'{6}
The claims of his duties as an 'undertaker,' in
addition perhaps to certain troubles at court, where
his rival Essex was at this time somewhat superseding
him in the royal favour,{7} and making a temporary
absence not undesirable, brought Raleigh into Cork
County in 1589. A full account of this visit and its
important results is given us in _Colin Clouts Come
Home Again_, which gives us at the same time a charming
picture of the poet's life at Kilcolman. Colin
himself, lately returned home from England, tells his
brother shepherds, at their urgent request, of his
'passed fortunes.' He begins with Raleigh's visit.
One day, he tells them, as he sat
Under the foote of Mole, that mountaine hore,
Keeping my sheepe amongst the cooly shade
Of the greene alders by the Mullaes shore,
a strange shepherd, who styled himself the Shepherd of
the Ocean --
Whether allured with my pipes delight,
Whose pleasing sound yshrilled far about,
Or thither led by chaunce, I know not right --
found him out, and
Provoked me to plaie some pleasant fit.
He sang, he tells us, a song of Mulla old father Mole's
daughter, and of another river called Bregog who loved
her. Then his guest sang in turn:--
His song was all a lamentable lay
Of great unkindnesse and of usage hard,
Of Cynthia the ladie of the sea,
Which from her presence faultlesse him debard,
And ever and anon, with singults rife,
He cryed out, to make his undersong:
Ah! my loves queene and goddesse of my life,
Who shall me pittie when thou doest me wrong?
After they had made an end of singing, the shepherd of
the ocean
Gan to cast great lyking to my lore,
And great dislyking to my lucklesse lot
That banisht had my selfe, like wight forlore,
Into that waste where I was quite forgot,
and presently persuaded him to accompany him 'his
Cinthia to see.
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