their duties to repair the ravages inflicted during the
recent tumults and bring the lands committed to them
into some state of cultivation and order.
The wars had been followed by a famine. 'Even in
the history of Ireland,' writes a recent biographer of
Sir Walter Raleigh, 'there are not many scenes more
full of horror that those which the historians of that
period rapidly sketch when showing us the condition of
almost the whole province of Munster in the year 1584,
and the years immediately succeeding.'{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 --