Varia III: Quatrains relating to the controversy of the Red Hand

The three quatrains edited below form part of a controversy which arose in the late seventeenth century, as to which family could legitimately lay claim to the heraldic symbol of the Red Hand.1 The controversy is relatively well known, as four poems belonging to it appeared in Reliquiae Celticae in 1894, and the topic has not infrequently been referred to in print since O’Curry’s day.2