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History of the Affairs of Ireland,' doubtless for the purpose of giving its falsehoods weight and publicity, by their being attached to a work bearing on its title the high authority of his Lordship's name.

"Of the slanders thus propagated, the Protestants of that time appear to have been well aware. Sir Audley Mervin, speaker of the Irish House of Commons, in addressing the Duke of Ormond, 13th February, 1662, says: The Roman Catholics of this kingdom may get a reputation and credit to those pamphlets which they have dispersed through Europe, that his Majesty's Protestant subjects first fell upon and murdered them.'

"The next notice we have observed on the same side is contained in a small work entitled The Genuine History of Ireland,' said on its title to be written by Hugh Reilly (Dr. Nary) [?], printed in London in 1742. In this tract it is said that the massacre in Island Magee, happened early in November, 1641, and that the number of sufferers amounted to between two and three thousand persons; but it is admitted that the rebellion began on 23rd October, 1641.

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"Incorrect as these accounts are, as to the time and the number murdered, they are nevertheless repeated in a work entitled, A Dialogue on the Rebellion of 1641,' published in 1747; and also in a book entitled, Memoirs of Ireland, in a letter to Walter Harris, Esq. printed in 1757. A similar statement is also given, on the authority of Lord Clarendon, in Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica,' printed in Dublin in 1772; and likewise by Dr. Curry, a Roman Review of the Civil Wars of Ireland,' published in 1775. Francis Plowden, Esq. an English Roman Catholic Barrister, also asserts the same in his pon

Catholic, in his

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derous Historical View of the State of Ireland,' printed in 1803, giving Lord Clarendon as his authority; although, in reality, his Lordship's work is a complete refutation of his assertions. A still later work, by an Irish Roman Catholic, contains similar information; he gravely tells his readers, that he will not disgust them with an account of that atrocious massacre, nor set down the terrible vengeance inflicted by the Irish on their sanguinary enemies. This is saying pretty plainly that the Protestants were the aggressors.

"It is particularly worthy of remark, that the Remonstrance' of the Roman Catholics, presented to the King's Commissioners at Trim, in March, 1642, takes no notice of any murders committed in Island Magee; nor is any mention made of them in the Humble Apology,' of the Roman Catholics to his Majesty, for their taking up arms; nor yet in the second Remonstrance' presented to the King. From their silence on this head we may fairly infer, that had their accounts of the massacre been true, as to time and numbers, it would have formed a chief feature, not only in one of these documents, but in them all.

"It is not a little remarkable that Protestant writers should have inadvertently fallen into a portion of the same error, as to numbers, and have ascribed this massacre to the fanaticism of the Scotch Puritan soldiers, when it appears from several historical documents that no Scottish troops arrived at Carrickfergus till the following April. Carte, in his Life of the Duke of Ormond,' mentions the massacre as committed by the garrison of Carrickfergus, but speaks with uncertainty as to the main points in dispute. Dr. Leland, in his History of Ireland,' says that thirty families were massacred, but states it to have been committed early in January, 1642,

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when the followers of O'Neill had almost exhausted their barbarous malice.' Since the time that Leland wrote, the minor Protestant historians appear to have contented themselves with merely quoting from one or the other of those authors.

"Some years after the suppression of the rebellion of 1641-2, this massacre, among other matters, attracted the notice of Government, and about 1650, an inquiry concerning it took place. Bryan Magee, son of Owen, whose family was among the chief sufferers, deposed, that about the 8th of January, 1641 (1642, according to our present calculation), he was living in his father's house in Island Magee, when nine of the family were murdered by twenty persons reputed Scotchmen, and their goods carried off by them. That on the same day, in the house of his next neighbour, Daniel Magee, the same Scotchmen (as one who escaped told him) killed Daniel and ten other persons; and that they all retired to Carrickfergus with prisoners; but that Colonel Hill not being in garrison, the Scotchmen took them out of the gate and killed three of them.

"Elizabeth Gormally, deposed seeing Bryan Boye Magee, son of the Magees, followed by drummers of the garrison of Carrickfergus, on Monday after the great murder, committed about the end of December, and after the breaking out of the rebellion.

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Finlay O'Donnell, deposed, that it was the report of the country that the chief actors in this horrid business were Scotchmen, who came from the neighbourhood of Ballymena. Another deponent also stated the same report, with the naine of the leader of the murderers, who it is said was from Ballymena. Some of the deponents also gave the sirnames of

several of the assassins, with the

weapons used by them; and relate that one of the ruffians stabbing at a female with a dagger, killed an infant in her arms.

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"The deposition of James Mitchel of Island Magee, a Dissenter, corresponds exactly, as to the time of the masacre, by stating that it was in the afternoon of Sunday, 8th January. "While," continues Mr. MacSkimin, we must all deplore this horrid deed, we must also reprobate that malignant spirit which even yet continues to advance such gross exaggerations, which we think is sufficiently apparent even from the general population of the parish at that period. In 1599 Fynes Moryson states, that the Island of Magee was desolate; and between that time and 1641, there was little tranquillity, Tyrone's rebellion having rendered the greater part of Ulster literally a desert. By the returns of the census of 1819, Island Magee then only contained 1931 inhabitants; and by that of 1821, 2300 persons, probably eighteen or twenty times the number of people at the period of the massacre ; and we see that some of them were Dissenters, and that a number of Roman Catholics were preserved.

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Before taking leave of this subject, it may not be amiss to remark how easily 30 could be altered to 3000, the number in the pamphlet of R. S.; in which pamphlet the small peninsula of Island Magee is called a 'territory,' a word generally understood to signify a large tract of country, rather than a mere stripe, without either hamlet or village. Judging therefore by the depositions of the survivors, the probability is that thirty individuals were not under the number who suffered."

C.

II.

"THE belief of moving islands in these seas was very ancient. Giraldus tells us of an island on the Irish coast, which suddenly made its appearance one clear day, and which disappeared the moment any one approached it. At length a party went out in pursuit of it, and as they approached within bowshot, one of them struck it with a red-hot arrow, the consequence of which was that it immediately became stationary. The conclusion which Giraldus draws from this legend is curious." Multis itaque patet argumentis," says he, "phantasmati cuilibet ignem semper inimicissimum."-Girald. Camb. Topog. Hib. lib. ii. c. 12.-W.

Milton thus poetically explains the idea entertained by northern voyagers of floating islands.

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that sea-beast

Leviathan, which God of all his works
Created hugest that swim th' ocean stream:
Him haply slumb'ring on the Norway foam
The pilot of some small night-founder'd skiff
Deeming some island, oft, as sea-men tell,
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind
Moors by his side under the lee, while night
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays."

M.

Mr. Hardiman, in his " Irish Minstrelsy," (a work which I regret to find so deeply tinged with the writer's political opinions), has an extremely curious note upon what he calls these "Miranda loca" of former times. In modern days, however, the minute search after the imaginary danger known by the name of

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