[253] of Londonderry, when James II. and his Papists were thundering at its gates. Agreeably to his death-bed directions, his old fellow-soldiers, in their leathern doublets and battered steel caps, bore him to his grave, firing over him the same rusty muskets which had swept down rank after rank of the men of Amalek at the Derry siege. Erelong the celebrated Derry fair was established, in imitation of those with which they had been familiar in Ireland. Thither annually came all manner of horse-jockeys and pedlers, gentlemen and beggars, fortune-tellers, wrestlers, dancers and fiddlers, gay young farmers and buxom maidens. Strong drink abounded. They who had goodnat-uredly wrestled and joked together in the morning not unfrequently closed the day with a fight, until, like the revellers of Donnybrook,
Their hearts were soft with whiskey,A wild, frolicking, drinking, fiddling, courting, horse-racing, riotous merry-making,—a sort of Protestant carnival, relaxing the grimness of Puritanism for leagues around it. In the midst of such a community, and partaking of all its influences, Robert Dinsmore, the author of the poem I have quoted, was born, about the middle of the last century. His paternal ancestor, John, younger son of a Laird of Achenmead, who left the banks of the Tweed for the green fertility of Northern Ireland, had emigrated to New England some forty years before, and, after a rough experience of Indian captivity in the wild woods of Maine, had settled down
And their heads were soft with blows.
