Repealers, Irish National Leagues, Whiteboys, Rockites, United Irishmen, &c., all had their day, and carried their meaning upon the surface; so that it was really necessary to give the new organization some occult, comprehensive and characteristic name, that would separate it in this aspect from all the Irish revolutionary bodies that had preceded it, and place it en rapport with the great past of the nation which was the grand receptacle of its traditions and source of its pride.
While in Ireland, which, as mentioned, is their grand parent hive, they go by a perplexing multiplicity of designations, such as Bogtrotters, Redshanks, Ribbonmen, Cottiers, Peep-of-Day Boys, Babes of the Wood, Rockites, Poor-Slaves: which last, however, seems to be the primary and generic name; whereto, probably enough, the others are only subsidiary species, or slight varieties; or, at most, propagated offsets from the parent stem, whose minute subdivisions, and shades of difference, it were here loss of time to dwell on.