tisement suggests.33 Many young men also had to leave the of Charity of New York. (See Appendix 5 c). The follow-

Island to find careers. The first woman from the Kinkora ing lament by an unknown Celt at Kinkora seems to echo
area to join a religious congregation did so in 1887; she was a lament of youth as true in RBI. in 1885 as it was for others
Elizabeth McCabe, Sister Mary Constantine of the Sisters in 1835 in Ireland.

The New Celtic Singer34

Oh, Spirit of Poesy! however

Could one of our race have been led
To make such a wretched endeavor

At singing a poem o’er the dead?

The old land that weeps by the waters
Has children on every shore,

Has talented sons and fair daughters
Who wear many garlands for Moore.

Her harp, once so famous in story,
That had fallen from Carolan’s hand
Had been rescued by Moore to the glory
And pride of the song-loving land.

But weep, oh! dear Erin, in fetters,

O’er the day when this new bard was born;
Bewail that he e’er learned his letters

Or that poesy his pleadings did scorn.

42

He seized Tom Moore’s harp with rude fingers
And beckoned the muse to his aid,

But she coyly refused him and lingers
By Moore’s tomb in a foreign land laid.

The youth struck the harp nothing daunted,
It answered in measure that jarred,

And the people who heard it were haunted
For fear that the ghost of the bard

Would rise from his tomb in Devizes,
And float on the winds to this shore
To punish the youth who unwise is
In touching the sweet harp of Moore.

Parnassus is further than Fordham,
And the youth who courted the muse
Will find that she wil not accord him

Moore’s fame, nor his harp nor his shoes.
Another Celt.

Kinkora, October 19th, 1885