Note 18 — Chapter XXXVIII

This piece is taken from a manuscript of my own; I have never met this fine poem elsewhere. The word fooboon, upon which the changes are so rung, is new to me, and is not contained in any Irish or Scotch-Gaelic dictionary, the nearest approach to it is O'Reilly's fúbta, "humiliation"; but I find the words fubub fubub in the sense of "shame," "fy," in the Turner MS., "Reliquiæ Celticæ," vol. ii. p. 325. The metre of this poem is Little Rannaigheacht, and the first verse runs thus—

"Fúbún fúibh a shluagh Gaoidheal Ni mhair aoin-neach agaibh Goill ag comh-roinn bhur gcríche Re sluagh sithe mar [i.e. bhur] samhail."

Literally: "Fooboon to you, O host of the Gaels, not a man of you is alive: the Galls are together-dividing your lands, while ye are [unsubstantial] like a fairy host. The Clan Carthy of Leath Mogha [i.e., Southern Ireland], and to call them out down to one man, there is not—and sad is the disgrace—one person of them imitating the [old] Gaels," etc.