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"Come over, ye baste. The carrse o' Cromwell on ye."

And in Michael Houlihan, Anthony had a teacher who, if he cared less than nothing for the fate of any King of England, had an inherited, a cherished, an unbelievably bitter hatred of the cruel and savage brute who had been responsible for the appalling slaughters in which Houlihan's ancestors had perished.

Well might people speak of the Curse of Cromwell. When, in all the days of all the world, had a bigger curse been put upon an innocent people? Had not the bloody-minded villain proscribed the Roman Catholic religion? Had he not sold three million acres of Irish land to English adventurers, so that he might use the money for the raising of more troops for the further conquest and massacre of the unoffending Irish?

Had he not herded the priests of God into their own churches and there burned them alive with the weeping women and innocent children who had fled to the sanctuary of their altars?

What need of further oath or curse while human tongue could blister with the words,