anything of such matters—and I ought—his chance is not small."
"I doubt it not, kinsman—I doubt it not," said Thomelin; "and yet I know not how he is to get a chance; for the match is, in some measure, confined to the Londoners, and strangers may not be admitted." ”

“ Beyond remarking that the first canto opens a scene of lazy luxury that fills the imagination, he says nothing, it is true, of Thomson’s finest poem, the ‘Castle of Indolence;’ but he speaks with something of enthusiasm of the ‘Seasons,’ observing that Thomson ‘looks round on Nature and on life with the eye which Nature bestows only on a poet.’ When he adds that the reader of the ‘Seasons’ ‘wonders that he never saw before what Thomson shows him, and that he never yet has felt what Thomson impresses,’ he very naïvely and amusingly betrays his own limitations. ”

“ I understand, sir, you knew Thomson long?
I became acquainted with him in the year 1726, when he published his poem of Winter. He lived opposite to me, in Lancaster-court, in the Strand. I went to the East Indies soon after, which caused a chasm in our acquaintance; but, on my return, our intimacy was strengthened, and continued to the hour of his death. I do not know any man, living or dead, I ever esteemed more highly, and he was attached to me. I had once a complaint of a consumptive nature, which confined me much at home, and he was so good as to come often from Kew-lane to sit with me. ”

“ Thom gives a most affecting picture of the lives and thoughts of these men, many of them, strong with native intellect and passion, condemned to a life of unending servitude and degradation, too ragged to dare to enter a church, even if they wished, and getting their only glimpse of nature in the garden of Gordon's Hospital, which was open on the Sunday holiday, while the whiskey shop gave them their only taste of joy and exhilaration ”

“ Wherefore I say the man should go, to his own kind, in his own land."
"He is my own man," Thom answered, "and he is a great man."
"Ay, he is a great man." Chugungatte lifted his head with a faint recrudescence of youthful vigor. "He is a great man, and he put strength in thy arm, O Tantlatch, and gave thee power, and made thy name to be feared in the land, to be feared and to be respected. He is very wise, and there be much profit in his wisdom. ”

“ Thoth, accompanied by Daphne, advanced to the front, and as they did so they were saluted by a profound obeisance, in perfect silence.
Thoth took up his position beside the central throne, and placed Daphne on his right hand.
"Are all the fitting preparations made? Have all our ancestors been brought to the light and set upon their thrones?" ”

“ So he was canonized, and made a saint in the calendar for ever.—T. S. Gueulette, Chinese Tales (“The Ape Moroug,” 1723) .
Morrel or Morell, a goat-herd, who invites Thomalin, a shepherd, to come to the higher grounds, and leave the low-lying lands. He tells Thomalin that many hills have been canonized, as St. Michael’s Mount, St. Bridget’s Bower in Kent, and so on; then there was Mount Sinah and Mount Parnass, where the Muses dwelt. Thomalin replies, “The lowlands are safer, and hills are not for shepherds.” ”

“ Was more sufficient for itself than thou.
Thomson.
For the strong spirit will at times awake,
Piercing the mists that wrap her clay abode;
And, born of thee, she may not always take
Earth’s accents for the oracles of God;
And ev’n in this—O dust, whose mask is power!
Reed, that wouldst be a scourge thy little hour!
Spark, whereon yet the mighty hath not trod,
And therefore thou destroyest,—where were flown
Our hope, if man were left to man’s decrees alone.
Mrs. Hemans.
O put away thy pride,
Or be ashamed of power,
That cannot turn aside
The breeze that waves a flower. ”

“ Why, if I love thee, should we not live here, and happily rule this city, regardless of the rest of the world? Why not leave thy dread ancestors to their sleep?"
She Spoke to him with a soft enticing voice, and looked up to him as to a superior.
"Daphne," replied Thoth, "I have already yielded to thee the utmost that my nature will permit. It is useless to ask more. For two thousand years my race have toiled incessantly to create a new world. They await their reward. If I raise them from their sleep, they will never consent to forego their plans. ”

“ THOM, WILLIAM (1798?–1848) , Scottish poet, was born in Aberdeen about 1798. His father, a business man, died young, and Thom was left to the care of his mother, ‘a widow unable to keep him at home idle’ (Thom, Recollections, p. 37) . Run over in infancy by a nobleman's carriage, he was lamed for life, the nobleman sympathising to the extent of 5s. ”

“ Thomé, a few miles to the south, the reputed burial-place of the apostle Thomas, and a holy place of the Roman Catholics of India. The road is hard, level, and smooth, and has been made with great labour by the English government. Leaving the fort on your left, you pass between rows of tulip-trees, dotted with yellow flowers, which have been planted for shade to foot-passengers. The first object of interest is a colossal bronze equestrian statue of Sir Thomas Munro, a distinguished governor of this presidency. It stands upon a lofty stone pedestal, and is an admirable work of art. ”

“ Thom. Your patience,
May not a man profess his love?
[Pg 110]
Dor. In blasphemies?
Rack a maids tender ears, with dam's and Devils?
Thom. Out, out upon thee,
How would you have me write?
Begin with my love premised? surely,
And by my truly Mistress.
Dor. Take your own course,
For I see all perswasion's lost upon ye:
Humanitie, all drown'd: from this hour fairly
I'le wash my hands of all ye do: farewel Sir.
Tho. Thou art not mad? ”