The distinction between the Irish foot soldier and the Irish
Rapparee had never been very strongly marked. It now disappeared.
Great part of the army was turned loose to live by marauding. An
incessant predatory war raged along the line which separated the
domain of William from that of James. Every day companies of
freebooters, sometimes wrapped in twisted straw which served the
purpose of armour, stole into the English territory, burned,
sacked, pillaged, and hastened back to their own ground. To guard
against these incursions was not easy; for the peasantry of the
plundered country had a strong fellow feeling with the
plunderers. To empty the granary, to set fire to the dwelling, to
drive away the cows, of a heretic was regarded by every squalid
inhabitant of a mud cabin as a good work. A troop engaged in such
a work might confidently expect to fall in, notwithstanding all
the proclamations of the Lords justices, with some friend who
would indicate the richest booty, the shortest road, and the
safest hiding place. The English complained that it was no easy
matter to catch a Rapparee. Sometimes, when he saw danger
approaching, he lay down in the long grass of the bog; and then
it was as difficult to find him as to find a hare sitting.
Sometimes he sprang into a stream, and lay there, like an otter,
with only his mouth and nostrils above the water. Nay, a whole
gang of banditti would, in the twinkling of an eye, transform
itself into a crowd of harmless labourers. Every man took his gun
to pieces, hid the lock in his clothes, stuck a cork in the
muzzle, stopped the touch hole with a quill, and threw the weapon
into the next pond. Nothing was to be seen but a train of poor
rustics who had not so much as a cudgel among them, and whose
humble look and crouching walk seemed to show that their spirit
was thoroughly broken to slavery. When the peril was over, when