Chapter 21: , forbidding the importation of foreign coals, was designed (6)

"With a few exceptions, all the translations we are acquainted
with, in addition to having abundance of minor faults, are
eminently un-Irish. They seem to have been made by persons to whom
one of the languages was not familiar. Many of them were
confessedly versified from prose translations, and are mere English
poems, without a tinge of the colour or character of the country.
Others, translated by sound Irish scholars, are bald and literal;
the writers sometimes wanting a facility of versification,
sometimes a mastery over the English language. The Irish scholars
of the last century were too exclusively national to study the
foreign tongue with the care essential to master its metrical
resources; and the flexible and weighty language which they had not
learned to wield hung heavily on them,

'Like Saul's plate armour on the shepherd boy,
Encumbering, and _not_ arming them.'

If it were just to estimate our bardic poetry by the specimens we
have received in this manner, it could not be rated highly. But it
would manifestly be most unjust. Noble and touching, and often
subtle and profound thoughts, which no translation could entirely
spoil, shine through the poverty of the style, and vindicate the
character of the originals. Like the costly arms and ornaments
found in our bogs, they are substantial witnesses of a distinct
civilisation; and their credit is no more diminished by the rubbish
in which they chance to be found than the authenticity of the
ancient _torques_ and _skians_ by their embedment in the mud.
When the entire collection of our Irish Percy--James Hardiman--shall
have been given to a public (and soon may such a one come) that can
relish them in their native dress, they will be entitled to
undisputed precedence in our national minstrelsy."

About a dozen of the ballads in the volume are derived from the Irish. It is only in this way that Clarence Mangan (a name to which Mr. Duffy does just honour) contributes to the volume. There are four translations by him, exhibiting eminently his perfect mastery of versification--his flexibility of passion, from loneliest grief to the maddest humour. One of these, "The Lament for O'Neil and O'Donnell," is the strongest, though it will not be the most popular, ballad in the work.

Callanan's and Ferguson's translations, if not so daringly versified, are simpler and more Irish in idiom.

Most, indeed, of Callanan's successful ballads are translations, and well entitle him to what he passionately prays for--a minstrel of free Erin to come to his grave,

"And plant a wild wreath from the banks of the river
O'er the heart and the harp that are sleeping for ever."

But we are wrong in speaking of Mr. Ferguson's translations in precisely the same way. His "Wicklow War Song" is condensed, epigrammatic, and crashing, as anything we know of, except the "Pibroch of Donnil Dhu."

The _second_ source is--the common people's ballads. Most of these "make no pretence to being true to Ireland, but only being true to the _purlieus_ of Cork and Dublin"; yet now and then one meets a fine burst of passion, and oftener a racy idiom. The "Drimin Dhu," "The Blackbird," "Peggy Bawn," "Irish Molly," "Willy Reilly," and the "Fair of Turloughmore," are the specimens given here. Of these "Willy Reilly" (an old and worthy favourite in Ulster, it seems, but quite unknown elsewhere) is the best; but it is too long to quote, and we must limit ourselves to the noble opening verse of "Turloughmore"--

"'Come, tell me, dearest mother, what makes my father stay,
Or what can be the reason that he's so long away?'
Oh! 'hold your tongue, my darling son, your tears do grieve me
sore;
I fear he has been murdered in the fair of Turloughmore.'"

The _third_ and principal source consists of the Anglo-Irish ballads, written during the last twenty or thirty years.

Of this highest class, he who contributes most and, to our mind, best is Mr. Ferguson. We have already spoken of his translations--his original ballads are better. There is nothing in this volume--nothing in _Percy's Relics_, or the _Border Minstrelsy_, to surpass, perhaps to equal, "Willy Gilliland." It is as natural in structure as "Kinmont Willie," as vigorous as "Otterbourne," and as complete as "Lochinvar." Leaving his Irish idiom, we get in the "Forester's Complaint" as harmonious versification, and in the "Forging of the Anchor" as vigorous thoughts, mounted on bounding words, as anywhere in the English literature.

We must quote some stray verses from "Willy Gilliland":--

"Up in the mountain solitudes, and in a rebel ring,
He has worshipped God upon the hill, in spite of church and king;
And sealed his treason with his blood on Bothwell bridge he hath;
So he must fly his father's land, or he must die the death;
For comely Claverhouse has come along with grim Dalzell,
And his smoking roof tree testifies they've done their errand well.

* * * * * * * * * *

"His blithe work done, upon a bank the outlaw rested now,
And laid the basket from his back, the bonnet from his brow;
And there, his hand upon the Book, his knee upon the sod,
He filled the lonely valley with the gladsome word of God;
And for a persecuted kirk, and for her martyrs dear,
And against a godless church and king he spoke up loud and clear.

* * * * * * * * * *

"'My bonny mare! I've ridden you when Claver'se rode behind,
And from the thumbscrew and the boot you bore me like the wind;
And while I have the life you saved, on your sleek flank, I swear,
Episcopalian rowel shall never ruffle hair!
Though sword to wield they've left me none--yet Wallace wight I wis,
Good battle did, on Irvine side, wi' waur weapon than this.'--

"His fishing-rod with both his hands he gripped it as he spoke,
And, where the butt and top were spliced, in pieces twain he broke;
The limber top he cast away, with all its gear abroad,
But, grasping the tough hickory butt, with spike of iron shod,
He ground the sharp spear to a point; then pulled his bonnet down,
And, meditating black revenge, set forth for Carrick town."

The only ballad equally racy is "The Croppy Boy," by some anonymous but most promising writer.

Griffin's "Gille Machree"--of another class--is perfect--"striking on the heart," as Mr. Duffy finely says, "like the cry of a woman"; but his "Orange and Green," and his "Bridal of Malahide," belong to the same class, and suffer by comparison, with Mr. Ferguson's ballads.

Banim's greatest ballad, the "Soggarth Aroon," possesses even deeper tenderness and more perfect Irish idiom than anything in the volume.

Among the Collection are Colonel Blacker's famous Orange ballad, "Oliver's Advice" ("Put your trust in God, my boys, but keep your powder dry"), and two versions of the "Boyne Water." The latter and older one, given in the appendix, is by far the finest, and contains two unrivalled stanzas:--

"Both foot and horse they marched on, intending them to batter, But
the brave Duke Schomberg he was shot as he crossed over the water.
When that King William he observed the brave Duke Schomberg
falling, He rein'd his horse, with a heavy heart, on the
Enniskilleners calling; 'What will you do for me, brave boys? see
yonder men retreating, Our enemies encouraged are--and English
drums are beating'; He says 'My boys, feel no dismay at the losing
of one commander, For God shall be our King this day, and I'll be
general under.'"

Nor less welcome is the comment:--

"Some of the Ulster ballads, of a restricted and provincial spirit,
having less in common with Ireland than with Scotland; two or three
Orange ballads, altogether ferocious or foreign in their tendencies
(preaching murder, or deifying an alien), will be no less valuable
to the patriot or the poet on this account. They echo faithfully
the sentiments of a strong, vehement, and indomitable body of
Irishmen, who may come to battle for their country better than they
ever battled for prejudices or their bigotries. At all events, to
know what they love and believe is a precious knowledge."

On the language of most of the ballads Mr. Duffy says:--

"Many of them, and generally the best, are just as essentially
Irish as if they were written in Gaelic. They could have grown
among no other people, perhaps under no other sky or scenery. To an
Englishman, to any Irishman educated out of the country, or to a
dreamer asleep to impressions of scenery and character, they would
be achievements as impossible as the Swedish _Skalds_ or the
_Arabian Nights_. They are as Irish as Ossian or Carolan, and
unconsciously reproduce the spirit of those poets better than any
translator can hope to do. They revive and perpetuate the vehement
native songs that gladdened the halls of our princes in their
triumphs, and wailed over their ruined hopes or murdered bodies. In
everything but language, and almost in language, they are
identical. That strange tenacity of the Celtic race, which makes a
description of their habits and propensities when Caesar was still a
Proconsul in Gaul true in essentials of the Irish people to this
day, has enabled them to infuse the ancient and hereditary spirit
of the country into all that is genuine of our modern poetry. And
even the language grew almost Irish. The soul of the country,
stammering its passionate grief and hatred in a strange tongue,
loved still to utter them in its old familiar idioms and cadences.
Uttering them, perhaps, with more piercing earnestness, because of
the impediment; and winning out of the very difficulty a grace and
a triumph."

How often have we wished for such a companion as this volume! Worse than meeting unclean beds, or drenching mists, or Cockney opinions, was it to have to take the mountains with a book of Scottish ballads. They were glorious, to be sure, but they were not ours--they had not the brown of the climate on their cheek, they spoke of places afar, and ways which are not our country's ways, and hopes which were not Ireland's, and their tongue was not that we first made sport and love with. Yet how mountaineer without ballads any more than without a shillelagh? No; we took the Scots ballads, and felt our souls rubbing away with envy and alienage amid their attractions; but now, Brighid, be praised! we can have all Irish thoughts on Irish hills, true to them as the music, or the wind, or the sky.

Happy boys! who may grow up with such ballads in your memories. Happy men! who will find your hearts not only doubtful but joyous in serving and sacrificing for the country you thus learned in childhood to love.

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[47] _Ballad Poetry of Ireland_,--Library of Ireland, No. II.

A BALLAD HISTORY OF IRELAND.

Of course the first _object_ of the work we project[48] will be to make Irish History familiar to the minds, pleasant to the ears, dear to the passions, and powerful over the taste and conduct of the Irish people in times to come. More _events_ could be put into a prose history. Exact dates, subtle plots, minute connections and motives rarely appear in Ballads, and for these ends the worst prose history is superior to the best ballad series; but these are not the highest ends of history. To hallow or accurse the scenes of glory and honour, or of shame and sorrow; to give to the imagination the arms, and homes, and senates, and battles of other days; to rouse, and soften, and strengthen, and enlarge us with the passions of great periods; to lead us into love of self-denial, of justice, of beauty, of valour, of generous life and proud death; and to set up in our souls the memory of great men, who shall then be as models and judges of our actions--these are the highest duties of history, and these are best taught by a Ballad History.

A Ballad History is welcome to childhood, from its rhymes, its high colouring, and its aptness to memory. As we grow into boyhood, the violent passions, the vague hopes, the romantic sorrow of patriot ballads are in tune with our fitful and luxuriant feelings. In manhood we prize the condensed narrative, the grave firmness, the critical art, and the political sway of ballads. And in old age they are doubly dear; the companions and reminders of our life, the toys and teachers of our children and grand-children. Every generation finds its account in them. They pass from mouth to mouth like salutations; and even the minds which lose their words are under their influence, as one can recall the starry heavens who cannot revive the form of a single constellation.

In olden times all ballads were made to music, and the minstrel sang them to his harp or screamed them in recitative. Thus they reached farther, were welcomer guests in feast and camp, and were better preserved. We shall have more to say on this in speaking of our proposed song collection. Printing so multiplies copies of ballads, and intercourse is so general, that there is less need of this adaptation to music now. Moreover, it may be disputed whether the dramatic effect in the more solemn ballads is not injured by lyrical forms. In such streaming exhortations and laments as we find in the Greek choruses and in the adjurations and caoines of the Irish, the breaks and parallel repetitions of a song might lower the passion. Were we free to do so, we could point out instances in the _Spirit of the Nation_ in which the rejection of song-forms seems to have been essential to the awfulness of the occasion.

In pure narratives and in the gayer and more splendid, though less stern ballads, the song-forms and adaptation to music are clear gains.

In the Scotch ballads this is usual, in the English rare. We look in vain through Southey's admirable ballads--"Mary the Maid of the Inn," "Jaspar," "Inchcape Rock," "Bishop Hatto," "King Henry V. and the Hermit of Dreux"--for either burden, chorus, or adaptation to music. In the "Battle of Blenheim" there is, however, an occasional burden line; and in the smashing "March to Moscow" there is a great chorusing about--

"Morbleu! Parbleu!
What a pleasant excursion to Moscow."

Coleridge has some skilful repetitions and exquisite versification in his "Ancient Mariner," "Genevieve," "Alice du Clos," but nowhere a systematic burden. Campbell has no burdens in his finest lyric ballads, though the subjects were fitted for them. The burden of the "Exile of Erin" belongs very doubtfully to him.

Macaulay's best ballad, the "Battle of Ivry," is greatly aided by the even burden line; but he has not repeated the experiment, though he, too, makes much use of repeating lines in his Roman Lays and other ballads.

While, then, we counsel burdens in Historical Ballads, we would recognise excepted cases where they may be injurious, and treat them as in _no case_ essential to perfect ballad success. In songs, we would almost always insist either on a chorus, verse, or a burden of some sort. A burden need not be at the end of the verse; but may, with quite equal success, be at the beginning or in the body of it, as may be seen in the Scotch Ballads, and in some of those in the _Spirit of the Nation_.

The old Scotch and English ballads, and Lockhart's translations from the Spanish, are mostly composed in one metre, though written down in either of two ways. Macaulay's Roman Lays and "Ivry" are in this metre. Take an example from the last:--

"Press where ye see my white plume shine, amid the ranks of war,
And be your Oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre."

In the old ballads this would be printed in four lines, of eight syllables and six alternately, and rhyming only alternately, thus:--

"Press where ye see my white plume shine,
Amid the ranks of war,
And be your Oriflamme to-day
The helmet of Navarre."

So Macaulay himself prints this metre in some of his Roman Lays.

But the student should rather avoid than seek this metre. The uniform old beat of eight and six is apt to fall monotonously on the ear, and some of the most startling effects are lost in it. In the _Spirit of the Nation_ the student will find many other ballad metres. Campbell's metres, though new and glorious things, are terrible traps to imitation, and should be warily used. The German ballads, and, still more, Mr. Mangan's translations of them, contain great variety of new and safe, though difficult, metres. Next in frequency to the fourteen-syllable line is that in eleven syllables, such as "Mary Ambree" and "Lochinvar"; and for a rolling brave ballad 'tis a fine metre. The metre of fifteen syllables with double rhymes, (or accents) in the middle, and that of thirteen, with double rhymes at the end, is tolerably frequent, and the metre used by Father Prout, in his noble translation of "Duke D'Alencon," is admirable, and easier than it seems. By the way, what a grand burden runs through that ballad:--

"Fools! to believe the sword could give to the children of the Rhine,
Our Gallic fields--the land that yields the Olive and the Vine!"

The syllables are as in the common metre, but it has thrice the rhymes.

We have seen great materials wasted in a struggle with a crotchety metre; therefore, though we counsel the invention of metres, we would add that unless a metre come out racily and appropriately in the first couple of verses, it should be abandoned, and some of those easily marked metres taken up.

A historical ballad will commonly be narrative in its form, but not necessarily so. A hymn of exultation--a call to a council, an army, or a people--a prophecy--a lament--or a dramatic scene (as in Lochiel), may give as much of event, costume, character, and even scenery as a mere narration. The varieties of form are infinite, and it argues lack of force in a writer to keep always to mere narration, though when exact events are to be told that may be the best mode.

One of the essential qualities of a good historical ballad is truth. To pervert history--to violate nature, in order to make a fine clatter, has been the aim in too many of the ballads sent us. He who goes to write a historical ballad should master the main facts of the time, and state them truly. It may be well for those perhaps either not to study or to half-forget minute circumstances until after his ballad is drafted out, lest he write a chronicle, not a ballad; but he will do well, ere he suffers it to leave his study, to reconsider the facts of the time or man, or act of which he writes, and see if he cannot add force to his statements, an antique grace to his phrases, and colour to his language.

Truth and appropriateness in ballads require great knowledge and taste.

To write an Irish historical ballad, one should know the events which he would describe, and know them not merely from an isolated study of his subject, but from old familiarity, which shall have associated them with his tastes and passions, and connected them with other parts of history. How miserable a thing is to put forward a piece of vehement declamation and vague description, which might be uttered of any event, or by the man of any time, as a historical ballad. We have had battle ballads sent us that would be as characteristic of Marathon or Waterloo as of Clontarf--laments that might have been uttered by a German or a Hindu--and romances equally true to love all the world over.

Such historical study extends not merely to the events. A ballad writer should try to find the voice, colour, stature, passions, and peculiar faculties of his hero--the arms, furniture, and dress of the congress, or the champions, or the troops he tells of--the rites wherewith the youth were married--the dead interred, and God worshipped; and the architecture--previous history and pursuits (and, therefore, probable ideas and phrases) of the men he describes.

Many of these things he will get in books. He should shun compilations, and take up original journals, letters, state papers, statutes, and cotemporary fictions and narratives as much as possible. Let him not much mind Leland or Curry (after he has run over them), but work like fury at the Archaeological Society's books--at Harris's Hibernica, at Lodge's Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica, at Strafford's Pacata, Spencer's View, Giraldus's Narrative, Fynes Moryson's Itinerary, the Ormond Papers, the State Papers of Henry the Eighth, Stafford's and Cromwell's and Rinuccini's Letters, and the correspondence and journals, from Donald O'Neill's letter to the Pope down to Wolfe Tone's glorious memoirs.

In the songs, and even their names, many a fine hint can be got; and he is not likely to be a perfect Balladist of Ireland who has not felt to tears and laughter the deathless passions of Irish music.

We have condemned compilations; but the ballad student may well labour at Ware's Antiquities. He will find in the History of British Costume, published by the Useful Knowledge Society, and in the illustrated work now in progress called Old England, but beyond all other books, in the historical works of Thierry, most valuable materials. Nothing, not even the Border Minstrelsy, Percy's Relics, the Jacobite Ballads, or the Archaeological Tracts, can be of such service as a repeated study of the Norman Conquest, the Ten Years' Study, and the Merovingian Times of Augustine Thierry.

We know he has rashly stated some events on insufficient authority, and drawn conclusions beyond the warrant of his promises; but there is more deep dramatic skill, more picturesque and coloured scenery, more distinct and characteristic grouping, and more lively faith to the look and spirit of the men and times and feelings of which he writes, in Thierry, than in any other historian that ever lived. He has almost an intuition in favour of liberty, and his vindication of the "men of '98" out of the slanderous pages of Musgrave is a miracle of historical skill and depth of judgment.

In the Irish Academy in Dublin there is a collection (now arranged and rapidly increasing) of ancient arms and utensils. Private collections exist in many provincial towns, especially in Ulster. Indeed, we know an Orange painter in a northern village who has a finer collection of Irish antiquities than all of the Munster cities put together. Accurate observation of, and discussion on, such collections will be of vast service to a writer of historical Ballads.

Topography is also essential to a ballad, or to any Historian. This is not only necessary to save a writer from such gross blunder as we met the other day in Wharton's Ballad, called "The Grave of King Arthur," where he talks of "the steeps of rough Kildare," but to give accuracy and force to both general references and local description.

Ireland must be known to her Ballad Historians, not by flat, but by shaded maps, and topographical and scenic descriptions; not by maps of to-day only, but by maps (such as Ortelius and the maps in the State Papers) of Ireland in time past; and, finally, it must be known by the _eye_. A man who has not raced on our hills, panted on our mountains, waded our rivers in drought and flood, pierced our passes, skirted our coast, noted our old towns, and learned the shape and colour of ground and tree and sky, is not master of all a Balladist's art. Scott knew Scotland thus, and, moreover, he seems never to have laid a scene in a place that he had not studied closely and alone.

What we have heretofore advised relates to the Structure, Truth, and Colouring of ballads; but there is something more needed to raise a ballad above the beautiful--it must have Force. Strong passions, daring invention, vivid sympathy for great acts--these are the result of one's whole life and nature. Into the temper and training of "A Poet," we do not presume to speak. Few have spoken wisely of them. Emerson, in his recent essay, has spoken like an angel on the mission of "The Poet." Ambition for pure power (not applause); passionate sympathy with the good, and strong, and beautiful; insight into nature, and such loving mastery over its secrets as a husband hath over a wife's mind, are the surest tests of one "called" by destiny to tell to men the past, present, and future, in words so perfect that generations shall feel and remember.

We merely meant to give some "Hints on the Properties of Historical Ballads"--they will be idle save to him who has the mind of a Poet.

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[48] A "Ballad History of Ireland."

THE SONGS OF IRELAND.[49]

There are great gaps in Irish song to be filled up. This is true even of the songs of the Irish-speaking people. Many of the short snatches preserved among them from olden times are sweet and noble; but the bulk of the songs are very defective. Most of those hitherto in use were composed during the last century, and therefore their structure is irregular, their grief slavish and despairing, their joy reckless and bombastic, their religion bitter and sectarian, their politics Jacobite and concealed by extravagant and tiresome allegory. Ignorance, disorder, and every kind of oppression weakened and darkened the lyric genius of Ireland. Even these, such as they are, diminish daily in the country, and a lower class comes in. We have before us a number of the ballads now printed at Cork, in Irish, and English and Irish mixed. They are little above the street ballads in the English tongue. If Hardiman's and Daly's collections be fair specimens (as we believe they are) of the Irish Jacobite songs, we should not care to have more than a few of them given to the people; but, perhaps, there may be twenty, which, if printed clearly in slips, would sell as ballads in the Irish districts.

Assuming that the morsels given in O'Reilly's catalogue of Irish writers do not exaggerate the merits of the older bards, their works would supply numberless pastoral, love, joy, wailing, and war songs. A popular editor of these could condense them into three or four verses each--cut them so as exactly to suit the airs, preserve the local and broad historical allusions, but remove the clumsy ornaments and exaggerations. This is what Ramsay, Burns, and Cunningham did with the Lowland Scotch songs, and thus made them what they are--the best in Europe. This need not prevent complete editions of these songs in learned books; but such books are for libraries, not cabins.

There is one want, however, in _all_ the Irish songs--it is of strictly national lyrics. They are national in form and colour, but clannish in opinion. In fact, from Brian's death, there was no thought of an Irish nation, save when some great event, like Aodh O'Neill's march to Munster, or Owen Roe's victory at Beinnburb, flashed and vanished. These songs celebrate M'Carthy or O'More, O'Connor or O'Neill--_his_ prowess, _his_ following, _his_ hospitality; but they cry down his Irish or "more than Irish" neighbour as fiercely as they do the foreign oppressor. True it is, you will find amid the flight of minstrels one bolder than the rest, who mourns for the time when the Milesians swayed, and tells that "a soul has come into Eire," and summons all the Milesian tribes to battle for Ireland. But even in the seventeenth century, when the footing of the Norman and Saxon in Ireland was as sure as that of the once-invading Milesians themselves, we find the cry purely to the older Irish races, and the bounds of the nation made, not by the island, but by genealogy.

We may remark, in passing, that on no hypothesis did these same Milesians form more than the aristocracy of ancient Ireland--a class--a race of conquerors.

Dr. MacHale has made a noble attempt to supply this deficiency by his translation of Moore into Irish; but we are told that the language of his translation is too literary, and that the people do not relish these songs. A stronger reason for their failure (if in so short a time their fate can be judged) is, that the originals want the idiom and colour of the country, and are too subtle in thought. This remark does not apply to Moore's love songs, not to some, at least, of his political lyrics, and we cannot doubt that, if translated into vernacular Irish, and printed as ballads, they would succeed. For the present nothing better can be done than to paraphrase the _Songs of the Nation_ into racy and musical Irish; though a time may come when someone born amid the Irish tongue, reared amid Gaelic associations, instructed in the state of modern Ireland, and filled with passion and prophecy, shall sing the union and destiny of all the races settled on Irish ground, till the vales of Munster and the cliffs of Connaught ring with the words of Nationality.

But whatever may be done by translation and editing for the songs of the Irish-speaking race, those of our English-speaking countrymen are to be written. Moore, Griffin, Banim, and Callanan have written plenty of songs. Those of Moore have reached the drawing rooms; but what do the People know even of his? Buy a ballad in any street in Ireland, from the metropolis to the village, and you will find in it, perhaps, some humour, some tenderness, and some sweetness of sound; but you will certainly find bombast, or slander, or coarseness, united in all cases with false rhythm, false rhyme, conceited imagery, black paper, and blotted printing. A high class of ballads would do immense good--the present race demean and mislead the people as much as they stimulate them; for the sale of these ballads is immense, and printers in Dublin, Drogheda, Cork, and Belfast live by their sale exclusively. Were an enterprising man to issue the choice songs of Drennan, Griffin, Moore, on good paper, and well printed, he would make a fortune of "halfpenny ballads."

The Anglo-Irish songs, though most of the last century, are generally indecent or factious. The cadets of the Munster Protestants, living like garrison soldiers, drinking, racing, and dancing, wrote the one class. The clergy of the Ulster Presbyterians wrote the other. "The Rakes of Mallow" and "The Protestant Boys" are choice specimens of the two classes--vigorous, and musical, and Irish, no doubt, but surely not fit for this generation.

Great opportunities came with the Volunteers and United Irishmen, but the men were wanting. We have but one good Volunteer song. It was written by Lysaght, after that illustrious militia was dissolved. Drennan's "Wake of William Orr" is not a song; but he gave the United Men the only good song they had--"When Erin First Rose." In "Paddy's Resource," the text-book of the men who were "up," there is but one tolerable song--"God Save the Rights of Man;" nor, looking beyond these, can we think of anything of a high class but "The Sean Bhean Bhochd," "The Wearing of the Green," Lysaght's "Island," and Reynolds' "Erin-go-bragh," if it be his.

Two of Lady Morgan's songs, "Savournah Dilis" and "Kate Kearney," have certainly gone through all classes; and perhaps we might add a little to these exceptions; but it is a sad fact that most of the few good songs we have described are scarce, and are never printed in a ballad shape.

There is plenty, then, for the present race of Irish lyrists to do. They have a great heritage in the national music. It has every excellence and every variety. It is not needful for a writer of our songs to be a musician, though he will certainly gain much accuracy and save much labour to others and himself by being so. Moore is a musician of great attainments, and Burns used to compose his songs when going over, and over, and over the tune with or without words. But constantly listening to the playing of Irish airs will enable any man with a tolerable ear, and otherwise qualified, to write words to them.

Here, we would give two cautions. First--that the airs in Moore's Melodies are very corrupt, and should never be used for the study of Irish music. This is even more true of Lover's tunes. There is no need of using them, for Bunting's and Holden's collections are cheaper, and contain pure settings. Secondly--that as there are hundreds of the finest airs to which no English words have been written, and as the effect of a song is greatly increased by having one set of words always joined with one tune, our versifiers should carefully avoid the airs to which Moore, Griffin, or any other Irishman has written even moderately good words.

In endeavouring to learn an air for the purpose of writing words to it, the first care should, of course, be to get at its character--as gay, hopeful, loving, sentimental, lively, hesitating, woeful, despairing, resolute, fiery, or variable. Many Irish airs take a different character when played fast or slow, lightly or strongly; but there is some one mode of playing which is best of all, and the character expressed by it must determine the character of the words. For nothing can be worse than a gay song to calm music, or massive words to a delicate air; in all cases _the tune must suggest, and will suggest, to the lyrist the sentiment of the words_.

The tune will, of course, fix the number of lines in a verse. Frequently the number and order of the lines can be varied. Three rhymes and a fall, or couplets, or alternate rhymes, may answer the same set of notes; or rhymes, if too numerous, may be got rid of by making one long, instead of two short lines. Where the same notes come with emphasis at the ends of musical phrases, the words should rhyme, in order to secure the full effect. The doubling two lines into one is most convenient where the first has accents on both the last syllables, for you thus escape the necessity of double rhyming. In the softer airs the effect of this is rather agreeable than otherwise.

Talking of double rhymes, they are peculiarly fitted for strong political and didactic songs, for the abstract and political words in English are chiefly of Latin origin, of considerable length and gravity, and have double accents. The more familiar English words (which best suit most songs) contain few doubly-accented terminations, and are, therefore, little fitted for double rhyming.

Expletive syllables in the beginning of lines where the tune is sharp and gay are often an improvement, but they should never follow a double rhyme.

In strong and firm tunes, having a syllable for every note is a perfection, though one hard to be attained without harshness, from the crowd of consonants in English. With soft tunes, on the other hand, it is commonly better to have in most lines two or more light notes to one syllable, so that the words may be dwelt on and softly sounded; but where and how must be determined by the taste of the writer.

The sound of the air will always show the current of thought, its pauses and changes; and a nice attention and bold sympathy with these properties of a tune is necessary to lyrical success.

A great advantage, too, of writing for existing airs is the variety of metres thus gained, and the naturally greater variety of thought and expression thus suggested.

We have spoken, in reference to Ballads, of the use of Choruses and Burdens, and said that we thought there were some Ballads which were injured by them; but all songs, save (perhaps) those of desperate sorrow, gain by burden lines and choruses. They are almost universal in the Native Irish and Lowland Scotch. Beranger has employed them in most of his songs, and Moore in many of his. A chorus should, of course, contain the very spirit of the song--bounding, if it be gay; fierce, if it be bold; doting, if it loves. Merely repeating one verse between, or at the head or tail of another, is not putting a chorus; it must be _the_ verse which beats the best on your ear, and has the most echo in your heart. So, too, of burdens; they are not made merely by bringing in the same words in like places. They must be marked words forcibly brought in.

Irish choruses have often a glorious effect in English songs, nor need anyone familiar with the peasantry, or with Edward O'Reilly's Irish Writers, published as the first part of the _Transactions of the Iberno-Celtic Society_ be at any loss for them.

These are some of the minutiae of song-writing, which we note for the consideration of our young writers, leaving them to add to or modify these, according to their observation.

Of course, different men and different moods will produce various classes of songs. We shall have places for all, Songs for the Street and Field require simple words, bold, strong imagery, plain, deep passions (love, patriotism, conciliation, glory, indignation, resolve), daring humour, broad narrative, highest morals. In songs for the wealthier classes, greater subtlety, remoter allusion, less obvious idiom and construction, will be tolerable, though in all cases we think simplicity and heartiness needful to the perfect success of a song.

If men able to write will fling themselves gallantly and faithfully on the work we have here plotted for them, we shall soon have Fair and Theatre, Concert and Drawing-room, Road and Shop, echoing with Songs bringing home Love, Courage, and Patriotism to every heart.

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[49] This essay, together with another of less value, was reprinted
from _The Nation_ by M. J. Barry as an introduction to his "Songs
of Ireland" 1845. [Ed.]

INFLUENCES OF EDUCATION.

"Educate, that you may be free." We are most anxious to get the quiet, strong-minded People who are scattered through the country to see the force of this great truth; and we therefore ask them to listen soberly to us for a few minutes, and when they have done to think and talk again and again over what we say.

If Ireland had all the elements of a nation, she might, and surely would, at once assume the forms of one, and proclaim her independence. Wherein does she now differ from Prussia? She has a strong and compact territory, girt by the sea; Prussia's lands are open and flat, and flung loosely through Europe, without mountain or river, breed or tongue, to bound them. Ireland has a military population equal to the recruitment of, and a produce able to pay, a first-rate army. Her harbours, her soil, and her fisheries are not surpassed in Europe.

Wherein, we ask again, does Ireland now differ from Prussia? Why can Prussia wave her flag among the proudest in Europe, while Ireland is a farm?

It is not in the name of a kingdom, nor in the formalities of independence. We could assume them to-morrow--we could assume them with better warrants from history and nature than Prussia holds; but the result of such assumption would perchance be a miserable defeat.

The difference is in Knowledge. Were the offices of Prussia abolished to-morrow--her colleges and schools levelled--her troops disarmed and disbanded, she would within six months regain her whole civil and military institutions. Ireland has been struggling for years, and may have to struggle many more, to acquire liberty to form institutions.

Whence is the difference? Knowledge!

The Prussians could, at a week's notice, have their central offices at full work in any village in the kingdom, so exactly known are their statistics, and so general is official skill. Minds make administration--all the desks, and ledgers, and powers of Downing Street or the Castle would be handed in vain to the ignorants of ---- any untaught district in Ireland. The Prussians could open their collegiate classes and their professional and elementary schools as fast as the order therefor, from any authority recognised by the People, reached town after town--we can hardly in ten years get a few schools open for our people, craving for knowledge as they are. The Prussians could re-arm their glorious militia in a month, and re-organise it in three days; for the mechanical arts are very generally known, military science is familiar to most of the wealthier men, discipline and a soldier's skill are universal. If we had been offered arms to defend Ireland by Lord Heytesbury, as the Volunteers were by Lord Buckinghamshire, we would have had to seek for officers and drill-sergeants--though probably we could more rapidly advance in arms than anything else, from the military taste and aptness for war of the Irish People.

Would it not be better for us to be like the Prussians than as we are--better to have religious squabbles unknown, education universal, the People fed, and clad, and housed, and independent as becomes men; the army patriotic and strong; the public offices ably administered; the nation honoured and powerful? Are not these to be desired and sought by Protestant and Catholic? Are not these things _to be done_, if we are good and brave men? And is it not _plain_, from what we have said, that the reason for our not being all that Prussia is, and something more, is ignorance--want of civil and military and general knowledge amongst all classes?

This ignorance has not been our fault, but our misfortune. It was the interest of our ruler to keep us ignorant, that we might be weak; and she did so--first by laws, prohibiting education; then by refusing any provision for it; next, by perverting it into an engine of bigotry; and now, by giving it in a stunted, partial, anti-national way. Practice is the great teacher, and the possession of independence is the natural and best way for a People to learn all that pertains to freedom and happiness. Our greatest voluntary efforts, aided by the amplest provincial institutions, would teach us less in a century than we would learn in five years of Liberty.

In insisting on education we do not argue against the value of _immediate independence_. _That would be our best teacher._ An Irish Government and a national ambition would be to our minds as soft rains and rich sun to a growing crop. But we insist on education for the People, whether we get it from the Government or give it to themselves as a round-about, and yet the only, means of getting strength enough to gain freedom.

Do our readers understand this? Is what we have said _clear_ to _you_, reader!--whether you are a shopkeeper or a lawyer, a farmer or a doctor? If not, read it over again, for it is your own fault if it be not clear. If you now know our meaning, you must feel that it is your duty to your family and to yourself, to your country and to God, to _act_ upon it, to go and remove some of that ignorance which makes you and your neighbours weak, and therefore makes Ireland a poor province.

All of us have much to learn, but some of us have much to teach.

To those who, from superior energy and ability, can teach the People, we now address ourselves.

We have often before and shall often again repeat, that the majority of our population can neither read nor write, and therefore that from the small minority must come those fitted to be of any civil or military use beyond the lowest rank. The People may be and are honest, brave, and intelligent; but a man could as well dig with his hands as govern, or teach, or lead without the elements of Knowledge.

This however, is a defect which time and the National Schools must cure; and the duty of the class to which we speak is to urge the establishment of such Schools, the attendance of the children at them, and occasionally to observe and report, either directly or through the Press, whether the admirable rules of the Board are attended to. In most cases, too, the expenditure of a pound-note and a little time and advice would give the children of a school that instruction in national history and in statistics so shamefully omitted by the Board. Reader! will you do this?

Then of the three hundred Repeal Reading-rooms we know that some, and fear that many, are ill-managed, have few or no books, and are mere gossiping-rooms. Such a room is useless; such a room is a disgrace to its members and their educated neighbours. The expense having been gone to of getting a room, it only remains for the members to establish fixed rules, and they will be supplied with the Association Reports (political reading enough for them), and it will be the plain duty of the Repeal Wardens to bring to such a room the newspapers supplied by the Association. If such a body continue and give proofs of being in earnest, the Repeal Association will aid it by gifts of books, maps, etc., and thus a library, the centre of knowledge and nursery of useful and strong minds, will be made in that district. So miserably off is the country for books, that we have it before us on some authority that there are _ten counties in Ireland without a single book-seller in them_. We blush for the fact; it is a disgrace to us; but we must have no lying or flinching. There is the hard fact; let us face it like men who are able for a difficulty--not as children putting their heads under the clothes when there is danger. Reader! cannot you do something to remedy this great, this disabling misery of Ireland? Will not you _now_ try to get up a Repeal Reading-room, and when one is established get for it good rules, books from the Association, and make it a centre of thought and power?

These are but some of the ways in which such service can be done by the more for the less educated. They have other duties often pointed out by us. They can sustain and advance the different societies for promoting agriculture, manufactures, art, and literature in Dublin and the country. They can set on foot and guide the establishment of Temperance Bands, and Mechanics' Institutes, and Mutual Instruction Societies. They can give advice and facilities for improvement to young men of promise; and they can make their circles studious, refined, and ambitious, instead of being, like too many in Ireland, ignorant, coarse, and lazy. The cheapness of books is now such that even Irish poverty is no excuse for Irish ignorance--that ignorance which prostrates us before England. We must help ourselves, and therefore we must educate ourselves.

FOREIGN TRAVEL.

We lately strove to induce our wealthier countrymen to explore Ireland before they left her shores in search of the beautiful and curious. We bid the economist search our towns and farms, our decayed manufactures, and improving tillage. Waving our shillelagh, we shouted the cragsman to Glenmalure and Carn Tual, and Achill and Slieve League. Manuscript in hand, we pointed the antiquary to the hundred abbeys of North Munster, the castles of the Pale, the palaces and sepulchres of Dunalin, Aileach, Rath Croghan, and Loughcrew, and we whispered to our countrywomen that the sun rose grandly on Adragool, that the moon was soft on Lough Erne ("The Rural Venice"), and that the Nore and Blackwater ran by castled crags like their sweet voices over old songs.

But there are some who had not waited for our call, but had dutifully grown up amid the sights and sounds of Ireland, and knew the yellow fields of Tipperary, and the crash of Moher's wave, and the basalt barriers of Antrim, and the moan or frown of Wexford over the graves of '98, and there are others not yet sufficiently educated to prize home excellence. To such, then, and to all our brethren and sisters going abroad, we have to say a friendly word.

We shall presume them to have visited London, Woolwich, the factories of Lancashire and Warwick, and to have seen the Cumberland lakes, and therefore to have seen all worth seeing in England, and that they are bound for somewhere else. For a pedestrian not rich there is Wales--the soft vales of the far North and South Clwyd, and the Wye and Llanrwst, and the central mountain groups of Snowdon, and still finer of Cader Idris. But if he go there we pray him not to return without having heard and, so far as he could, noted down a few airs from the harp and cruit, collected specimens of the plants and minerals of Wales for the museum (existing or to be) of his native town, studied the statistics of their great iron works or their little home-weaving; nor, if he has had the sense and spirit to take a Welsh and an Irish vocabulary, without some observations on the disputed analogy of the two languages, and how far it exists in general terms, as it certainly does in names of places. By the way, we warn him that he will know little of the peasantry, and come home in the dark about Rebecca, unless he can speak Welsh. The Welsh have been truer to their language than we were to ours; their clergy ministered in it; their people refused their tongues to the Saxon as if 'twere poison; and even their nobles, though tempted by England, welcomed the bard who lamented the defeat of Rhuddlan, and gloried in the frequent triumphs of Glendower.

But let us rather classify pursuits than countries.

We want the Irish who go abroad to bring something back besides the weary tale of the Louvre and Munich, and the cliffs of the Rhine, and the soft airs of Italy. We have heard of a patriot adventurer who carried a handful of his native soil through the world. We want our friends to carry a purpose for Ireland in their hearts, to study other lands wisely, and to bring back all knowledge for the sustenance and decoration of their dear home.

How pleasantly and profitably for the traveller this can be done. There is no taste but may be interested, no capacity but can be matched, no country but can be made tributary to our own. The historian, the linguist, the farmer, the economist, the musician, the statesman, and the man of science can equally augment their pleasure and make it minister to Ireland.

Is a man curious upon our language? He can (not unread in Neilson, nor unaccompanied by O'Reilly's Dictionary) trace how far the Celtic words mixed in the classical French, or in the patois of Bretagne or Gascony, coincide with the Irish; he can search in the mountains of North Spain, whether in proper names or country words there be any analogy to the Gaelic of the opposite coast of Ireland.

The proper names are the most permanent, and if there be any truth in Sir William Betham's theories, the names of many a hill and stream in Tuscany, North Africa, and Syria ought to be traceable to an Irish root. Nor need this language-search be limited to the south. Beginning at the Isle of Man, up by Cumberland (the kingdom of Strath Clyde), through Scotland, Denmark, Norway, to Ireland, the constant intercourse in trade and war with Ireland, and in many instances the early occupation by a Celtic race, must have left indelible marks in the local names, if not the traditions, of the country. To the tourist in France we particularly recommend a close study of the _History of the Gauls_, by Amadeus Thierry.

The student of our ecclesiastical history, whether he hold with Dr. Smiles that the Irish Church was independent, or with Dr. Miley, that it paid allegiance to Rome, may delight in following the tracks of the Irish saints, from Iona of the Culdees to Luxieu and Boia (founded by Columbanus), and St. Gall, founded by an Irishman of that name. Rumold can be heard of in Mechlin, Albhuin in Saxony, Kilian in Bavaria, Fursey in Peronne, and in far Tarentum the traveller will find more than one trace of the reformer of that city--the Irishman, St. Cathaldus. We cannot suppose that any man will stray from Stackallen, or Maynooth at least, without keeping this purpose in mind, nor would it misbecome a divine from that Trinity College of which Ussher was a first Fellow.