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Show , IRISH "FUNER AL CRY. The well known custom so long used in Ireland, of keening, or lamenting over the dead, is of the most remote antiquity. History informs us that il was known to the Greeks and Romans, who, however, seem to have borrowed it from the eastern nations among whom probably it had its origin; -and from the Scriptures We learn that it was practiced by the Israelites. Dr. O'Brien tells us that the word in the 1 Irish language as originally and mor? correctly written is cine, and not as modern orthoepists have it, caoine; and this makes it almost identical with the Hebrew word cina, which signifies lamentation or weeping with clapping of hands. .The following "lament of Morian Shehone for Miss Mary Bourke," which is literally translated from the original Irish, has much pathos ar.d beauti "Silence prevails: it is an awful silence. si-lence. The voice of Mary is heard no longer in the valley." "Yes. thou art gone, O Mary; but Morian Shehone will raise the song of. woe, and bewail thy fate." "Snow white was thy virtu';, the youths gazed on thee with rapture and old age listened with pleasure to the softj music of thy tongue." "Thy beauty was brighter than the sun which shone around thee, O Mary; but thy sun is fet, and has left the sou, , or thy friend in darkness." "Sorrow -"tor 1 thee is dumb. save., in the wailingsof "i ...iL- '" ,v ; " . V- Morian Shc-hone: and grief has not yet tears to shed for Mary." "I have cried over the rich ma it: but when the stone was laid upon his grave my grief was at an end. Not so with my heart's darling: dar-ling: the grave cannot hide Mary from ' the view of Mcrian Shehone." "I see her in the tour corners of her habir.t-. habir.t-. tion. which was once gilded by her presence." "Thou didst not fall off like a withered. leaf which haims trembling j and insecure: no. it was a rude blast I which brought thee to the dusr. Mary. Hadst thou not friends'.' llads. thou not bread to eat, and raiment to j Put on?" "Hadst thou not youth and beauty. Mary? Then . mightest thou not have been happy? But the spoiler cam? and disordered my peace! The grin: tyrant has taken away my only support sup-port in Mary.". "In thy slate of probation pro-bation thou .wert kind hearted to ail. and' liciie envied thee thy good fortune. Oh. that the lamentations of thy friends. Oh. that the burning tears of Morian Shehone could bring back from the grave the peerless Mary." "Bin. alas! this cannot be. Then twice in every year, while the virgins of the valley celebrate the birth and death Oi Mary, under the wide-spreading elm. let her spirit hover round them and teach them to emulate her virtues." "So fal's into the depth of silence the. lament of Morian Shehone." This w.i published in the first volume of the Dublin Penny Journal in 1X32. |