338
NOTES TO CANTO THIRD.
predatory tribes, to be but the hounds of their hunting priests, who directed their incursions by their pleasure, partly for sustenance, partly to gratify animosity, partly to foment general division, and always for the better security and easier domination of the friars.[1] Derrick, the liveliness and minuteness of whose descriptions may frequently apologize for his doggrel verses, after describing an Irish feast, and the encouragement given, by the songs of the bards, to its termination in an incursion upon the parts of the country more immediately under the dominion of the English, records the no less powerful arguments used by the friar to excite their animosity:
And more t'augment the flame,
and rancour of their harte,
The friar, of his counsells vile,
to rebelles doth imparte,
Affirming that it is
an almose deede to God,
To make the English subjects taste
the Iriske rebells rodde.
To spoile, to kill, to burne,
this frier's counsell is;
And for the doing of the same,
he warrantes heavenlie blisse.
He tells a holie tale;
the white he tournes to blacke;
And through the pardons in his male,
he workes a knavishe knacke.
and rancour of their harte,
The friar, of his counsells vile,
to rebelles doth imparte,
Affirming that it is
an almose deede to God,
To make the English subjects taste
the Iriske rebells rodde.
To spoile, to kill, to burne,
this frier's counsell is;
And for the doing of the same,
he warrantes heavenlie blisse.
He tells a holie tale;
the white he tournes to blacke;
And through the pardons in his male,
he workes a knavishe knacke.
The wreckful invasion of a part of the English pale is then
