TO QUILCA
(Jonathan Swift)

Let me thy Properties explain,
A rotten Cabbin, dropping Rain;
Chimnies with Scorn rejecting Smoak;
Stools, Tables, Chairs, and Bed-stede broke:
Here Elements have lost their Uses,
Air ripens not, nor Earth produces:
In vain we make poor Sheelah toil,
Fire will not roast, nor Water boil.
Thro' all the Vallies, Hills, and Plains,
The Goddess Want in Triumph reigns;
And her chief Officers of State,
Sloth, Dirt, and Theft around her wait.

Full title, "To Quilca, a Country House in no very good Repair, where the supposed Author, and some of his Friends, spent a Summer, in the Year 1725"
Quilca, or Cuilcagh, was the home of Swift's friend, Thomas Sheridan, grandfather of the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Thomas S. was described by one who knew him as, "ill-starred, good natured, improvident ... a punster, a quibbler, a diffler and a wit ... his pen and his fiddlestick were in continual motion, and yet to little or no purpose." He was a clergyman, too outspoken to retain any position in the church. When he obtained any money he found himself "besheridaned" (his own coinage), that is, surrounded by importunate kinsfolk. County Cavan is Sheridan territory.
'Sheelah', the name suggests, would have been a household servant, Catholic, peasant, and in language a Gael. The Sheridan family had Protestant and Catholic branches, the latter having to remove to the Continent in order to avoid descent into extreme poverty. Their landowning cousin did not prosper in spite of conforming to the established religion.