GIFT OF 
 
 
IRISH LITERARY AND 
 MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
IRISH LITERARY AND 
 MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 BY 
 
 ALFRED PERCEVAL GRAVES, M.A. 
 
 ("CANWR CILARNE") 
 
 President of the Irish Literary Society of London, 
 
 Honorary Member of the National Literary Society, and one of the 
 
 Fowtders and Metnber of Executive of the Folk Song Society, 
 
 and of tfie Irish and Welsh Folk Song Societies 
 
 LONDON 
 
 ELKIN MATHEWS, CORK STREET 
 
 M CM XIII 
 
A^f>>^ 
 
 K 
 
 
 \- 
 
DEDICATION 
 
 These Essays on Irish and Celtic Poetry and Mtisic^ and 
 these Reminiscences and Stitdies of the writings of Nineteenth 
 Centnry Irish Poets afid Musicians — Mangan ajtd Buntings 
 knoum to, and Petrie, beloved of viy father — -Joseph Sherida7i 
 Le Fanu, Sir Samuel Ferguson afid Williain Allijigha?n, his 
 friends and mine fro77i my boyhood to middle 7nanhood — of 
 Tennyson, to whom my U7tcle, Robert Perceval Graves, had 
 been host at Wi7ider77iere, a7id to who77i I was guest at Kilkee — 
 a7id, lastly, of Patrick Weston Joyce, for forty years 77iy 
 generous mtisical and literary ally — / dedicate to my good 
 frie7tds a7id colleagiies, " those ki7idred Irish spirits banded 
 together to te7id the fla77ie of 7iatio7ial pride in the heart of 
 Lo7ido7i," the 77iembers of the Lish Literary Society. 
 
 A, P. G. 
 July 31, 1913. 
 
 284112 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The Irish Literary and Musical Studies contained in this 
 volume consist of revised versions of lectures delivered from 
 time to time before the Irish Literary Society of London, the 
 Royal Literary Society, the National Literary Society of 
 Dublin, the National Eisteddfod at Carnarvon, the students 
 of Alexandra College, Dublin, and the Belfast Philosophical 
 Society ; also of revised versions of articles and reviews in 
 The Contemporary Review ("Celtic Nature Poetry"), The 
 Dublin Review (" Early Irish Religious Poetry " and " The 
 Preternatural in Early Irish Poetry"}, The Cornhill Magazine 
 (" Tennyson in Ireland " and " James Clarence Mangan "), 
 The Spectator ("The English Spoken in Ireland," "The 
 Religious Songs of Connacht," " An Irish Wonder Book " 
 and " Edward Bunting "), and y^ Treasury of Irish Literature 
 in the English To?igue (" Sir Samuel Ferguson "), published 
 by Smith, Elder and Co., to whose editors and publishers I 
 gratefully acknowledge permission to republish them. 
 
 My original verse translations from the Irish contained 
 in the articles on " Celtic Nature Poetry," " Early Irish 
 Religious Poetry," and "The Preternatural in Early Irish 
 Poetry," and many others, by my own and other hands, will 
 appear in an anthology of English verse renderings of Irish 
 Poetry entitled Harpstrings of the Irish Gael, with some 
 twenty illustrations in colour, Celtic capital letters, and a 
 cover of Celtic design by George Morrow, to be published 
 coincidently with this volume by the Devin-Adair Company 
 of 437, Fifth Avenue, New York. 
 
 Alfred Perceval Graves. 
 
 Erinfa, Harlech, N. Wales. 
 fuly 31, 1913. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Tennyson in Ireland 
 
 The English Spoken in Ireland 
 
 James Clarence Mangan . 
 
 Sir Samuel Ferguson 
 
 Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu 
 
 William Allingham . 
 
 Early Irish Religious Poetry 
 
 The Religious Songs of Connacht 
 
 Celtic Nature Poetry 
 
 The Preternatural in Early Irish 
 
 Dr. Joyce's Irish Wonder Book 
 
 Folk Song 
 
 Edward Bunting 
 
 George Petrie as an Artist and Man of Letters 
 
 George Petrie as an Antiquary .... 
 
 George Petrie as a Musician and amongst his Friends 231 
 
 Poetry 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 12 
 
 19 
 36 
 51 
 
 70 
 101 
 
 122 
 
 128 - 
 
 143 (^- ) 
 166 
 
 191 
 
 200 
 214 
 
IRISH 
 LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 TENNYSON IN IRELAND 
 A Reminiscence 
 
 It was the summer of 1878. A gale from the south-west, 
 after breaking suddenly over the iron-bound coast of Clare, 
 and raging against it furiously for forty-eight hours, had just 
 died away. 
 
 Scarcely a breath of air was stirring, and the August sky 
 was intensely blue. Yet the great Atlantic billows, gathering 
 out of the sea distance at ever increasing intervals, still 
 boomed and smoked against the cliffs — the last sullen 
 thunders of ocean's retreating insurgency. 
 
 But the proverbial ill wind that had kept all but the 
 most venturesome spirits close prisoners in the " lodges " 
 of Kilkee had blown the storm-loving Tennyson over from 
 Foynes, where he and his son Hallam were the guests of 
 Lord and Lady Monteagle. 
 
 So far back as September 1842 he had written to Aubrey 
 de Vere from Killarney : " I have been to your Ballybunion 
 Caves, but could not get into the finest on account of the 
 weather." But in one of these caves, so his son now 
 records, " he made the following lines, which occur in 
 Merlin ajid Vivien : 
 
 So dark a forethought rolled about his brain, 
 As on a dull day in an ocean cave 
 The blind wave feeling round his long sea-hall 
 In silence." 
 
.2:. •: -•. IRl-S'Pl LITEJMRV AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 In the year 1848 he had written to de Verc, "I hear 
 that there are larger waves at Bude than on any other part 
 of the British coast ; and I must go hither and be alone with 
 God"; but his friend persuaded him to come to Ireland, 
 where the waves are far higher and the cliffs often rise to 
 800 feet, and in one spot, Slieve League, to 2,000. 
 
 On his way to Valencia he slept at Mount Trenchard, 
 the residence of Lord Monteagle, and, de Vere continues, 
 "I led him to the summit of Knock Patrick, the farthest 
 spot in the south-west to which Ireland's apostle, patriarch, 
 and patron advanced. 
 
 ". . . The sunset was one of extraordinary but minatory 
 beauty. It gave, I remember, a darksome glory to the 
 vast and desolate expanse with all its creeks and inlets from 
 the Shannon, lighted the green islands in the mouth of the 
 Fergus, and fired the ruined castle of Shanid, a stronghold 
 of the Desmonds. . . . 
 
 " The western clouds hung low, a mass of crimson and 
 gold ; while from the ledge of a nearer one, down plunged 
 a glittering flood empurpled like wine. The scene was a 
 thoroughly Irish one, and gave a stormy welcome to the 
 Sassenach bard. The next morning he pursued his way 
 alone to Valencia. He soon wrote that he had enjoyed it. 
 He had found there the highest waves that Ireland knows, 
 cliffs that at one spot rise to the height of 600 feet, 
 tamarisks and fuchsias that no sea-winds can intimidate, and 
 the old ' Knight of Kerry,' as chivalrous a representative of 
 Desmond's great Norman House as it had ever put 
 forth." 
 
 And now, a generation afterwards, and having found his 
 full fame in the interval, Tennyson was paying his third and 
 last visit to Ireland, and again revisiting " Kilkee by the 
 great deeps," for a letter from him to de Vere in October 
 1848 containing this phrase seems to show he had visited 
 the spot in the previous summer, when the guest of his 
 brother poet at Curragh Chase, 
 
TENNYSON IN IRELAND 3 
 
 " I am glad," he writes, " that you have thought of me at 
 Kilkee by the great deeps. The sea is my deHght." 
 
 The intelHgence of Tennyson's arrival at Moore's 
 Hotel had spread rapidly, and on the splendid forenoon in 
 question it was very noticeable what a number of the 
 Laureate's slim green volumes were in evidence on the 
 terraces and up the cliff side in the hands which had been 
 swinging a racquet in the fine weather of a few days before. 
 
 "These Limerick girls," remarked a local wit, *'are 
 growing more fickle than ever. Yesterday they had lawn- 
 tennis on. To-day they have Alfred Tennyson." 
 
 Bathing had been out of the question for a couple of 
 days, so it was with a keen sense of exhilaration that I, a 
 visitor to Kilkee at the time, again found myself on the 
 Duggena spring-board. I plunged, and was in mid 
 career, when, rounding a reef corner, I all but knocked 
 heads with another swimmer. 
 
 " Beg your pardon, sir." 
 
 " Not at all, sir ! but— yes ! What ! Vou here ? Why, 
 how long have you been in these parts ? " 
 
 "About ten days, J. G. !" 
 
 " Very odd, we've not met before, then ? " 
 
 " Not at all. I've been purposely avoiding you." 
 
 " That doesn't sound very friendly." 
 
 " Perhaps not, but my intention was particularly so." 
 
 " Explain ! " 
 
 " Well, the fact is, I heard you were showing Tennyson 
 the sights ; and knowing how shy he is of strangers, I 
 thought the most friendly thing I could do was to steer clear 
 of your party." 
 
 " My dear fellow, I'll make that all right." 
 
 And he did within a few hours ; for that afternoon I got 
 a note from him saying, " Tennyson hopes you will spend 
 the evening with us. Don't bother about dressing. Come 
 just as you are, if not exactly just as you were when last 
 we met." 
 
 B 2 
 
4 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 The >Yriter was my old friend John George Butcher, now 
 a well-known figure at the English Bar and in the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 On the outbreak of the storm he and his two sisters had 
 run over from Mount Trenchard, their brother-in-law Lord 
 Monteagle's country seat, in company with Tennyson and 
 his son Hallam, and I found this party awaiting me at 
 Moore's Hotel. Tennyson received me, beaming, evidently 
 thorougly amused at my marine encounter with Butcher that 
 morning. He offered me a long pipe, pressed me into a 
 chair at his right hand, and plunged into animated 
 conversation. 
 
 His personality more than satisfied me, though I had 
 been led to anticipate much from Mrs. Cameron's and 
 Rejlander's artistic photographs. 
 
 " The large dark eyes, generally dreamy, but with an 
 occasional gleam of imaginative alertness," as de Vere 
 describes them, still varied between haunting softness and 
 eager brightness ; " the great shock of rough dusky dark 
 hair," that Carlyle wrote of in 1842, had been somewhat 
 subdued, but far from subjugated by time; it revealed 
 more of the poet's " high-built brow," but its raven hue was 
 unimpaired. "The massive aquiline face" was still "most 
 massive, yet most delicate," and still of a healthy bronze. 
 His gestures were free and spontaneous, his voice full and 
 musical. It w^as impossible to believe he was in his 
 seventieth year. 
 
 His accent and speech both surprised me. I was quite 
 prepared for the fastidious articulation and premeditated 
 hesitation in the choice of words to which so many distin- 
 guished English University men are prone. There was a 
 rich burr in his accent, Lincolnshire, I suppose, and a 
 pungent directness in his utterance which were as refreshing 
 as they were unlooked for. 
 
 Then he evidently possessed the rare knack of getting 
 the very best out of his fellow talkers at the sam.e time that 
 
TENNYSON IN IRELAND 5 
 
 he gave them much more than he got for it. At this 
 interval of time I cannot, of course, do more than record 
 the general drift of our conversation and the opinions he 
 expressed ; his exact words have escaped me, except in an 
 occasional instance. First we talked of the sea, and here 
 he spoke notably. He said that a great storm, such as we 
 had witnessed, was a wonderful and terrible sight of im- 
 potent passion, and he quoted St. Jude's words, " Raging 
 waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame." But he 
 had once seen roll in out of the Atlantic, suddenly, over a 
 still sea and under a still sky, a succession of stupendous 
 billows, earthquake waves perhaps, which completely 
 engulfed the shore, and whose awful serenity impressed 
 his imagination far more deeply than any tempest he had 
 ever experienced. It is easy for all who have heard him 
 thus discourse to believe, as we are now told by his son, 
 that he claimed a Norse ancestry, " that he loved the sea 
 for its own sake, and also because English heroism has ever 
 been conspicuous on shipboard," and that he "gloried," 
 therefore, in having made these lines in Boadicea: 
 
 Fear not, isle of blowing woodland, isle of silvery parapets ! 
 Thine the liberty, thine the glory, thine the deeds to be celebrated, 
 Thine the myriad-rolling ocean, light and shadow illimitable ; 
 
 and — 
 
 Roared as when the roaring breakers boom and blanch on the 
 precipices. 
 
 When thus talking of the storm to me he rolled out a 
 line from Homer, and challenged Butcher, a fine Greek 
 scholar, to say where it came from. I should imagine that 
 it was 
 
 e| aKaXappitrao fiadvppoou ojKtduaio, 
 
 a favourite example to him of sounding lines, according to 
 his son. This line and the well-known 
 
 fiij 5' aKeoiV irapa 67va iro\v(t)\oia0oi(j Qakdaa-qs, 
 
6 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 he would say, arc grander in our modern Northern pro- 
 nunciation than in the soft Southern talk of the Greeks, 
 with a difference as between the roar of the Northern sea 
 and the hissing of the Mediterranean. 
 
 The rugged, open-throated, deep-chested vocalisation of 
 his own north-eastern folk, which he himself so finely 
 illustrated by his chanting of verse, when gathered into the 
 grandly rolling Yorkshire choruses, affords a similar contrast 
 to the smoother and softer but thinner and sharper concerted 
 singing of southern England. 
 
 In this connection his son's biography of Tennyson may 
 well be quoted : 
 
 " He never cared greatly for the sea on the south coast 
 of England; not a grand sea," he would say, "only an 
 angry curt sea. It seems to shriek as it recoils with the 
 pebbles along the shore ; the finest seas I have ever seen 
 are at Valencia, IMablethorpe, and in West Cornwall. At 
 Valencia the sea was grand, without any wind blowing and 
 seemingly without a w-ave ; but with the momentum of the 
 Atlantic behind, it dashes up into foam, blue diamonds it 
 looks like, all along the rocks, like ghosts playing at hide 
 and seek. When I was in Cornwall it had blown a storm 
 of wind and rain for days, and all of a sudden fell into 
 perfect calm ; I was a little inland of the cliffs ; when after 
 a space of perfect silence, a long roll of thunder, from some 
 wave rushing into a cavern I suppose, came up from the 
 distance, and died away. I iievc7- felt silence like that." 
 
 He talked a good deal of that visit to Kerry, of the 
 scenery and of the people. 
 
 It was in 1848, the year of revolutions, and the political 
 electricity had even penetrated to Valencia ; and Tennyson, 
 while studying the Alantic breakers from the mountain, was 
 cautiously followed up by a conspirator, attracted no doubt 
 by his distinctly un-English dress and appearance. The 
 man finally closed upon Tennyson and whispered in his 
 ear, " Be you from France ? " I could narrate a similar 
 
TENNYSON IN IRELAND 7 
 
 experience. When in Fenian times my father (afterwards the 
 Bishop of Limerick) and I were belated during an archaeo- 
 logical ramble in an Irish-speaking part of Kerry, our 
 nocturnal appearance at a remote homestead led to a 
 guarded inquiry whether the French fleet were in the Bay, 
 as reported — so expressed as to convey the belief that our 
 coming was in some way connected with it. 
 
 Tennyson was evidently greatly interested in the Irish 
 play of character, and in its dramatic as well as its humorous 
 side. He told us of his drive to see a waterfall on Hungry 
 Hill, and of an amusing conversation he had with the 
 carman, a Celt of the type of Daniel O'Connell, or — to take 
 an instance from our day— of Denis O'Sulhvan, the "Shamus 
 O'Brien " of Stanford's opera, so distinguished-looking indeed 
 that when he claimed the closest connection with the great 
 old families of McCarthy More and The O'Sullivan Bear, 
 and emphasised the statement by the production of a 
 ponderous old seal containing their arms quartered together, 
 Tennyson felt quite inclined to believe his final contention 
 that if he had his rights he should be reigning in these parts. 
 " He looked an Irish chief," said Tennyson ; and though 
 the poet did not tell me so at the time, his driver, it appears, 
 on being rallied by the waiter after returning to the inn 
 from which they had driven, for talking to the gentleman 
 of his " great blood," drew himself up, answering, " The 
 gentleman is a gentleman, every inch of him." Noblesse 
 oblige, and on that drive in search of one waterfall it had 
 rained such cataracts that they were fain to take shelter in a 
 wretched little roadside shealing occupied by a poor woman 
 and her little son Johnny. To use Tennyson's own words 
 as given by his son : 
 
 " The ' King of Connaught ' dried my stockings and 
 went to sleep on a bench. The woman drew me up a stool 
 to the turf fire with the courtly air of a queen. While he 
 was asleep, I heard the mother say to the boy ' Johnny,' 
 several times (she didn't speak a word of English). The 
 
8 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 King awoke, and, as we were going out, I said, ' Johnny,' 
 and the little boy with a protuberant paunch (protuberant, I 
 suppose, from eating potatoes) ran forward and I gave him 
 a sixpence. The woman, with her black hair over her 
 shoulders, and her eyes streaming w^ith tears, passionately 
 closed her hands over the boy's hand in which was the six- 
 pence. When the King and I climbed into the car, I, in 
 my stupid Saxon way, thinking it was the beggarly sixpence 
 that had made the woman grateful, expressed my astonish- 
 ment at such gratitude. ' It was not the sixpence, your 
 honour, it was the stranger's gift.' " 
 
 My recollection of the story as told to me is a slight 
 variant upon this version. According to it the woman cried 
 out something in Irish, and Tennyson asked the driver for its 
 meaning when they got outside, on which he replied, "She was 
 blessing God, your honour, that the child's hand had been 
 crossed with silver by the dark-haired stranger." And certainly 
 I don't remember in Tennyson's version of the story as told 
 me that claim to the kingdom of Co?maughf was made by the 
 driver. Even in fun a McCarthy or an O'Sullivan would 
 never have advanced such a claim. Tennyson saw I was 
 much affected by his story, which was very strikingly told, 
 and said, " There ! you must make a poem out of * the 
 Stranger's Gift.' " He went on to say that he much desired 
 to write an Irish poem, and was on the look-out for a 
 suitable subject. Could I make a suggestion ? 
 
 I ran over in my mind the themes with which I was 
 familiar, and suddenly bethought me of my friend Dr. 
 Joyce's Old Celtic Rojnances^ some of which he had shown 
 me in manuscript and which were to be published in a few 
 months' time. 
 
 I told him of these, and undertook that he should have 
 an early copy of the book. When it appeared I took care 
 to fulfil my promise. Tennyson's Voyage of Maelduiie yfdiS 
 the outcome. In his notes quoted by his son he writes, " I 
 read the legend in Joyce's Celtic Legends'' (it should be 
 
TENNYSON IN IRELAND 9 
 
 Joyce's Old Celtic Romances)^ " but most of the details are 
 mine." His biographer adds, " By this story he intended 
 to represent in his own original way the Celtic genius, and 
 he wrote the poem with a genuine love of the peculiar 
 exuberance of the Irish imagination." 
 
 When telling Tennyson of Joyce's book, several of the 
 tales in which relate to Finn and his heroic companions, I 
 had hoped he would have treated one of them, by choice 
 Ois'm (Ossian) in Tirnanoge (The Land of Youth) rather 
 than The Voyage of Maeldune. For the mention of Ossian 
 had started him off into an expression of admiration for 
 some passages in Macpherson's work for which I was not 
 prepared. 
 
 " Listen to this," he said : 
 
 " ' O thou that rollest above, round as the shield of my 
 fathers ! Whence are thy beams, O sun ! thy everlasting 
 light ? Thou comest forth in thy awful beauty ; the stars 
 hide themselves in the sky ; the moon, cold and pale, sinks 
 in the western wave ; but thou thyself movest alone. Who 
 can be a companion of thy course? The oaks of the 
 mountains fall ; the mountains themselves decay with years ; 
 the ocean shrinks and grows again ; the moon herself is 
 lost in heaven ; but thou art for ever the same, rejoicing in 
 the brightness of thy course. When the world is dark with 
 tempest, when thunder rolls and lightning flies, thou lookest 
 in thy beauty from the clouds, and laughest at the storm. 
 But to Ossian thou lookest in vain, for he beholds thy beams 
 no more ; whether thy yellow hair flows in the eastern 
 clouds, or thou tremblest at the gates of the west. . . .'" 
 
 " Is it not fine ? " he said. I owned it was, but have 
 never ceased to regret that the much finer, older, and truer 
 Irish Ossianic gold, such as that, for example, which gUtters 
 in the pages of Standish Hayes O'Grady's Silva Gadelica 
 had not been earlier open to him. Had it been, I make no 
 doubt he would have given us a saga immeasurably more 
 true to the Celtic spirit than his Voyage of Maeldwie 
 
lO IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 delightful though that poem is in itself, and deeply 
 interesting though it is as a great English poet's attempt to 
 express the Celtic genius. To compare Tennyson's finished 
 poem with the Irish tale from which he took it is a 
 novel experience. I own I share Mr. Stopford Brooke's 
 opinion as to which of them is the simpler and the more 
 convincing. 
 
 Tennyson's other Irish poem, To-morrow^ was founded 
 on the story told him by Aubrey de Vere : " The body of 
 a young man was laid out on the grass by the door of a 
 chapel in the West of Ireland, and an old woman came and 
 recognised it as that of her young lover, who had been lost 
 in a peat bog many years before ; the peat having kept him 
 fresh and fair as when she last saw him." 
 
 His son notes: "He corrected his Irish from Carleton's 
 admirable IVaits of the Irish Fcasantry\ a proof of the 
 poet's extraordinary laboriousness, and a crying comment 
 on the want of an Anglo-Irish or Hiberno-English dialect 
 dictionary. Tennyson certainly could not have written 
 that intensely dramatic poem had he not been deeply 
 sensible of the tragic side of Irish peasant life as he saw it 
 with his own eyes so shortly after the potato famine. How 
 gracefully, too, he presses into his service the poetic imagery 
 of the ^Vestern Gael. It is, moreover, an interesting asser- 
 tion of his belief in the artistic value of Irish dialect in 
 verse ; Irish Doric, as he once wrote of it to me. 
 
 But to go back to our conversation, which had turned 
 upon the preternatural, whether through the superstitious 
 touch in the story of The Stranger's Gift or because 
 something was said of Macpherson's ghost machinery, I 
 cannot recollect. Tennyson acknowledged to having taken 
 a very deep interest in spiritualism, but he added that, 
 though he could not account for some of the phenomena 
 he had witnessed, investigation had led him to no valuable 
 results, and he had therefore dropped it. Truth and 
 falsehood were evidently woven strangely together in the 
 
TENNYSON IN IRELAND II 
 
 minds of the mediums, wlio he behevcd corresponded to 
 the mediaeval witches. He instanced in support of this 
 view the record of an old witch trial at which violent 
 manifestations occurred in full court similar to the so-called 
 " spirit rappings " of recent seances. 
 
 He went on to say that witches had, under torture, 
 confessed to the most preposterous doings, such as having 
 suckled young devils. 
 
 The talk then turned to national education, and he 
 seemed eager for practical instances of its enlightening 
 effects upon the people, derived from my personal 
 knowledge as an inspector of schools. A generation 
 previously he had said that "one of the two great social 
 problems impending was the housing and education of the 
 poor man before making him our master; the other was 
 the Higher Education of Women," to which his Princess 
 served as a pioneer. 
 
 "Wasn't the Bard great?" said Butcher when we met 
 next morning. 
 
 Readers of his son's noble memoir, all the world over, 
 will answer that question as emphatically as I did. 
 
12 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 THE ENGLISH SPOKEN IN IRELAND* 
 
 Dr. Joyce's literary vitality is as remarkable as his literary 
 versatility. Sixty years ago he was contributing Irish folk- 
 songs and notes on Irish dances to Dr. Petrie's A?ide?it 
 Music of Ireland. In his spare hours when an active 
 teacher, Professor, and Training College Principal he pro- 
 duced what have since become standard works on Irish 
 school method and Irish names of places ; and since his 
 retirement from the Government Service some twenty years 
 ago he has kept his literary energy fresh by turning from 
 folk-lore to folk-song, and from archaeology to history. His 
 Irish historical writings exhibit close research and impartial 
 judgment. His Old Celtic Roma7ices inspired Tennyson's 
 Voyage of Maeldnne ; and, when the artistic vigour of 
 Sir Edward Burne-Jones had, for the time being, failed, the 
 study of these Romances gave it renewed life, by the 
 painter's own confession. 
 
 To Dr. Joyce's first collection of Irish folk-songs Sir 
 Charles Stanford and Dr. Charles Wood are indebted for 
 Irish melodies harmonised by them, and popularised by the 
 singing of Mr. Plunket Greene; and Dr. Joyce has quite 
 recently edited his musical opus magnwn, a collection of no 
 less than eight hundred and forty-two Irish airs and songs 
 hitherto unpublished. And now, taking a fresh departure, 
 he presents us, in a popular form, with the first detailed 
 analysis and systematic classification of Anglo-Irish speech. 
 
 * English as We Speak it in Ireland. By P. W. Joyce, LL.D., 
 M.R.I. A., etc. London : Longmans and Co. \2s. 6d. net.] 
 
THE ENGLISH SPOKEN IN IRELAND 1 3 
 
 He has been for more than twenty years quietly gathering 
 the materials for this book, with unique qualifications and 
 opportunities for the undertaking. For he spoke both Irish 
 and English as a boy, and during his days at Marlborough 
 Street Training College had unequalled chances for inquiry 
 into the differences of speech exhibited by the students 
 under his care, who came from " all the four corners of 
 Erin." But he did not make any serious preparation to 
 write upon the English spoken in Ireland till 1892, when 
 he invited, through the medium of the Press, the contribu- 
 tion of collections of dialectical words and phrases to a 
 projected book on the subject. In response to this appeal 
 he received such collections from no less than a hundred 
 and sixty-four persons in all parts of Ireland and Great 
 Britain, and even in America, Australia, and New Zealand. 
 He has, furthermore, studied the works of the leading 
 writers who make use of different forms of Anglo-Irish and 
 Hiberno-English dialect, and quotes from them at large. 
 Finally, he has digested, and refers to, all the articles and 
 pamphlets on the subject of his book published up to date. 
 
 Dr. Joyce's treatment of this considerable mass of 
 material is both scholarly and attractive. The book con- 
 tains many humorous personal reminiscences, more especi- 
 ally in the chapters devoted to " The Devil and his Territory," 
 " Swearing," " Proverbs," " Exaggeration and Redundancy," 
 and " The Memory of History and Old Customs," all of 
 which are pervaded with the peculiarly dry form of fun 
 for which Dr. Joyce has established a reputation. But the 
 special value of his volume is its authoritative explanation 
 of the origin and building up of the forms of English spoken 
 in Ireland. 
 
 Dealing with the sources of "Anglo-Irish dialect," he 
 shows that the influences of Irish pronunciation, vocabulary 
 and idiom, and of Elizabethan English and of Lowland 
 Scotch, have largely affected that form of speech. Accord- 
 ing to him, the Irish language has determined the popular. 
 
14 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 though not the educated, pronunciation of the English 
 letters " t," " d," " s," and " z," in imitation of their Irish 
 sounds as in " butlher " (butter), " thrue " (true), "fisht" 
 (fist), "drizzhling" (drizzling). Irish Gaelic has also intro- 
 duced into Anglo-English many single words, some of which 
 — such as " shamrock," " whisky," " bother," " blarney," 
 " galore," and even " smithereens " — are now current 
 wherever English is spoken. 
 
 But more interesting to tlie linguist, and to those'who 
 wish to write correct Hiberno-English, is Dr. Joyce's 
 chapter on the idioms from the Irish language imported 
 into Anglo-Irish speech. These peculiarities may be classi- 
 fied as prepositional, pronominal, adverbial, verbal and 
 general. Of the prepositional peculiarities, the following 
 examples will suffice : — " There is snow i7i it " is used for 
 " There is snow there," the Gaelic preposition atin denoting 
 " in existence." " The tinker took fourpence out of the 
 kettle," — i.e.^ he earned fourpence by mending it. " I once 
 heard a grandmother," writes Dr. Joyce, " an educated 
 Dublin lady, say, in a charmingly pretty way, to her little 
 grandchild who came up crying : ' What did they do to you 
 071 me (to my harm) ? Did they beat you on me 7 ' " This 
 is just the sense of the Irish preposition air (on) before a 
 personal pronoun or personal name after an active verb. 
 
 The reflexive pronouns "myself," "himself," etc., have 
 meanings borrowed from the Irish to be found in such 
 phrases as " The birds are singing for themselves," " I felt 
 dead (dull) in myself." The personal pronoun has a curious 
 use in Irish-English which comes straight from the Gaelic, 
 as, for example, " I saw Thomas and he sitting by the fire." 
 Hence Charles Wolfe, an Irishman, in his " Burial of Sir 
 John Moore " writes : 
 
 We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed, 
 
 And smoothed down his lonely pillow, 
 That the foe and the stranger would tread on his head, 
 
 And we far away on the billow. 
 
THE ENGLISH SPOKEN IN IRELAND 1 5 
 
 The following are instances of adverbial peculiarities in 
 Hiberno-English : The Irish Is amhlaidh (it is the way), 
 meaning " thus " or " how " or " in order that," is responsible 
 for such expressions as these : " What do you want, James ? " 
 " 'Tis the way, ma'am, my mother sent me for the loan of the 
 shovel." " I brought an umbrella t/ie way I wouldn't get 
 wet." In colloquial Irish the words " even " and " itself " 
 are expressed hy fcin, but the Anglo-Irish avoid the word 
 "even" and incorrectly use "itself" in its place, — i.e., "If 
 I had that much itself,'' meaning " If I had even that much." 
 The English " when " is expressed in Gaelic by an nair, the 
 hour or the time ; hence " The time you arrived I was away 
 in town." 
 
 Verbal peculiarities from the Irish are the use of the 
 narrative infinitive, a construction common to the old Irish 
 annals, and still fast-rooted in Irish folk speech,^ — e.g., " How 
 did the mare get that hurt?" " Oh ! Tom Cody to leap her 
 over the garden wall, and she to fall on her knees on the 
 stones." The Irish Gaelic is without the perfect and 
 pluperfect tenses, and the Irish people do not know how 
 or do not care to use them in their English, but feeling 
 their need of them supply it by a periphrasis. Thus when 
 we should say, " I have finished my work," they say, " I am 
 after finishing my work," which is a direct translation from 
 the Irish. Or they wrongly use the preterite — i.e., " I done 
 my work " — or they incorrectly resort to the present pro- 
 gressive — i.e., " I am sitting " (for " I have been sitting ") 
 " w^aiting for you for the last hour." 
 
 " Corresponding devices," writes Dr. Joyce, " are re- 
 sorted to in order to escape the use of the pluperfect, such 
 as, ' An hour before you came yesterday I finished ' (for ' I 
 had finished ') ' my work.' " The Irish language has a 
 consuetudinal tense which the Irish people so much miss 
 from the English tongue that they have manufactured one 
 by the use of the verbs " do " and " be," — i.e., " There does 
 he a meeting of the Company every Tuesday," that is to say, 
 
l6 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 the meeting is held regularly on that day. wSometimes 
 " be " is used alone, — e.(^., " My father l?a's at home in the 
 morning/' i.e., is regularly at home. 
 
 The following sentences strung together in the narrative 
 form from Dr. Joyce's pages will show how Irish idioms 
 abound in the English spoken in Ireland : 
 
 That was well and good, but the lion let such a roar out of him that 
 she had like to be killed with the fright, and she was no fool of a girl 
 neither ; when up comes along Dicky Diver, the boy she was to be 
 married on, with his regulation rifle and it wasn't long after that the 
 lion got death from him. And if they didn't live happy ever after, that 
 we may ! 
 
 The day was rising (clearing) when I called in on the Murphy s. *' Is 
 himself within ? " I axed the servant girl. " He is so and herself too !i" 
 says she. With that I went in through the half-door. The woman 
 had a nose on her (was looking sour) and neither of the two axed me 
 had I a mouth on me (would I like some refreshment). Then I drew 
 down with them (introduced the subject) about the money. 
 
 Dr. Joyce thus accounts for the Irish and Scotch use of 
 " will " and " shall " as a survival from Elizabethan times. 
 Hamlet says : — •" I will win for him an I can ; if not, I will 
 gain nothing but my shame and the odd bits." The second 
 " will " exactly corresponds with the Irish and Scotch use. 
 So also as regards " shall." Its old and correct use, which 
 indicated obligation, has been discarded in England since 
 Shakespeare made Macbeth, on being requested by his wife 
 to " Be bright and jovial among your guests to-night ! " reply 
 to her : " So shall I, love ! " But this use of the " shall " 
 is preserved in Ireland, for if you ask an attentive Irish 
 " boots " to call you early, he replies : " I shall, Sir." On 
 the other hand, PuncKs Irish waiter's use of " will,'' as he 
 stands with his hand on a dish-cover inquiring : " Will I 
 strip, ma'am ? " appears, like Topsy, to have " growed " of 
 itself, and is therefore incorrect English. Dr. Joyce has 
 not accounted for the equally common Irish confusion of 
 " would " and " should," and it is to be hoped that he will do 
 so in a second edition of his book, which should be assured. 
 
THE ENGLISH SPOKEN IN IRELAND 1 7 
 
 Dr. Joyce points out that the correct Enghsh sound of 
 the diphthongs ea and ei^ and of long e^ was the same as 
 long a in " fate " from Elizabethan to comparatively recent 
 times. Thus Cowper rhymes " sea " with " way " ; Tate 
 and Brady rhyme "conceive" with "grave"; while Pope 
 rhymes " race " with " Lucrece " and " sphere " with " fair." 
 On the other hand, the correct old English pronunciation of 
 ie and ee has not changed in Ireland ; therefore Irish people 
 never say praste for priest, belave for believe, indade for 
 indeed, or kape for keep, as writers of shoddy Anglo-Irish 
 think they do. 
 
 "Vocabulary and Index" is a somewhat misleading 
 heading to Dr. Joyce's twelfth chapter, which certainly 
 contains a fairly full vocabulary, but is in no sense an index 
 to the text of the preceding chapters, though such an index 
 was to be looked for in a book of this kind. 
 
 There is no Irish Dialect Society to contest Dr. Joyce's 
 use of the term " Anglo-Irish dialect " as a general descrip- 
 tion of the English spoken in Ireland. But doubtless the 
 representative scholars of the Irish-speaking provinces would 
 hold that each of them has impressed a dialect of its own 
 upon the English spoken within its borders. 
 
 Then the Anglo-Irish of much of County Wexford was 
 undoubtedly of West Saxon origin, and we imagine that Sir 
 John Byers has something to say for the existence of more 
 than one Scoto-Irish dialect in Ulster, as doubtless would 
 Mr. Henry Hart and Mr. W. J. Craig, the Shakespearean 
 scholars, had they lived to produce their important glossary 
 of North of Ireland words. 
 
 The curious resemblance of many English proverbs, 
 folk-sayings, and primitive forms of expression to Anglo- 
 Irish examples drawn from the Gaelic raises the interesting 
 questions whether some of these may not date back to 
 days when British-Celtic must have considerably affected 
 Anglo-Saxon speech. These proverbs, sayings, and idioms 
 may, indeed, go back to a time when a Celtic speech, 
 
 c 
 
l8 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 cognate to the Irish, pervaded England. That it died hard 
 in this country is now beginning to be conceded. For, quite 
 apart from the obvious influence of the Cumbrian, Cambrian, 
 and Cornish Celtic dialects upon the English North- Western, 
 Border, and South-Western counties, it is now held by some 
 that British speech lingered on in the North York moors 
 till after the Norman Conquest, whilst so far East as Lin- 
 colnshire we find in the shepherds* tallies traces of a Celtic 
 language. 
 
 We should like to have followed Dr. Joyce through the 
 chapters in which he illustrates the ingeniiim perfervidum 
 Scotoriim by such comparisons as " My stomach is as dry 
 as a lime-burner's wig," and such proverbs as " If you give 
 away an old coat, don't cut off the buttons " ; or dwell upon 
 his disquisition on the Irish methods of " dodging a curse," 
 as exemplified in the well-known expression, *'The dear 
 knows," or more correctly, " The deer knows " (Thmiss ag 
 fee)^ by which Thauss ag Dhce (God knows) is avoided ; or 
 quote some of the delicious anecdotes with which his pages 
 abound. But space forbids, and we conclude by warmly 
 recommending his book to all would-be writers and tellers 
 of Irish stories as by far the most authoritative guide to the 
 English spoken in Ireland that has yet appeared. 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 
 
 The growing cult of James Mangan, or James Clarence 
 Mangan, as he renamed himself, who died sixty-seven years 
 ago in Dublin, has been recently marked not only by a 
 sympathetic " Study " of Mangan by Louise Imogene Guiney, 
 the American poetess, prefacing an admirable selection from 
 his poems, but also by Mr. D. J. O'Donoghue's complete 
 edition of his poems and very detailed biography. The 
 reasons for the slow recognition he has received in this 
 country are not far to seek. He wrote in Ireland, and 
 entirely for Irish periodicals. His poems were never col- 
 lected during his lifetime, and ill-collected at his death. 
 Again, while he was regarded as a writer of genius by the 
 few Dublin contemporaries to whom his authorship of 
 poems, very variously subscribed, was familiar, even the 
 Irish pubUc, owing to his natural modesty and his solitary 
 habits, knew practically nothing of him. 
 
 But his work was too good to remain buried in old 
 magazines ; indeed, the best of it is, by its rich colouring 
 and weird melody, even more calculated to delight our 
 times than his own. 
 
 Mangan did not find life worth living. " You shall 
 tramp the earth in vain for a more pitiable object than a 
 man of genius with nothing to back it," he himself writes, 
 doubtless thinking of his own case. For the possession of 
 extraordinary gifts amid such wretched surroundings as he 
 had to face called for a stubborn heroism of which his 
 gentle, sensitive nature was incapable, and he went down, 
 though not without a struggle, leaving us a legacy of 
 
 C 2 
 
20 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 passionate, poetic melancholy, here and there, however, 
 shot througli by gleams of wit and humour which mark him for 
 a true Irishman, and of which the following is a fair example : 
 
 A FAST KEEPER 
 
 My friend, Tom Bentley, borrowed from me lately 
 
 A score of yellow shiners. Subsequently 
 
 I met the cove, and dunned him rather gently ; 
 Immediately he stood extremely stately. 
 And swore, " 'pon honour," that he ** wondered greatly." 
 
 We parted coolly. Well (exclaimed I ment'Uy), 
 
 I calculate this isn't acting straightly ; 
 You're what slangwhangers call a scamp, Tom Bentley. 
 
 In sooth, I thought his impudence prodigious ; 
 
 And so I told Jack Spratt a few days after ; 
 
 But Jack burst into such a fit of laughter. 
 '* Fact is" (said he), "poor Tom has turned religious." 
 
 I stared, and asked him what it was he meant. 
 
 " Why, don't you see," quoth Jack, " he keeps the Lent 1 " 
 
 The eldest son of a Dublin grocer, James Mangan was 
 born, in the year 1802, into the same circumstances under 
 which Thomas Moore had seen the light in the very same 
 locality four-and-tw^enty years before. 
 
 Like Moore, moreover, he was destined to write Irish 
 national lyrics of great beauty and Oriental poems of a very 
 striking character, though in each instance the quality of 
 Mangan's verse differs absolutely from Moore's. One more 
 parallel. He possessed a vein of whimsicality as delicate as 
 Moore's, which, had he worked it judiciously, would have 
 given him as high a reputation as a poetical satirist. 
 
 But here all likeness between the two poets ceases. 
 Moore had a happy home in childhood, Mangan a most 
 unhappy one. Though crediting his father with some fine 
 traits of character, Mangan writes that, unlike Moore's, 
 " he never exhibited the qualities of guardian towards his 
 children," whom he treated habitually as a huntsman would 
 treat refractory hounds. It was his boast, uttered in pure 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 21 
 
 glee of heart, " that we would run into a mousehole to 
 shun him." But with "this rigorous conception of the 
 awe and respect due to him as head of the family," as 
 Mr. O'Donoghue puts it, he combined a wrong-headed 
 generosity and credulity which gradually dissipated his 
 respectable fortune in foolish loans and silly speculations, 
 and in the end reduced him to absolute ruin. Thus it came 
 about that at the age of fifteen, when James Mangan's great 
 promise as a schoolboy should have been inducing his 
 father to give him those continued educational advantages 
 which lifted young Moore to honour and affluence, Mangan 
 was helping to support his broken-down parents by 
 monotonous drudgery at a scrivener's desk, in rude and 
 unsympathetic company. 
 
 For his mother's sake he went through with the un- 
 palatable duty. But he deeply resented his father's action 
 in the matter. Indeed, the very recollection of it in after-years 
 threw him into a paroxysm of self-pity. Yet it must be 
 confessed that when in this condition Mangan had a way of 
 making his strong imagination take the place of his weak 
 memory, or of describing things not as they happened, but 
 as they should have happened in his morbid opinion. He 
 therefore exaggerates his hours of work and the chaff of his 
 fellow-clerks, in what Mr. O'Donoghue proves was a highly 
 respectable office, into an appalling record of white slavery 
 amongst a herd of obscene savages. 
 
 Is Mangan hysterically playing upon our feelings of pity 
 and his own sense of self-importance ? Or is he dealing with 
 matters of fact on the non-moral, if artistic, principle which 
 he thus enunciates when treating of matters of opinion in a 
 sketch of Dr. Petrie, the famous Irish archaeologist ? — 
 
 I take a few facts, not caring to be overwhelmed by too many proofs 
 that they are facts ; with them I mix up a dish of the marvellous — 
 perhaps an old wife's tale — perhaps a half- remembered dream or 
 mesmeric experience of my own — and the business is done. My 
 conclusion is reached and shelved, and must not thenceforward be 
 
22 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 disturbed. I would as soon think at any time afterwards of questioning 
 its truth as of doubting the veritable existence of the Barber's five 
 brothers in The Arabian Alights or the power of Keyn Alasnam, King 
 of the Genii. There it is, and an opponent may battle with me 
 anent it, if he pleases. I manage to hold my ground by the help ot 
 digressions and analogies. 
 
 Till his cight-and-twentieth year Mangan did clerical 
 work by day, and studied and rambled and rhapsodised 
 alone by night, building up his education in desultory 
 fashion on the good foundation of Latin and modern 
 languages laid for him during his school-days by Father 
 Graham, a very learned scholar of the best continental 
 training. 
 
 He read much English literature, and enjoyed declaim- 
 ing aloud from Shakespeare and Byron ; but the dreamy 
 philosophy and romance of the German poets attracted him 
 most, and he threw himself deeply into their study. He 
 was also an eager reader of mediaeval works of magic and 
 mystery. And so, a slender, picturesque figure, with deep 
 blue eyes, golden hair, and fine but strangely pallid features, 
 he haunted the bookshops and bookstalls, turning over the 
 pages of old black-letter, in search of the mystical and 
 marvellous. 
 
 He looked — he could not help looking — a character 
 and having discovered the fact, he apparently amused him- 
 self by playing the part. 
 
 In 1818 — that is to say, when he was sixteen years of 
 age — Mangan's verse began to appear in the poets' corners 
 of the Dublin and Belfast almanacks, in the shape of 
 charades, acrostics, and rebuses, at that time greatly in 
 fashion; and till 1826 he was a frequent and popular 
 contributor to these annuals. 
 
 Under countless pseudonyms he thus indulged his love 
 of mystery and enigma, and gratified his taste for literary 
 sleight of art by outrhyming all his rivals in original metres 
 of the most complicated kind, as Mr. O'Donoghue points 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 23 
 
 out. The faculty for alliteration and rhyme, for pause and 
 cadence thus developed, on the whole affected his after- 
 work for good; though we must also attribute to the 
 almanack influence, as suggested by Mr. O'Donoghue, the 
 forced double rhymes and the forced gaiety that occasionally 
 vitiate it. 
 
 After a twelvemonth ot deep religious depression, from 
 which his spiritual advisers rescued him by judiciously 
 prescribing his resort to "cheerful and gay society," 
 Mangan, who had been reading much but writing little, 
 became a leading poetical contributor to The Cornet^ a very 
 cleverly but bitterly written " anti-tithe " weekly. 
 
 The conductors of The Comet were Philistines, and had 
 little sympathy with Mangan's higher flights ; though he had 
 the courage to press upon them poems of such promise as 
 " The Dying Enthusiast " and " Life is the Desert and the 
 Solitude," and so specimens of his whimsical prose and 
 verse figure most frequently in that journal. 
 
 John Sheehan, its editor, and his cronies treated Mangan 
 to a full share of the coarse chaff which they mistook for 
 wit, ridiculing him for his peculiarities, voting him " a spoon " 
 because he did not or could not retort in the same vein, and 
 finally insulting him into a severance of his connection with 
 The Comet, before its final collapse under a Government 
 prosecution. 
 
 But the establishment of The Duhlui Fen7iy Jonrnal g2iVQ 
 him a better literary connection, which he continued to 
 extend until he had established himself as a regular con- 
 tributor to The Dublin University Magazine, then under 
 Charles Lever's editorship. 
 
 The vogue for German literature, largely attributable to 
 Carlyle's influence, made good translations from the German 
 poets peculiarly acceptable about this time ; and this special 
 need was Mangan's opportunity as a sympathetic student of 
 these authors, and now a considerable master of verse. He 
 availed himself of it fully, and at first quite seriously. He 
 
24 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 evidently took infinite pains to reproduce the spirit of each 
 original with which he dealt. In the rare instances where 
 the character of the original lent itself to almost literal 
 translation into English he so rendered it with superlative 
 skill, if anything out- Schillcri7ig Schiller in some of his 
 versions of that poet, as Coleridge may be said to have done 
 in part of his Walle7istei7i. But as a rule he was an 
 adapter rather than a translator, " treating his victims on the 
 same principle, though without the same justification, as 
 Burns treats the floating Scotch ballads," as Miss Guiney 
 justly points out. For " the children of conventional art " 
 suffer more from Mangan's re-dressing than the Scotch 
 children of Nature do from Burns's genius for readjusting 
 and beautifying. Take the following from the German of 
 Otto Runge as an instance of Mangan's happiest manner as 
 a translator : 
 
 HOLINESS TO THE LORD. 
 
 There blooms a beautiful Flower, it blooms in a far-off land ; 
 Its life has a mystic meaning for few to understand ; 
 Its leaves illumine the valley, its odour scents the wood ; 
 And if evil men come near it, they grow for the moment good. 
 
 When the winds are tranced in slumber, the rays of this luminous 
 
 Flower 
 Shed glory more than earthly o'er lake and hill and bower ; 
 The hut, the hall, the pakce, yea, earth's forsakenest sod, 
 Shine out in the wondrous lustre that fills the heaven of God. 
 
 Three Kings came once to a hostel wherein lay the Flower so rare, 
 A star shone over its roof, and they knelt adoring there ; 
 Whenever thou seest a damsel whose young eyes dazzle and win, 
 O, pray that her heart may cherish this P lower of Flowers within ! 
 
 The original German poem is too vague to be really 
 effective ; yet, while scarcely altering a w^ord in his translation, 
 Mangan has by a suggestive title and an almost imper- 
 ceptible touch here and there given it a perfect meaning. 
 Surely, too, Mr. O'Donoghue is right in saying that Mangan's 
 version of Eichendorff' s miller's daughter is much superior 
 to the better known English translation of it. 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 25 
 
 A tendency thus to edit and improve his originals, 
 notably in the case of minor German poets, gradually grew 
 upon him. Having become an acute critic of their weak- 
 nesses, and having readers to cater for who would have 
 been intolerant of their occasional lapses into dulness and 
 sentimentality, Mangan now began to embroider them with 
 a free hand. This is his droll comment on the situation : 
 
 Most to be commiserated of all is his (the German poet's) English 
 translator, who, having the severest judges in Europe for his critics, is 
 often reduced to the necessity of either making himself ridiculous by 
 his desperate fidelity, or criminal by his departures from it, however 
 marvellously these may improve the original. The entire weight of the 
 blame rests upon the authors from whom we versify. We cannot, like 
 the experimentalist in "Gulliver," undertake to extract a greater 
 number of sunbeams from a cucumber than it is in the habit of 
 yielding. ... It is our business to cast a veil over the German poet's 
 blemishes, and bring forward nothing but his excellences, or what we 
 presume to be such. 
 
 Of course this is sheer paradox, but it veiled this very 
 pertinent position : Translations from the German are 
 my bread-and-butter. If I cannot make them interesting, 
 I must do without bread-and-butter. I can only make 
 them interesting by improving them or improving them 
 away. This process sustains and amuses me, so I shall 
 continue it. 
 
 Of the German poet in general he remarks : " He begins 
 in a tone of thunder, as if he would bring heaven and earth 
 into collision, but while you are waiting to see what will 
 come of it, he calls for his pipe, and you thenceforth lose 
 him in the fog." And Ludwig Tieck, " man-milliner to the 
 Muses," is thus delicately touched off in particular : " He 
 simpers and whimpers, and yet one cannot tell whether he 
 would be thought glad or sad. He plays the poetical 
 coquette between Fortune and Misfortune. . . . He is 
 knocked down by a bulrush every half-minute in the day, 
 and reverently kisses the face of his Fatherland fourteen 
 hundred and forty times in twelve hours." 
 
20 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Thus he improved and improved German minor poets 
 as his stock for translation deteriorated, until he improved 
 them almost entirely away, and finally began to publish, as 
 poems from the German of " Dreschler " and " Selber," and 
 other non-existent authors, lyrics of his own, more or less 
 influenced by his German studies. 
 
 This practice he carried on with even greater effrontery 
 when he began to put forth so-called translations of Oriental 
 poetry. Indeed, it seems to puzzle Mangan's researchful 
 biographer, Mr. O'Donoghue, where his Literce. Orientales 
 are original and where reflected from an Eastern source, 
 or refracted through a German medium. Mangan slily 
 attributes this explanation of his own altruistic attitude on 
 the whole question to Edward Walsh : 
 
 My poor friend Clarence has perpetrated a great number of 
 literary sins, which, taken together, would appear " the antithesis of 
 plagiarism." It is a strange fault, no doubt, and one that I cannot 
 understand, that Mangan should entertain a deep diffidence of his own 
 incapacity to amuse or attract others to anything emanating from him- 
 self. . . . People have called him a singular man, but he is rather a 
 plural one — a Proteus. . . . He has been much addicted to the practice 
 of fathering upon other writers the offspring of his own brain. ... I 
 cannot commend it. A man may have a right to offer his property to 
 others, but nothing can justify his forcing it upon them. 
 
 When remonstrated with by Dr. Anster for thus depriving 
 himself of the credit of such fine original work as was 
 contained in a sham translation of Haflz, he replied, " Any 
 one could see that it was only Half-his." 
 
 But whatever their origin, there is no doubt of the rare 
 poetical quality of much of Mangan's so-called Eastern 
 poems. Let the following serve for an example : 
 
 THE KARAMANIAN EXILE. 
 
 I see thee ever in my dreams, 
 Karaman ! 
 
 Thy hundred hills, thy thousand streams, 
 Karaman, O Karaman ! 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 27 
 
 As when thy gold-bright morning gleams, 
 
 As when the deepening sunset seams 
 
 With lines of light thy hills and streams, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 
 So thou loomest on my dreams, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 
 On all my dreams, my homesick dreams, 
 
 Karaman, O Karaman ! 
 
 The hot bright plains, the sun, the skies, 
 
 Karaman, 
 
 Seem death-black marble in mine eyes, 
 
 Karaman, O Karaman ! 
 
 I turn from summer's blooms and dyes, 
 
 Yet in my dreams thou dost arise 
 
 In welcome glory to mine eyes, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 
 In thee my life of life yet lies, 
 
 Karaman ! 
 
 Thou still art holy in mine eyes, 
 
 Karaman, O Karaman ! 
 
 Mangan had meanwhile got fresh employment as a 
 clerk, first in various Dublin attorneys' offices, and then 
 under the Irish Ordnance Survey ; but when that depart- 
 ment was for the time being closed, he practically supported 
 himself by his pen. In this latter office, like Charles Lamb, 
 in whose " dry drollery " he took a congenial delight, he 
 was a late-comer if not an early-goer, varying in his moods 
 between long spells of dejected silence and brief outbursts 
 of what Mitchell well describes as " fictitious jollity." For 
 although then more comfortably off than he had ever 
 been, and in the midst of considerate friends, his will was 
 becoming gradually weakened by some form of stimulant, 
 to which he declares his wretched health and slavish work 
 had first driven him. Was this stimulant opium, or " red 
 rum," or both ? 
 
 Mr. O'Donoghue maintains that he had shaken off the 
 habit of opium-eating, contracted when he was at the 
 scrivener's office, only to fall a victim to drink. 
 
28 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Dr. Sigerson and other medical experts declare that the 
 evidence derived from his handwriting, which remained 
 quite steady until the last, proves him never to have become 
 an actual drunkard. And Miss Guiney holds that " this 
 singular misconception is due to his own denial of his real 
 folly," opium-eating, of which " secretiveness is the sign- 
 manual," and the indulgence in which would account for 
 the unmistakable alabaster shine upon his features, his 
 fixed eyes, his incoherent life, and, above all, his strangely 
 coloured and visionary poems, and such dreams as he here 
 describes : " The Gorgon's head, the triple-faced hell-dog, 
 the handwriting on Belshazzar's palace wall, the fire globe 
 that turned below the feet of Pascal, are all bagatelles 
 beside the phantasmagoria which evermore haunt my brain 
 and blast my eyes." 
 
 Some of his most characteristically ecstatic poems were 
 written at the very close of his career, which would indicate 
 that opium, not alcohol, was still his master, in spite of 
 Father Meehan's evidence. 
 
 Take this passage from A Vision of Connaughf iii the 
 Thirteenth Century, and compare it with Coleridge's 
 Kuhla Khan, and the internal evidence in favour of a still 
 prevailing opium influence will be hard to gainsay : 
 
 Then saw I thrones, 
 
 And circling fires, 
 
 And a dome rose near me, as by a spell, 
 
 Whence flowed the tones 
 
 Of silver lyres. 
 
 And many voices in wreathed swell ; 
 
 And their thrilling chime 
 
 Fell on my ears 
 
 As the heavenly hymn of an angel-band ; 
 
 *' It is now the time, 
 
 These be the years, 
 
 Of Cuhal Mor of the Wine-red Hand ! '• 
 
 It has been suggested that disappointment in love, as 
 much as his ill-health and unhappy youth, turned Mangan 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 29 
 
 into an opium-eater. The evidence, however, goes strongly 
 against this theory. He fell into a splenetic mood after 
 Miss Margaret Stacpoole discouraged his attentions, and 
 railed at her as " Caroline." But he got over his resent- 
 ment, and resumed acquaintance with her as a friend, as 
 Sir Charles Gavan Duffy distinctly proves, and gave other 
 unmistakable symptoms that the wound had never been a 
 deep one. " We must remember, moreover," with Miss 
 Guiney, " that a poet's despair cannot gracefully charge 
 itself to dearth of beef, unpleasant kinsfolk, and headaches 
 out of a morphine phial. Hence woman and the love of 
 woman come in as the cmcsa rerii77i^ even in a Mangan." 
 
 This is his portrait at the time, touched in from several 
 contemporary sources : 
 
 Of middle height, he is slightly stooped and attenuated as one ot 
 Memling's monks. . . . His hair is white as new-fallen snow, which 
 gives him the appearance of age before he is old. His eye is 
 inexpressibly deep and beautiful, his forehead unwrinkled and white. 
 Pressed closely over his brows is a hat with such a quaint-shaped crown, 
 such a high, wide-boated leaf as has rarely been seen off the stage ; his 
 little coat, tightly buttoned, is covered with a shabby cloak that once 
 has been blue, the tightest to the form that can be imagined. He 
 moves seemingly with pain — his last hour is not far ofif. He speaks ! 
 You cannot choose but listen to his low, touching voice. That man, 
 so weak, so miserable, whom you meet alone in life, seeking com- 
 panionship in darkness, is James Clarence Mangan ! 
 
 Let US follow his failing life to its unhappy close. That 
 he had struggled hard to resist intemperance, whatever its 
 mastering form may have been, is clear. Ever and again 
 he fought off his temptation, flying from it to the protection 
 of such good friends as Father Meehan — from whom he 
 took the pledge at last ; but, alas ! only to break it again. 
 
 But though falling more repeatedly in these latter days, 
 he worked as hard, and indeed with a higher purpose, in 
 the lucid intervals that were left him. 
 
 During the last few years he had come under the 
 spell of the Young Irelanders, and had contributed fine 
 
2,0 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 rhetorical verse and several noble laments to the Nation^ 
 though he had never personally identified himself with its 
 political views. But he had been stirred to the expression 
 of strong patriotic feeling, and this culminates in the 
 broken man's pathetic offer of his open services to John 
 Mitchell when, on the eve of his revolutionary movement, 
 he seceded from the Naiioft and founded the United 
 IrishmajL Mitchell generously put aside, but never forgot, 
 this offer. 
 
 Patriotic and devotional verse and a certain amount of 
 rough-and-ready translation from the Irish, for the supply 
 of the very necessaries of life, occupied Mangan's closing 
 days. 
 
 The Irish Famine, whose horrors are reflected in his 
 New Year's Lay, had profoundly affected his imagination. 
 It was followed by the cholera, and by this, in the course 
 of one of his numerous disappearances from all knowledge 
 of his friends, Mangan was stricken. He recovered, and 
 was too soon allowed to leave one of the temporary cholera- 
 sheds at Kilmainham to which he had been removed ; for 
 collapse followed, and he was finally carried from a 
 wretched cellar in Bride Street to the Heath Hospital, 
 where he died seven days after admission. 
 
 Hi.s true friend. Father Meehan, thus describes the 
 end : — 'On taking a chair at his bedside the poor fellow 
 playfully said : ' I feel that I am going ; I know that I 
 must go, " unhousel'd " and "unaneal'd," but you must not 
 let me go " unshriven " and " unanointed." ' " " Poor fellow ! " 
 writes the same good priest elsewhere, " he did occasionally 
 take what he ought not to have taken ; but be his faults 
 what they may have been, he was a pure man, never 
 lowering himself to ordinary debaucheries or sensuality of 
 any sort. He prayed and heard mass almost every day, 
 and occasionally knelt at the altar-rail." 
 
 In this connection some of Mangan's devotional verse 
 may fitly be quoted from Mr. O'Donoghue's volume. 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 3^ 
 
 I raise my thoughts in prayer to God, 
 I look for help to Him alone 
 Who shared our lot — 
 The Mighty One of Heaven, who trod 
 
 Life's path as Man, though earth— His own- 
 Received Him not ! 
 
 I turn to Him, and ask for naught 
 Save knowledge of His heavenly will, 
 Whate'er it be ; 
 I seek no doubtful blessings, fraught 
 With present good, but final ill 
 And agony : 
 
 Come Death or Life, come Woe or Weal, 
 Whate'er my God elects to send 
 I here embrace ; 
 Blest while, though tortured on the wheel, 
 I forfeit not, or worse, mis-spend 
 His holy Grace. 
 
 The fount of Happiness— the source of Glory- 
 Eternity is in Thy hands and Power— 
 Oh ! from that sphere unrecognised by our 
 
 Slow souls, look down upon a world which, hoary 
 In evil and in error though it be, 
 
 Retains even yet some trace of that primeval 
 
 Beauty that bloomed upon its brow ere Evil 
 And Error wiled it from Thy Love and Thee ! 
 Look down, and if, while human brows are brightening 
 
 In godless triumph, angel eyes be weeping. 
 Publish Thy will in syllables of Lightning 
 
 And sentences of Thunder to the Sleeping ! 
 Look down, and renovate the waning name 
 
 Of Goodness, and relume the waning light 
 Of Truth and purity !— that all may aim 
 
 At one imperishable crown— the bright 
 Guerdon which they, who by untired and holy 
 
 Exertion overcome the earth, inherit— 
 The Self-denying, the Peaceable, the Lowly, 
 
 The truly Merciful, the Poor in Spirit. 
 
 When his body lay in the mortuary Dr. William Stokes 
 had a cast taken of his face, and Frederick, afterwards Sir 
 
32 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Frederick Burton, made the remarkable sketch of Mangan 
 after death which now hangs in the Irish National Portrait 
 Gallery. 
 
 I had a conversation with Sir Frederick about this at 
 the AthencXum Club, when he told me that he had once 
 seen Mangan in life in the company of " dear old Petrie." 
 Mangan left the room, and Burton, struck by his face, asked 
 " Who was that ? " " Mangan, the Poet," replied Petrie. 
 He had at that time, according to Burton, a profusion of 
 reddish hair tangled over his forehead, and his nose though 
 good was blunt. The corpse had luxuriant grizzled hair 
 and a noble forehead ; the nose was a fine aquiline. " For 
 the rigor 7?iortis" explained Burton, *' often draws the 
 skin over the cartilage and produces an effect in death 
 that did not exist in life." Thus poor Mangan was 
 elusive to the last, and we do not possess his true portrait 
 after all. 
 
 What are the poetical influences under which Mangan 
 fell ? What are his poetical methods ? What is his 
 distinctive poetical note ? And how far is its predominance 
 likely to ensure him poetic immortality ? 
 
 Apart from the German poets, he is in his early and 
 middle period most reminiscent of Byron ; here and there 
 we find in him a Shakespearean touch ; and occasional 
 echoes of Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and Tennyson 
 encounter us in his writings — notably Coleridge, whom 
 Mangan further resembled in his wonderful faculty for 
 brilliant monologue ; testibus Sir Charles Gavan Duffy and 
 others. 
 
 Mangan, writes Mitchell, would sometimes remain in conversation 
 of his own for an hour ; for though extremely silent, shy, and reserved 
 habitually, yet, with those in whom he confided, he was much given 
 to strange and desultory talk, which seemed like the soliloquy of a 
 somnambulist. His blue eyes would then dilate, and light up 
 strangely the sepulchral pallor of his face. 
 
 " Of his manner and his conversation," writes O'Daly, 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 3^ 
 
 " it would be impossible to give a correct idea ; they may be 
 best described by an extract from his favourite Schiller : 
 His dreams were of great objects, 
 He walked amidst us of a silent spirit, 
 Communing with himself; yet I have known him 
 Transported on a sudden into utterance 
 Of strange conceptions ; kindling into splendour, 
 His soul revealed itself, and he spake so 
 That we looked round, perplexed, upon each other, 
 Not knowing whether it was craziness. 
 Or whether it were a god that spake in him." 
 
 It has been explained how by force of circumstances he 
 became a translator, adapter, improver, and improver away 
 of Continental, Oriental, and, we should add, Irish poetry. 
 To disentangle from his so-called translations what is 
 Mangan's would, no doubt, be a troublesome task in many 
 instances, but it should be a highly interesting one to a 
 linguistic man of letters. Add to this remarkable peculiarity 
 of method another. Stress of circumstances — sudden journ- 
 alistic exigencies, for example — led him to put forth verse 
 in an unfinished form. He, however, kept a parental eye 
 upon a poem he valued, and he reproduced it from time to 
 time in periodical after periodical with continually improv- 
 ing finish, or recast it altogether. The most memorable 
 example of this habit is his treatment of his greatest poem, 
 My Dark Rosaleen. 
 
 This is based on an Irish ode by a minstrel of the 
 O'Donnell clan, contemporary with Shakespeare, of which 
 the literal English translation is given by Miss Guiney at 
 length in her study of Mangan, and there contrasted with 
 his successive versions of it. Mangan felt that he had not 
 done the theme justice, and worked at it with true artistic 
 fervour until he wrought it into his masterpiece; for, as 
 Miss Guiney truly says, " between My Dark Rosaleeii 
 and the preceding lyrics made from Roisln Dubh by the 
 same hand is a difference— all the difference there can be 
 between the thing cunningly wrought and the thing divinely 
 
 D 
 
34 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 inspired." But the great body of his verse Mangan did not 
 treat in this way. As a consequence there is a very great 
 variety of quality in its very considerable quantity. 
 
 When did Mangan acquire a distinctive poetical note, 
 and what was its peculiar character ? Before the year 1840 
 he had begun to experiment with " the refrain," as he had 
 before experimented in rhythms that were absolutely novel. 
 Some of the best of these refrains and rhythms, which 
 contain a mystical music all their own, occur in his so- 
 called translations. Edgar Allan Poe, a fellow-Celt, is 
 generally credited, in the Raveji, with that modern 
 adaptation of the refrain which consists of repeating it with 
 musical variations. Indeed, Poe himself states that this use 
 of the refrain in that poem was his first experiment of the 
 kind. Now the Rave?i was not published till 1845, 
 whereas from 1839 onward Mangan, as Miss Guiney points 
 out, "bestowed upon almost everything he wrote the curious 
 involved diction in question." For example, the Wi7miger 
 IVinehoiise, slightly improved from Hoffman of Fallersleben , 
 has the refrain : 
 
 As thinking but doubles men's troubles, 
 
 'Tis shirked in the emerald parlour ; 
 
 The' banks be broken and war lour, 
 
 "We've eyes alone for such bubbles 
 
 As wink on our cups in the Winehouse, 
 
 Our golden cups in the "Winehouse 
 
 (As poets would feign), but 'tis glasses we drain 
 
 In the sanded Winniger Winehouse. 
 
 This art-effect runs through Mangan's so-called Oriental 
 poems, and its use in the Karamania7i Exile so caught 
 the fancy of the author of Maryland^ my Maryland ! as 
 to have inspired that famous lyric. 
 
 Lastly, to what extent is Mangan's poetry likely to live ? 
 It obviously cannot endure in the bulk, however musical 
 and individual its character, owing to its want of careful 
 technique, its everlasting dreariness of subject, and its 
 tendency to repetition run mad, which spoils the effect of 
 
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN 35 
 
 even such a delightful piece of satire as The Woman of 
 Three Cows. A few of his Irish poems, including My 
 Dark Rosaleen^ The Lament for Banba^ the Vision of 
 Connaught in the Thirteenth Century, his version of 
 O'Husseys Ode to the Maguire, and his desolate Siberia 
 cannot perish from Anglo-Irish literature. Some of his 
 German translations and so-called translations from the 
 Turkish, such as Gone in the Wind, the Karamanian 
 Exile, and the Howling Song of Al Mohara, will survive, 
 through their perfection of colour, form and music ; and the 
 interest attached to the author of these poems should, for 
 their subjective interest, preserve The One Mystery and 
 The Nameless Ojie. 
 
 For these and other poems of charming, though not of 
 consummate, quality we refer our readers to Miss Guiney's 
 selection from Mangan, certainly the best that has yet been 
 got together, though perhaps hardly complete without a few 
 additional poems recently hunted up by the indefatigable 
 Mr. O'Donoghue from odd corners of old Irish periodicals. 
 With one of these — apparently Mangan's epitome of his own 
 unhappy life — this essay may fitly conclude ; 
 
 REST ONLY IN THE GRAVE. 
 
 I rode till I reached the House of Wealth : 
 'Twas filled with Riot and blighted health. 
 
 I rode till I reached the House of Love : 
 
 'Twas vocal with sighs beneath and above ! 
 
 I rode till I reached the House of Sin : 
 
 There were shrieks and curses without and within. 
 
 I rode till I reached the House of Toil : 
 
 Its inmates had nothing to bake and boil. 
 
 I rode in search of the House of Content, 
 But never could reach it, far as I went. 
 
 The House of Quiet, for strong and weak, 
 And Poor and Rich, I have still to seek. 
 
 That House is narrow and dark and small. 
 But the only Peaceful House of all. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 
 
 Sir Samuel Ferguson was unquestionably the Irish poet of 
 the past century who has most powerfully influenced the 
 literary history of his country. It was in his writings that 
 was decisively begun the great work of restoring to Ireland 
 the spiritual treasure it had sacrificed in losing the Gaelic 
 tongue. He was, however, no mere antiquarian. He was 
 also a scholar, and a patriot in the highest sense of the 
 word. He had friends in all parties, for he was in no sense 
 a political partisan. Indeed, though with strong Irish 
 National feeling — of which he gave evidence in some of his 
 earlier ballads, and which came to the front in his successful 
 defence of Richard Dalton Williams, the Young Ireland 
 poet, when tried for treason-felony — he felt that the 
 highest duty he owed his country was that of a poet and 
 prose writer above party. But in his poetic capacity, as 
 pointed out by Mr. W. B. Yeats, " he was wiser than Young 
 Ireland in the choice of his models ; for while drawing not 
 less than they from purely Irish sources, he turned to the 
 great poets of the world for his style," and notably to 
 Homer : and the result is that, as Roden Noel puts it, 
 " Congal and his shorter Irish heroic poems combine in a 
 striking manner the vague, undefined shadowy grandeur, 
 the supernatural glamour of northern romance, with the 
 self-restraint, distinct symmetrical outline, ordered proportion 
 and organic construction of the Greek classic." More than 
 this, as his brother poet and friend, Aubrey de Vere, urges, 
 " its qualities are those characteristic of the noble, not the 
 ignoble poetry — viz., passion, imagination, vigour, an epic 
 largeness of conception, wide human sympathies, vivid and 
 
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 37 
 
 truthful description — while with them it unites none of the 
 vulgar stimulants for exhausted or morbid poetic appetite, 
 whether the epicurean seasoning, the sceptical, or the 
 revolutionary." 
 
 Ferguson differs from those who regard the realm of 
 poetry as another world detachable from this — a life 
 mystical, non-human, non-moral — the life, if you will, of 
 fairy, demon, or demi-god. Indeed, he was in no danger of 
 falling into this illusion. He was absolutely human and 
 practical ; broad and sympathetic-minded both. Yet for 
 entire success as a poet in his particular day he had to 
 struggle against difficulties constitutional, accidental, and 
 of his own seeking. His very versatility rendered difficult 
 that entire devotion of his energies to his art, of which 
 Tennyson is the great modern example. He could not 
 spare the time, even had he possessed the taste, for that 
 fastidious word-for-word finish in verse to which the late 
 Laureate accustomed the critics, and through them the 
 educated public, which undoubtedly, for the time being, 
 militated against the success of Ferguson's poetry. 
 
 Then he was deliberately facing the fact that the Irish 
 themes he had set his heart upon had no public behind 
 them. A generation before, they would have had the 
 support of a cultured and unprovincialised Irish upper 
 class ; a generation later they would have claimed attention, 
 in Ferguson's hands, as the noblest outcome of the Irish 
 literary revival. He was therefore both before and after his 
 time, and realised his position to the full. Indeed, when I 
 once spoke to him with regret of the neglect of all but 
 Irish political literature, he acknowledged it, but with the 
 quiet expression of his confidence that " his time would 
 come." Edward Dowden explains the fact that Coiigal 
 had not hit the popular taste in the following passage of a 
 letter to Sir Samuel : 
 
 A poem with epic breadth and thews is not likely to be popular now. 
 A diseased and over-sensitive nerve is a qualification for the writing of 
 
38 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 poetry at present, much more than a thoughtful brain or strength of 
 muscle. Some little bit of novel sensibility, a delight in such colours 
 as French milliners send over for ladies' bonnets, or the nosing of 
 certain curious odours, is enough to make the fortune of a small poet. 
 What seems to me most noteworthy in your poems is the union of 
 culture with simplicity and strength. Their refinement is large and 
 strong, not curious and diseased ; and they have spaces and move- 
 ments which give one a feeling like the sea or the air on a headland. I 
 had not meant to say anything of Coiigal^ but somehow this came and 
 said itself. 
 
 Nothing could be more truly appreciative of Ferguson's 
 work than this. That fine saying, " Your poems have spaces 
 and movements which give one a feeling like the sea or the 
 air on a headland," may be here illustrated by one of the 
 greatest passages in Co7igal ; indeed, it in all probability 
 suggested the criticism to Dr. Dow^den. It may be quoted, 
 moreover, as a telling example of how Ferguson's careless 
 or rough treatment of detail is carried off by the largeness 
 of his conception and movement : 
 
 lie looking landward from the brow of some great sea-cape's head. 
 Bray or Ben Edar — sees beneath, in silent pageant grand. 
 Slow fields of sunshine spread o'er fields of rich, corn-bearing land, 
 Red glebe and meadow margin green commingling to the view 
 With yellow stubble, browning woods, and upland tracts of blue ; 
 Then, sated with the pomp of fields, turns seaward to the verge 
 Where, mingling with the murmuring wash made by the far-do un 
 
 surge, 
 Comes up the clangorous song of birds unseen, that, low beneath, 
 Poised off the rock, ply underfoot ; and, 'mid the blossoming heath, 
 And mint-sweet herb that loves the ledge rare-air'd, at ease reclined. 
 Surveys the wide pale-heaving floor crisped by a curling wind ; 
 With all its shifting, shadowy belts, and chasing scopes of green, 
 Sun-strown, fonm-frecklcd, sail-embossed, and blackening squalls 
 
 between. 
 And slant, cerulean-skirted showers that with a drowsy sound. 
 Heard inward, of ebullient waves, stalk all the horizon round ; 
 And, haply, being a citizen just 'scaped from some disease 
 That long has held him sick indoors, now, in the brine-fresh breeze, 
 Health-salted, bathes ; and says, the while he breathes reviving bliss, 
 " I am not good enough, O God, nor pure enough for this ! " 
 
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 39 
 
 The ear educated to Tennyson's or Swinburne's verse 
 would be jarred by the heavy aggregation of consonants 
 here and there in the passage. But as a presentment of 
 country, cHff, and ocean, it is alike so broad and delicate in 
 colour and movement that it rises visibly before us, till the 
 echo of the sea is in our ears, and we breatlie and smell its 
 keen savours. Then the human note with which it closes is 
 inexpressibly touching. 
 
 It is not, however, implied that Ferguson is w^anting in 
 the musical ear or the appreciation of fine poetical crafts- 
 manship, but rather suggested that, unlike Tennyson and 
 other writers, he is not sedus ad imgtiem in everything he 
 attempts, because he is not careful to be so. Moreover, 
 like Wordsworth, he did not always write when his best 
 mood was upon him. And hence like Wordsworth and, I 
 may add, Browning, he will live in selections, though large 
 selections, from his works, rather than in their entirety. 
 Yet, The Forging of the AncJwr is a remarkably finished 
 achievement for a young man of one-and-twenty, and The 
 Fairy Thorn, another early poem, is exquisite wizardry 
 itself. True, it appears to have been conceived and 
 executed with a rapidity which was inspiration, and is 
 indeed one of Ferguson's gems without flaw. 
 
 Next come Ferguson's Translations from the Irish 
 which arose from his study of his country's language along 
 with O'Hagan, afterwards Lord Chancellor, and above all 
 George Fox, a young Belfast man, of whom he writes in 
 after life : 
 
 His discourse possessed a fascination equal to all that I have heard 
 ascribed to that of Coleridge, and under his influence my poetic faculty, 
 which had already shown itself in the ballad of Willy Gilliland, 
 acquired strength for the production of The Forging of the Anchor^ 
 published in Blackwood m May 1832. We had formed a private class 
 for the study of Irish. The early history of Ulster had already seized 
 on my imagination, and the Rehirn of Clancboy^ a prose romance 
 which I contributed about that time to Blackwood^ may be regarded 
 as the first indication of my ambition to raise the native elements 
 
40 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 of Irish Ilistcjiy to a dignified level ; and this ambition, I think, may 
 be taken as the key to almost all the literary work of my subsequent 
 life. 
 
 George Fox probably died young. " He left Belfast to 
 push his fortunes in British Guiana," writes Lady Ferguson 
 in her memoirs of her husband, and no doubt succumbed 
 to its unhealthy climate. His youthful friends heard no 
 more of him. They spared no efforts, through a long 
 period of years, to learn his fate. 
 
 When Ferguson, in 1864, published in his Lays of the 
 Western Gael his Versions front the Irish, which had 
 appeared first in the Diihlin U?iiversity Magazine of 1834 in 
 the form of translations with a Commentary from Hardiman's 
 Irish Minstrelsy, he would not include one of the best 
 among them, as he considered George Fox entitled to share 
 in the authorship of The County Mayo, and when almost 
 fifty years had passed since his early friend had been heard 
 of, and he, in 1880, published his Poems, the volume bore 
 this brief and touching dedication — Georgio, Amico, 
 Condiscipulo, Instaurafoii. 
 
 Ferguson's translations from the Irish differ from Miss 
 Brooke's and Miss Balfour's versions and those of other 
 translators preceding him, by their assimilation of Irish 
 idioms and the Irish spirit into English verse without 
 violence — indeed, with a happy judgment which lends a 
 delightful effect to these lyrics. Edward Walsh has scarcely 
 excelled Ferguson in this field; and Dr. Sigerson and 
 Dr. Hyde, though they come much closer to the original 
 metres, rarely go past him in poetical feeling and passion. 
 
 For the very character of the originals calls for simple 
 treatment, and high polish would have spoilt Ferguson's 
 verse translations from the Irish. 
 
 Ferguson was now casting round for nobler themes to 
 work upon, whilst keeping his hand in at these translations 
 from the Irish. Patriotic to the core, he was above all 
 things eager to achieve something lofty in literature for 
 
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 4 1 
 
 Ireland's sake — something that might help to lift her from 
 the intellectual flats upon which she had fallen. 
 
 Moreover, another Belfast friend and mentor, Dr. 
 Robert Gordon, was keeping him up to his highest poetical 
 self by a series of memorable letters, extracts from which 
 Lady Ferguson gives in her Biography of Sir Samuel, as thus : 
 
 "You rejoice me, I speak seriously, by saying you are 'doing.' 
 To be and to do. O Ferguson, those little words contain the sum of all 
 man's destiny. You are strong, and I would have you strike some note 
 that will reverberate down the vista of time. Will you, Ferguson ? " 
 
 In the course of his delightful New Year's Epistle to 
 Robert Gordon, M.D., dated ist of January, 1845, Ferguson 
 thus responds to his friends' appeal : 
 
 For ilka day I'm growin' stranger 
 To speak my mind in love or anger ; 
 And, hech ! ere it be muckle langer, 
 
 You'll see appearin' 
 Some offerin's o' nae cauld haranguer, 
 
 Put out for Erin. 
 
 Lord, for ane day o' service done her ! 
 
 Lord, for ane hour's sunlight upon her ! 
 
 Here, Fortune, tak' warld's wealth and honour, 
 
 You're no' my debtor. 
 Let me but rive ae link asunder 
 
 O' Erin's fetter ! 
 
 Let me but help to shape the sentence 
 Will put the pith o' independence, 
 O' self-respect in self-acquaintance, 
 
 And manly pride 
 Intil auld Eber-Scot's descendants — 
 
 Take a' beside I 
 
 Let me but help to get the truth 
 Set fast in ilka brother's mouth. 
 Whatever accents, north or south, 
 
 His tongue may use, 
 And there's ambition, riches, youth ; 
 
 Tak' which you choose ! 
 
 But before he had ripened for the full outcome of his 
 
42 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 genius Ferguson anticipated it by one of the noblest laments 
 in our language, Thomas Davis: an Eks^y, 1845, a 
 poignant expression of his grief at the death of his friend, 
 the famous young National leader. 
 
 Sir Charles Gavan Duffy tells us that " Ferguson, who 
 lay on a bed of sickness when Davis died, impatient that 
 for the moment he could not declare it in public, asked me 
 to come to him, that he might ease his heart by expressing 
 in private his sense of what he had lost. He read me frag- 
 ments of a poem written under these circumstances, the most 
 Celtic in structure and spirit of all the elegies laid on the tomb 
 of Davis. The last verse sounded like a prophecy ; it was, 
 at any rate, a powerful incentive to take up our task anew." 
 
 This poem, which has not been as yet included in 
 Ferguson's published works, and is in many respects 
 especially typical of his genius, now follows at length. The 
 modern Irish Celt has indeed inherited a wonderful gift for 
 the elegy, as Moore's lines on the death of Sheridan, Dr. 
 Sigerson's to the memory of Isaac Butt and Thomas Davis's 
 own immortal lament for Owen Roe O'Neill abundantly 
 demonstrate. 
 
 LAMENT FOR THOMAS DAVIS. 
 
 I walked through Ballinderry in the spring-time, 
 
 When the bud was on the tree ; 
 And I said, in every fresh-ploughed field beholding 
 
 The sowers striding free, 
 Scattering broadside forth the corn in golden plenty 
 
 On the quick seed-clasping soil, 
 " Even such, this day, among the fresh-stirred hearts of Erin, 
 
 Thomas Davis, is thy toil ! " 
 
 I sat by Ballyshannon in the summer, "■ 
 
 And saw the salmon leap ; 
 And I said, as I beheld the gallant creatures 
 
 Spring glittering from the deep, 
 Through the spray, and through the prone heaps striving onward 
 
 To the calm clear streams above, 
 '* So seekest thou thy native founts of freedom, Thomas Davis, 
 
 In thy brightness of strength and love ! " 
 
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 43 
 
 I stood on Derrybawn in the autumn, 
 
 And I heard the eagle call, 
 With a clangorous cry of wrath and lamentation 
 
 That filled the wide mountain hall, 
 O'er the bare deserted place of his plundered eyrie ; 
 
 And I said, as he screamed and soared, 
 '* So callest thou, thou wrathful soaring Thomas Davis, 
 
 For a nation's rights restored ! " 
 
 And, alas ! to think but now, and thou art lying, 
 
 Dear Davis, dead at thy mother's knee ; 
 And I, no mother near, on my own sick-bed, 
 
 That face on earth shall never see ; 
 I may lie and try to feel that 1 am dreaming, 
 
 I may lie and try to say, '* Thy will be done " — 
 But a hundred such as I will never comfort Erin 
 
 For the loss of the noble son ! 
 
 Young husbandman of Erin's fruitful seed-time. 
 
 In the fresh track of danger's plough ! 
 Who will walk the heavy, toilsome, perilous furrow 
 
 Girt with freedom's seed-sheets now ? 
 Who will banish with the wholesome crop of knowledge 
 
 The daunting weed and the bitter thorn, 
 Now that thou thyself art but a seed for hopeful planting 
 
 Against the Resurrection morn ? 
 
 Young salmon of the fiood-tide of freedom 
 
 That swells round Erin's shore ! 
 Thou wilt leap against their loud oppressive torrent 
 
 Of bigotry and hate no more ; 
 Drawn downward by their prone material instinct, 
 
 Let them thunder on their rocks and foam— 
 Thou hast leapt, aspiring soul, to founts beyond their raging. 
 
 Where troubled waters never come ! 
 
 But I grieve not, Eagle of the empty eyrie. 
 
 That thy wrathful cry is still ; 
 And that the songs alone of peaceful mourners 
 
 Are heard to-day on Erin's hill ; 
 Better far, if brothers' war be destined for us, 
 
 (God avert that horrid day, I pray). 
 That ere our hands be stained with slaughter fratricidal 
 
 Thy warm heart should be cold in clay. 
 
44 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 But my trust is strong in God, Wlio made us brothers, 
 
 That He will not suffer their right hands 
 Which thou hast joined in holier rites than wedlock 
 
 To draw opposing; brands. 
 Oh, many a tuneful tongue that thou mad'st vocal 
 
 Would lie cold and silent then ; 
 And songlcss long once more, should often-widowed Erin 
 
 Mourn the loss of her brave young men. 
 
 Oh, brave young men, my love, my pride, my promise, 
 
 'Tis on you my hopes are set. 
 In manliness, in kindliness, injustice. 
 
 To make Erin a nation yet ; 
 Self-respecting, self-relying, self-advancing, 
 
 In union or in severance, free and strong — 
 And if God grant this, then, under God, to Thomas Davis 
 
 Let the greater praise belong. 
 
 The Irish potato famine now intervened, and drove 
 Ferguson into the scBva indignatio of Juvenal at the Govern- 
 ment mismanagement, which had multipHed its horrors a 
 hundredfold. 
 
 No one knew this better than himself, for he was 
 secretary to the Irish Council, whose wise advice, tendered 
 to the English Parliament, was rejected in favour of futile 
 experimental legislation in the way of relief-road making 
 and so forth. Convinced that a Parliament after Grattan's 
 model would have saved the country, he became a Repealer 
 and one of the poets of Repeal. 
 
 Deem not, O generous English hearts, who gave 
 Your noble aid our sinking Isle to save. 
 This breast, though heated in its Country's feud. 
 Owns aught towards jw^- but perfect gratitude. 
 
 But, frankly, while we thank you all who sent 
 Your alms, so thank we not your Parliament, 
 Who, what they gave, from treasures of our own 
 Gave, if you call it giving, this half loan, 
 Half gift from the recipients to themselves 
 Of their own millions, be they tens or twelves ; 
 
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 4$ 
 
 Our own as well as yours : our Irish brows 
 
 Had sweated for them ; though your Commons' House, 
 
 Forgetting your four hundred millions debt, 
 
 When first in partnership our nations met, 
 
 Against our twenty-four (you then two-fold 
 
 The poorer people), call them British Gold. 
 
 No ; for these drafts on our United Banks 
 
 We owe no gratitude, and give no thanks ! 
 
 More than you'd give to us, if Dorsetshire 
 
 Or York a like assistance should require ; 
 
 Or than you gave us when, to compensate 
 
 Your slave-owners, you charged our common state 
 
 Twice the amount : no, but we rather give 
 
 Our curses, and will give them while we live. 
 
 To that pernicious blind conceit and pride, 
 
 Wherewith the aids we asked you misapplied. 
 
 Sure, for our wretched Country's various ills 
 We've got, a man would think, enough of bills — 
 Bills to make paupers, bills to feed them made ; 
 Bills to make sure that paupers' bills are paid ; 
 Bills in each phrase of economic slang ; 
 Bills to transport the men they dare not hang. 
 (I mean no want of courage physical, 
 'Tis Conscience doth make cowards of us all !) 
 
 Allowance must be made for the passionate bitterness or 
 this invective from the circumstances that Ferguson had 
 seen the Irish peasantry he loved dying of starvation before 
 his very eyes and because of the neglect of the British 
 Government of ordinary precautions for " more than a third 
 of the potato crop throughout the island was gone, in some 
 districts more than half, and at the same time the bulk of 
 the remaining supplies, cattle and corn, butter, beef and 
 pork, which would have fed all the inhabitants, continued 
 to be exported to England to pay the rent of farms which 
 would no longer yield the cultivators their ordinary food." 
 
 Ferguson, however, lived to turn this fine power of 
 literary invective against the successors of the Young Ire- 
 land poets and patriots with whom he had sympathised 
 
46 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 when he found them descending from the high aspirations 
 and manly action of Davis and Duffy to what he 
 characterised as " a sordid social war of classes carried on 
 by the vilest methods." 
 
 In his satiric poems The Curse of the Joyces and 
 At the Polo Ground — an analysis in Browning's manner 
 of Carey's frame of mind before giving the fatal signal to 
 the assassins of Mr. Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish 
 — and in his Dublin eclogue Li Carefs Footsteps, he 
 exposes the cruelties of the boycotting system of political 
 agitation with unsparing severity. 
 
 In 1864 appeared Ferguson's Lays of the Western 
 Gael, a gratifying surprise even to many of his friends, 
 owing to the inclusion in it of fresh and finer work than 
 he had yet achieved. Their point of departure is thus 
 well described by Mr. A. M. Williams, the American 
 critic : 
 
 Tne Lays of the Western Gael are a series of ballads founded on 
 events in Celtic history, and derived from the Early Chronicles and 
 poems. They are original in form and substance, the ballad form and 
 measure being unknown to the early Celtic poets of Ireland ; but they 
 preserve in a wonderful degree the ancient spirit, and give a picture of 
 the ancient times with all the art of verity. They have a solemnity of 
 measure like the voice of one of the ancient bards chanting ol 
 
 Old forgotten far-off things 
 And battles long ago, 
 
 and they are clothed with the mists of a melancholy age. They 
 include such subjects as The aTin Quest, ^(h.Q. search of the bard for the 
 lost lay of the great cattle-raid of Queen Maeve of Connaught, and its 
 recovery, by invocation, from the voice of its dead author, who rises in 
 misty form above his grave ; The Healing of Conall Carnach, a story of 
 violated sanctuary and its punishment ; The Welshman of Tirawley, one 
 of the most spirited and original, and which has been pronounced by 
 Mr. Swinburne as amongst the finest of modern ballads, telling of a 
 cruel mulct inflicted upon the members of a Welsh Colony and its 
 vengeance ; and other incidents in early Irish history. In his poems, 
 rather than in Macpherson's Ossian or in the literal translations, will 
 the modern reader find the voice of the ancient Celtic bards speaking 
 
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 47 
 
 to the intelligence of to-day in their own tones, without false 
 change and dilution, or the confusion and dimness of an ancient 
 language. 
 
 Of the longer lays thus far published, The Ta'm Quest 
 found the greatest acceptance with his poetic compeers, and 
 the most notable criticism of it was that of Thomas Aird, 
 the fine Scottish poet, author of The Devil's Dream ofi Moimt 
 Aksheck : 
 
 In all respects The Tain Quest is one of the most striking poems of 
 our day. Specially do I admire the artistic skill with which you 
 have doubled the interest of the Quest itself by introducing in the 
 most natural and unencumbering way so many of the best points of the 
 Great Cattle Foray^ the subject-matter of the Tain. The shield has 
 long been grand in poetry ; you have made it grander. The refusal of 
 Fergus to stir to the force of private sympathy, but his instantaneous 
 recognition of the patriotic necessity of song, is a just and noble 
 conception 
 
 The power of the Bard over the rude men of Gort ; the filial piety 
 of the sons of Sanchan, and their brotherly love ; that mysterious Vapour, 
 and that terrible blast of entrance, and the closing malediction by the 
 Maiden, are all very notable towards the consummation of effect. As 
 for the kissing of the champions in the pauses of the fight, I know of 
 nothing in the reaches of our human blood so marvellously striking and 
 sweet ; you have now made it immortal in song. However admirably 
 expressed, the last stanza is an error in art. Surely you spoil the grand 
 close, and the whole piece, by appending your own personality of 
 interference as a commentator on the malediction. Might I not further 
 say (with a peculiar smile) you make the preordained fulfilment of 
 Malison a sublime apology for Irish Grub Street ? 
 
 The sting in the tail of Aird's fine judgment is deserved, 
 and it is curious to observe that Ferguson has been 
 similarly unlucky in The Welshmen of Tlrawley in this 
 attempt to tag a comment on to the end of a tale which 
 he has so nobly adorned. That magnificently savage lay 
 should end with the anti-penultimate stanza. 
 
 This tendency to act at times as a commentator on his 
 own work and to present it at others in a too ponderously 
 Latinised form, as well as the careless, not to say bluff, 
 
48 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 disregard for verbal delicacies into which he now and again 
 lapses, are the only proclivities to which exception can be 
 taken in Ferguson's technique. For his method is uniformly 
 manly, and his occasional periods of majestic inspiration 
 sweep our minor critical objections before them, as the 
 blast from his Mananan's mantle swept the chieftain and his 
 hound into the valley like leaves before the wind. 
 
 We have taken Ferguson to our hearts as we take our 
 best brother, loving his very ponderosities and carelessnesses 
 as part and parcel of his greatness, as we love the kindred 
 qualities in Samuel Johnson — for the sake of the man and 
 the gentleman. 
 
 In 1872 appeared Congal^ which Ferguson describes in 
 a letter to Father Russell as an epic poem of greater length 
 and higher literary pretension than his Lays of the Wesfe?'fi 
 Gael. 
 
 An epic requires a great subject, and he who writes 
 it must have vision and manliness closely allied to his 
 nature, else how can he realise the heroic ideal? These 
 are Ferguson's pre-eminent qualities. He is manly. His 
 heroes proclaim it in their every action, their every utter- 
 ance ; and his tender portrait of Lafinda could only have 
 been drawn by a gallant gentleman. He has vision. The 
 terrible shapes and Celtic superstitions — the Giant Walker, 
 the Washer of the Ford — loom monstrously before us as 
 he sings ; and he marshals the contending hosts at Moyra 
 with a magnificent realism to which we know no modern 
 parallel. 
 
 His subject is a great old-world tale of love and hate, 
 and ambition and jealousy, and craft and courage — a 
 splendid story of the last heroic stand made by Celtic 
 Paganism against the Irish Champions of the Cross. 
 
 But great though much of Cotigal undoubtedly is, 
 Ferguson's genius was to break into finest flower at the 
 last. 
 
 The volume of 1880 contains some striking verse of a 
 
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON 49 
 
 religious, philosophical and personal kind, including the 
 searching Two Voices^ the trenchant and yet more touching 
 Three Thoughts^ the noble lines entitled The Morning's 
 Hinges^ and the lofty Hymn of the Fishermen — a poem 
 written after a surmounted danger of shipwreck. But in 
 Deirdre and Conary he reaches his fullest height as a poet, 
 and the best that has been said or could well be said about 
 them comes from William Allingham and Aubrey de Vere — 
 the two Irishmen of his time whose opinion should interest, 
 if not influence, us most. 
 
 Allingham wrote on receipt of the volume : " Many 
 thoughts of my own swarmed about the pages as I turned 
 them, like bees in a lime-tree. In your style high culture is 
 reconciled with simplicity, directness, and originality; and 
 nothing can be happier than your enrichment of English 
 speech with Irish forms without the least violence. All the 
 Irish poems are very remarkable, but Deirdre I count the 
 chief triumph. Its peculiar form of unity is perfectly 
 managed, while in general effect it recalls nothing so much 
 as a Greek play." 
 
 Mr. Aubrey de Vere and Mr. Yeats, and perhaps the 
 larger proportion of the other leading Irish critics, prefer 
 Conary to Deirdre. 
 
 " It would be difficult," writes De Vere, " to find, amid 
 our recent literature, a poem which at once aims as high 
 as Conary and as adequately fulfils its aim . . . Novel to 
 English readers as is such a poetic theme, and embarrassing 
 as are a few of the Gaelic names, the work belongs to the 
 ' great ' style of poetry^ — that style which is characterised 
 by simpHcity, breadth of effect, a careless strength full of 
 movement, but with nothing of the merely sensational about 
 it, and an entire absence of those unclassic tricks that 
 belong to meaner verse. It has caught thoroughly that epic 
 character so remarkable in those Bardic Legends which were 
 transmitted orally through ages when Homer must have been 
 a name unknown in Ireland." 
 
 £ 
 
50 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 To sum up : though at times over-scholarly and nodding 
 now and again — as all the great unconscious poets, from 
 Homer down, will occasionally nod, as opposed to the little 
 self-conscious ones who are never caught napping — Ferguson 
 is always human, always simple, always strong. Sense ever 
 goes before sound with him. He is no mere reed for 
 blowing music through. He takes you into no gorgeous 
 jungle of colour and scent, and stealing serpent and raven- 
 ing beast, where perspective is lost and will pnralysed, and 
 passion riots unrestrained. No ! What Mr. W. B. Yeats 
 finely wrote of him in 1886 is still true to-day : 
 
 " The author of these poems is the greatest poet Ireland 
 has produced, because the most central and most Celtic. 
 Whatever the future may bring forth in the way of a truly 
 great and national literature — and now that the race is so 
 large, so widely spread, and so conscious of its unity, the 
 years are ripe — will find its morning in these three volumes 
 of one who was made by the purifying flame of national 
 sentiment the one man of his time who wTOte heroic 
 poetry — one who, among the somewhat sybaritic singers of 
 his day, was like some aged sea-king sitting among the 
 inland wheat and poppies — the savour of the sea about him 
 and its strength." 
 
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 
 
 When in the year 1880 I wrote a memoir of Joseph 
 Sheridan Le Fanu, as a Preface to his Furcell Papers^ 
 published by Bentley and Son, I was not aware that, 
 besides being the author of the Irish poems contained in 
 that collection of Irish stories and of the celebrated 
 Shamiis O'Brien^ Le Fanu had anonymously contributed 
 half-a-dozen other poems to the Dublin University Magazine 
 between the years 1863 and 1866 ; two of which. The Legend 
 of the Glaive and Beatrice^ exhibit Le Fanu's genius in a 
 new and unexpected light. They show him to have been 
 capable of dramatic and lyrical creation on a distinctly 
 higher plane than he had hitherto reached, although the 
 forms in which the drama and the legend are cast are 
 clearly experimental and not always successful. The same 
 magnetic attributes of superhuman mystery, grim or ghastly 
 humour and diabolic horror which characterise the finest 
 of his prose fictions meet us again. But these qualities are 
 often conveyed with a finer touch, and at times with a 
 directness of suggestion that is overwhelming. Again, the 
 lurid terror of these narratives is happily relieved by inter- 
 ludes of such haunting beauty of colour and sound, that we 
 cannot but lament the lateness of this discovery of his 
 highest artistic self. Indeed, our literature can ill afford 
 to lose lyrical drama with such a stamp of appalling power 
 as is impressed on Beatrice, or old-world idylls so full of 
 Gaelic glamour as The Legend of the Glaive, and such a 
 terrible confession by a drunkard of how he had fallen 
 irrevocably into the toils of the Enchantress Drink. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Let this criticism be judged by the subjoined extracts 
 CHORUS FROM "BEATRICE." 
 
 Sad night is o'er the city of the Isles 
 
 And o'er a palace that amid her glooming 
 
 With a radiant halo smiles, 
 
 While music from its windows booming 
 
 Floats the voice of masque and measure 
 
 Through distant domes and marble piles, 
 
 And hymns the jubilee of youth and pleasure. 
 
 Between the ripple dimly plashing, 
 
 And the dark roof looming high, 
 
 Lost in the funereal sky, 
 
 Like many-coloured jewels flashing, 
 
 Small lamps in loops and rosaries of fire, 
 
 Verdant and blood-red, trembling, turning — 
 
 Yellow and blue — in the deep water burning. 
 
 From dark till dawning 
 
 Illumine all the wide concave, 
 
 And plash and stain the marble and the wave 
 
 From balconies in air 
 
 Th' emblazoned silken awning 
 
 Flows like a lazy sail ; 
 
 And gondoliers down there, 
 
 And masks upon the stair. 
 
 Hear music swelling o'er them like a gale. 
 
 Italian grace and gaiety, 
 
 And silver-bearded policy, 
 
 Princes and soldiers, sage and great, 
 
 The craft and splendour of the State, 
 
 Proud dames and Adria's fair daughters, 
 
 The sirens of Venetian waters, 
 
 Beautiful as summer dreams 
 
 Dreamed in haunted forest glade, 
 
 By silvery streams in leafy gleams. 
 
 Floating through the shade. 
 
 The noble palace peopled was right meetly, 
 
 And in its wide saloons the dance went featly, 
 
 And high above the hum 
 
 Swelled the thunder and the hoot 
 
 Of theorbo and viol, of the hautboy and the flute. 
 
 And the roaring of the drum. 
 
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 53 
 
 SCENE FROM ''BEATRICE." 
 
 Beatrice. 
 
 They lifted me down from the giddy plank 
 
 Into the boat that rose and sank ; 
 
 The eager sails that rattle and slap 
 
 With thundering flap, 
 
 At a turn of the tiller filled at last, 
 
 And stooped the mast. 
 
 As the wet rope raced through the mooring ring, 
 
 On the mad waves their boat was free ; 
 
 And like a wild bird on the wing, 
 
 With sudden dive and soaring swing, 
 
 Still bending with the breeze away. 
 
 Away she swept on the laughing sea 
 
 Among waves and romping sea and spray. 
 
 Away the dancing island goes, 
 
 The sleeping headland dipt and rose. 
 
 The billows, that wild creatures be 
 
 Of the hearty and wondrous sea, 
 
 In sport and power 
 
 Welcome the boat with snort and plash 
 
 And riotous dash, 
 
 And hail of foamy shower. 
 
 High, spring high, 
 
 Surge, in your roaring glee ; 
 
 Fly, foam, fly ! 
 
 And whirling mist of the sea ! 
 
 CHORUS FROM "BEATRICE." 
 
 Man upon his journey hies — 
 
 A chequered course and variable, 
 
 Walking through life as he is shown 
 
 By gleams through yawning darkness thrown — 
 
 By lights that fall from Paradise 
 
 And hues that cross from hell. 
 
 Can we read his words or ways ? 
 Whence he acts, or whereto thinks? 
 A vapour changing as we gaze, 
 An utterance of the Sphinx. 
 
54 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Still the man our judgment baulks ; 
 Good is he ? or, is he evil ? 
 At his right an Angel walks, 
 At his left a Devil. 
 
 PART OF A SCENE FROM *' BEATRICE.' 
 
 Who enters ? Lo ! 
 
 Passing phantom-like the door, 
 
 A silent monk stands on the floor. 
 
 Is he anchorite or devil ? 
 
 High and gaunt this form of evil 
 
 Gliding noiselessly has sought her, 
 
 As a shadow on the water. 
 
 Marble-like beneath his cowl 
 
 Gleams the curve of his anguine scowl, 
 
 The broad cold eyes — that greenly stare 
 
 And ever seem to search and smile, 
 
 And find in all things something vile. 
 
 She did not mean to greet him here ; 
 She rose as people rise in fear ; 
 He stood there in his garment sooty, 
 She stood gleaming in her glory, 
 Face to face, like Death and Beauty, 
 In a painted allegory. 
 
 FROM "THE LEGEND OF THE GLAIVE." 
 
 Through the woods of Morrua and over its root-knotted flooring 
 The hero speeds onward, alone, on his terrible message ; 
 When faint and far-off, like the gathering gallop of battle. 
 The hoofs of the hurricane louder and louder come leaping. 
 Dizzy lightnings split this way and that in the blind void above him ; 
 For a moment long passages reeling and wald with the tempest, 
 In the blue mass and dazzle of lightning, throb vivid and vanish ; 
 And white glare the wrinkles and knots of the oak-trees beside him. 
 While close overhead clap the quick mocking palms of the Storm- 
 Fiend. 
 
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU $5 
 
 The forest opens as he tjoes, 
 
 And smitten trees in groups and rows 
 
 Beneath the tempest's tune, 
 
 Stand in the mists of midnight drooping, 
 
 By moss-grown rocks fantastic stooping, 
 
 In the blue shadows of the yellow moon. 
 
 THE CROMLECH. 
 
 And in the moonlight, bleached as bones, 
 Uprose the monumental stones, 
 Meeting the hero suddenly 
 With a blind stare 
 Dull as despair. 
 The formless boulder that blocked the door 
 Like a robed monster, broad and hoar. 
 
 He twice essayed to earth to throw 
 With quivering sinew, bursting vein, 
 
 With grinding teeth and scowling brow. 
 From his dark forehead with the strain, 
 Beads start and drop like thunder-rain ; 
 And in the breathless tug and reek, 
 All his lithe body seems to creak. 
 
 The mighty stone to earth is hurled. 
 Black gapes the violated door. 
 Through which he rushes, to rise no more 
 Into this fair, sad world. 
 
 TIIORGIL AND HIS GLAIVE. 
 
 Where high the vaults of midnight gape 
 In the black waste, a blacker shape — 
 And near against a distant dark. 
 He could the giant Norseman mark, 
 A black tarn's waters sitting by ; 
 Beneath a brazen, stormy sky. 
 That never moves but dead doth lie. 
 And on the rock could darkly see 
 The mighty glaive beside his knee. 
 The hero's front and upreared form 
 Loomed dim as headlands in a storm. 
 No more will flicker passion's meteors 
 O'er the dead shadow of his features. 
 
56 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Fixed in the apathy eternal 
 
 That lulls him in repose infernal. 
 
 The cornice of his knotted brows 
 
 A direful shadow downward throws 
 
 Upon his eyeballs, dull and stark, 
 
 Like white stones glimmering in the dark ; 
 
 And, carved in their forlorn despair, 
 
 His glooming features changeless wear 
 
 Gigantic sorrow and disdain, 
 
 The iron sneer of endless pain. 
 
 From the lips of the awful phantom woke 
 
 A voice ; and thus, by the tarn, it spoke : — 
 
 " Son of Malmorra, what canst thou gather here ? " 
 The spell was broke that struck him dumb. 
 And held his soul aghast and numb, 
 
 With a wild throb, 
 
 A laugh, and sob. 
 The frenzied courage came again 
 Of Cathair, the Prince of men. 
 With planted foot, with arm extended, 
 And his ferine gaze distended, 
 Back flowed the cataract of his hair 
 From the gleaming face of the great Cathair ; 
 And he shouted, lion-voiced. 
 Like one defying who rejoiced : — 
 "Thorgil, king of the wintry sea, 
 Of the nine-gapped sword and minstrel glee. 
 Of mountains dark and craggy valleys. 
 Of the golden cup and the hundred galleys, 
 Malmorra's son, myself, have sworn 
 To take thy sword or ne'er return ! " 
 The Norseman's phantom, black and dread, 
 Turned not, lifted not his head. 
 Mute, without anger or alarm 
 As shadow stretches, stretched his arm ; 
 Upon the hilt his hand he laid. 
 The metal dull one bell-note made — 
 One cold flash from the awakened blade 
 P lecked the waste sky with flying glare, 
 
 Like northern lights 
 
 That sport o' nights 
 Shuddering across the empty air. 
 
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 57 
 
 High overhead, where died the light 
 Through the wide caverns of the night, 
 The imprisoned echoes, whispering first, 
 Afar in moaning thunders burst. 
 Mortal armour nought avails- 
 Shearing the air, the enchanted blade 
 Of Thorgil a strange music made ; 
 The brazen concave of the sky 
 Returns its shrilly sigh, 
 Above — around — along — 
 With the roaring shiver of a gong. 
 
 Black night around him floating, and booming of the sea 
 Have borne away the hero on the spirit-maelstrom free ; 
 The shadows round him deepen in his soft and dreamless 
 flight— 
 
 The pause of a new birth, 
 
 A forgetting of the earth. 
 
 Its action and its thinking, 
 
 A mighty whirl and sinking, 
 A lapsing into Lethe, and the ocean caves of night. 
 
 A DRUNKARD'S ADDRESS TO A BOTTLE OF 
 WHISKEV. 
 
 From what dripping cell, through what fairy glen, 
 Where 'mid old rocks and ruins the fox makes his den ; 
 Over what lonesome mountain, 
 
 Acushla machree ! 
 
 Where gauger never has trod , 
 
 Sweet as the flowery sod, 
 
 Wild as the breath 
 
 Of the breeze on the heath, 
 And sparklin' all o'er like the moon-lighted fountain, 
 
 Are you come to me — 
 
 Sorrowful me ? 
 
 Dancing — inspirin' — 
 My wild blood firin' ; 
 Oh ! terrible glory — 
 Oh ! beautiful siren — 
 Come, tell the old story — 
 Come, light up my fancy, and open my heart. 
 
58 IRISH LITERARY AND .MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Oh ! beautiful ruin — 
 My life — my undoin' — 
 Soft and fierce as a pantheress, 
 Dream of my longing, and wreck of my soul, 
 I never knew love till I loved you, enchantheress ! 
 
 At first, when I knew you, 'twas only flirtation, 
 
 The touch of a lip and the flash of an eye ; 
 Eut 'tis different now — 'tis desperation ! 
 I worship before you, 
 I curse and adore you, 
 And without you I'd die. 
 
 Wirrasthrue ! 
 I wish 'twas again 
 The happy time when 
 I cared little about you. 
 Could do well without you, 
 Eut would just laugh and view you ; 
 'Tis little I knew you ! 
 
 Oh ! terrible darlin', 
 
 How have you sought me. 
 
 Enchanted, and caught me ? 
 
 See, now, where you've brought me — 
 To sleep by the road-side, and dress out in rags. 
 
 Think how you found me ; 
 
 Dreams come around me — 
 The dew of my childhood, and life's morning beam ; 
 Now I sleep by the road-side, a wretch all in rags. 
 My heart that sang merrily when I was young. 
 
 Swells up like a billow and bursts in despair ; 
 And the wreck of my hopes on sweet memory flung, 
 
 And cries on the air, 
 Are all that is left of the dream. 
 
 Wirrasthrue ! 
 My father and mother. 
 The priest, and my brother — 
 Not a one has a good word for you. 
 But I can't part you, darling, their preachin's all vain ; 
 
 You'll burn in my heart till these thin pulses stop ; 
 And the wild cup of life in your fragrance I'll drain 
 To the last brilliant drop. 
 
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 59 
 
 Then oblivion will cover 
 
 The shame that is over, 
 The brain that was mad, and the heart that was sore. 
 
 Then, beautiful witch, 
 
 I'll be found — in a ditch, 
 With your kiss on my cold lips, and never rise more. 
 
 Le Fanu, as Mr. T. W. Rolleston writes in A Treasury oj 
 Irish Poetry, edited by Dr. Stopford Brooke and himself, 
 " was certainly one of the most remarkable of Irish writers. 
 
 In Uncle Silas, in his wonderful tales of the supernatural, 
 such as The Watcher, and in a short and less known but 
 most masterly story The Rooiri in the Dragon Volant, he 
 touched the springs of terror and suspense as perhaps no 
 other writer of fiction in the language has been able to do. 
 His fine scholarship, poetic sense, and strong yet delicate 
 handling of language and of incident give these tales a 
 place quite apart among works of sensational fiction. But 
 perhaps the most interesting of all his novels is The House 
 by the Churchyard, a wonderful mixture of sentimentalism, 
 humour, tragedy and romance. 
 
 His Legend of the Glaive shows the weird and romantic 
 touch which he had at command, and The Address to the 
 Bottle has much of the almost savage energy which he 
 showed more in certain scenes of The House by the Church- 
 yard than anywhere else." 
 
 Le Fanu, as the readers of the Purcell Papers, and more 
 recently of Seve?ity Years of Irish Life by his brother 
 William, will know, showed unusual talent for verse as a boy 
 of fifteen years of age, as witness these hnes, in which, 
 although the thought is evidently as secondhand as that 
 pervading Tennyson's boyish lyrics, the medium of its 
 expression is distinctly poetical. 
 
 There is an hour of sadness all have known. 
 
 That weighs upon the heart we scarce know why ; 
 
 We feel unfriended, cheerless and alone, 
 We ask no other pleasure but to sigh, 
 
 And muse on days of happiness gone by : 
 
6o IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 A painful, lonely pleasure which imparts 
 A cahn regret, a deep serenity, 
 
 That soothes the rankling of misfortune's darts, 
 And kindly lends a solace even to broken hearts. 
 
 Young Le Fanu was naturally a student, and made good 
 use of his father's excellent library. But though of a dreamy 
 and evidently unmethodical disposition, he had his wits 
 about him when they were wanted, as the following anec- 
 dote chronicled by his brother will show : 
 
 " One thing that much depressed the Dean was his 
 habitually being late for prayers. One morning, breakfast 
 was nearly over, and he had not appeared. My father, 
 holding his watch in his hand, said in his severest tones, ' I 
 ask you, Joseph, I ask you seriously, is this right ? ' ' No, 
 sir,' said Joe, glancing at the watch, ' I'm sure it must be 
 fast.' " 
 
 This was an instance of precocious wit further exempli- 
 fied by the brilliant piece of doggerel sent as a valentine 
 
 to a pretty Miss K a few years later, from which we 
 
 may quote the following : 
 
 Your frown or your smile make me Savage or Gay 
 
 In action as well as in song ; 
 And if 'tis decreed I at length become Gray, 
 
 Express but the word, and I'm Young. 
 And if in the Church I should ever aspire 
 
 With friars and abbots to cope, 
 By a nod, if you please, you can make me a Prior, 
 
 By a word you can render me Pope. 
 If you'd eat, I'm a Crabbe ; if you'd cut, I'm your Steele, 
 
 As sharp as you'd get from the cutler ; 
 I'm your Cotton whene'er you're in want of a reel, 
 
 And your livery carry, as Butler. 
 
 He had also an early eye for a humorous situation, for 
 on another occasion an elderly woman, whom he had never 
 seen before and never saw after, looked at him as if she 
 recognised him. 
 
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 6 1 
 
 Woman. — " O then, Masther Richard, is that yerself?" 
 
 Joseph. — " Of course it is myself. Who else should I 
 be?" 
 
 Woman.—" Ah, then, Masther Richard, it's proud I am 
 to see you. I hardly knew you at first, you're grown so 
 much. And how is the mistress and all the family ? " 
 
 Joseph. — "All quite well, thank you. But why can't 
 you ever come to see us ? " 
 
 Woman. — " Ah, Masther Richard, don't you know I 
 daren't face the house since that affair of the spoons ? " 
 
 Joseph. — " Don't you know that is all forgotten and 
 forgiven ? " 
 
 Woman. — " If I knew that, I'd have been up at the 
 house long ago." 
 
 Joseph. — " I'll tell you what to do; come up to dinner 
 with the servants. You know the hour, and you will be 
 surprised at the welcome you will get." 
 
 Woman.— " Well, please God, I will, Masther Richard." 
 
 The tone of O'Donoghue, an unfinished poem written 
 at fifteen, and of his later Irish National Ballads^ was due 
 to his mother, who, as a girl, had been in her heart more or 
 less a rebel, and she, not the Dean, was the critic of his 
 boyish verse. She told him of the hard fate which in 'q8 
 befell many of those she knew and admired, including the 
 brothers Sheares, and bequeathed to William Le Fanu a 
 very interesting letter written, just before his execution, by 
 John Sheares to her father, Dr. Dobbin, in which he defends 
 himself from the charge of connivance at assassination for 
 which he was about to suffer death. The character ot 
 Sheares makes it impossible to doubt the truth of these his 
 dying words. She told him much of Lord Edward Fitz- 
 Gerald and the fight he made for his life, and showed him 
 the dagger with which he defended it. This dagger she 
 possessed herself of, taking it surreptitiously from its owner. 
 Major Swan, because, in her own words, — 
 
 " When I saw the dagger in the hands with which Lord 
 
62 IRISH IJTERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Edward had striven in the last fatal struggle for life or death, 
 I felt that it was not rightfully his who held it. I knew 
 the spot in the front drawing-room where it was laid, and 
 one evening I seized it, unobserved, and thrust it into 
 my bosom ; I returned to the company, where I had to 
 sit for an hour. As soon as we got home I rushed up to 
 the room which my sister and I occupied, and plunged it 
 among the feathers of my bed, and for upwards of twelve 
 years I lay every night upon the bed which contained my 
 treasure. 
 
 " When I left home I took it wiih me and it has been my 
 companion in all the vicissitudes of life. When he missed 
 it, Major Swan was greatly incensed, and not without 
 apprehension that it had been taken to inflict a deadly 
 revenge upon him, but after a time his anger and uneasiness 
 subsided." 
 
 At the age of twenty-five Le Fanu WTOte a vigorous 
 imitation of a street ballad bearing upon this subject. 
 
 From the year 1826 to 1831 the Le Fanu family were 
 on the most friendly terms with the peasantry in the 
 neighbourhood of Abington, in the county of Limerick, the 
 Dean of Emly being also Rector of Abington. To quote 
 William Le Fanu's account : — " They appeared to be de- 
 voted to us. If we had been awMy for a month or two, on 
 our return they met us in numbers some way from our home, 
 took the horses from the carriage, and drew it to our house 
 amid deafening cheers of welcome, and at night bonfires 
 blazed on all the neighbouring hills. In all their troubles 
 and difficulties the people came to my father for assistance. 
 There was then no dispensary nor doctor near us, and 
 many sick folk or their friends came daily to my mother 
 for medicine and advice ; I have often seen more than 
 twenty with her of a morning. Our parish priest also was a 
 special friend of ours, a constant visitor to our home. In 
 the neighbouring parishes the same kindly relations existed 
 between the priest and the flock and the Protestant clergy- 
 
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 6;^ 
 
 man. But in 1831 all this was suddenly and sadly changed, 
 when the Tithe War came upon us." 
 
 A cousin of the Le Fanus, the Rev. Charles Coote, the 
 Rector of the neighbouring parish of Doon, gave offence at 
 the very commencement of the agitation by taking active 
 measures to enforce the payment of his tithes. Wherever 
 he or any of his family went they were received with oppro- 
 brium, and as frequent visitors to the Rectory at Doon, the 
 Le Fanus soon came to be treated in a similar way. 
 
 Returning to Abingdon after a few years' absence, the 
 young Le Fanus met on a steamboat, the Garry Owen, 
 plying between Limerick and Kilrush, a famous character, 
 one Paddy O'Neill, whose music and song, fiddling and 
 playing on the bagpipes cheered the passengers on the trip. 
 He was, moreover, a poet, and sang his own songs to his 
 own accompaniments. 
 
 As showing the friendly feeling again existing between 
 Joseph and the peasants, his brother relates the 
 following : 
 
 " One summer's evening my brother, who was a prime 
 favourite of his, persuaded Paddy to drive across with him 
 from Kilrush to Kilkee, and there they got up a dance in 
 Mrs. Reade's lodge, where some of our family were 
 sojourning at the time ; I am sorry to say I was away at the 
 time and missed the fun. The dance music was supplied 
 by Paddy's pipes and fiddle, and between the dances he 
 sang some of his favourite songs. Next day my brother 
 wrote some doggerel verses celebrating the dance . . . ." 
 A copy was presented to the highly delighted Paddy, who, 
 for years after, sang them with much applause to the 
 passengers on the Garry Owen. 
 
 But as Le Fanu had seen the best side of Irish peasant 
 life, he had also seen its v/orst. His feeUngs as his mother's 
 son prompted him to write Shamus O'Brien; his personal 
 experiences during the Tithe War, drew him away from the 
 people's side in politics. He was none the less a "good 
 
64 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Irishman " in the National, not Nationahst, sense of that 
 title. 
 
 Besides the poetical powers with which he was endowed, 
 in common with his connections, the great Sheridan, the 
 Dufferins, and the Hon. Mrs. Norton, Sheridan Le Fanu 
 also possessed an irresistible humour and oratorical gift that, 
 as a student of Old Trinity, made him a formidable rival of 
 the best of the young debaters of his time at the " College 
 Historical," not a few of whom eventually reached the 
 highest eminence at the Irish Bar, after having long 
 enlivened and charmed St. Stephen's by their wit and 
 oratory. 
 
 Amongst his compeers he was remarkable for his sudden 
 fiery eloquence of attack, and ready and rapid powers of 
 repartee when on his defence. But Le Fanu, whose under- 
 standing was elevated by a deep love of the classics, in 
 which he took University honours, and further heightened 
 by an admirable knowledge of our own great authors, was 
 not to be tempted away by oratory from literature, his first 
 and, as it proved, his last love. 
 
 Very soon after leaving college, and just when he was 
 called to the Bar, about the year 1841, he bought the 
 Warder, a Dublin newspaper, of which he was editor, and 
 took, what many of his best friends and admirers, looking 
 to his high prospects as a barrister, regarded at the time as 
 a fatal step to his career to fame. 
 
 Just before this period, Le Fanu had taken to writing 
 humorous Irish stories, afterwards published in the Dublin 
 University Magazine, such as the Quare Gander, Jim 
 Sullivan's Adve?itnre, The Ghost a fid the Bone-setter, etc. 
 
 These stories his brother, William Le Fanu, was in the 
 nabit of repeating for his friends' amusement, and about the 
 year 1837, when he was about twenty-three years of age, 
 Joseph Le Fanu said to him that he thought an Irish story 
 in verse would tell well, and that if he would choose him 
 a subject suitable for recitation, he would write him one, 
 
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 65 
 
 " Write me an Irish Young Lochinvar^' said his brother, 
 and in a few days he handed him Phaudhrig Croohore — 
 anglice^ Patrick Crohore. 
 
 Of course this poem has the disadvantage, not only 
 of being written after Young Lochinvar^ but also that of 
 having been directly inspired by it, and yet, although 
 wanting in the rare and graceful finish of the original, the 
 Irish copy has, we feel, so much fire and feeling, that it at 
 least tempts us to regret that Scott's poem was not written 
 in that heart-stirring Northern dialect, without which many 
 of the noblest of our British ballads would lose half their 
 spirit. 
 
 To return to the year 1837, Mr. William Le Fanu, the 
 suggester of this ballad, who was from home at the time, 
 now received daily instalments of the second and more 
 remarkable of his brother's Irish poems — -Shaimis O'Britii 
 (James O'Brien) — learning them by heart as they reached 
 him, and, fortunately, never forgetting them, for his brother 
 Joseph kept no copy of the ballad, and he had himself to 
 write it out from memory ten years after, when the poem 
 was to appear in the Dublin University Magazine. 
 
 Few will deny that this poem contains passages most 
 faithfully, if fearfully, picturesque, and that it is characterised 
 throughout by a profound pathos and an abundant humour. 
 Can we wonder then at the immense popularity with which 
 Samuel Lover recited it in the United States ? For to 
 Lover's admiration of the poem, and his addition of it to 
 his entertainment, Shamus O'Brien owes its introduction 
 into America, where it is now so popular. Lover added 
 some lines of his own to the poem, making Shamus emigrate 
 to the States, and set up a public-house. These added 
 lines appeared in most of the published versions of the 
 ballad, but they are indifferent as verse, and certainly injure 
 the dramatic effect of the poem. 
 
 Shamus O'Brien is so generally attributed to Lover 
 (indeed, we remember seeing it advertised for recitation on 
 
 F 
 
66 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 the occasion of a benefit at a leading London theatre as 
 " by Samuel Lover ") that it is a satisfaction to be able to 
 reproduce the following letter upon the subject from Lover 
 to \Villiam Le Fanu : — 
 
 AsTOR House, 
 
 New York, U.S. America. 
 September 2,ot/i, 1846. 
 Mv Dear Le Fanu, — 
 
 In reading over your brother's poem while I crossed the 
 Atlantic, I became more and more impressed with its great beauty and 
 dramatic effect, so much so that I determined to test its effect in public, 
 and have done so here, on my first appearance, with the greatest 
 success. Now, I have no doubt there will be great praises of the poem, 
 and people will suppose most likely that the composition is mine, and 
 as you know (I take for granted) that I would not wish to wear a 
 borrowed feather, I should be glad to give your brother's name as the 
 author, should he not object to have it known ; but as his writings are 
 often in so different a tone, I would not speak without permission to do 
 so. It is true that in my programme my name is attached to other 
 pieces, and no name appended to the recitation. So far, you will see, 
 I have done all I could to avoid "appropriating" — the spirit of which 
 I might have caught here with Irish aptitude ; but I would like to have 
 the means of telling all whom it may concern the name of the author, 
 to whose head and heart it does so much honour. Pray, my dear Le 
 Fanu, inquire, and answer me here by next packet, or as soon as 
 convenient. My success here has been quite triumphant. 
 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 Samuel Lover. 
 
 The outlaw Kirby, who was "on his keeping" (i.e., 
 hiding from the police) at the time of his family's residence 
 in County Limerick, evidently suggested much of the devil- 
 may-care character of Shamus O'Brieii to Le Fanu. 
 With a price upon his head, owing to his connection with 
 agrarian outrages, Kirby could not resist the temptation of 
 going to a hunt or a coursing match, narrowly escaping 
 capture on some of these occasions. 
 
 An informer, learning that Kirby would be at his 
 mother's house one Sunday night, communicated the fact 
 to Major Yokes, of Limerick, the most active magistrate in 
 
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 6^ 
 
 the south of Ireland, who had more than once been baffled 
 in his efforts to capture the outlaw. 
 
 Old Mrs. Kirby was in bed when the Major and two 
 constables drew up to the door, but, fortunately, her 
 daughter, Mary, had gone to a wake in the neighbourhood, 
 and stayed out all night. Kirby, who was sitting by the 
 fire, his pistols on a table beside him, sprang to his feet, and 
 seizing them, cried, " At any rate, I'll have the life of one 
 of them before I'm taken." " Whisht ! you fool," said his 
 mother. " Here, be quick ! put on Mary's cap, take your 
 pistols with you, jump into bed, turn your face to the wall, 
 and lave the rest to me." 
 
 He was scarcely in bed when there was a loud knocking 
 at the door, which his mother, having lit a rush, opened as 
 quickly as possible. In came Major Yokes and the 
 constables. " Where is your son ? " said Yokes. " Plaze 
 God, he's far enough from ye. It's welcome yez are this 
 night," she said. "And thanks to the Lord it wasn't 
 yesterday ye came, for it's me and Mary there that strove to 
 make him stop the night wid us ; but, thank God, he was 
 afraid." They searched the house, but did not like to disturb 
 the young girl in bed, and finding nothing, went, sadly dis- 
 appointed, back to Limerick. The news of Kirby's escape 
 soon spread through the country. Yokes was much chaffed, 
 but Kirby never slept another night in his mother's house. 
 
 This incident, which is summarised from his brother's 
 book, does not occur in Le Fanu's S/iamus^ but Mr. 
 Jessop has seized the situation, and indeed improved upon 
 it for his libretto of the opera of Shaimis O'Brien by 
 Sir Charles Y. Stanford, which has been received with such 
 pronounced popularity. 
 
 It is not as easy to see how the song, I'm a young man 
 that never yet was daujited^ quoted by Mr. W. Le Fanu in 
 his Irish Recollections^ suggested to his brother the plot 
 of Shamus O'Brien beyond that it describes, though 
 incoherently enough, the doings of an outlaw, who breaks 
 
 F 2 
 
68 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 gaol at Nenagh, and gets off scot-free after knocking down 
 the sentry. 
 
 Le Fanu's literary life may be divided into three distinct 
 periods. During the first of these, and till his thirtieth 
 year, he was an Irish ballad, song, and story writer, his 
 first published story being the AdveJitures of Sir Robert 
 Ardagh^ which appeared in the Dublin University Magazine 
 in 1838. 
 
 In 1844 he was united to Miss Susan Bennett, the 
 beautiful daughter of the late George Bennett, Q.C. From 
 this time until her decease in 1858, he devoted his energies 
 almost entirely to Press work, making, however, his first 
 essays in novel writing during that period. The Cock 
 a?id Anchor, a chronicle of old Dublin city, his first and, 
 in the opinion of competent critics, one of the best of his 
 novels, seeing the light about the year 1850. Torlogh 
 O'Brien was its immediate successor. Their comparative 
 want of success when first published, seems to have deterred 
 Le Fanu from using his pen, except as a Press writer, until 
 1863, when the House by the Churchyard w^as published, 
 and was soon followed by U7icle Silas, and other well- 
 known novels. Finally, Le Fanu published in the pages 
 of the Dubli?i University Magazine, Beatrice and The 
 Legend of the Glaive, revised editions of which form the 
 specially notable feature in the volume of his poems 
 edited by me. 
 
 Those who possessed the rare privilege of Le Fanu's 
 friendship, and only they, can form any idea of the true 
 character of the man ; for after the death of his wife, to 
 whom he was most deeply devoted, he quite forsook general 
 society, in which his fine features, distinguished bearing, 
 and charm of conversation marked him out as the beau-ideal 
 of an Irish wit and scholar of the old school. 
 
 From this society he vanished so entirely, that Dublin, 
 always ready with a nickname, dubbed him " The Invisible 
 Prince," and, indeed, he was for long almost invisible, 
 
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU 69 
 
 except to his family and most familiar friends, unless at odd 
 hours of the evening, when he might occasionally be seen 
 stealing, like the ghost of his former self, between his news- 
 paper office and his home in Merrion Square. Sometimes, 
 too, he was to be encountered in an old, out-of-the-way 
 bookshop, poring over some rare black letter Astrology or 
 Demonology. 
 
 To one of these old bookshops he was at one time a 
 pretty frequent visitor, and the bookseller relates how he 
 used to come in and ask with his peculiarly pleasant voice 
 
 and smile, " Any more ghost stories for me, Mr. ? " 
 
 and how, on a fresh one being handed to him, he would 
 seldom leave the shop until he had looked it through. This 
 taste for the supernatural seems to have grown upon him 
 after his wife's death, and influenced him so deeply that, 
 had he not been possessed of a deal of shrewd common 
 sense, there might have been danger of his embracing some 
 of the visionary doctrines in which he was so learned. But 
 no ! even Spiritualism, to which not a few of his brother 
 novelists succumbed, whilst affording congenial material for 
 our artist of the superhuman to work upon, did not escape 
 his severest satire. 
 
 Shortly after completing his last novel, strange to say, 
 bearing the title Wiilbig to Die^ Le Fanu breathed his 
 last at his home. No. i8, Merrion Square South, at the age 
 of fifty-nine. 
 
 " He was a man," writes the author of a brief memoir 
 of him in the Dtiblin University Magazine^ " who thought 
 deeply, especially on religious subjects. To those who 
 knew him he was very dear; they admired him for his 
 learning, his sparkling wit and pleasant conversation, and 
 loved him for his manly virtues, for his noble and generous 
 qualities, his gentleness, and his loving, affectionate nature." 
 And all who knew the man must feel how deeply deserved 
 are these simple words of sincere regard for Joseph 
 Sheridan Le Fanu. 
 
70 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 
 
 Descended from English forbears, the son of a banker of 
 substance and abiUty and of a capable and charming 
 mother of the well-know Crawford family, William AUing- 
 ham was born on March 19th, 1824, at Ballyshannon. At 
 an early age he was sent to Mr. Ray's school in his native 
 town, and from his class-fellow and cousin, John Crawford, 
 I have received these hitherto unpublished particulars of 
 those school-days. 
 
 Mr. Ray taught Latin, nothing more, and the general 
 curriculum was evidently unattractive. For though the boy 
 was a particularly bright and clever one and mastered his 
 most difficult lessons with ease, the routine was so dull and 
 irksome to him that while devoting just sufficient time to 
 it to hold his own in class, he read widely and diligently 
 on his own account. As a result he often caused surprise 
 to his elders by the fixed opinions he held on subjects 
 supposed to be above his years and the remarkably clear 
 expression of them. Mentally much ahead of his compeers 
 he did not associate much with them, but was never so 
 happy as when surrounded by a crowd of boys younger 
 than himself. For these he had a great attraction, and his 
 power of amusing them was inexhaustible. Games of 
 " follow the leader," including all sorts of difficult jumps 
 and feats of bodily prowess, were led by young Allingham. 
 
 But perhaps the sport to which he was most attached 
 was skating, which he has so well described in his poem 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 7 I 
 
 Frost ill the Holidays. Yet whilst keenly enjoying the 
 tricks played by one boy on another — and some of these 
 were rough enough — he always kept the peace. He was 
 a great lover of nature and particularly humane towards 
 dumb animals, being always ready to defend them or 
 rescue them from the hands of cruel or thoughtless boys. 
 But for one of his adventurous spirit he was strangely 
 indifferent to field sports. He did not fish or shoot like his 
 fellows, or follow the hounds, abstaining from such pursuits 
 on principle. 
 
 From Ray's he was sent to a boarding school at Kille- 
 shandra, but for a short time only. Yet distasteful as Ray's 
 had been, this school was doubly so to him. By his own 
 request he left it and was put into his father's bank in 
 Ballyshannon in his fourteenth year. College life he had 
 none, a circumstance over w^hich he long repined, but which 
 in the end he regarded as having been a benefit to him. 
 For he was an indefatigable student of English literature 
 and natural science and taught himself French, German, 
 Latin and Greek, till he was able to enjoy the classics and 
 the works of Continental writers in the original, and few 
 University students can claim to have covered so wide a 
 field of reading. Allingham passed from his father's bank 
 into the Excise in the year 1846. A few years later his 
 cousin Robert Crawford had this experience of him : 
 
 " On my return from the University I was engaged in 
 making a geological survey around Ballyshannon, when 
 Wilham became my constant companion. Nor could 
 there have been a pleasanter one ; he was so full of general 
 information, and looked at everything from such an 
 interesting and original point of view. Surgeon Tighe of 
 the 1 2th Lancers attached himself to us in these rambles. 
 My cousin and he were for the most part engaged in 
 constant controversies on almost every conceivable topic, 
 from the formation of gneiss to the political questions of 
 the day. It was most amusing to hear the younger 
 
72 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 philosopher deftly conducting his attacks upon fortresses of 
 opinion which the elder considered impregnable. Indeed, 
 he was altogether lacking in veneration for old-established 
 opinions the reasonableness of which was not apparent to 
 him. One comic case of the kind I remember. He was 
 taking lessons on the violin, but the universally adopted 
 shape of the instrument shocked his sense of the fitness of 
 things, as he argued that a rectangular body would admit 
 the sounds quite as well as one of the normal type with its 
 fantastic curves, and he carried his theory into practice, for 
 he got Higgins, the vioHn maker, to make him one on this 
 pattern. What is more he had the courage of his opinions, 
 insisting that the tone of his instrument surpassed that of 
 any other he had heard, notwithstanding that there were a 
 couple of Cremonas in the neighbourhood." 
 
 But his father, proud though he was of his son's 
 intelligence, had little sympathy with his constant craving 
 for knowledge. In the bank manager's eyes it was not the 
 scholar, but the thorough business man who ranked highest. 
 From the counting-house the young poet at last succeeded 
 in escaping. 
 
 " Heart-sick of more than seven years of bank-clerking," 
 he writes, " I found a door suddenly opened, not into an ideal 
 region, or anything like one, but at least into a roadway 
 of life somewhat less narrow and tedious than that in which 
 I was plodding." A place had been found for him in the 
 Customs, as it was found for another and a greater dreamer 
 on the other side of the Atlantic. 
 
 "In the spring of 1846 I gladly took leave for ever of 
 discount ledgers and current accounts, and w^ent to Belfast 
 for two months' instruction in the duties of Principal Coast 
 Officer of Customs, a tolerably well-sounding title, but 
 which carried with it a salary of but ;£8o a year. I 
 trudged daily about the docks and timber-yards, learning to 
 measure logs, piles of planks, and, more troublesome, ships 
 of tonnage; indoors, part of the time practised customs 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 73 
 
 book-keeping, and talked to the clerks about literature and 
 poetry in a way that excited some astonishment, but 
 on the whole, as I found at parting, a certain degree of 
 curiosity and respect. I preached Tennyson to them. My 
 spare time was mostly spent in reading and haunting book- 
 sellers' shops, where, I venture to say, I laid out a good 
 deal more than most people, in proportion to my income, 
 and manged to get glimpses of many books which I could 
 not afford or did not care to buy. I enjoyed my new 
 position, on the whole, without analysis, as a great improve- 
 ment on the bank ; and for the rest, my inner mind was 
 brimful of love and poetry, and usually all external things 
 appeared trivial save in their relation to them. Yet I am 
 reminded, by old memoranda, that there were sometimes 
 overclouding anxieties : sometimes, but not very frequently, 
 from lack of money ; more often from longing for culture, 
 conversation, opportunity ; oftenest from fear of a sudden 
 development of some form of lung disease, the seeds of 
 which I supposed to be sown in my bodily constitution." 
 This weakness he outgrew. 
 
 During his banking days Allingham had begun to write 
 poetry, Leigh Hunt's journal being the first to print his 
 lyrics. Leigh Hunt himself he met for the first time in 
 Edwardes Square in T847. ^^ ^^49 Henry Sutton, a poet 
 now too little known, gave him a letter of introduction to 
 Coventry Patmore, who later introduced him to Tennyson, 
 with whom he afterwards became intimate. He also was 
 made acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Browning, Emerson, 
 Arthur Hugh Clough, George Eliot, Thackeray, and 
 Dickens. Moreover, Patmore brought him into the artist 
 group, which comprised Rossetti, Millais, and other 
 members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. 
 
 Allingham's acquaintance with Rossetti ripened into 
 friendship, and the letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to 
 William Allingham, edited by Dr. Birkbeck Hill, record the 
 chief facts of his life and literary friendships. Much supple- 
 
74 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 nicntary detail, however, is to be found in a set of remi- 
 niscences chiefly relating to Tennyson and Carlyle, which 
 Mrs. Allingham has edited. P'or it should be added that 
 Leigh Hunt introduced our poet to Carlyle in early days, 
 and that later on they became close companions. In the 
 year 1862 Allingham came over to London, still engaged in 
 the Customs, but he disliked the noise and the confinement 
 of city life near the docks, and was very glad of a transfer 
 to Lymington, where for seven years he saw much of 
 Tennyson. 
 
 He retired from the Government service in 1870, when 
 he became sub-editor, under Mr. Froude, of Fraser's 
 Magazine, succeeding him as editor in 1874. It was during 
 this period that I became personally acquainted with the poet. 
 He was then a well preserved man of middle age, and I 
 agree in Nathaniel Hawthorne's description of his looks as 
 " intelligent, dark, pleasing, and not at all John Bullish." 
 His voice was musical, touched with the Donegal accent, 
 but his pronunciation of English was finely correct and he 
 was a most fascinating conversationalist, who, if he did not 
 set the table in a roar, always started it smiling and 
 thinking. 
 
 Much my senior, he was singularly courteous to my 
 young opinions, and I well remember that when I sent my 
 first long poem to Fraser^ calling it Vox Feris, and on 
 getting no reply, perhaps too impatiently suggested that 
 spring was passing and my verses would soon be out of 
 date, he replied in choice Latin, " Spring is ever with us," 
 at the same time accepting the poem. We became engaged 
 to be married at about the same time, and I had the pleasure 
 of meeting him and his then Jiancee, Miss Helen Paterson, 
 the well-known water-colour artist and book illustrator, at the 
 house of Tom Taylor, the dramatist, whose wife arranged 
 the Irish airs collected by Allingham and enriched by his 
 lyrics. 
 
 Of Carlyle he saw much more than most of that great 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 75 
 
 man's friends, for during some years scarcely a week went 
 by in which they did not walk together. " Strange to say," 
 writes Dr. Hill, " this intimacy has been passed over 
 in total silence by Mr. Froude. In the four volumes of 
 his hero's life there are sins of omission as well as of 
 commission." 
 
 Allingham used to recount how Carlyle would sometimes 
 begin by flatly contradicting him, and end by tacitly adopting 
 what he had said. One day the old man was describing his 
 interview with the Queen at the Dean of Westminster's. 
 " She came sliding into the room," he said — " as if on 
 wheels," exclaimed Allingham, interrupting him. " Not at 
 all, Allingham," he gruffly replied. A few days later his 
 friend overheard him telling the story to Mr. Lecky. " The 
 Queen," he said, " came sliding into the room as if on 
 wheels," and in that form he ever afterwards told it. He used 
 to add that he saw that he was expected to stand during 
 the interview, but that he took hold of a chair, and saying 
 that he hoped Her Majesty would allow an old man to sit 
 down, down he sat. 
 
 During his connection with Frasers Magazine^ Alling- 
 ham lived near Carlyle, in Chelsea, and walked out regu- 
 larly with him on several afternoons of each week. It was 
 at his suggestion that Allingham started a series of chapters 
 on Irish history in Fraser. 
 
 But Allingham's walks were not all strolls with brother 
 men of letters. A large proportion of his prose work and 
 much of his best poetical description had their origin in 
 solitary rambles undertaken from his boyhood upwards, and 
 which he kept up all through his life. In this way as 
 " Patricius Walker " he tramped through Ireland, England, 
 Wales, and Scotland, collecting his " harvest of the quiet 
 eye," studying the country folk as he went, musing over the 
 great cathedrals and abbeys, and reviving recollections of 
 Swift and Prior, Herbert and Dickens, Burns and Scott, on 
 the very ground where they had walked and talked, written 
 
76 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 and sung. These rambles awakened many an interesting 
 train of thought, and his records of them crystaUise into 
 charming essays, amongst which we can trace the germs of 
 subsequent poen^s. 
 
 His later poems give a delightful picture of his home life 
 in Surrey, and during this period Allingham saw Tennyson 
 several times each summer, when the Laureate and his wife 
 came to Blackdown. Fraser's Magazi?ie had by this time 
 ceased to be, and Allingham occupied his time with prose 
 and verse composition entirely, including the preparation 
 of his various works for the Press, as well as a complete 
 edition of them. 
 
 He had a fall from his horse in the year 1888, from 
 which serious consequences ensued. He removed to 
 Hampstead in bad health, and died on November i8th, 
 1889. 
 
 In the preface to The Music Master^ published in 1855, 
 Allingham states that five of the songs or ballads, namely. 
 The Milkmaid^ The Girl's Lanie?itatiofi, Lovely Alary 
 Doimelly^ Naimfs Sailor Lad, and The NobleinaiUs 
 Weddijig, have already had an Irish circulation as 
 halfpenny ballads, and the first three were wTitten for this 
 purpose. 
 
 This statement is explained in Dr. Birkbeck Hill's 
 letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham. 
 In evening walks at Ballyshannon he would hear the Irish 
 girls at their cottage doors singing old ballads which he 
 would pick up. If they were broken or incomplete he 
 would add to them or finish them ; if they were improper 
 he would refine them. He could not get them sung till he 
 got the Dublin Catnach of that day to print them on long 
 strips of blue paper, like old songs ; and if about the sea, 
 with the old rough woodcut of a ship at the top. He 
 either gave them away or they were sold in the neighbour- 
 hood. Then, in his evening walks, he had at last the 
 pleasure of hearing some of his own ballads sung at the 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 77 
 
 cottage doors by the crooning lasses, who were quite 
 unaware that it was the author who was passing by. This 
 is exactly what Oliver Goldsmith had done a century 
 before, when a student of Trinity College, Dublin, though 
 the lanes in which he listened to his ballads were very 
 other from those at beautiful Ballyshannon. 
 
 In this connection AUingham raises a very interesting 
 literary question. He states he did not find it easy in 
 ballad writing to employ a diction that might hope to come 
 home to the English-speaking Irish peasant using his 
 customary phraseology, and also keep within the laws 
 of poetic taste and the niles> of grammar ; " for that 
 phraseology, being as regards its structural peculiarities 
 but an imperfect or distorted expression, not an ancient 
 dialect like that of Scotland, is generally too corrupt, 
 though often forcible, to bear transplantation into poetry. 
 Only familiar experience, too, and constant attention can 
 enable one to use words in the exact significance which the 
 popular custom has assigned. For instance, among the 
 Irish peasantry ' distress,' as far as I know, always means 
 bodily want, ' trouble ' affliction of mind, ' misery ' 
 penuriousness, ' care ' responsibility, and ' sorrow ' com- 
 monly means ill-luck or misfortune, while ' sorry ' has the 
 usual dictionary meaning. From these conditions it comes 
 that the choice of words for poetry in Irish-English is 
 narrowly limited, instead of there being both that variety 
 and raciness which is sometimes in the gift of a genuine 
 peculiar dialect." 
 
 But after fifteen years' experience, AUingham qualifies 
 the strong term "imperfect or distorted expression," as 
 applied to the structural peculiarities of the Irish peasants* 
 phraseology, to mean unusual forms, some of them old- 
 fashioned English, some translated or adapted from Gaelic 
 forms. This is a very important modification of view, and 
 surely such forms, derived as they are from Shakespearean 
 English and classical Gaelic, are as ancient and respectable 
 
78 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 in their historic and literary associations as the idioms ot 
 the modern Scotch dialect. 
 
 Allingham's final concession that some not unimportant 
 poetical results might How from a judicious treatment of 
 Irish dialect has been more than justified by the event. 
 The water has been flowing for thirty-three years under 
 Essex — now the O'Connell — Bridge since then, and we have 
 half-a-dozen writers of successful Irish-English dialect poetry, 
 amongst whom may be mentioned Moira O'Neill, Francis 
 Fahy, P. J. McCall, George Savage Armstrong, John 
 Stephenson, and others, whilst quite as much interest 
 attaches to " Gaelic English," now familiar in the prose and 
 poetry of Douglas Hyde and the plays of Synge, Yeats, 
 Boyle, Lady Gregor}'-, and other dramatists of the Irish 
 Literary Theatre. Allingham has, however, very justly 
 pointed out that during his time Irish-English has never 
 been properly examined, though quite recently this deficiency 
 has been atoned for by Dr. Joyce in his admirable little 
 volume. The English we speak in Ireland published by 
 Longmans for only half-a-crown. 
 
 Allingham, in spite of his preface to his 1855 edition, 
 returned to Irish ballad writing, and may be said to have 
 achieved his masterpiece in the Winding Banks of Erne 
 or the Emigrant's Adieu to Ballyshanno7i, a ballad which 
 has gone round the world, in spite of Mr. Stephen Gwynn's 
 statement that it is too little known. To readers of the 
 class to whom Mr. Gwynn has addressed his delightful 
 Highways and Byways in Donegal and Antrim this is 
 doubtless true, but the beautiful ballad has reached the 
 hearts of the Irish people, wedded to the haunting old air 
 to which it is set. 
 
 It is still difficult to fix Allingham's position in the 
 poetical hierarchy. This is undoubtedly due to his 
 remarkable open-mindedness to the influences of both 
 nature and art. A lover of nature before he could read, 
 Allingham, almost as soon as he could do so, saturated 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 79 
 
 himself with Tennyson's poems. Then, as has been pointed 
 out, he was brought into touch with the Pre-RaphaeUte 
 Brotherhood, and caught some of their inspiration, but he 
 was none the less an "open-air poet," which Rossetti 
 certainly was not, and wholly original in all his best work. 
 But with Irish nature and Irish human nature he had most 
 affinity, though his Anglo-Irish race and creed kept him, 
 like Ferguson, apart from, though not without warm sym- 
 pathy for, his Celdc compatriots, literary and polidcal. He 
 lamented the destruction of early Irish civilisation and the 
 internecine feud, political and religious, between Saxon and 
 Celt. If Home Rule could make Ireland as " homely," as 
 he puts it, "as Devonshire," which delighted him by its 
 happy union of Celtic and Saxon characteristics, he would 
 have given his vote for Home Rule, but he dreaded 
 leaving the dissident elements in Ireland to take care of 
 themselves. Yet he was proud to call himself an Irishman, 
 and Carlyle got little change out of him when he insisted 
 that AUingham was an Anglian name, meaning the "hame" 
 or " home " of one of the Filings. 
 
 His earliest volume contains five Irish ballads. 
 Lawrence Bloomfield is an entirely Irish theme, and his 
 last collection of Irish songs and poems consists of thirty- 
 two pieces written round "Ballyshanny." But this is not all, 
 as Lionel Johnson finely puts it in his estimate of Allingham 
 in The Treasury of Irish Poetry^ edited by Stopford 
 Brooke and Rolleston. " Song upon song makes no mention, 
 direct or indirect, of Ireland, yet reveals an Irish atmosphere 
 and temperament. As the outward aspect of the man so 
 is his characteristic work, the work of a poet who is many 
 things but always essentially an Irishman of the secluded 
 west, with ancient visions and ponderings in his heart, and 
 the gift of tears and smiles. He passed along his way 
 alone, with a heart responding, a soul vibrating to the 
 voices of nature and of tranquil lives, and to him came 
 those voices in Irish. He wrote much ambitious work 
 
8o IRISri LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 which may not live, but his lyric voice of singular sweetness, 
 his muse of passionate and pensive meditation, his poetic 
 consecration of common things, his mingled aloofness and 
 homeliness assured him a secure place among the poets of 
 his land and the Irish voices which never will fall silent ; 
 and though the Irish cause receives from him but little 
 direct encouragement or help, let it be remembered that 
 Allingham wrote this great and treasurable truth : 
 
 We're one at heart if you be Ireland's friend, 
 Though leagues asunder our opinions tend, 
 There are but two great parties in the end." 
 
 Lionel Johnson has not done him justice in the matter 
 of his assistance to the Irish cause if, as seems almost 
 certain, Lawrence Blooinfield first fired Gladstone's 
 imagination upon the Irish Land Question. 
 
 For a highly eulogistic review of this poem in The 
 Athenceum^ in which statesmen were besought to read it, 
 was followed by an invitation to the poet to breakfast with 
 the famous Irish land-law reformer. Let me press my point 
 that Allingham was a good Irishman on Irish questions by 
 a few passages from this poem, which both Stopford Brooke 
 and Lionel Johnson fitly describe as combining the 
 descriptive grace of Goldsmith and the ironic force of 
 Crabbe. Very justly indeed Lawrence Bloomfield has 
 been called the epic of the Irish Land Question. 
 
 Sir Ulick Harvey. 
 
 You find in old Sir Ulick Harvey's face 
 The looks of long command and comely race ; 
 No small man sees a brother in those eyes 
 Of calm and frosty blue, like winter skies ; 
 Courteous his voice, yet all the pride is there, 
 Pride like a halo crowns the silvery hair ; 
 'Tis unmisgiving pride that makes him frank 
 With humble folk, and dress beneath his rank. 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 8 1 
 
 Born in the purple, he could hardly know 
 Less of the tides of life that round him flow. 
 The Laws were for the Higher Classes made ; 
 But while the Lower gratefully obey'd, 
 To patronise them you had his consent, 
 Promote their comfort, to a safe extent, 
 And teach them — ^just enough, and not too much ; 
 Most careful lest with impious hand you touch 
 Order and grade as planned by Providence. 
 
 He sometimes took a well-meant scheme in hand, 
 Which must be done exactly as he plann'd ; 
 His judgment feeble, and his self-will strong. 
 He had his way, and that was mostly wrong. 
 The whim was such, that seized his mind of late, 
 To "square " the farms on all his wide estate ; 
 Tim's mountain grazing, Peter's lough-side patch, 
 This onion-field of Ted's that few could match, 
 Phil's earliest ridges, Bartly's bog, worse hap ! 
 By mere new lines across his Honour's map 
 From ancient holdings have been dipt away, 
 Despite the loud complaints, or dumb dismay. 
 
 Lord Crashton — The Absentee Landlord. 
 
 Joining Sir Ulick's at the river's bend, 
 Lord Crashton's acres east and west extend ; 
 Great owner here, in England greater still. 
 As poor folk say, *' The world's divided ill." 
 On every pleasure men can buy with gold 
 He surfeited, and now, diseased and old, 
 He lives abroad ; a firm in Molesworth Street 
 Doing what their attorneyship thinks meet. 
 ***** 
 
 Twice only in the memory of mankind 
 
 Lord Crashton's proud and noble self appear'd ; 
 
 Up-river, last time, in his yacht he steer'd, 
 
 With Maltese valet and Parisian cook. 
 
 And one on whom askance the gentry look, 
 
 Altho' a pretty, well-dress'd demoiselle — 
 
 Not Lady Crashton, who, as gossips tell, 
 
 Goes her own wicked way. They stopped a week ; 
 
 G 
 
82 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Then, with gay ribbons fluttering from the peak, 
 
 And snowy skirts wide spread, on either hand, 
 
 The Aphrodite curtsied to the land, 
 
 And glided off. My Lord, with gouty legs. 
 
 Drinks Baden-Baden water, and life's dregs ; 
 
 With cynic jest inlays his black despair, 
 
 And curses all things from his easy chair. 
 
 FiNLAY. 
 
 Finlay, next landlord (I'll abridge the tale), 
 
 Prince of Glenawn, a low and fertile vale, 
 
 No fool by birth, but hard, and praised for wise, 
 
 The more he learn'd all softness to despise, 
 
 Married a shrew for money, louts begot. 
 
 Debased his wishes to a vulgar lot, 
 
 To pence and pounds coin'd all his mother-wit, 
 
 And ossified his nature bit by bit. 
 
 A dull, cold home, devoid of every grace. 
 
 Distrust and dread in each dependent's face. 
 
 Bullocks and turnips, mighty stacks of grain. 
 
 Plethoric purse, impoverished heart and brain — 
 
 Such Finlay's life ; and when that life shall end, 
 
 He'll die as no man's debtor, no man's friend. 
 
 Tom Dysart. 
 
 Unlike this careful management (between 
 
 The two, Sir Ulick's townlands intervene) 
 
 Is that of Termon on the river-side, 
 
 Domain and mansion of insolvent pride, 
 
 Where Dysart, drawing from anceslral ground 
 
 One sterling shilling for each phantom pound 
 
 Of rent-roll lives, when all the truth is known, 
 
 Mere factor in the place he calls his own ; 
 
 Through mortgages and bonds, one wide-spread maze, 
 
 Steps, dances, doubles round by devious ways, 
 
 While creditor, to creditor a foe. 
 
 Hangs dubious o'er the vast imbroglio. 
 
 And thus, minute in bargain where he can. 
 
 There, closing quick with ready-money man. 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 83 
 
 Despised for cunning, and for malice fear'd, 
 Yet still by custom and old name endear'd, 
 To Keltic minds, who also better like 
 A rule of thumb than Gough's arithmetic, 
 Tom Uysart shuflles on, to this good day, 
 Let creditors and courts do what they may. 
 
 Isaac Brown. 
 
 Pass on to Isaac Brown, a man elect, 
 
 Wesleyan stout, our wealthiest of his sect ; 
 
 Who bought and still buys land, none quite sees how. 
 
 Whilst all his shrewdness and success allow. 
 
 On Crashton's mortgage he has money lent, 
 
 He takes a quiet bill at ten per cent., 
 
 The local public business much he sways. 
 
 He's learn'd in every neighbour's means and ways, 
 
 For comfort cares, for fashion not a whit, 
 
 Nor if the gentry to their ranks admit. 
 
 All preachers love him ; he can best aftbrd 
 
 The unctuous converse and the unctuous board ; 
 
 Ev'n the poor nag, slow-rattling up the road 
 
 In ancient rusty gig a pious load, 
 
 Wags his weak tail, and strikes a brisker trot. 
 
 Approaching Brownstown, Isaac's pleasant lot. 
 
 For though at Poor-House Board was never known 
 
 A flintier Guardian-angel than good Brown, 
 
 As each old hag and shivering child can tell, — 
 
 Go dine with Isaac, and he feeds you well. 
 
 And hear him pray, with fiercely close-shut eyes ! 
 Gentle at first the measured accents rise. 
 But soon he waxes loud, and storms the skies. 
 Deep is the chest and powerful bass the voice, 
 The language of a true celestial choice ; 
 Handorgan-wise the holy phrases ground 
 Go turning and returning round and round ; 
 The sing-song duly runs from low to high ; 
 The chorus'd groans at intervals reply ; 
 Till after forty minutes' sweat and din. 
 Leaving perhaps too little prayer within. 
 Dear Brother Brown, athletic babe of grace. 
 Resumes his bench, and wipes his reeking face. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Jack Dokan. 
 
 Jack was a plodding man, who deem'd it best 
 To hide away the wisdom he possess'd ; 
 Of scanty words, avoiding all dispute ; 
 But much experience in his mind had root ; 
 Most deferential, yet you might surprise 
 A secret scanning in the small grey eyes ; 
 Short, active, tho' with labour's trudge, his legs ; 
 His knotted fingers, like rude wooden pegs. 
 Still firm of grip ; his breath was slow and deep ; 
 His hair unbleach'd with time, a rough black heap. 
 Fond, of a night, to calmly sit and smoke, 
 While neighbours plied their argument or joke, 
 To each he listen'd, seldom praised or blamed, 
 All party-spirit prudently disclaim'd. 
 Repeating, in his wise old wrinkled face, 
 " I never knew it help a poor man's case " ; 
 And when they talked of " tyrants " Doran said 
 Nothing, but suck'd his pipe and shook his head. 
 
 The Eviction. 
 
 The Sherift's painful duty must be done ; 
 He begs for quiet — and the work's begun. 
 The strong stand ready ; now appear the rest, 
 Girl, matron, grandsire, baby on the breast, 
 And Rosy's thin face on a pallet borne ; 
 A motley concourse, feeble and forlorn. 
 One old man, tears upon his wrinkled cheek. 
 Stands trembling on a threshold, tries to speak, 
 But, in defect of any word for this, 
 Mutely upon the doorpost prints a kiss, 
 Then passes out for ever. 
 
 Through the crowd 
 The children run bewilder'd, wailing loud ; 
 Where needed most, the men combine their aid 
 And, last of all, is Oona forth convey'd, 
 Reclined in her accustom'd strawen chair, 
 Her aged eyelids closed, her thick white hair 
 Escaping from her cap ; she feels a chill. 
 Looks round and murmurs, then again is still. 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 85 
 
 Poor consumptive Rosy has shared in the Eviction, but 
 her poor friends come to her rescue. 
 
 Those, too, with less to spare, and those with nought, 
 
 To this poor girl their friendly succour brought. 
 
 Here in a neighbouring house, but whence no noise 
 
 Can reach her, some well-wishing girls and boys 
 
 Have clubb'd their moneys, raffling for a shawl ; 
 
 Of Rose's other shreds the pawn has all. 
 
 Three simple pence entitle to a throw ; 
 
 Down on a slate the names and numbers go ; 
 
 The wooden cubes mark'd with a red-hot wire 
 
 (No better dice or dice-box they require) 
 
 In old tin porringer flung rattling fast. 
 
 A warmer interest watches every cast ; 
 
 " Follie' your han' ! " "You're lucky, throw for me ! " 
 
 " More power ! " "Tim Ryan has it— fifty-three ! " 
 
 Then silver, copper, mix'd, a bulky pound 
 
 Makes haste to Rosy, feebly turning round 
 
 With grateful smile ; and back the shawl comes too. 
 
 The winner swearing 'twas for her he threw. 
 
 The Unhappy Country. 
 Derided in her torture and her tears, 
 In sullen slavery dragging hopeless years ; 
 Of social ties mere cruel scourges made ; 
 A ban upon her learning and her trade ; 
 Possessions, rights, religion, language, torn 
 And crushed by Law — a word to hate and scorn 
 For those taught English in oppression's school. 
 And reading good words by the witches' rule ; 
 A name for powerful wrong, with no appeal ; 
 Since law at every moment made them feel 
 To live an Irishman on Irish ground 
 The sole unpardonable crime was found. 
 
 Island of bitter memories, thickly sown 
 
 From winding Boyne to Limerick's treaty-stone, 
 
 Bare Connaught Hills to Dublin Castle wall, 
 
 Green Wexford to the glens of Donegal, 
 
 Through sad six hundred years of hostile sway, 
 
 From Strongbow fierce to cunning Castlereagh ! 
 
 These will not melt and vanish in a day. 
 
 These can yet sting the patriot thoughts which turn 
 
 To Erin's past, and bid them weep and burn. 
 
86 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 In another respect AUingham has not been done justice 
 to by Lionel Johnson. He is spoken of as no Irish scholar 
 and therefore unable to draw inspiration from Gaelic litera- 
 ture. Allingham's essays distinctly show that he was a 
 student of Gaelic literature, even to the extent of wading 
 through The Four Masters^ and though unfortunately he did 
 not, until rather late in life, try his hand at a subject inspired 
 by Gaelic literature, the one piece of work of the kind that 
 he attempted only makes us regret that he had not turned 
 his thoughts in that direction long before. I refer to his 
 Lady of the Sea, He is also taxed with not seeking a centre 
 of Irish Literary Society. But what centre of Irish Literary 
 Society existed in England or Ireland until the Irish 
 Literary Society of London and the National Literary 
 Society of Dublin were founded in the year 1892, three 
 years after Allingham's death? In the bibliography of 
 Allingham's works in The TreasiLry oj Irish Poetry^ no men- 
 tion is made of his prose writings, but had Johnson studied 
 Allingham's Varieties i?i Prose he would have given him 
 credit for even greater versatility than he allows him. I 
 give a few brief selections from his Rainbles by Pairicius 
 Walker as evidence of his powers as a prose writer. 
 Here is his new-style description of the river Erne : 
 
 After running swiftly half a mile between bare slopes, the Erne 
 finds its channel suddenly contracted to a narrow passage between two 
 ledges of limestone, and down into this gully it sweeps, racing in long 
 black ridges, leaping in amber curves, dashed into foam against 
 hidden rocks in its bed, sending up from the boiling depths great 
 gulching bubbles, and whirling into crannies and corners, raging 
 continually, with a commingled roaring and hissing as of lions and 
 serpents. After this tumultuous rush at *' Kathleen's Fall," the 
 Erne, spreading wide, runs at a steadier pace, but still rapidly, by 
 the walls of Ballyshannon and under the arches of the old long bridge, 
 and 300 yards lower down makes its final plunge into the tidal waters 
 of the harbour, over the Fall of Assaroe, otherwise called the Salmon 
 Leap. 
 
 How curiously this contrasts with the old style prose 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 87 
 
 description of the same fall, in an ancient Irish tale, The 
 Banquet of Dtinagay and the Battle of Moira^ translated 
 by John O'Donovan (Irish Archaeological Society, 1842), 
 which AUingham himself calls attention to : 
 
 The clear-watered, snowy-foamed, ever-roaring, parti-coloured, 
 bellowing, in-salmon-abounding, beautiful old torrent, whose cele- 
 brated well-known name is the lofty-great, clear-landed, contentious, 
 precipitate, loud-roaring, headstrong, rapid, salmon-ful, sea-mon?ter- 
 ful, varying, in-large-fish-abounding, rapid-flooded, furious-streamed, 
 whirling, in-seal-abounding, royal and prosperous cataract of Eas 
 Ruaidh. 
 
 Here is a very different specimen of Allingham's prose : 
 
 Was it while he was staying at Broadstairs (it was certainly in Kent) 
 that I Patricius met Charles Dickens one day in Regent Street ? With 
 one sharp glance, and a quiver of the wide flexible nostrils, " O, 
 lord !" he exclaimed, "how are you?" and taking my arm walked 
 off at five miles an hour towards a railway station. But great as his 
 hurry was, he suddenly stopped short as quickly, and pressed with me 
 into the edge of a crowd in the street to see what was happening. It 
 was only a horse down, and Dickens hurried me along again, saying, 
 " I'm a country cousin now, and stare at everything when I come up." 
 A trivial anecdote, but it recalls the man. Nor was it a trivial incident 
 to the worshipping youth ; it was almost as though his arm were taken 
 by an angel dropping from the sky ! 
 
 But much more valuable specimens of his prose style, 
 and specially interesting as exhibiting his own intellectual 
 points of view, are the following sketches, criticisms, and 
 recollections of his great compeers, Tennyson, Browning^ 
 Rossetti, and Jowett, extracted from Allingham's Diary, 
 edited by Mrs. AUingham and Mrs. Ernest Radford, and 
 published by Macmillan and Co., in 1907. 
 
 The first extract has to me a special interest, because 
 AUingham once told me himself how Tennyson had 
 abandoned the theme of King Arthur when " his mind was 
 in flower with it " owing to a want of warmth in the recep- 
 tion by the critics of his Morfe d' Arthur, due, in part, he 
 himself afterwards felt, to his own somewhat apologetic 
 
88 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 verse preface to that incomparable poem, of which Froude 
 once said to me, "Alfred will not live except in selection, 
 but the Morte d'Art/mr is immortal." 
 
 Sunday, October i6th, i88i. T. told me that he had planned out 
 his Ari/iuriad, and could have written it all off without any trouble. 
 But in 1842 he published, with other poems, the Morte d^ Arthur, 
 which was one book of his Epic (though not really the eleventh), and 
 the review in the Quarterly disheartened him, so that he put the 
 scheme aside. lie afterwards took it up again, but not as with the 
 first inspiration. This unlucky article in the Quarterly was written by 
 John Sterling, who was then thirty-six years old, just three years older 
 than Tennyson. It may be interesting now to read what it said of the 
 Morte d^ Arthur : "The fust poem in the second volume seems to 
 us less costly jewel work, with fewer of the broad flashes of passionate 
 imagery, than some others, and not compensating for this inferiority by 
 any stronger human interest. The miraculous legend of Excalibur 
 does not come very near to us, and as reproduced by any modern 
 writer must be a mere ingenious exercise of fancy. The poem, how- 
 ever, is full of distinct and striking description, perfectly expressed, 
 and a tone of mild dignified sweetness attracts, though it hardly avails 
 to enchant us." 
 
 This, it will be observed, chimes in with the doubts expressed by 
 the poet himself in the lines written by way of prologue. Blame or 
 doubt in regard to his own writings always weighed more with 
 Tennyson than praise. He often said that he forgot praise and 
 remembered all censure. 
 
 Sterling's review, meant to be friendly, was a thin, pretentious 
 piece, and of no value whatever ; a pity it should have chanced to 
 prove so miseffectual ! 
 
 Tuesday, February i8th, 1868. Browning's "Sludge," etc. 
 Mem. — There is too often a want of solid basis for Robert Browning's 
 brilliant and astounding cleverness. A Blot w the ^Scutcheon is 
 solid. How try to account for Browning's twists and turns ? I 
 cannot. He has been and still is very dear to me. But I can no 
 longer commit myself to his hands in faith and trust. Neither can I 
 allow the faintest shadow of a suspicion to dwell in my mind that his 
 genius may have a leaven of quackery. Yet, alas ! he is not solid — 
 which is a very different thing from prosaic. A Midsummer Nighfs 
 Dream is as solid as anything in literature ; has imaginative coherency 
 and consistency in perfection. Looking at forms of poetic expression, 
 there is not a single utterance in Shakespeare, or of Dante as far as I 
 know, enigmatic in the same sense as so many of Browning's are. If 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 89 
 
 you suspect, and sometimes find out, that riddles presented to you with 
 Sphinxian solemnity have no answers that really fit them, your curiosity 
 is apt to fall towards freezing point, if not below it. Yet I always end 
 by striking my breast in penitential mood and crying out, "O rich 
 mind ! wonderful Poet ! strange great man ! " 
 
 I recall an interesting talk with Professor Jowett at Freshwater, 
 one night that I walked with him from Tennyson's to his lodging at 
 the Terrace. The conversation turned to the subject of conventionali- 
 ties, and I urged how lamentable it was to see men, and especially 
 distinguished men, accepting in public, or even actively supporting 
 ideas which they abjured in their own minds. This was my hobby, 
 and I rode it at a pace that the Professor was probably little accustomed 
 to, yet he listened and answered not only with patience but apparent 
 interest, and when we arrived at his door invited me, somewhat to my 
 surprise, to come in and continue the conversation, I remember, in a 
 room dimly lighted with one candle. He seemed to agree with me in 
 the main, but argued to the effect that by an open and unguarded non- 
 conformity a m.an might ruin his career and lose all influence and 
 authority. I said in my usual impulsive style: "Oh, he would find 
 the apparent obstacles to be only shadows on his road." To which 
 
 J replied gently, but with a tone of conviction, " I fear he would 
 
 find them very real." 
 
 He is a soft, smooth, round man, with fat soft hands and a very 
 gentle voice and manner, but with no weakness of will or lack of 
 perseverance. He is extremely cautious, but not in the least cowardly, 
 can quietly make his way, doubtless, into very hard substances, as 
 some very soft creatures do (speaking without disparagement). J. 
 indeed has publicly shown great frankness, for an Oxford Don, and 
 will be a reformer ab intra. 
 
 I know full well how too impatient I always am, how too lacking 
 in savoir faire. Yet I don't think I was wrong to speak freely to him, 
 for once. Nay, I don't see how any thinking man can be at perfect 
 peace with himself while his public conduct and private belief are not 
 in agreement. I do not know one English writer now living who is 
 consistent. Emerson is : but supposing he were an Englishman ? — an 
 absurd supposition, for Emerson is entirely an American product. 
 
 Thursday, September 19th, 1867. Rossetti and I look round the 
 furniture brokers ; he buys an old mirror and several other things " for 
 a song," but they will have to be done up "otherwise you fill your 
 house with dinginess." Then a walk. R. walks very characteristi- 
 cally, with a peculiar lounging gait, often trailing the point of his 
 umbrella on the ground, but still obstinately pushing on and making 
 way, he humming the while with closed teeth, in the intervals of talk. 
 
90 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 not a tunc or anythinLj like one, but what sounds like a sotto voce note 
 of defiance to the universe. Then suddenly he will fling himself down 
 somewhere and refuse to stir an inch further. His favourite attitude — 
 on his back, one knee raised, hands behind head. On a sofa he often, 
 too, curls himself up like a cat. He very seldom takes particular 
 notice of anything as he goes, and cares nothing about natural history 
 or science in any form or degree. It is plain that the simple, the 
 natural, the naive are merely insipid in his mouth ; he must have 
 strong savours, in art, in literature, and in lile. Colours, forms, 
 sensations are required to be pungent, mordant. In poetry he desires 
 spasmodic passion, and emphatic, partly archaic, diction. He cannot 
 endure Wordsworth any more than I can S. He sees nothing in 
 Lovelace's " Tell me not, Sweet, I am Unkind." In foreign poetry 
 he is drawn to Dante by inheritance (Milton, by the way, he dislikes) ; 
 in France he is interested by Villon and some others of the old lyric 
 writers ; in Germany by nobody. To Greek literature he seems to owe 
 nothing, nor to Greek art directly. In Latin poetry he has turned to 
 one or two things of Catullus for sake of the subjects. English 
 imaginative literature — poems and tales, here lies his pabulum : Shake- 
 speare, the old ballads, Blake, Keats, Shelley, Browning, Mrs. 
 Browning, Tennyson, Poe being first favourites, and now Swinburne. 
 Wuthering Heights is a Koh-i-noor among novels, Sidonia the 
 Sorceress "a stunner." ^;y/ writing that with the least competency 
 assumes an imaginative form, or any criticism on the like, attracts his 
 attention more or less ; and he has discovered in obscurity, and in 
 some cases helped to rescue from it, at least in his own circle, various 
 unlucky books ; those, for example, of Ebenezer Jones and Wells, 
 authors of Joseph and His B?-ethreu and Stories after Nature. 
 About these and other matters Rossetti is chivalrously bold in 
 announcing and defending his opinions, and he has the valuable 
 quality of knowing what he likes and sticking to it. In painting, the 
 early Italians with their quaintness and strong rich colouring have 
 magnetised him. In sculpture, he only cares for picturesque and gro- 
 tesque qualities ; and of architecture^ as such, takes, I think, no notice 
 at all. 
 
 The two Aeoliafi Harps^ one of which Tennyson read 
 aloud with deep appreciation to its author, Would I kncia^ 
 St. Margaret" s Eve, The Girl's Laine?itation, The Sailor — 
 the last two described as " most admirable " — and The Dream 
 were Rossetti's favourites in Allingham's first volume. His 
 opinion of the one long poem in it, The Music Master^ is 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 9 1 
 
 mixed, his adverse criticism being that it is not a strong 
 enough narrative poem to form the pike de resistance \w a 
 first volume of poems, and that it chiefly awakens con- 
 templation like a walk on a fine day with a churchyard in it, 
 instead of rousing one like part of one's own life and leaving 
 one to walk it off as one might live it off; but he praises 
 the poem for its many artistic merits. 
 
 I have studied the poem at three times of my life — five 
 and twenty years ago, fifteen years ago, and in preparation 
 for this study. First I read it with unmixed pleasure, then 
 with considerable disappointment, lastly with mixed feelings, 
 my artistic and dramatic instincts somewhat pitted against 
 each other. For the dramatic interest drags at Gerald's 
 irresolute attitude and inarticulate farewell to Mollie, and 
 it is hard to forgive him for the unexplained silence that 
 consumed her very life. " The only part," writes Rossetti, 
 " where I remember being much affected was at the old 
 woman's narrative of Mollie's gradual decline." The 
 interest certainly revives here, but not convincingly, and 
 there is a lack of the romantically passionate which, as 
 Rossetti points out, Keats satisfies us with in his dramatic 
 narratives. But the poem so abounds with artistic beauties, 
 both of personal and natural description, that we accept it 
 thankfully on these grounds alone, pace Coventry Patmore, 
 who thought it perfect from every point of view. It has, 
 moreover, the note of distinction. It was the first serious 
 poem upon a musical theme, as its author claims. 
 
 Tacitly Allingham has taken Rossetti's advice, and made 
 The Music Master second in a series of four stories of Irish 
 life, old world and modern, in his final collection of Irish 
 poems, where its tranquil, calm and poignant restraint 
 contrasts happily with the mystery and romance of The Lady 
 of the Sea and the Abbot of I?tisfalk?i, and the uncanny 
 power and gloom of the Goblin Child and a Stormy Night, 
 
 Throughout his letters to Allingham we find Rossetti 
 seeking and generally accepting his friends' opinions of his 
 
92 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 poems, and glorifying, by recitation amongst his friends, 
 and approving or criticising, Allingham's, with a combined 
 delicacy and frankness which it does one good to dwell 
 upon. This was the period of Allingham's Day and Night 
 Songs, and Lawrence Bloomficld and Nightingale Valley, an 
 anthology of lyrics and short poems. But alas ! while 
 Allingham preserved Rossetti's critical letters, his own to 
 Rossetti perished, for it is chronicled that the great painter 
 was in the habit from time to time of clearing out his 
 drawers by the simple method of destroying all their 
 accumulations. 
 
 The ballad of Elfin Mere, " one of the very few really 
 fine things of the kind written in our day," as Rossetti 
 characterised it, was illustrated by that painter in the Day 
 afid Night Songs. 
 
 Here is, in brief, the story of Ihe Lady of the Sea. 
 
 Brother of Diarmid, king of West lerne, Dalchamar 
 becomes the apt pupil of the Arch poet Conn : 
 
 Who taught the Prince of Fairy folk 
 Who dwell within the hollow hills, 
 In founts of rivers and of rills, 
 In caves and woods and some that be 
 Underneath the cold green sea ; 
 The spells they cast on mortal men, 
 And spells to master them again. 
 
 Therefore Dalchamar, to his brother's dread, turns his 
 mind to some love the wide earth cannot give and lives 
 absorbed in dreams thereof. Till, as with the return of 
 spring, he paddles his coracle in a rocky cove and up a 
 lonely little strand : 
 
 What spies he on the tawny sand ? 
 A cold sea-jelly, cast away 
 By fling of ebbing water ? nay ! 
 A little Cap of changeful sheen, 
 A seamless Cap of rippled green, 
 Mingling with purple, like the hue 
 Of ocean weeds. 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 93 
 
 He stoop'd ; its touch 
 Like thinnest lightning ran him through 
 With blissful shiver, sharp and new ! 
 What might it mean ? For never such 
 A chance had come to Dalchamar ; 
 He felt as when, in dream, a star 
 Flew to him, bird-like from the sky. 
 
 But then he heard a sad low cry. 
 And, turning, saw five steps away — 
 Was it a woman ?— strange and bright. 
 With long loose hair, and her body fair, 
 Shimmering as with watery light ; 
 For nothing save a luminous mist 
 Of tender beryl and amethyst 
 Over the living smoothness lay, 
 Statue-firm from head to feet, — 
 A breathing Woman, soft and sweet. 
 And yet not earthly. 
 
 So she stood 
 One marvellous moment in his sight ; 
 Then, lapsing to another mood, 
 Her mouth's infantine loveliness 
 Trembling pleaded in sore distress ; 
 Her wide blue eyes with great affright 
 Were fiU'd ; two slender hands she press'd 
 Against the roundlings of her breast, 
 Then with a fond face full of fears 
 She held them forth, and heavy tears 
 Brimm'd in silence and overflow'd. 
 
 He, doubting much what this might be, 
 Watched her. 
 
 Swiftly pointed she ; 
 Utter'd some sound of foreign speech ; 
 But Dalchamar held out of reach 
 The Cap, behind-back, — and so each 
 Regarded other. 
 
 Then she flung 
 Her arms aloft, — stood straight, — her wide 
 Eyes gazed on his, and into him ; 
 And she began a solemn song. 
 Of words uncouth, slow up and down ; 
 
94 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 A sonj; that dccpen'd as she sung, 
 
 That soon was loud and swift and strong 
 
 Like the rising of a tide, 
 
 With power to seize and drench and drown 
 
 The senses, — till his sight grew dim, 
 
 A torpor crept on every limb. 
 
 What could he do ? — an ocean-spell 
 
 Was on him. 
 
 But old wisdom rush'd 
 Into his mind, and with a start, 
 One gasp of breath, one leap of heart, 
 He pluck'd his dagger from its shealh, 
 Held forth the little Cap beneath 
 Its glittering point. The song was hushed. 
 Prone on the yellow sand she fell. 
 
 He kneels, he takes her hands, with gentle, 
 Tender, passionate words — in vain ; 
 Then with a heart of love and pain 
 Wraps her in his crimson mantle, 
 Lifts her, lays her down with care. 
 As she a one-year infant were, 
 Within his woven coracle, 
 And o'er the smooth sea guides it well, 
 And bears her up the rocky path, 
 And through the circle of the rath. 
 To Banva's bovver, his sister dear. 
 There, half in pity, half in fear. 
 The women tend her, till she sighs 
 And opens wide her wondrous eyes. 
 
 She is a Sea Maid, Moruach (Merrow) of Irish tradition 
 and wears a Comileen Dniith — a magical Httle cap on 
 which depends her power of living under water. The Sea 
 Maid becomes Dalchamar's bride, but in the end leaves her 
 mortal lover and children to return to the ocean depths, 
 just as Matthew Arnold's Margaret is constrained to forsake 
 the Neckan and her children of the sea. 
 
 Allingham has written two remarkable poems on the 
 supernatural, one upon an Irish, the other upon an English 
 subject, namely, The Goblin Child of Bdashafwy and Squire 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM g5 
 
 Curtis. This is the legend of The Goblin Child of Bela- 
 shanny. " In the large old house by the bridge, once a 
 barrack, the room is still shown in which Robert Stewart, 
 afterwards Lord Castlereagh, is said to have seen a ghost, 
 which made a lasting impression on his mind. From early 
 childhood Allingham heard as one of the local traditions 
 that Castlereagh, after marching in with his regiment into 
 Ballyshannon, saw a ghost in the barracks, and there is no 
 reason to doubt that this is the ghost described in Lock- 
 hart's Life of Scott, chapter Ivi. Thomas Moore sets down 
 in his diary (Abbotsford, October 20th, 1835): 'Scott said 
 the only two men who had ever told him that they had 
 actually seen a ghost afterwards put an end to themselves ; 
 one was Lord Castlereagh, who had himself mentioned to 
 Scott his seeing The Radiant Boy. It was one night when 
 he was in barracks and the face brightened gradually 
 out of the fire-place and approached him. Lord Castlereagh 
 stepped forward to it, and it receded again, and faded into 
 the same place. It was the Duke of Wellington made Lord 
 Castlereagh tell the story to Sir Walter, and Lord Castle- 
 reagh told it without hesitation and as if believing in it 
 implicitly.' " 
 
 But whilst Allingham had the warm suffrages of famous 
 men and women of letters — the elect of various schools — 
 Dickens and Thackeray, Patmore and Rossetti, Ruskin and 
 George Eliot, Leigh Hunt, Tennyson and Browning — it is 
 impossible to avoid the conclusion that his poems did not 
 meet with the general recognitiont that hey deserved, while 
 such obviously unfinished work as The Songs of Two Worlds 
 and such charming but comparatively slight performances 
 as the lyrics of the author of So77gs of Seveji were widely read. 
 No doubt Allingham was clever enough to have tickled the 
 taste of the English middle-class tens of thousands by oleo- 
 graphs of the order of The Light of Asia or sham antiques 
 of the type of The Epic of Hades. But he was above such 
 a prostitution of his powers, even though he had by his 
 
g6 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 independence to suffer "fools" sadly — young lions, I should 
 say, or rather young jackasses in critical lions' skins who 
 brayed out of T/ie Saturday Review — '' New Poems by William 
 Allingham, and who is William Allingham ? " William 
 AUingham ! over whose Day and Night songs Ruskin went 
 into raptures, whom Rossetti and Tennyson recited and 
 Emerson quoted at length in the course of a famous oration. 
 
 But, if discouraged, the poet was in no sense daunted. 
 With the doggedness that ran in his northern blood he 
 thought and wrote on. 
 
 In Flower Pieces he exercised his fancy upon the lovely 
 nurslings of garden and field, while in Thought a?id IVordhe 
 attempts, as he says in his dedication to his children, " to 
 put into words some faint hint of the highest truths." Here 
 he tilts against Sacerdotalism and Un-Christian Science with 
 equal ardour, and in Au Evil May Day shows the horror of 
 the loss of belief and the joy of its recovery, released from 
 the letter which kills, and full of the spirit which gives life ; 
 whilst in his Neivs from Fanno?tia he conducts a noble 
 dialogue on the death and motive philosophy of the great 
 Emperor Marcus Aurelius. 
 
 Allingham's penultimate volume. Life and Fha?itasy, is 
 prefaced by an interesting note of his plan of poetical work : 
 " There are various modes of producing what a man is able 
 to produce, and in my case I have, as it were, gone on 
 knitting, in the midst of other occupations, a little w^eb of 
 poetry for myself and those near me out of designs sug- 
 gested by the influences of the passing hours, have looked 
 back at these from time to time, reconsidered, retouched, 
 omitted, added new things to old." 
 
 By this process his " six volumes have taken substance 
 and shape," and thus they should " show; something of the 
 quality of homogeneity, so far as this may belong to a man's 
 progress through successive stages of life and their various 
 moods." 
 
 His attitude to his art is to expound the miracle of 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 97 
 
 universal beauty, which, though linked with evil, is subject 
 to a divine law. 
 
 I have marked Prince Brightkin as a delightful fairy 
 pastoral for children's theatricals, and George and the 
 School-fellows as one of the most striking poems in this 
 volume, and was not surprised to find in a note at the end 
 
 of it this letter : 
 
 Tavistock House, 
 Monday^ Ninth November^ 1857. 
 
 My dear Sir, — I am happy to retain the poem, which is mournfully 
 true and has moved me very much. You shall have a proof without 
 
 fail. 
 
 Faithfully yours, 
 
 Charles Dickens. 
 
 His new Bona Dea is an address to Mother Nature — 
 the Bride of God — his childhood's rapture, his manhood's 
 guard against a despair, which, however, for a time broke 
 through her embrace and his ultimate consoler and spirit- 
 ualiser. 
 
 In both Thotight and Word and Life and Phantasy 
 begins that series of epitaphs, aphorisms and obiter dicta 
 of all kinds of which his final volume, Blackberries^ is 
 compounded : 
 
 These berries swell with autumn's power : 
 Some are red and green and sour, 
 Some are black and juicy to bite, 
 Some have a maggot, some a blight. 
 
 Here a new quality of our versatile author is apparent 
 — satire, quizzical, ironical, sarcastic, sardonic, the possession 
 of which is traditionally attributed to the Irish Bard, and 
 whose exercise owing to its supposed maleficent effects he 
 kept like a rod in pickle for his detractors. 
 
 We do not now believe in this power of rhyming 
 human rats to death, however we might rejoice at such a 
 form of euthanasia. But are there not still certain letter- 
 boxes into which the dropping of such epigrams as follow, 
 
 H 
 
98 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 upon their owners' well-advertised birthdays, might not have 
 a searching effect ? I will leave my readers to address the 
 envelopes. 
 
 '* Man's a machine ? " Well, if we ever can 
 Construct one, bit by bit, on some new plan, 
 Be sure 'twill be, a scientific man. 
 
 /believe without bother in This, That and T'other ; 
 
 Whatever is current, no matter. 
 /beHeve in success, and in comfort no less ; 
 
 / believe all the rest is but patter. 
 
 Dorr through his life has been content to wait 
 In lazy hopes of doing something great ; 
 In practice null, in theory surprising, 
 Dorr sleeps till noon to dream of early rising. 
 
 Arr does write books, and, to exalt his own. 
 On principle runs every other's down. 
 
 Scratch also writes ; and if you can and do 
 
 Praise Scratch, then Scratch will honestly praise yo2t. 
 
 Maximilian Gusher. 
 
 A torrent of abuse, or praise. 
 What matters which? I'll pour. 
 Let folk but on the sparkle gaze. 
 And listen to the roar. 
 
 With wrappings and knottings your meaning you hide ; 
 Good sooth, is there always a meaning inside ? 
 
 I dreamt I went to hell one night. 
 The little devils were impolite ; 
 But Satan with the sweetest air 
 Bowed me into a red-hot chair. 
 
 Finally, here is x\llingham's — 
 
 Advice to a Young Poet. 
 
 You're a true Poet : but, my dear, 
 If yoa would hold the public ear. 
 Remember to be, NOT TOO clear. 
 Be strange, be verbally intense ; 
 
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM 99 
 
 Words matter ten times more than sense : 
 
 In c/ear streams, under sunny skies, 
 
 The fish you angle for won't rise ; 
 
 In turbid water, cloudy weather. 
 
 They'll rush to you by shoals together. 
 
 *' Ignotum pro mirifico " ; 
 
 The least part of your meaning show ; 
 
 Your readers must not understand 
 
 Too well ; the mist-wrapt hill looks grand, 
 
 The placid noonday mountain small. 
 
 Speak plainly and folk say — " Is that all ? " 
 
 Speak riddles — " What is here ? " They read 
 
 And re-read, many times indeed ; 
 
 *' How fine ! how strange ! how deep ! how new ! 
 
 Here's my opinion ; what say you ? 
 
 It may be this, it might be that ; 
 
 Who can be certain what he's at. 
 
 This necromancer? " While they talk 
 
 You swing your solemn cloak and stalk 
 
 Or else look on with smile urbane, 
 
 *' Well done, my children, — guess again ! " 
 
 O let me not advise in vain, 
 
 Be what you will, but don't be plain ! 
 
 Thus writing, gardening, and musing afield with good 
 friends from the highest to the humblest, with many interests 
 in a life of high thinking and plain living, and above all, the 
 happiest of homes through the devoted companionship of 
 his wife and children, Allingham's days went by. 
 
 He wrote Ashby Manor^ a telling poetical drama of 
 Puritan and Royalist times (as Allingham tells us), which a 
 London manager highly praised, regretting, however, that 
 it was not exactly suited to his company, but asking for 
 another drama from the same hand. Some months later 
 the manager produced a play which was without doubt a 
 clumsy parody of Ashby Ma?ior, in time, story, incidents 
 and characters, with senseless melodramatic additions and 
 an entirely irrelevant fifth act. 
 
 The manager, on this being pointed out to him, asserted 
 that he had never read a page of Ashby Ma?ior, and scarcely 
 
 H 2 
 
lOO IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 recollected anything about it. His bold enterprise, adds 
 AUingham, deservedly proved a failure. He received 
 similar treatment when his one-act prose comedy, Hopwood 
 '^ Co., was shown to another stage shark, who swallowed 
 his ideas whole but returned the play. This piece might 
 well be undertaken by the Irish Literary Society with some 
 modification of the part of the Irish Dea ex machina. ISIrs. 
 AUingham illustrated Ashby Manor and other of her 
 husband's works with the rarest charm. 
 
 When next we have to think of Christmas presents, I 
 cannot conceive of a more enjoyable one for children, 
 young and growing up, than AUingham' s Rhymes for the 
 Yotmg Folk, with delightful pictures by Mrs. AUingham, 
 Kate Greenaway, Caroline Paterson and Harry Furniss. 
 Another AUingham souvenir is a selection from his poems, 
 which, by the consent of Mrs. AUingham, Mr. W. B. Yeats has 
 made, and which has been issued from his sister's beauti- 
 ful Cuala Press. To these AUingham souvenirs may now 
 be added the new volume of Messrs. Macmillan's Golden 
 Treasury, i.e., the selections from William Allingham's 
 poetry, by his wife, Helen AUingham. 
 
EARLY IRISH RELIGIOUS POETRY 
 
 ( With original translations) 
 
 Dr. Douglas Hyde, who has done much to preserve the 
 Gaelic religious poetry of Connaught, and who has turned 
 so much of it into beautiful English verse, first drew my 
 serious attention to the study of sacred poetry in the Irish 
 language. 
 
 I then read, with much pleasure, Dr. Alexander Car- 
 michael's fine prose versions of Hebridean prayer poems 
 and charms in his delightful Carmliia Gadelica, and, of 
 course, I had been happily familiar, from the time of their 
 publication, with Dr. Sigerson's verse renderings of Irish 
 Gaelic poems in his Bards of the Gael and Gall. 
 
 A German historian's opinion, quoted by Dr. Sigerson, 
 is that the civilisation of Europe belonged to Ireland for 
 three centuries, from the fifth to the ninth, and that an 
 Irish influence upon Latin verse first made itself manifest 
 in the works ofSedulius (Shiel) and especially in his Carmen 
 Paschale, the earliest Christian epic of importance. True, 
 the poet's Irish nationality has been questioned by the 
 German critic Huemer, but Dr. Sigerson applies Gaelic 
 verse tests which afford the strongest internal evidence 
 that he was an Irish writer. 
 
 Zeuss calls attention to Irish rhymes in the verses in 
 praise of St. Patrick by his nephew, St. Secundinus, also a 
 fifth century writer, and Dr. Sigerson enforces this view by 
 even more distinct proofs of the influence of the Bardic 
 schools upon these verses and upon his " Sancti, Venite," 
 the celebrated post-communion hymn, sung, according to 
 tradition, by angels in the Saint's church at Bangor. 
 
I02 IRISH I^IILKARV A-ND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Ther., in the si.xth (venany, we have, in St. Columkille 
 himself, an author of both Gaehc and Latin sacred verse, 
 one who moreover GaeHcised Latin verse, as in his Alhis 
 Prosator, composed in trochaic tetrameters. But, as a 
 writer in the ancient Lehor Brcac points out — distinguishing 
 between artificial rhythm, or that of quantity, and that of 
 accent in the syllables of the quatrain and half-quatrain — 
 this hymn is composed in the latter and popular Irish 
 rhythm. St. Columkille also uses trisyllabic and even four- 
 syllabled, as well as internal rhymes and assonances in his 
 Latin verse — all Gaelic verse peculiarities. 
 
 Columbanus, twenty years later, whilst composing in 
 classical metres and pure Latin, also introduced Irish 
 alliteration and rhyme ; and St. Ultan's seventh century 
 Latin hymn in honour of St. Brigit abounds in Irish-Gaelic 
 verse characteristics, as do the Latin hymns of the seventh 
 century poet saints, Cummain and Colman. 
 
 In the eighth century, according to Dr. Sigerson, St. 
 Cucuimne, who died a.d. 742, "employed both vowel and 
 consonant rhyme, with alliteration, in a manner most dear 
 to the Gaelic bards of Munster a thousand years ago. His 
 contemporary, St. CEngus, son of Tipraite, makes use of 
 woven rhyme with like liberality in his hymn to St. Martin. 
 As written, the lines are : 
 
 Martinus mirus ore laudavit deum, 
 Puio corde cantavit atque amavit eum. 
 
 Here we see the rhymes, but not the system, until we 
 arrange the lines as a Gaelic quatrain : 
 
 Martinus Mirus more 
 Ore laudavit deum, 
 Puro Corde Cantavit 
 Atque amavit eum." 
 
 The old Spanish rcdondellas are so obviously akin in 
 their imperfect rhyming to the Irish quatrains that it is 
 amusing to find Ticknor claiming them as an original con- 
 
EARLY IRISH RELIGIOUS POETRY I03 
 
 tribution to Spanish poetical culture, as Dr. Sigerson points 
 out. Of course they came into Spain out of Ireland. For 
 the fact was that Ireland was at this time not only *' The 
 Island of the Saints," but that of the scholars and students 
 as well — an International University, in fine, where all 
 foreigners. Continental and British, were not only received 
 with the warmest of welcomes, but actually given a free 
 education in all the learning of the time, free living and 
 free lodging, as The Venerable Bede expressly tells us. 
 What a comment this upon the tardiness with which Ireland 
 has secured a latter day National University of her own 
 from her Anglo-Saxon rulers, and in how different a spirit 
 from that of Prince, afterwards King, Aeldfrid of Northum- 
 bria, who, in those good old days, praised, in a Gaelic 
 poem of his own, the beauty and hospitality and learning 
 and wisdom of Ancient Erin. 
 
 Then the foreign students learnt Irish from their Irish 
 teachers, and carried GaeHc poetry abroad with them into 
 France, Spain, Germany and Scandinavia, there infusing 
 their native verse with such Irish elements as are found, as 
 pointed out, in the Spanish redondellas. 
 
 It will thus be seen that Gaelic verse, written side by 
 side with Latin, had not only influenced that language in 
 rhyme and accent, but had begun to emerge as a separate 
 vehicle for the expression of religious thought as early as 
 the fifth century. 
 
 I propose here to place before the readers of the 
 Dublin Review a few translations of some of the Gaelic 
 religious poems in early Irish, collected by Professor Kuno 
 Meyer, and the editors of The Irish Liber Hymnorum. 
 
 Let me preface my own translations with one by Dr. 
 Sigerson, published in his work already referred to. He 
 prefixes to this translation the following observations : 
 
 In Gaelic, many hymns and poems relating to religious subjects 
 made their appearance subsequent to St. Patrick's Guardsman's Cry. 
 They show originality and independence of thought and expression. 
 
104 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Perhaps the earliest is the Hymn of St. Ita (who was born A.D. 
 480) ; it is classic in form and bold in conception. 
 
 The absolute faith of the ancient Irish inspired them with the love 
 which casts (nit fear, and their poems show no trace of servile dread. 
 
 They prefixed the pronoun "mo," "my," to the names of their 
 saints, which they modified by fond diminutives. 
 
 Saint Ita, in this way, uses an endearing diminutive with the name 
 of the Redeemer. " Isa," the ancient Irish form of Jesus (which is now 
 " losa ") became "Isucan" — Jesukin — in her poem. It was applied 
 to the infant Saviour who, it was believed, abode with her at night, in 
 her lonely cell in the desert. The following translation is in the metre 
 of the original : 
 
 JESUKIN. 
 St. Ita (B, 480— D. 570.) 
 
 Jesukin 
 
 Lives my little cell within ; 
 What were wealth of cleric high — 
 All is lie but Jesukin. 
 
 Nursling nurtured, as 'tis right — 
 Harbours here no servile spright — 
 Jesu of the skies, who art 
 Next my heart thro' every night ! 
 
 Jesukin, my good for aye, 
 Calling and will not have nay, 
 King of all things, ever true, 
 He shall rue who will away. 
 
 Jesu, more than angels' aid, 
 Fosterling not formed to fade. 
 Nursed by me in desert wild, 
 Jesu, child of Judah's Maid. 
 
 Sons of Kings and kingly kin 
 To my land may enter in ; 
 Guest of none I hope to be. 
 Save of Thee, my Jesukin ! 
 
 Unto heaven's High King confest, 
 Sing a chorus, maidens blest ! 
 He is o'er us, though within 
 Jesukin is on my breasti 
 
EARLY IRISH RELIGIOUS POETRY I05 
 
 The legendary story of the famous hymn known as 
 The Lorica of St. Patrick., or The Gtiardsman's Cry., or The 
 Deer's Cry^ is, according to the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick, 
 as follows : 
 
 " Patrick and King Loegaire (Leary) met at Tara Hill, 
 when that monarch was presiding at a heathen festival, 
 which was to begin with the extinction of all fires through- 
 out the country. But Patrick disregarded the regulation, 
 and defiantly lighted his Paschal fire on the Hill of Slane, 
 in full view of the King and his Druids. Then followed 
 contested arguments between the Saint and the Druids, in 
 which Patrick triumphed, as Moses of old triumphed over 
 the magicians of Egypt. The King thereupon purposed to 
 kill Patrick by a treacherous assault ; but he and his com- 
 panions escaped, being miraculously transformed into deer, 
 but the hymn or chant which he recited in his flight was 
 the ' Lorica S. Patricii,' commonly called ' Faeth Fiada,' or 
 ' The Deer's Cry ' — the chanting of the Saint and his 
 monks appearing to those lying in ambush against them to 
 be the cry of deer." 
 
 In his Essay on Tara Hill.^ published in 1839, in which 
 this piece was first printed, Petrie stated that some portions 
 of the hymn were then in use amongst the peasantry, and 
 repeated at bed-time as a protection against evil. But 
 Dr. O'Donovan translates " fath fia " to mean magical dark- 
 ness, and Professor O'Curry explains that " fath fiadha " was 
 a spell, peculiar to druids and poets, who, by pronouncing 
 certain verses, made themselves invisible. " Thus The Lorica 
 may have gained its title, not from any tradition about 
 St. Patrick and the deer at Tara," writes Dr. Bernard, " but 
 from its use as a charm or incantation to ensure invisibihty." 
 That the hymn is of early date there can be no doubt, and 
 it may be identified with the " Canticum Scoticum," ordered 
 to be sung in all Irish monasteries in honour of St. Patrick. 
 " The original," writes Dr. Sigerson, "is a ' Kosg,' a poem 
 of short sentences, with irregular rhythm and rime." 
 
I06 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 THE BREASTPLATE OF ST. PATRICK. 
 
 I invoke, upon my path 
 
 To the King of Ireland's rath, 
 
 The Almighty power of the Trinity ; 
 Through belief in the Threeness, 
 Through confession of the Oneness 
 
 Of the Maker's Eternal Divinity. 
 
 I invoke, on my journey arising. 
 
 The power of Christ's Birth and Baptizing, 
 
 The powers of the hours of Ilis dread Crucifixion, 
 
 Of His Death and Abode in the Tomb, 
 The power of the hour of His glorious Resurrection 
 
 From out the Gehenna of gloom, 
 The power of the hour when to Heaven He ascended, 
 And the power of the hour when by Angels attended 
 
 He returns for the Judgment of Doom ! 
 On my perilous way 
 To Tara to-day, 
 I, Patrick, God's servant. 
 Invoke from above 
 The Cherubim's love ! 
 Yea ! I summon the might of the Company fervent 
 Of Angel obedient, ministrant Archangel 
 To speed and to prosper my Irish Evangel. 
 I go forth on my path in the trust 
 Of the gathering to God of the Just ; 
 In the power of the Patriarchs' prayers ; 
 The foreknowledge of Prophets and Seers ; 
 The Apostles' pure preaching ; 
 The Confessors' sure teaching ; 
 The virginity blest of God's Dedicate Daughters, 
 And the lives and the deaths of His Saints and His Martyrs 
 
 I arise to-day in the strength of the heaven, 
 
 The glory of the sun, 
 
 The radiance of the moon, 
 The splendour of fire and the swiftness of the levin, 
 The wind's flying force, 
 
 The depth of the sea. 
 The earth's steadfast course, 
 
 The rock's austerity. 
 
EARLY IRISH RELIGIOUS POETRY 107 
 
 I arise on my way, 
 With God's Strength for my stay, 
 God's Might to protect me, 
 God's Wisdom to direct me, 
 God's Eye to be my providence, 
 God's Ear to take my evidence, 
 God's Word my words to order, 
 God's Hand to be my warder, 
 God's Way to lie before me, 
 God's Shield and Buckler o'er me, 
 God's ?Iost Unseen to save me. 
 From each ambush of the Devil, 
 
 From each vice that would enslave m c, 
 And from all who wish me evil, 
 
 Whether far I fare or near, 
 
 Alone or in a multitude. 
 
 All these Hierarchies and Powers 
 
 I invoke to intervene, 
 W^hen the adversary lowers 
 
 On my path, with purpose keen 
 Of vengeance black and bloody 
 On my soul and on my body ; 
 I bind these Powers to come 
 
 Against Druid counsel dark, 
 The black craft of Pagandom, 
 
 And the false heresiarch, 
 The spells of v/icked women, 
 And the wizard's arts inhuman, 
 And every knowledge, old and fresh. 
 Corruptive of man's soul and flesh. 
 
 May Christ, on my way 
 To Tara to-day. 
 Shield me from poison, 
 
 Shield me from fire, 
 Drowning or wounding 
 
 By enemy's ire. 
 So that mighty fruition 
 May follow my mission. 
 Christ behind and before me, 
 Christ beneath me and o'er me, 
 Christ within and without me, 
 Christ with and about me, 
 
ICS IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Christ on my left and Christ on my right, 
 Christ with me at morn and Christ with me at night ; 
 Christ in each heart that shall ever take thought of me, 
 Christ in each mouth that shall ever speak aught of me ; 
 Christ in each eye that shall ever on me fasten, 
 Christ in each ear that shall ever to me listen. 
 
 I invoke, upon my path 
 
 To the King of Ireland's rath. 
 
 The Almighty Power of the Trinity ; 
 Through belief in the Threeness, 
 Through confession of the Oneness 
 
 Of the Maker's PZternal Divinity. 
 
 The originals of these early religious poems are as 
 remarkable for their style as Matthew Arnold leads us to 
 expect in a fine passage on the study of Celtic literature. 
 
 " The Celts certainly have style in a wonderful measure. 
 Style is the most striking quality of their poetry. Celtic 
 poetry seems to make up to itself for being unable to 
 master the world and give an adequate interpretation of it, 
 by throwing all its force into style, by bending language, at 
 any rate, to its will, and expressing the ideas it has with 
 unsurpassable intensity, elevation, and effect. It has all 
 through it a sort of intoxication of style — a Pindarism, to 
 use a word formed from the name of the poet, on whom, 
 above all other poets, the power of style seems to have 
 exercised an inspiring and intoxicating effect; and not in 
 its great poets only, in Taliesin, or Llywarch Hen, or 
 Ossian, does the Celtic genius show this Pindarism, but in 
 all its productions : 
 
 The grave of March is this, and this the grave of Gwythyr ; 
 Here is the grave of Gwgawn Gleddyfreidd ; 
 But unknown is the grave of Arthur. 
 
 That comes from the Welsh Memorials of the Graves of the 
 Warriors^ and if we compare it with the familiar memorial 
 inscriptions of an Eni^lish churchyard (for we English have 
 
EARLY IRISH RELIGIOUS POETRY IO9 
 
 SO much Germanism in us that our productions offer abun- 
 dant examples of German want of style as well as of its 
 
 opposite) : 
 
 Afflictions sore long time I bore, 
 Physicians were in vain, 
 Till God did please Death should me seize, 
 And ease me of my pain — 
 
 If, I say, we compare the Welsh memorial lines with the 
 English, which, in their Gemein/ieif of style are truly 
 Germanic, we shall get a clear sense of what that Celtic 
 talent for style I have been speaking of is. 
 
 Or take this epitaph of an Irish Celt, ^ngus the Culdee, 
 whose ' felire,' or festology, I have already mentioned ; a 
 festology in which, at the end of the eighth or beginning of 
 the ninth century, he collected from ' the countless hosts of 
 the illuminated books of Erin ' (to use his own words) the 
 festivals of the Irish saints, his poem having a stanza for 
 every day in the year. The epitaph on ^Engus, who died 
 at Cluain Eidhnech, in Queen's County, is by no eminent 
 hand, and yet a Greek epitaph could not show a finer 
 perception of what constitutes propriety and felicity of 
 style in compositions of this nature." 
 
 ON ^NGUS THE CULDEE. 
 
 Delightful here at Disert Bethel, 
 By cold, pure Nore at peace to rest, 
 
 Where noisy raids have never sullied 
 The beechen forest's virgin vest. 
 
 For here the Angel Host would visit 
 Of yore with ^Engus, Oivlen's son, 
 
 As in his cross-ringed cell he lauded 
 The One in Three, the Three in One. 
 
 To death he passed upon a Friday, 
 The day they slew our Blessed Lord. 
 
 Here stands his tomb ; unto the Assembly 
 Of Holy Heaven his soul has soared. 
 
no IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 'Twas in Cloneagh he had his rearing ; 
 
 'Tis in Cloneagh he now lies dead, 
 'Twas in Cloneagh of many crosses 
 
 That first his psalms he read.* 
 
 " Irish religious poetry," writes Professor Kuno Meyer, 
 " ranges from single quatrains to lengthy compositions 
 dealing with all the varied aspects of religious life. Many 
 of them give us a fascinating insight into the peculiar char- 
 acter of the early Irish Church, which differed in so many 
 ways from the Christian world. We see the hermit in his 
 lonely cell, the monk at his devotions or at his work of 
 copying in the scriptorium or under the open sky ; or we 
 hear the ascetic who, alone or with twelve chosen com- 
 panions, has left one of the great monasteries in order to 
 live in greater solitude among the woods or mountains, or 
 on a lonely island. The fact that so many of these poems 
 are fathered upon well-known saints emphasises the friendly 
 attitude of the native clergy towards vernacular poetry." 
 
 With these words before me, which summarise the con- 
 tents of the Professor's section of Religious Poetry in his 
 beautiful prose translations from Ancient Irish Poetry in 
 his book of that name, published a year ago by Messrs. 
 Constable, let me express my deep indebtedness to him for 
 the pleasure these consummate versions from the Gaelic 
 have given me. 
 
 They beguiled the tedium of a troublesome illness last 
 spring, and if the verse translations that follow have been 
 successful, it is largely because they have caught, through 
 Professor Kuno Meyer's prose, some of the inspiration of 
 their Gaelic originals. 
 
 * Matthew Arnold only quotes the last two quatrains of this epitaph 
 in the following prose version : 
 
 " Angus is in the assembly of Heaven, here are his tomb and his 
 bed J it is from hence he went to death in the Friday, to holy Heaven. 
 It was in Cluain Eidhnech he was rear'd ; in was in Cluain Eidhnech 
 he was buried; in Cluain Eidhnech, of many crosses, he first read his 
 psalms." The verse rendering of the whole poem is my own. A. P. G. 
 
Early irish religious poetry hi 
 
 CRINOG. 
 
 A.D. 900 — 1,000. 
 
 [This poem relates, on the authority of Professor Kuno Meyer, by 
 whom the Irish text was first published, " to one who lived like a sister 
 or spiritual wife with a priest, monk, or hermit, a practice which, while 
 early suppressed and abandoned everywhere else, seems to have survived 
 in the Irish Church till the tenth century."] 
 
 Crinog ot melodious song, 
 
 No longer young, but bashful-eyed, 
 
 As when we roved Niall's Northern Land, 
 Hand in hand, or side by side. 
 
 Peerless maid, whose looks ran o'er 
 
 With the lovely lore of Heaven, 
 By whom I slept in dreamless joy, 
 
 A gentle boy of summers seven. 
 
 We dwelt in Banva's broad domain, 
 
 Without one stain of soul or sense ; 
 While still mine eye flashed forth on thee 
 
 Affection free of all offence. 
 
 To meet thy counsel quick and just, 
 Our faithful trust responsive springs ; 
 
 Better thy wisdom's searching force 
 Than any smooth discourse with kings. 
 
 In sinless sisterhood mth men, 
 
 Four times since then, hast thou been bound, 
 
 Yet not one rumour of ill-fame 
 
 Against thy name has travelled round. 
 
 At last, their weary wanderings o'er, 
 To me once more thy footsteps tend ; 
 
 The gloom of age makes dark thy face, 
 Thy life of grace draws near its end. 
 
 Oh, faultless one and very dear, 
 
 Unstinted welcome here is thine. 
 Hell's haunting dread I ne'er shall feel. 
 
 So thou be kneeling at my side 
 
112 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Thy blessed fame shall ever bide, 
 For far and wide thy feet have trod. 
 
 Could we their saintly track pursue, 
 We yet should view the Living God. 
 
 You leave a pattern and bequest 
 To all who rest upon the earth — 
 
 A life-long lesson to declare 
 
 Of earnest prayer the precious worth. 
 
 God grant us peace and joyful love ! 
 
 And may the countenance of Heaven's King 
 Beam on us, when we leave behind 
 
 Our bodies blind and withering. 
 
 THE DEVIL'S TRIBUTE TO MOLING. 
 
 (Once, when St. Moling was praying in his church, the Devil visited 
 him in purple raiment and distinguished form. On being challenged 
 by the saint, he declared himself to be the Christ, but on Moling's 
 raising the Gospel to disprove his claim, the Evil One confessed that he 
 was Satan. " Wherefore hast thou come ? " asked Moling. " For a 
 blessing," the Devil replied. *' Thou shalt not have it," said Moling, 
 " for thou deservest it not." " Well, then," said the Devil, *'bestow 
 the full of a curse on me." "What good were that to thee?" asked 
 Moling. "The venom and the hurt of the curse will be on the lips 
 from which it will come." After further parley, the Devil paid this 
 tribute to Moling.) 
 
 He is pure gold, the sky around the sun, 
 A silver chalice brimmed with blessed wine, 
 An Angel shape, a book of lore divine. 
 
 Whoso obeys in all the Eternal One. 
 
 He is a foolish bird that fowlers lime, 
 
 A leaking ship in utmost jeopardy, 
 
 An empty vessel and a withered tree, 
 Who disobeys the Sovereign Sublime. 
 
 A fragrant branch with blossoms overrun, 
 A bounteous bowl with honey overflowing, 
 A precious stone, of virtue past all knowing 
 
 Is he who doth the will of God's dear Son. 
 
EARLY IRISH RELIGIOUS POETRY II3 
 
 A nut that only emptiness doth fill, 
 
 A sink of foulness, a crookt branch is he 
 Upon a blossomless crab-apple tree, 
 
 Who doeth not his Heavenly Master's will. 
 
 Whoso obeys the Son of God and Mary — 
 
 He is a sunflash lighting up the moor, 
 
 He is a dais on the Heavenly Floor, 
 A pure and very precious reliquary. 
 
 A sun heaven-cheering he, in whose warm beam 
 The King of Kings takes ever fresh delight, 
 He is a temple, noble, blessed, bright, 
 
 A saintly shrine with gems and gold a-gleam. 
 
 The altar he, whence bread and wine are told. 
 Where countless melodies around are hymned, 
 A chalice cleansed, from God's own grapes upbrimmed, 
 
 Upon Christ's garment's hem the joyful gold. 
 
 MAELISU'S HYMN TO THE ARCHANGEL MICHAEL. 
 
 By Maelisu ua Brochain, a writer of religious poetry both in Irish 
 and Latin, who died in 105 1. 
 
 Mael-Isu means " the tonsured of Jesus." He is the author of the 
 beautiful "Hymn to the Holy Spirit." 
 
 Angel and Saint, 
 
 O Michael of the oracles, 
 
 O Michael of great miracles. 
 Bear to the Lord my plaint ! 
 
 Hear my request ! 
 
 Ask of the great, forgiving God, 
 To lift this vast and grievous load 
 
 Of sin from off my breast. 
 
 Why, Michael, tarry, 
 
 My fervent prayer with upward wing 
 Unto the King, the great High King 
 
 Of Heaven and Earth to carry ? 
 
 Upon my soul 
 
 Bring help, bring comfort, yea, bring power 
 To win release, in death's black hour. 
 
 From sin, distress and dole. 
 
 I 
 
114 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Till, as devoutly 
 
 My fading eyes seek Heaven's dim height ; 
 
 To meet me, with thy myriads bright, 
 Do thou adventure stoutly. 
 
 Captain of hosts, 
 
 Against earth's wicked, crooked clan 
 To aid me lead thy battle van, 
 
 And quell their cruel boasts. 
 
 Archangel glorious, 
 
 Disdain not now thy suppliant urgent. 
 
 But over every sin insurgent 
 Set me at last victorious. 
 
 Thou art my choosing I 
 
 That with my body, soul and spirit 
 Eternal life I may inherit, 
 
 Thine aid be not refusing ! 
 
 In my sore need 
 
 O thou of Anti-Christ the slayer, 
 Triumphant victor, to my prayer 
 
 Give heed, O now give heed ! 
 
 THE HERMIT'S SONG. 
 See Eriu, vol. i, p. 39, where the Irish text will be found. 
 According to Professor Kuno Meyer it dates from the ninth century. 
 
 I long, O Son of the living God, 
 
 Ancient, eternal King, 
 For a hidden hut on the wilds untrod, 
 
 Where Thy praises I might sing ; 
 A little, lithe lark of plumage grey 
 
 To be singing still beside it. 
 Pure waters to wash my sin away, 
 
 When Thy Spirit has sanctified it. 
 Hard by it a beautiful, whispering wood 
 
 Should stretch, upon either hand, 
 To nurse the many-voiced fluttering brood 
 
 In its shelter green and bland. 
 Southward, for warmth, should my hermitage face, 
 
 With a runnel across its floor, 
 In a choice land gifted with every grace, 
 
 And good for all manner of store. 
 
EARLY IRISH RELIGIOUS POETRY 
 
 A few true comrades I next would seek 
 
 To mingle with me in prayer, 
 Men of wisdom, submissive, meek ; 
 
 Their number I now declare. 
 Four times three and three times four, 
 
 For every want expedient. 
 Sixes two within God's Church door, 
 
 To north and south obedient ; 
 Twelve to mingle their voices with mine 
 
 At prayer, whate'er the weather, 
 To Him Who bids His dear sun shine 
 
 On the good and ill together. 
 Pleasant the Church with fair Mass cloth — 
 
 No dwelling for Christ's declining — 
 To its crystal candles, of bees-wax both. 
 
 On the pure, white Scriptures shining. 
 Beside it a hostel for all to frequent, 
 
 Warm with a welcome for each. 
 Where mouths, free of boasting land i ribaldry, vent 
 
 But modest and innocent speech. 
 These aids to support us my husbandry seeks, 
 
 I name them now without hiding — 
 Salmon and trout and hens and leeks, 
 
 And the honey-bees' sweet providing. 
 Raiment and food enow will be mine 
 
 From the King of all gifts and all graces ; 
 And I to be kneeling, through rain or shine, 
 
 Praying to God in all places. 
 
 A PRAYER TO THE VIRGIN. 
 
 Edited by Strachan in Eriu, vol. i, p. 122. Tenth or perhaps 
 ninth century. 
 
 Gentle Mary, Noble Maiden, 
 
 Hearken to our suppliant pleas ! 
 Shrine God's only Son was laid in ! 
 Casket of the Mysteries ! 
 
 Holy Maid, pure Queen of Heaven, 
 
 Intercession for us make. 
 That each hardened heart's transgression 
 
 May be pardoned for Thy sake, 
 
 I 2 
 
Il6 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Bent in loving pily o'er us, 
 
 Through the Holy Spirit's power, 
 
 Pray the King of Angels for us 
 In Thy Visitation hour. 
 
 l>ranch of Jesse's tree whose blossoms 
 Scent the heavenly hazel wood, 
 
 Pray for me for full purgation 
 Of my bosom's turpitude. 
 
 Mary, crown of splendour glowing. 
 Dear destroyer of Eve's ill. 
 
 Noble torch of Love far-showing, 
 Fruitful Stock of God's good will ; 
 
 Heavenly Virgin, Maid transcendent. 
 Yea ! He willed that Thou should'st be 
 
 His fair Ark of Life Resplendent, 
 His pure Queen of Chastity. 
 
 Mother of all good, to free me, 
 
 Interceding at my side, 
 Pray Thy First-Born to redeem me, 
 
 When the Judgment books are wide ; 
 
 Star of knowledge, rare and noble, 
 Tree of many-blossoming sprays, 
 
 Lamp to light our night of trouble, 
 Sun to cheer our weary days ; 
 
 Ladder to the Heavenly Highway, 
 Whither every Saint ascends. 
 
 Be a safeguard still, till my way 
 In Thy glorious Kingdom ends ! 
 
 Covert fair of sweet protection, 
 Chosen for a Monarch's rest, 
 
 Hostel for nine months' refection 
 Of a Noble Infant Guest ; 
 
 Glorious Heavenly Porch, whereunder, 
 So the day star sinks his head, 
 
 God's Own Son — O saving wonder I 
 Jesus was incarnated j 
 
EARLY IRISH RELIGIOUS POETRY II7 
 
 For the fair Babe's sake conceived 
 
 In Thy womb and brought to birth, 
 For the Blest Child's sake, received 
 
 Now as King of Heaven and Earth ; 
 
 For His Rood's sake ! starker, steeper 
 
 Hath no other Cross been set, 
 For His Tomb's sake ! darker, deeper 
 
 There hath been no burial yet ; 
 
 By His Blessed Resurrection, 
 
 When He triumphed o'er the tomb. 
 By The Church of His affection 
 
 During till the Day of Doom, 
 
 Safeguard our unblest behaviour. 
 
 Till behind Death's blinding veil, 
 Face to face, we see our Saviour. 
 
 This our prayer is : Hail ! All Hail ! 
 
 ON THE FLIGHTINESS OF THOUGHT. 
 A tenth century poem. See Eriu, vol. iii, p. 13. 
 
 Shame upon my thoughts, O shame ! 
 
 How they fly in order broken. 
 Much therefore I fear the blame 
 
 When the Trump of Doom has spoken. 
 
 At my psalms, they oft are set 
 
 On a path the Fiend must pave them ; 
 
 Evermore, with fash and fret, 
 
 In God's sight they misbehave them. 
 
 Through contending crowds they fleet, 
 Companies of wanton women, 
 
 Silent wood or strident street, 
 
 Swifter than the breezes skimming. 
 
 Now through paths of loveliness, 
 Now through ranks of shameful riot, 
 
 Onward evermore they press, 
 Fledged with folly and disquiet. 
 
TiS IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 O'er the Ocean's sounding deep 
 Now they Hash like fiery levin ; 
 
 Now at one vast bound they leap 
 Up from earth into the heaven. 
 
 Thus afar and near they roam 
 
 On their race of idle folly ; 
 Till at last to reason's home 
 
 They return right melancholy. 
 
 Would you bind them wrist to wrist— 
 F'oot to foot the truants shackle, 
 
 From your toils away they twist 
 Into air with giddy cackle. 
 
 Crack of whip or edge of steel 
 
 Cannot hold them in your keeping ; 
 
 With the wriggle of an eel 
 
 From your grasp they still go leaping. 
 
 Never yet was fetter found, 
 
 Never lock contrived, to hold them ; 
 Never dungeon underground. 
 
 Moor or mountain keep controlled them. 
 
 Thou Whose glance alone makes pure. 
 Searcher of all hearts and Saviour, 
 
 With Thy Sevenfold Spirit cure 
 
 My stray thoughts' unblessed behaviour. 
 
 God of earth, air, fire and flood, 
 Rule me, rule me in such measure, 
 
 That, to my eternal good, 
 
 I may live to love Thy pleasure. 
 
 Christ's own flock thus may I reach. 
 At the flash of Death's sharp sickle, 
 
 Just in deed, of steadfast speech, 
 Not, as now, infirm and fickle. 
 
EARLY IRISH RELIGIOUS POETRY II9 
 
 THE MOTHERS' LAMENT AT THE SLAUGHTER OF THE 
 INNOCENTS. 
 Probably a poem of the eleventh century. It is written in Rosg 
 metre, and was first published by Professor Kuno Meyer, in The Gaelic 
 Journal, May, 1 89 1. 
 
 Then, as the exeaitioncr plucked her son from her breast, one of the 
 women said : 
 
 " Why are you tearing 
 Away to his doom, 
 The child of my caring, 
 
 The fruit of my womb. 
 Till nine months were o'er, 
 His burthen I bore, 
 Then his pretty lips pressed 
 The glad milk from my breast, 
 And my whole heart he filled. 
 And my whole life he thrilled. 
 
 All my strength dies, 
 
 ]My tongue speechless lies, 
 
 Darkened are my eyes ! 
 
 His breath was the breath of me ; 
 
 His death is the death of me ! " 
 
 Then another tuoman said : 
 
 '* Tis my own son that from me you wring, 
 /deceived not the King. 
 But slay me, even me. 
 And let my boy be. 
 A mother most hapless, 
 My bosom is sapless. 
 Mine eyes one tearful river. 
 My frame one fearful shiver, 
 My husband sonless ever, 
 And I a sonless wife, 
 To live a death in life. 
 
 Oh, my son ! Oh, God of Truth ! 
 
 Oh, my unrewarded youth ! 
 
 Oh, my birthless sicknesses, 
 
 Until doom without redress ! 
 
 Oh, my bosom's silent nest ! 
 
 Oh, the heart broke in my breast ! " 
 
T20 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 TJiai said ajiothey- wovian : 
 
 '* Murderers, obeying 
 
 Herod's wicked willinc;, 
 One ye would be slaying, 
 
 Many are ye killing. 
 Infants would ye smother ? 
 
 Ruffians ye have rather 
 
 Wounded many a father, 
 Slaughtered many a mother. 
 Hell's black jaws your horrid deed is glutting, 
 Heaven's white gate against your black souls shutting. 
 
 Ye are guilty of the Great Offence ! 
 Ye have spilt the blood of Innocence." 
 
 A)td yet anotlur ^vontan said : 
 
 *' O Lord Christ come to me ! 
 
 Nay, no longer tarry ! 
 With my son, home to Thee 
 
 My soul quickly carry. 
 O Mary great, O Mary mild. 
 
 Of God's One Son the Mother, 
 What shall I do without my child, 
 
 For I have now no other. 
 For Thy Son's sake my son they slew. 
 
 Those murderers inhuman ; 
 My sense and soul they slaughtered too. 
 
 I am but a crazy woman. 
 Yea ! after that most piteous slaughter, 
 When my babe's life ran out like water, 
 The heart within my bosom hath become 
 A clot of blood from this day till the Doom ! " 
 
 THE MONK AND HIS WHITE CAT. 
 
 After an eighth or early ninth century Irish poem. Text and 
 translation in Thesaurus Palaohiberniciis. 
 
 Pangar, my white cat, and I 
 Silent ply our special crafts ; 
 
 Hunting mice his one pursuit, 
 Mine to shoot keen spirit shafts. 
 
EARLY IRISH RELIGIOUS POETRY 
 
 Rest I love, all fame beyond, 
 In the bond of some rare book ; 
 
 Yet white Pangar from his play 
 Casts, my way, no jealous look. 
 
 Thus alone within one cell 
 
 Safe we dwell — not dull the tale — 
 
 Since his ever favourite sport 
 Each to court will never fail. 
 
 Now a mouse, to swell his spoils, 
 In his toils he spears with skill ; 
 
 Now a meaning deeply thought 
 I have caught with startled thrill. 
 
 Now his green full-shining gaze 
 Darts its rays against the wall ; 
 
 Now my feebler glances mark 
 
 Through the dark bright knowledge fall, 
 
 Leaping up with joyful purr. 
 
 In mouse fur his sharp claw sticks. 
 
 Problems difficult and dear 
 With my spear I, too, transfix. 
 
 Crossing not each other's will, 
 
 Diverse still, yet still allied, 
 Following each his own lone ends, 
 
 Constant friends we here abide. 
 
 Pangar, master of his art, 
 
 Plays his part in pranksome youth ; 
 While, in age sedate, I clear 
 
 Shadows from the sphere of Truths 
 
122 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS SONGS OF CONNACHT 
 
 For vigour and versatility Dr. Douglas Hyde occupies a 
 unique position amongst Irishmen of letters. A fine classical 
 and modern languages scholar, he can yet translate into racy 
 Hiberno-English prose and verse his own Gaelic description 
 and collection of the religious songs of Connacht. He 
 dedicates them, moreover — he, a Bachelor of Divinity of 
 Dublin University — in graceful Latin, to the memory of 
 Father Eugene O'Growney, his intimate associate in the Irish 
 language revival. Could literary catholicity go much 
 further ? 
 
 An extract from his interesting preface will show the 
 scope and purpose of the work : 
 
 ^Yhile collecting the poetry of the province of Connacht — a work 
 which I began some twenty years ago — I found that those poems which 
 touched upon piety or religion were very numerous. I found, more- 
 over, that prayers put in a setting of poetry, melodious "paidirs'' and 
 short petitions composed in metre, were very numerous also. I found 
 at the same time charms or *'orthas" or "amhras," I found pieces 
 concerning the Church, I found pieces praising or dispraising people 
 for their religion, I found stories about the Church or about the 
 persecution of the Church, or about some saint or other, I found 
 blessings, I found curses, and I put all these things down here with 
 the rest. These things are all mixed together in this book. There is 
 no special order or arrangement in them, and it is now in my reader's 
 power to form his own judgment — a thing which he could not have 
 done if I had concealed from him anything that was coarse, bitter, 
 foolish, half Pagan or otherwise unpleasing. . . . Very few indeed of 
 these things have ever been put upon paper until now, and they will 
 be becoming more scarce from day to day. If the " National Schools " 
 
THE RELIGIOUS SONGS OF CONNACHT 1 23 
 
 ruined the indigenous literature (the love songs, the drinking songs, 
 the keenes), they have torn these religious songs up out of the roots 
 altogether. ... "In my youth," says Father Walter Conway of 
 Glenaddy, "there was no house in which the ' paidirin ' or rosary used 
 not to be said throughout all the year. When I came to this parish 
 some eight or nine years ago, this custom had been given up by the 
 majority of people, I frequently inquired the cause and never heard any 
 answer except the one from everybody : ' We cannot say it in English, 
 and the young people will not repeat it with us in Irish.' " And 
 another priest, Father O'Concannon, also gives evidence of the neglect 
 of the ancient Irish prayers and the old religious poems, adding : " It 
 is upon the flagstone of the hearth that the foundations of piety and 
 nationality are laid, and alas ! that the foreign schools should be 
 destroying them ! " 
 
 Dr. Hyde will certainly have the sympathy he asks from his 
 readers for having preserved for the history of his country 
 this leaf plucked out of the book of pre-Reformation 
 Christendom. But to an historian's and folk-lorist's zeal to 
 contribute a chapter to his country's records, Dr. Hyde also 
 adds the desire of a good Irishman to preserve the evidences 
 of her piety through the ages. For, as he points out, " the 
 Irish Gael is pious by nature, there is not an Irishman in a 
 hundred in whom is the making of an unbeliever. God is 
 for him assured, true, inteUigible. When he meets a neigh- 
 bour, instead of saying 'Bon jour' or 'Good morning,' he 
 says ' God salute you.' " Indeed, all the ordinary invocations 
 and salutations of the Irish language are governed by this 
 religious feehng. " When he takes snuff from you he will 
 say : ' The blessing of God be with the souls of your dead.' 
 If a sudden wonderment surprise him, he will cry : ' A 
 thousand laudations to God ' ; and if he be shown a young 
 child or anything else for the first time, he will say : 
 ' Prosperity from God on it.' " 
 
 Dr. Hyde adduces two reasons for the persistence of the 
 Irishman in the Roman Catholic faith. The old Church gave 
 him more to believe than did the new Churches, and he was 
 ready to believe more than they did, even in the face of 
 bitter persecution. Again, the Irish Roman Catholic was 
 
124 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 never " insular." Much traffic prevailed between Ireland and 
 the Continent. Her clergy were trained in its great Colleges, 
 and brought home with them the thoughts, the spirit, and the 
 literature of Roman Catholic Europe during the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries. This is shown by the numbers of 
 books translated from the Italian, French, and Spanish into 
 Irish. Yet Dr. Hyde maintains that, in spite of what they 
 suffered, the Irish Roman Catholics were not unreasonably 
 embittered against those of the old Gaelic families whom the 
 Penal Laws converted to the new faith, though the bards gave 
 many a blow to " Martin " or to " John," and to " the lot who 
 fatten on Friday," — that is to say, the people of the Bearla 
 (the English language). And no doubt many of the new 
 clergy were time-servers, and through the relaxation of a 
 stricter rule of life became lazy and self-indulgent, and justified 
 such gibes as this : 
 
 If yon fat friar be a poor friar, 
 Then a fat desire is his life's rule ; 
 
 But if man by fat to Heaven aspire, 
 Then the lean friar is a lean fool ! 
 
 " Yet a change came at last. There grew out of the new 
 clergy many true Irishmen who had the love and respect of 
 the entire people." Donough O'Daly, said to have been 
 Abbot of Boyle in the beginning of the thirteenth century, 
 was, in Dr. Hyde's opinion, the finest religious poet of old 
 Ireland. His poem, My son, re7?iember, taken down by 
 Dr. Hyde from the lips of a travelling man near Belmullet, 
 appears to have been kept alive by oral tradition for six 
 hundred odd years. It is composed in the measure called 
 Ranneeacht, the quatrains of which had seven syllables in 
 each line, and were end-rhymed and internally rhymed as in 
 these specimen stanzas : — 
 
 My son, remember what I say, 
 
 That in the day of Judgment shock, 
 
 When men go stumbling down the mount, 
 The sheep may count thee of their flock. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS SONGS OF CONNACHT I25 
 
 Shun sloth, shun greed, shun sensual fires 
 
 (Eager desires of men enslaved), 
 Anger and pride and hatred shun, 
 
 Till Heaven be won, till man be saved. 
 
 Here, too, is an excerpt from one of the many poems dealing 
 with the vanity of this world : 
 
 Sleek and unhealthy this world is, 
 
 Where "wealthy " means wise and good and free. 
 Where if a man is only poor. 
 
 All men are sure a fool is he. 
 
 The men I saw they saw me not, 
 Or if they saw they would not see. 
 
 They thought, I think, I was not I, 
 But something different from me. 
 
 The religious bards of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centmies dropped the syllabic metrification, and only counted 
 the stressed syllables of their lines. Their themes are largely 
 spiritual dialogues, such as those between Death and a Sinner, 
 or the Body and the Soul. In these life is treated as a 
 pilgrimage, and Dr. Hyde points out that those of them of 
 Munster origin are more Puritanical in spirit than the 
 Connacht examples. For, according to him, "it is not to 
 God's vengeance but to His mercy that the Connacht man 
 most looks, and his religious poems are always advising good 
 works as the true road to heaven," as in this version of the 
 original : 
 
 Sister to sister, brother to brother 
 Speak truth, show ruth to one another ; 
 This the one road to heavenly profit ; 
 This Christ's own way ! Oh, stray not off it. 
 
 These religious songs were chiefly composed by the friars, 
 regulars, and the people themselves, not by the parish priests. 
 
126 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Indeed, the latter had to suffer from the satire of the former, 
 as in the following example : 
 
 O priest of the hips that are slroni; and portly and fine, 
 Bring in my soul safe in the shade of that corpus of thine ! 
 
 But another bard thus makes amends to his parish priest : 
 
 When you lifted your voice to plead in Christ's cause, 
 You made sinners to pause, you so looked through us, 
 
 You seemed in Kilcornin that Sunday morning 
 Like an angel of God sent to us. 
 
 Space does not permit of dealing with Dr. Hyde's religious 
 folk tales : a Rip Van Winkle tale of a student who left 
 college, the story of a friar driven mad by love, another of a 
 mad priest who wrought miracles, the strange legend of the 
 Stone of Truth, and above all, a unique version of St. Paul's 
 Vision contained in a manuscript between two hundred and 
 three hundred years old, picked up by Dr. Hyde in County 
 Meath, and all written down by him in racy Irish vernacular. 
 
 The religious poems of blind Raftery, who also wTOte 
 satires on the Tithe War, the establishment of National 
 Schools, and the Clare Election of 1828, closed the series of 
 the genuine religious Irish poets ; and to Raftery Dr. Hyde 
 gives the palm amongst later writers on the score of taste, 
 sweetness, and simplicity. This praise is borne out by 
 extracts from several of his longer poems, including a very 
 remarkable one on The Cholera Morbus^ and another 
 entitled Raftery's Repentance. It is only right, in con- 
 clusion, to call attention to the interesting series of prayers 
 and invocations, not only of duty and observance, but also 
 concerning such special acts as the covering up of the hearth 
 fire, and even the smoking of tobacco. Dr. Hyde gives many 
 charms against diseases and pains, such as whooping-cough, 
 ague, and toothache. A comparison of these Irish charms 
 with those in Alexander Carmichael's delightful Carnmia 
 Gadelica shows that not a few of these are cornmon to Ireland 
 
THE RELIGIOUS SONGS OF CONNACHT 1 27 
 
 and the Western Isles, but Mr. Carmichael's collection is 
 both stranger and more beautiful than Dr. Hyde's. It may 
 be mentioned in conclusion that Dr. Hyde not only gives the 
 Irish text of his collection on the left-hand pages of his book, 
 and the English version on the right-hand pages, but also 
 adds literal translations of the religious poems in the footnotes 
 below his metrical translations, thus enabling the Sassenach 
 to compare the one with the other for critical purposes. 
 
128 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 CELTIC NATURE POETRY 
 
 Matthew Arnold's book on the study of Celtic Literature 
 contains perhaps the first reaUsation by a keen and wise 
 English critic of the Celtic feeling for Nature as distinguished 
 from that of the Greek, the Roman or the Teuton. Matthew 
 Arnold has, indeed, coined a phrase expressive of that 
 Celtic feeling for Nature which has been a sentiment for 
 centuries, and which, when combined with the feeling for 
 style with which he also credits the Celt, produces in Celtic 
 prose tales and verse those flashes of beautiful expression in 
 description of Nature which he terms " natural magic." 
 Byron, as he points out, is more of the Celt than the Saxon 
 in his poetry ; and no wonder, for was he not a Gordon of 
 Highland descent ? " All Byron's heroes," he writes, " are 
 consumed with the Celtic passion of revolt, so warm- 
 breathing, puissant and sincere." He might have added 
 that Byron, like the great Irish and Welsh poets, nurses his 
 melancholy and exalts his spirits in companionship with 
 Nature, rejoicing in its sullen solitudes of frowning mountain 
 top and moaning sea, and again exhilarated by the dancing 
 wave or the leaping lightning. 
 
 Shakespeare, he considers full of Celtic magic in his 
 handling of Nature. Where did he come by this superlative 
 gift? Was it at second hand through Edmund Spenser, or 
 his friend Dowland the Lutenist, through whom he is said 
 to have introduced our Irish Puca, as his Puck, and our 
 Queen Meabh, as his Queen Mab, into his plays ? Or was 
 his mother, Mary Arden, who came from the Welsh border 
 
CELTIC NATURE POETRY 1 29 
 
 and whose kin was connected with the Welsh Tudor court, 
 of Cymric blood ? However this may be, Matthew Arnold's 
 fine discrimination between Shakespeare's Greek and Celtic 
 Nature notes deserves careful weighing. Thus he writes : 
 
 I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows, 
 Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, 
 
 strikes a Greek note. Then again in his : 
 
 Look how the floor of heaven 
 
 Is thick inlaid with palines of bright gold, 
 
 we are at the very point of transition from the Greek note 
 to the Celtic ; there is the Greek clearness and brightness, 
 with the Celtic aerialness and magic coming in. 
 
 Then we have the sheer, inimitable Celtic note in 
 passages like this : 
 
 The moon shines bright. In such a night as this. 
 When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, 
 And they did make no noise, in such a night 
 Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls. 
 
 In such a night 
 Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand. 
 Upon the wild sea banks, and waved her love 
 To come again to Carthage. 
 
 The earliest Celtic Nature poems have a mystical magic 
 about them which indicate a Druidical influence, or at any 
 rate reminiscences of Druidism, as will be seen from the 
 following specimens which represent the ancient poetry of 
 four of the Celtic peoples : the Irish, Welsh, Cornish and 
 Breton. Of this strange Pantheistic fragment called Ths 
 Mystery of Amergin, Dr. Douglas Hyde states it is his 
 opinion that whilst it is credited to xA.mergin, one of the 
 first Milesian princes who colonised Ireland many hundreds 
 of years before Christ, no faith can be placed in the alleged 
 date, or genuineness of this poem, but that it is of interest 
 " because, as Irish tradition has always represented 
 
 K 
 
/ 
 
 130 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Amergin's verses as being the first made in Ireland, so it 
 may very well be that they actually do present the oldest 
 surviving lines in any vernacular tongue in Europe except 
 Greek." 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF AMERGIN. 
 
 I am the wind which breathes upon the sea, 
 
 I am the wave of the ocean, 
 
 I am the murmur of the billows, 
 
 I am the ox of the seven combats, 
 
 I am the vulture upon the rocks, 
 
 I am the beam of the sun, 
 
 I am the fairest of plants, 
 
 I am a wild boar in valour, 
 
 I am a salmon in the water, 
 
 I am a lake in the plain, 
 
 I am a word of science, 
 
 I am the point of the lance of battle, 
 
 I am the God who creates in the head {i.e., of man) the 
 fire {i.e., of thought). 
 "Who is it who throws light into the meeting on the mountain ? 
 Who announces the ages of the moon (if not I) ? 
 Who teaches the place where couches the sun (if not I) ? 
 
 The early Cymric fragment which follows is of unknown 
 antiquity, but it is stated to be as old as the sixth, or possibly 
 the fifth century. It is from the Black Book of Caeinartheii 
 (1154-1189), "that remarkable depository of early Cymric 
 Law," as Mr. William Sharp calls it in his note to the poem 
 in his wife's Lyra Celtica. 
 
 THE SOUL. 
 
 It was with seven faculties that I was thus blessed. 
 With seven created beings I was placed for purification ; 
 I was gleaming fire when I was caused to exist ; 
 I was dust of the earth, and grief could not reach me ; 
 I was a high wind, being less evil than good ; 
 I was a mist on a mountain seeking supplies of stags ; 
 I was uiossoms of trees on the face of the earth. 
 If the Lord had blessed me, He would have placed me on matter, 
 Soul, since I was made 
 
CELTIC NATURE POETRY I31 
 
 The third example of early Celtic Nature poetry of the 
 mystical order is Merlin the Divmer, which, although it is to 
 be found in the old Cornish dialect, is really an ancient 
 Breton incantation. The translation is from a Memoir of 
 Thomas Stevens, the author of the following version 
 published by William Rees, Llandovery, 1849. 
 
 MERLIN THE DIVINER. 
 
 Merlin ! Merlin ! where art thou going 
 So early in the day with thy black dog ? 
 Oi ! oi ! oi ! oi ! oi ! oi ! oi ! oi ! oi ! oi ! 
 Oi ! oi ! oi ! oi ! oi ! 
 
 I have come here to search the way, 
 
 To find the red egg ; 
 
 The red egg of the marine serpent, 
 
 By the sea-side in the hollow of the stone. 
 
 I am going to seek in the valley 
 
 The green water-cress, and the golden grass, 
 
 And the top branch of the oak, 
 
 In the wood by the side of the fountain. 
 
 Merlin ! Merlin ! retrace your steps ; 
 
 Leave the branch on the oak, 
 
 And the green water-cress in the valley, 
 
 As well as the golden grass ; 
 
 And leave the red egg of the marine serpent, 
 
 In the foam by the hollow of the stone. 
 
 Merlin ! Merlin ! retrace thy steps, 
 
 There is no diviner but God. 
 
 The poetry of Nature may be applied in two senses ; it 
 may first mean " the work of the poet," as Wordsworth puts 
 it, " with his eye on the object," and using all his ability to 
 draw and paint a lifelike and justly coloured picture of the 
 scene before him. The power to do this does not imply 
 more than accurate observation and artistic sensitiveness to 
 the relation between what is presented to the eye and the 
 language in which it is interpreted. 
 
 The second view, which latterly appears to have become 
 
 K 2 
 
132 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 the paramount view of Nature poetry, is that of Wordsworth 
 and his school, namely, " The poetry of Nature for Nature's 
 sake," or as it has been well put by Professor Lewis Jones 
 (to whom in conjunction with Mr. Stopford Brooke belongs 
 the credit of a fuller development of Matthew Arnold's 
 theory), " the poetry which seeks to interpret Nature in 
 terms of mind and spirit, the attempt to divine its inner 
 meaning and its relation to the mind and soul of man." 
 
 The history of the poetry of Nature in the world's 
 literature, adds the Professor, " is the history of the develop- 
 ment of the poetry of pure natural description as w^e find it 
 in Homer into the reflective, the emotional^ the philoso- 
 phical treatment of Nature of which Wordsworth and his 
 disciples are the recognised modern exponents." 
 
 With this second view of Nature poetry, the Words- 
 worthian, Mr. Ruskin joins issue. x\s he put it, " for one 
 who can see, thousands can think. To see clearly is poetry, 
 prophecy, and religion all in one." This introspective 
 influence, called by Ruskin "the pathetic fallacy," tends, 
 he thinks, to a withdrawal into self, arising from solitary 
 communion with Nature, which breaks that sympathy 
 between the poet and his fellow-men, which is a higher 
 poetic bond than that between him and Nature. 
 
 " Scott," according to Ruskin, " approaches nearest of 
 modern poets to the Greek attitude towards Nature. He 
 conquers all tendencies towards the pathetic fallacy and 
 instead of making Nature anywise subservient, does not 
 venture to bring his own cares and thoughts into her pure 
 and quiet presence, presents her in her simple and universal 
 truth, and appears, therefore, at first shallower than other 
 poets, being in reality wider and healthier." 
 
 Commenting upon these views of Ruskin contained in 
 his Modern Painters^ Professor Lewis Jones points out that 
 " the history of the rise of the habit of regarding Nature as 
 a subject in itself fit and adequate for poetry " is paralleled 
 by that of the growth of landscape painting. 
 
CELTIC NATURE POETRY I33 
 
 For Ruskin shows that mediaeval landscape was made so 
 subsidiary to human interest that " the workman who was 
 first led to think lightly of natural beauty as being sub- 
 servient to human, was next led to think inaccurately of 
 natural beauty because he had continually to alter and 
 simplify it for his practical purposes." He thus conven- 
 tionalised Nature to such a degree that these mediaeval 
 landscapes became largely artificial. 
 
 Even Chaucer is affected by the same vice though in a 
 limited degree. His interest in Nature is not as consistent 
 as that of the early Celtic poets, or indeed the mediaeval 
 ones. He is the poet of April and May and their inspira- 
 tion to man through the reawakening of the earth to life in 
 its glory of new green and the voices of its singing birds, 
 but he cannot paint an autumn or winter landscape with the 
 sympathy of the Irish or the Welsh bard. Where amongst 
 his tales can such a stark presentment of the rigours of 
 winter be found as this song attributed to Finn MacCumhal, 
 200 B.C., though, of course, of much later date. My verse 
 rendering could hardly be more literal in its reproduction of 
 
 the Irish original : 
 
 Take my tidings ! 
 Stags contend ; 
 Snows descend — 
 Summer's end ! 
 
 A chill wind raging ; 
 The sun low keeping, 
 Swift to set 
 O'er seas high sweeping. 
 
 Dull red the fern ; 
 Shapes are shadows ; 
 Wild geese mourn 
 O'er misty meadows. 
 
 Keen cold limes each weaker wing. 
 Icy times — 
 Such I sing ! 
 Take my tidings ! 
 
 / 
 
134 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Though there is a great deal of truth in it I cannot 
 quite agree with Professor Lewis Jones' statement that in 
 Spenser "Nature is but the background to his splendid 
 pictures of romantic life and action, and that the environ- 
 ment of the Faerie Qiiee7i is that of Fairyland " ; a non-Celtic 
 fairyland I presume he means — " the atmosphere vague, 
 dreamy, ethereal, fading away into the verdurous gloom of 
 forests or into the blue mists of pleasant glades and shadowy 
 valleys." I regard much of the fairy poetry of vSpenser to 
 be touched just by the same Celtic fairy magic which suffuses 
 many of the border ballads and takes us captive in The 
 Ajicient Marine7\ whose author, as his grandson, Mr. Ernest 
 Hartley Coleridge, has pointed out, had Celtic blood in his 
 veins. No one who has, like myself, sat under Spenser's 
 oak by the Blackwater where the poet composed much of 
 the Faerie Qiieen^ and who knows, therefore, the landscape 
 that was then before his brooding eyes ; and no one who is 
 conversant with the fact that Spenser enjoyed, in translation, 
 the poems of the Irish bards could avoid the conclusion 
 that the spell of Celtic natural magic had fallen upon Spenser. 
 May he not indeed have caught inspiration from some such 
 verses as follow, in my close translation from an Irish 
 original which, to use Spenser's own words in praise of Irish 
 bardic poems, "savours of sweet wit and good invention 
 . . . and is sprinkled with some pretty flowers of their 
 natural device which give good grace and comeliness unto 
 them." 
 
 MIDIR'S CALL TO EDAIN. 
 
 [This Midir (the Fairy King), like the rest of his race, was an 
 accomplished magician ; and, in a short time after the marriage of 
 Edain, he appeared in disguise at the Palace of Tara. He asked to 
 play a game of chess with the monarch, Eochy Fedleach, and won the 
 Queen Edain as the stake. As he is about to carry her off he thus 
 addressed her.] 
 
 Queen of women, oh come away ! 
 
 Come to my kingdom strange to see ; 
 Where tresses flow with a golden glow, 
 And white as snow is the fair bodie. 
 
CELTIC NATURE POETRY T35 
 
 Under the arching of ebon brows, 
 
 Eyes of azure the soul enthral, 
 And a speech of songs to the mouth belongs, 
 
 And sorrowful sighing shall ns'er befall. 
 
 Bright are the blooms of Innisfail, 
 
 Green her forests wave in the west : 
 But brighter flowers and greener bowers 
 
 Shall all be ours in that country blest. 
 
 Can her streams compare to the runnels rare. 
 
 Of yellow honey and rosy wine, 
 That softly slip to the longing lip. 
 
 With magic flow, through that land of nnne ? 
 
 We roam the earth in its grief and mirth, 
 
 But move unseen of all therein ; 
 For before their gaze there hangs a haze. 
 
 The heavy haze of their mortal sin. 
 
 But our age wastes not, our beauty tastes not 
 
 Evil's apple, nor droops nor dies ; 
 Death slays us never, but love for ever 
 
 With stainless ardour illumes our eyes. 
 
 Then, queen of women, oh come away ! 
 
 Come and sit on my fairy throne. 
 In the realm of rest with spirits blest, 
 
 Where sin and sorrow are all unknown. 
 
 It is none the less true, as pointed out by the Professor, 
 that pre-eighteenth and much of the eighteenth century 
 poetry in the Enghsh language suffers from too strict an 
 interpretation of the point of view pithily put by Pope that 
 " The proper study of mankind is man." 
 
 The glory and wonder of mountain and forest are un- 
 described because unknown, but the petty pastoral aspects 
 of "dawn" and "bower" and "grove," rhyming with 
 " lawn " and " flower " and " love," are the Nature notes 
 harped upon ad natiseam by the imitators of Theocritus 
 and Virgil through the lips of their conventional shepherds 
 and shepherdesses. 
 
136 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 p As ancient Ireland was covered with forest its invaders 
 were of necessity oversea people and maintained their 
 position from points of vantage upon the shores, and more 
 especially upon islands or peninsulas in the great estuaries, 
 still keeping in touch with the sea and its suggestions. This 
 is true even of the later invaders of Ireland, the Danes, 
 who never moved far inland, penetrating no further than 
 the waters of the great rivers and lakes would allow 
 them. The early Irish and Irish-Danish Sagas are there- 
 fore permeated with the joys and terrors of the ocean. 
 Here is a portion of a fine early sea-chant (in translation by 
 myself), the original of which is ascribed to the celebrated 
 poet Rumann, who died in 748. It was first published 
 and translated by Professor Kuno Meyer, whose version I 
 have followed : 
 
 SONG OF THE SEA. 
 
 Huge, huge the tempest that disorders 
 
 All the Pleasant Plain of Lir, 
 Hurling whirl-blasts o'er its borders ; 
 
 At the winter's onset sheer, 
 
 Piercing us, as with a spear. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Rude, tremendous waves are tumbled 
 
 Round each mighty river mouth ; 
 Wild, white Winter has us humbled 
 
 Past Cantire from Alba south ; 
 
 Torrents quench Slieve Dremon's drouth. 
 
 ***** 
 
 Full the tide to overflowing ; 
 
 Pleasant is the Home of Ships ; 
 Eddying airs the sands are strowing 
 Round the Estuary's lips ; 
 Smooth and free the rudder slips. 
 
 But when the early waves of oversea invasion had 
 ceased to break upon the island, and the successive races 
 of conquerors had been driven inland by one another and 
 had become more or less united, the Irish visionary outlook 
 
CELTIC NATURE POETRY 1 37 
 
 upon the sea ceased, and the joys of mountain and forest 
 and plain overtook the hearts and minds of the ancient 
 Irish people. The mystery of magic stored in their 
 imaginations was given forth again and united them 
 intimately with their new surroundings. The extraordinary 
 physical and mental vigour inherent in a race which had 
 not so long ago faced the dangers of an uncharted ocean 
 in primeval vessels, incited them to constant deeds of arms 
 and a not less constant activity in the chase of the boar 
 and elk and red deer and wolf, which were then indigenous 
 in Ireland. 
 
 The Celtic love of Nature, pre-eminent in Finn and his 
 companion, stamps the Fenian tales with a picturesque 
 beauty nearer to earth because out of sight of the sea ; but 
 not nearer to heaven, because the other world of this 
 people was not imagined as contained in a sphere outside 
 their own, but intimately in touch with it, either within its 
 green hills or among the invisible islands which surrounded 
 its shores. As Mr. Brooke well puts it : " The great beauty 
 of the cloud-tragedies of storm, the gorgeous sunrises and 
 sunsets, so dramatic in Ireland, or the magnificence of the 
 starry heavens, are scarcely celebrated. But the Irish folk 
 have heard the sound of the wind in the tree-tops and marked 
 its cold swiftness over the moor, and watched with fear or 
 love the mists of ocean and the bewilderment of the storm- 
 driven snow and the sweet falling of the dew." These are 
 fully celebrated, as the following extracts from Irish Gaelic 
 poetry will show, proving, as Mr. Stopford Brooke points 
 out, "that the great and small aspects of Nature are so I 
 near to the heart of the Celtic story-teller — as they are not ^ 
 to the writers of the Teutonic and Norse Sagas — that, even 
 where there is no set description of scenery, an atmosphere 
 is created around the heroes and heroines of early Irish 
 heroic romance, that all other European early literatures 
 are without." 
 
 Thus the " Three Sorrows of Irish Story-Telling," as they ^ 
 
1 
 
 138 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 have been called, The Fate of the Children of Lir, llie 
 Fate of the Sons of Usnach^ and The Fate of the Sons of 
 Turann, tragedies all of them, are interwoven with beautiful 
 descriptions of natural beauty which add greatly to their 
 enchantment. And the same is true of the wonderful old 
 tale of The Pnrsnit of Dermid and G?'a?iia. The episodes 
 descriptive of the sufferings of the Swan children upon the 
 three Irish Seas and of their return to their father's ruined 
 palace are vivid to a degree in their realisation of the 
 savage aspects of Nature, though the atmospheric gloom is 
 now and again suffused by returning sunshine, and the close 
 of the tragedy is a beautifully hopeful one. 
 
 Here is a fresh translation fron¥ The Fate of the Sons 
 of U's?iach, who carried off Deirdre, King Conor's bride, 
 to Scotland, where she was wed to Naisi, the eldest brother, 
 and where the four abode in great happiness till their fatal 
 return to Erin. The joy in the life of Nature exhibited in 
 this farewell to Scotland by Deirdre is very delightful in 
 the original. 
 
 DEIRDRE'S FAREWELL TO SCOTLAND. 
 
 A land well-beloved is yon Easterly Land, 
 Alba of marvels, from mountain to strand, 
 Thence unto Erin I had not been faring, 
 Were Naisi not leading me still by the hand. 
 
 Beloved is Don Fidga, beloved is Dun Finn, 
 To the Fortress above 'twas delightful to win ; 
 \ Dear is the Isle where the thorn bushes smile, 
 
 "^ Very dear is Dun Sweeny, without and within. 
 
 Caill Cuan, Caill Cuan, where Ainli was blest, 
 Caill Cuan, Caill Cuan, for you Lm distressed. 
 May was in prime, when we fleeted the time, 
 Naisi and I, on your beautiful breast. 
 
 Glen Lay, O, Glen Lay, where we hunted all day. 
 Or crouched under cliffs in the summer moon's ray, 
 
 Venison and fish, and badger on dish — 
 That was our portion in lovely Glen Lay. 
 
CELTIC NATURE POETRY 1 39 
 
 Glen Massan, Glen Massan, of blossoming bowers, 
 Tall its wild garlic, white over with flowers, 
 
 Joy-broken sleep upon beds grassy deep, 
 By thy River-mouth's murmur. Glen Massan was ours ! 
 
 Glen Etive, Glen Etive — ah ! where art thou now, 
 And the bothy I built on thy verdurous brow ; 
 
 When we rose with the dawn and looked into our bawn, 
 A cattle-fold sunny. Glen Etive wert thou ! 
 
 Glen Urchain, Glen Urchain, now far from our ken, 
 O that was the straight and the fair-shouldered glen, 
 
 There in the flower of his pride and his power, 
 Stood Naisi exulting, my monarch of men. 
 
 Glen da Ruadh, Glen da Ruadh, hail ! to the Chief 
 Who hath thee in heritage, lap of green leaf! 
 
 Thy green peak behind, sweet to hear, hard to find, 
 The cuckoo enchanting goes banishing grief. 
 
 Beloved is Draighen above a firm strand ! 
 How soft its stream purls over silver-pure sand ! 
 
 Till death I'd be under its sky of blue wonder, 
 Were Naisi not leading me home by the hand. 
 
 But it is not only the warrior Irish bards who deHght us 
 with such glimpses of the green countryside, of the heather- 
 clad hill ; the monks and hermits and some of the great 
 ecclesiastics, Columkille and the Bishop-King Cormac 
 MacCullenann, and indeed St. Patrick himself, give us 
 beautiful passages of Nature poetry in the midst of their ] 
 sacred verse. Here is Dr. Hyde's charming rendering of 
 St. Columkille's Farewell to Erin, which he was ordered 
 to quit for ever, by the judgment of St. Molaise, owing to 
 his responsibility for the battle of Cooldrevin. He returned 
 once, however, it is said, to save the Irish bards from 
 expulsion from their native land : 
 
 COLUMCILLE'S FAREWELL. 
 
 Alas for the voyage, O high King of Heaven, / 
 
 Enjoined upon me. 
 For that I on the red plain of bloody Cooldrevin 
 
 Was present to see. 
 
140 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 How happy the son is of Dima ; no sorrow 
 
 For him is designed, 
 He is having, this hour, round his own hill in Durrow 
 
 The wish of his mind. 
 
 The sounds of the winds in the elms, like the strings of 
 
 A harp being played, 
 The note of a blackbird that claps with the wings of 
 
 Delight in the glade. 
 
 With him in Ros-Grencha the cattle are lowing 
 
 At earliest dawn. 
 On the brink of the summer the pigeons are cooing 
 
 And doves in the lawn. 
 
 Three things am I leaving behind me, the very 
 
 Most dear that I know, 
 Tir-Leedach I'm leaving, and Durrow and Derry ; 
 
 Alas, I must go ! 
 
 Yet my visit and feasting with Comgall have eased me 
 
 At Cainneach's right hand, 
 And all but thy government, Eire, has pleased me, 
 
 Thou waterfall land. 
 
 The sentiment contained in the last two lines has been 
 reiterated time out of mind since the Saint's day, and we 
 seem almost as far as ever from being able to vary it 
 satisfactorily. 
 
 The early Welsh poets, Aneurin, TaUesyn and Llywarch 
 Hen, were warrior bards, yet possessed with a love of 
 Nature so absorbing that they have left behind them entire 
 poems devoted to Nature, some of them running to con- 
 siderable length, such as Aneurin's Months and Llywarch 
 Hen's Tercets and poem on Winter^ while Taliesyn's 
 Sojig of the Wind forms a considerable episode in one 
 of his longer poems. 
 
 Space does not permit of our quoting more than a few 
 fragments from these somewhat mystical and distinctly 
 gnomic odes. This is from the Tercets of Llywarch 
 Hen, a sj^tlL_cenUin^ Welsh bard, though the version of his 
 
CELTIC NATURE POETRY 141 
 
 poem, from which the following is my translation, is in 
 language of a much later date : 
 
 Set is the snare ; the ash clusters glow, 
 
 Ducks plash in the pools ; breakers whiten below ; 
 
 More strong than a hundred is the heart's hidden woe. 
 
 The brambles with berries of purple are dressed ; 
 In silence the brooding thrush clings to her nest, 
 In silence the liar can never take rest. 
 
 Rain is without, but the shelter is near ; 
 
 Yellow the furze, the cow-parsnip is sere, 
 
 God in Heaven, how couldst Thou create cowards here ! 
 
 Rain and still rain, dank these tresses of mine ! 
 The feeble complain of the cliff's steep incline ; 
 Wan is the main ; sharp the breath of the brine. 
 
 Rain falls in a sheet ; the Ocean is drenched ; 
 By the whistling sleet the reed-tops are wrenched ; 
 Feat after feat ; but Genius lies quenched. 
 
 Much of the spirit of St. Francis animates these monkish 
 and hermit poems. There is a tenderness for the sufferings, 
 not only of the half-frozen wren during the snowstorm, but 
 even of the prowling wolf or the hovering eagle. 
 
 Not even in Cuan's forest deep. 
 To-night the shaggy wolves can sleep, 
 Nor can the little wren keep warm 
 On Lon's wild side against the storm. 
 
 The ancient eagle of Glen Rye 
 s Gets grief from out the storm-swept sky. 
 
 Great her misery, dire her drouth, 
 Famished, frozen, craw and mouth. 
 
 But if, as Matthew Arnold has pointed out, Nature 
 poetry, in a sense between that of the Greeks and that of 
 Wordsworth and his school, can thus be proved to be a 
 Celtic endowment, from whence did the English school of 
 
142 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Nature poets derive its inspiration ? Mr. Stopford Brooke 
 and Mr. F. T. Palgrave give us the clue which I hope to 
 follow out in a subsequent essay. The connection can be 
 traced in the streams of Celtic verse which mingled them- 
 selves with English poetry : the first a legacy of the Celtic 
 blood in the Lowlands and flowing in the veins of the 
 mediaeval Scottish poets, Douglas and Dunbar ; the second 
 having its source in the Principality and represented in the 
 writings of the Welsh poets, George Herbert and Henry 
 Vaughan. 
 
 Indeed, in a paper read by Professor Palgrave before 
 the Cymmrodorion Society, he goes so far as to write : " It 
 is safe to affirm that of all our poets until we reach Words- 
 worth, including here Chaucer, Spenser, and Milton, 
 Vaughan affords decidedly the most varied and the most 
 delicate pictures of Nature; that he looked upon the 
 landscape both in its fine details and its larger, and, as they 
 might be called, its cosmic aspects, with an insight and an 
 imaginative penetration not rivalled till we reach our own 
 century (the nineteenth)." 
 
 But behind the Scotch Lowland Nature poets of the 
 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and behind the Welsh 
 Nature poets of the seventeenth century, lie the gardens of 
 Irish and Welsh and Highland mediaeval bardic poetry, 
 tended by the O'Dalys, O'Carrolls, O'Higgins and 
 O'Coffeys, joint Irish and Scotch bards, the O'Husseys, the 
 Rhys Gochs, and beyond all, as the laureate of Celtic 
 Nature poets, Davydd ap Gwilym — true descendants of 
 Finn and Ossian, Aneurin and Llywarch Hen. 
 
THE PRETERNATURAL IN EARLY IRISH 
 POETRY 
 
 The study of early Irish literature, whether professedly 
 historical or romantic, is of that of a world possessed with 
 preternatural beliefs. As it has been very well put by 
 Miss Eleanor Hull in her work on Irish Literature : * 
 
 Everywhere in the literature which the old Gael has produced we 
 find the mingling of the actual and the purely imaginative ; in his 
 serious annals and historical tracts he surprises us by the perpetual 
 intrusion of fairy lore, or by the gravely historic importance which he 
 attaches to the genealogies and wars and settlements of the gods ; his 
 legal decisions and ancient lores have "a thread of poetry thrown 
 round them," and his official verse contains the geography, the 
 genealogies, and the historical traditions of Ireland. . . . The accounts 
 of Brian Boru, early in the eleventh century, are tinged with fairy 
 belief, just as are the tales of Conaire Mor at the beginning of the 
 Christian era ; nor, when Dr. Geoffrey Keating comes to compile a 
 connected history of Ireland in the seventeenth century, does he show 
 much desire to sift the real from the unreal. 
 
 In the two great groups of Irish romantic tales, those 
 of the Red Branch Knights and those of Finn Mac- 
 Cumhal and his heroic companions, while there is, no doubt, 
 an underlying historical basis of fact, kinship with the gods 
 involving supernatural powers, and then companionship 
 with the heroes and heroines of the De Danann race who 
 had passed into fairy lands across the seas or under them 
 and the earth, are treated as naturally as they are in 
 
 * A Text-Book of Irish Liierahire. By Eleanor Hull (M. H. Gill 
 ^nd Sons, Dublin). 
 
144 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 associations of a similar kind in the Iliad and Odyssey. 
 The heroic warfare of the early Irish Gaelic warriors, their 
 martial equipment and their mode of life ring true to the 
 descriptions by Caesar, Livy, and Tacitus of the Britons and 
 Gauls with whom the Irish chieftains were contemporary, 
 according to the traditional dates of these cycles of early 
 Irish romance. 
 
 Yet while the Red Branch heroes claimed descent from 
 the Tuatha De Danann gods, and the preternatural feats of 
 Cuchulain and his companions were said to be due to this 
 divine connection, their attitude towards these ancestral 
 deities was too intimate to admit of acts of worship towards 
 them. The relations between these gods and heroes 
 resemble those that subsisted between the heroes of early 
 Greece and their gods in the Trojan war, and not only 
 do the gods take sides for or against Cuchulain, as the 
 Greek gods did for or against Achilles, but we even find the 
 De Danann divinities seeking the aid of the Irish heroes 
 when engaged in conflicts with one another. 
 
 As suggested, the relation between the defeated De 
 Danann gods, when they have passed into fairyland, and 
 the Fenian heroes is of a still more intimate kind. These 
 gods, turned fairies, engage the Fenian heroes in their wars 
 with one another, spirit them off under a spell of magic 
 mist into underground palaces, from which they are released 
 by mortal brother warriors, befriend them when pursued by 
 their enemies, or by the glamour of their fairy women draw 
 them for a while into Tir n' an Oge, the land of perpetual 
 youth. 
 
 As Mr. Stopford Brooke writes in his fine introduction 
 to his son-in-law, ivlr. T. W. Rolleston's High Deeds of Fbui : 
 
 These were the invisible lands and peoples of the Irish imagination ; 
 and they live in and out of many of the stories. Cuchulain is lured 
 into a fairy land, and lives for more than a year in love with Fand, 
 Manannan's wife. Into another fairy land, through zones of mist, 
 Cormac, as is told here, was lured by Manannan, who now has left the sea 
 
THE PRETERNATURAL IN EARLY IRISH POETRY I 45 
 
 to play on the land. Oisin flies with Niam over the sea to the Island of 
 Eternal Youth. Etain, out of the immortal land, is born into an Irish 
 girl and reclaimed and carried back to her native shore by Midir, a 
 prince of the Fairy Host. Ethne, whose story also is here, has lived for 
 all her youth in the court of Angus, deep in the hill beside the rushing 
 of the Boyne. 
 
 Observe the intimate description of this fairy cavalcade, 
 not of pigmy warriors, but of powerful, heroic fairy princes 
 as they pass before Laegaire (Laery) Mac Crimthainn when 
 he visits the Fairy Realm of Magh Mell. They might be 
 the fiercest of Norse warriors devastating the Irish coasts, 
 but for the arts that endear them to the Gael, music and 
 poetry and their kindred skill at chess playing. Clearly 
 they are of the stock of the De Dananns, who, upon the 
 Milesian invasion, descended into fairyland. I here versify, 
 in old Irish measure, the prose rendering of the lyric in 
 the Book of Leinster, a MS. of the twelfth century, made by 
 Professor Kuno Meyer : 
 
 THE FAIRY HOST. 
 
 Pure white the shields their arms upbear, 
 
 With silver emblems rare o'er-cast ; 
 Amid blue glittering blades they go, 
 
 The horns they blow are loud of blast. 
 
 In well-instructed ranks of war 
 
 Before their Chief they proudly pace ; 
 Coerulean spears o'er every crest — 
 
 A curly-tressed, pale-visaged race. 
 
 Beneath the flame of their attack, 
 
 Bare and black turns every coast ; 
 With such a terror to the fight 
 
 Flashes that mighty vengeful hosi. 
 
 Small wonder that their strength is great, 
 
 Since royal in estate are all, 
 Each Hero's head a lion's fell — 
 
 A golden yellow mane lets fall. 
 
146 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Comely and smooth their bodies are, 
 
 Their eyes the starry blue eclipse ; 
 The pure white crystal of their teeth 
 
 Laughs out beneath their thin red lips. 
 
 Good are they at man-slaying feats, 
 
 Melodious over meats and ale ; 
 Of woven verse they wield the spell, 
 
 At chess-craft they excel the Gael. 
 
 More, a Munster Princess, was carried off by the fairy 
 host in her youth, but escaped from them and became the 
 wife of Cathal, King of Cashel. Afterwards her sister was 
 similarly abducted, but was rescued by More, who recog- 
 nised her by her singing, and thus advises her how she may 
 free herself from the spells of the Sidh (Shee) : 
 
 Little sister, whom the Fay 
 
 Hides away within his Doon,* 
 Deep below yon tufted fern, 
 
 Oh, list and learn my magic tune ! 
 
 Long ago, when snared like thee 
 
 By the Shee, my harp and I 
 O'er them wove the slumber spell, 
 
 Warbling well its lullaby. 
 
 Till with dreamy smiles they sank, 
 
 Rank on rank before the strain ; 
 Then I rose from out the rath 
 
 And found my path to earth again. 
 
 Little sister, to my woe 
 
 Hid below among the Shee, 
 List, and learn my magic tune. 
 
 That it full soon may succour thee. 
 
 The beautiful old air to which More of Cloy?ie is 
 sung is of the sleep-disposing kind, under which lullabies 
 and fairy music are classed. It formed the third of the 
 three Musical Feats, or three styles of playing, which gave 
 
 * A fortified residence. 
 
THE PRETERNATURAL IN EARLY IRISH POETRY I47 
 
 the dignity of Ollamh, or Doctor of Music, to the ancient 
 professors of the harp, and whose origin is given in this 
 weird old Folk Tale. 
 
 Lugh, the king of the Tuatha de Danann and the 
 Daghda, their great chief and Druid, and Ogma, their 
 bravest champion, followed the Formorians and their leader 
 from the battle-field of Moyturah, because they had carried 
 off the Daghda's harper, Uaithne by name. 
 
 The pursuers reached the banquet house of the Fomorian 
 chiefs and there found Breas, the son of Elathan, and 
 Elathan, the son of Delbath, and also the Daghda's harp 
 hanging upon the wall. This was the harp in which its 
 music was spellbound so that it would not answer when 
 summoned until the Daghda evoked it, when he said, 
 " Come Durdabla, come Coircethaircuir (the two names of 
 the harp) . . ." The harp came forth from the wall then 
 and killed nine persons in its passage. And it came to the 
 Daghda, and he played for them the three musical feats 
 which give distinction to a harper, namely, the Goltree 
 which, from its melting plaintiveness, caused crying, the 
 Gentree^ which, from its merriment, caused laughter, and the 
 Soontree, which, from its deep murmuring, caused sleep. 
 
 He played them the Goltree, till their women cried tears ; 
 he played them the Gentree until their women and youths 
 burst into laughter ; he played them the SooJitree until the 
 entire host fell asleep. It was through that sleep that they, 
 the three champions, escaped from those Fomorians who 
 were desirous to slay them 
 
 Observe the dignified bearing of the Fomorian champions 
 who held back their tears and laughter when their women 
 and young folk gave way to them, and could only be won 
 from their fell purpose by the fairy music of the De 
 Danann harp. 
 
 Dr. George Petrie, in \\\% Ancient Music of Ireland, prints 
 a wonderful old fairy lullaby, sung to a Gaelic poem, of 
 which Eugene O'Curry writes : "This rare and remarkable 
 
 L 2 
 
148 IRISH LITERARV AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 poem contains . . . more of authentic fairy fact and 
 doctrine than, with some few exceptions, has been ever 
 before pubhshed in Ireland." 
 
 Here is a prose rendering of the original. 
 
 O Woman below on the brink of the stream. Sho hoo lo ! 
 Do you understand the cause of my wailing? Sho hoo lo ! 
 A year and this day I was whipt off my palfrey. Sho hoo lo ! 
 And was carried into Lios-an-Chnocain. Sho hoo lo I Sho-heen, 
 Sho hoo lo ! 
 
 There is here my beautiful great house. Sho hoo lo ! 
 Abundant is new ale there and old ale. Sho hoo lo ! 
 Abundant is yellow honey and bee's wax there. Sho hoo lo ! 
 Many is the old man tightly bound there. Sho hoo lo ! Sho been, 
 etc. 
 
 Many is the curling brown-haired boy there. Sho hoo lo ! 
 
 Many is the yellow-haired comely girl there. Sho hoo lo ! 
 
 There are twelve women bearing sons there. Sho hoo lo ! 
 
 And as many more are there beside them, Sho hoo lo ! Sho-heen, 
 etc. 
 
 Say to my husband to come to-morrow. Sho hoo lo ! 
 
 With the wax candle in the centre of his palm. Sho hoo lo ! 
 
 And in his hand to bring a black-hafted knife. Sho hoo lo ! 
 
 And beat the first horse out of the gap. Sho hoo lo ! Sho-heen, etc. 
 
 To pluck the herb that's in the door of \X\t.fort. Sho hoo lo ! 
 With trust in God that I would go home with him. Sho hoo lo ! 
 Ox if he does not come within that time. Sho hoo lo ! 
 That I will be queen over all these women. Sho hoo lo ! Sho- 
 heen, etc. 
 
 "The incident here clearly narrated," writes O'Curry, "was 
 believed at all times to be of frequent occurrence. It was for the last 
 sixteen hundred years, at least, and is still, as firmly believed in as any 
 fact in the history of this country — that the Tuatha de Danann, after 
 their overthrow by the Milesians, had gone to reside in their hills and 
 ancient forts, or in their dwellings on lakes and rivers — that they were 
 in possession of a mortal immortality — and that they had the power to 
 carry off from the visible world men and women in a living state, but 
 sometimes under the semblance of death. 
 
THE PRETERNATURAL IN EARLY IRISH POETRY T49 
 
 " The persons taken off were generally beautiful infants, wanted for 
 those in the hill who had no children, fine young women, before 
 marriage and often on the day of marriage, for the young men of the 
 hills who had been invisibly feasting on their growing beauties — 
 perhaps from childhood ; young men, in the same way, for the 
 languishing damsels of fairyland ; fresh, well-looking nurses for their 
 
 This poem refers to all the classes of abducted persons 
 — abducted young men now grown old, comely young 
 men and maidens and married women, like the speaker, 
 needed for nurses. She describes a period before wine and 
 whiskey were in use, and therefore more than three hundred 
 years past, in Irish of, at any rate, the fifteenth century. 
 By her own account she was snatched from her palfrey, and 
 must, therefore, have been a woman of consequence. She 
 sees from within Lios-an-Chnocain, or the Fort of the 
 Hillock, a neighbour, perhaps, washing clothes by the brink 
 of the stream which runs past the fort, and^ in the intervals 
 of her hush-cries to her fairy nursling, she gives instructions 
 to her friend how to secure her freedom. 
 
 The bit of wax candle which her husband was to carry 
 in the centre of his palm would be, no doubt, a candle 
 blessed on Candlemas Day, and the black-hafted knife was 
 the only mortal weapon feared by the fairies. 
 
 Its use, as called for in the poem, was to strike the 
 leading horse of the woman's fairy chariot when she left the 
 fort the following day, and thus render her visible to her 
 rescuing husband, who was then to possess himself of the 
 herb that grew at the fort door, whose magical properties 
 would guard her from recapture by the fairies. 
 
 The next early Irish poem which I present in English 
 verse, is taken from Professor Kuno Meyer's Fianaigecht^ a 
 hitherto unedited collection of Fenian poems and tales, and 
 probably belongs to the ninth century. The original is a 
 very remarkable poem, both from the historical and 
 preternatural point of view, 
 
150 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 THE TRYST AFTER DEATH. 
 
 Fothad Canann, the leader of a Connaught warrior band, had 
 carried off the wife of King Alill, of Munster, with her consent. The 
 outraged husband pursued them and a fierce battle was fought, in 
 which Fothad and Alill fell by each other's hands. The lovers had 
 engaged to meet in the evening after the battle. Faithful to his w^ord, 
 the spirit of the slain warrior kept the tryst and thus addressed his 
 paramour : 
 
 Hush, woman ! Do not speak to me ; 
 
 My thoughts are not with thee to-night. 
 They glance again and yet again 
 
 Among the slain at Feic fight. 
 
 Who'd find my bloody corpse must grope 
 
 Upon the slope of Double Brink ; 
 My head unwashed is in the hands 
 
 Of bands who ne'er from slaughter shrink. 
 
 Dark Folly is that tryster's guide 
 
 Who Death's black tryst aside would set ; 
 
 To keep the tryst at Claragh made 
 The living and the dead are met. 
 
 Unhappy journey ! Evil doom 
 Had marked my tomb on Feic field, 
 
 And pledged me in that fateful strife 
 To foreign foes my life to yield. 
 
 Not I alone from Wisdom's way 
 
 Have gone astray, by Passion led ; 
 Yet though for thee to death I came, 
 
 I put no blame on thy bright head. 
 
 Full wretched is our meeting here 
 
 In grief and fear, O hapless one ! 
 Yet had we known it should be thus. 
 
 Not hard for us our sin to shun. 
 
 The proud -faced, grey-horsed warrior band 
 
 At my command fought faithful on ; 
 Till all their wondrous wood of spears 
 
 Beneath Death's shears to earth had none. 
 
THE PRETERNATURAL IN EARLY IRISH POETRY 15I 
 
 Had they but lived, their valour bright 
 To-night had well avenged their lord. 
 
 And had not Death my purpose changed, 
 I had avenged them with my sword. 
 
 Theirs was a lithe and blithesome force. 
 Till man and horse lay on the mould. 
 
 The great, green forest hath received 
 And overleaved the champions bold. 
 
 The sword of Domnall drank red dew. 
 The Lugh of hosts,* accoutred well ; 
 
 Before him in the River Ford 
 
 By Death's award slim Comgal fell. 
 
 The three fierce Flanns, the Owens three. 
 
 From sea to sea six outlaws famed — 
 Each with his single hand slew four, 
 
 No coward's portion thus they claimed. 
 
 Swift charged Cu-Domna, singling out, 
 
 With gleesome shout, his name-sake dread. 
 
 Down the Hill of Conflict rolled, 
 
 Lies Flann, the Little, cold and dead. 
 
 Beside him in his bloody bed 
 
 Six foes death-sped by Flann are sleeping — 
 Though 7ue esteemed them feeble ones — 
 
 The chaff of Mughirne's Son's red reaping. 
 
 Red Falvey, how your spear-strings' play 
 
 Amid the fray made manhood melt ; 
 Forchorb, the Radiant, on his foes 
 
 Seven murderous blows, outleaping, dealt. 
 
 Twelve warriors in the battle brunt 
 
 Front to front against me stood. 
 Yet now of all the twelve are left 
 
 But corses cleft and bathed in blood. 
 
 Then I and Alill, Owen's son. 
 
 To shun each other's arms were loath. 
 
 With drooping sword and lowered shield, 
 Still stood the field to view us both. 
 
 * A De Danann hero and God, 
 
IRISH LIIERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Oh, then we too exchanged our spears, 
 Heroic peers, with such dread art, 
 
 I pierced him to the very brain, 
 He me again unto the heart. 
 
 Abide not on the battle-plain 
 
 Among the slain, in terror's toils ; 
 
 Shun ghostly converse ; home with speed 
 Bear thou my meed of manly spoils. 
 
 All know that I was never seen, 
 Oh, Queen, apparelled as a boor. 
 
 But crimson-cloaked, with tunic white, 
 And belt of silver, bright and pure. 
 
 A five-edged spear, a lance of trust. 
 Of many slaying thrust I bore ; 
 
 A shield five-circled, bronze its boss, — 
 Firm oaths across its midst they swore. 
 
 My silver cup, a shining gem ; 
 
 Its glittering stem will flash to thee ; 
 Gold ring and bracelets, famed afar, 
 
 By Nia Nar brought over sea. 
 
 Then Cailte's brooch, a pin of luck, 
 
 Though small, a buckle of price untold ; 
 
 Two little silver heads are bound 
 Deftly around its head of gold. 
 
 My draught-board, no mere treasure-stake. 
 Is thine to take without offence ; 
 
 Noble blood its bright rim dyes. 
 Lady, it lies not far from hence. 
 
 While searching for that treasure prized, 
 Be thou advised thy speech to spare. 
 
 Earth never knew beneath the sun 
 A gift more wonderfully fair. 
 
 One half its pieces yellow gold. 
 
 White bronze of mould are all the rest ; 
 
 Its woof of pearls a peerless frame 
 By every smith of fame confessed. 
 
THE PRETERNATURAL IN EARLY IRISH POETRY T53 
 
 The piece-bag — 'tis a tale of tales — 
 Its rim with golden scales enwrought. 
 
 Its maker left a lock on it 
 
 Whose secret no want-wit hath caught. 
 
 Small is the casket and four-square, 
 
 Of coils of rare red gold its face, 
 The hundredth ounce of white bronze fine 
 
 Was weighed to line that matchless case. 
 
 O'ersea the red gold coil firm-wrought 
 Dinoll brought, a goldsmith nice ; 
 Of its all-glittering clasps one even 
 Is fixed at seven bondwomen's price. 
 
 Tradition tells the treasure is 
 
 A masterpiece of Turvey's skill ; 
 In the rich reign of Art the Good, 
 
 His cattle would a cantred* fill. 
 
 No goldsmith at his glittering trade 
 
 A wonder made of brighter worth ; 
 No royal jewel that outdid 
 
 Its glory hath been hid in earth. 
 
 If thou appraise its price with skill, 
 Want shall thy children ne'er attack ; 
 
 If thou keep safe this gem of mine. 
 No heir of thine shall ever lack. 
 
 There are around us everywhere 
 
 Great spoils to share of famous luck ; 
 
 Yet horribly at entrails grim 
 
 The Morrigan's dim fingers pluck. 
 
 Upon a spear-edge sharp alit, 
 
 With savage wit she urged us on. 
 Many the spoils she washes ; dread 
 
 The laughter of Red Morrigan. 
 
 Her horrid mane abroad is flung, 
 
 The heart's well strung that shrinks not back. 
 
 Yet though to us she is so near, 
 Let no weak fear thy heart attack. 
 
 * A large acreage of land. 
 
154 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 At dawn I part from all that's human, 
 To join, O woman, the warrior band. 
 
 Delay not ! Homeward urge thy flight ; 
 The end of night is nigh at hand. 
 
 Unto all time each ghostly rann 
 
 Of Fothad Canann shall remain. 
 My speech with thee reach every breast, 
 
 If my bequest I but obtain. 
 
 Since many to my grave will come. 
 
 Raise thou for mc a tomb far-seen. 
 Such trouble, for thy true love's sake, 
 
 Wilt thou not undertake, O Queen ? 
 
 My corse from thee must earthward pass. 
 
 My soul, alas I to torturing fire. 
 Save worship of Heaven's Lord of lords 
 
 All earth affords but folly dire. 
 
 I hear the dusky ousel's song, 
 
 To greet the faithful throng, outpour ; 
 
 My voice, my shape, turn spectral weak — 
 Hush, woman, speak to me no more. 
 
 The relations between the phantom lover and his para- 
 mour are here very finely and delicately described. The 
 Queen does not appear to be terrified by his appearance in 
 the first instance, and is about to address him passionately, 
 but, like Protesilaus, when permitted to appear to Laodamia, 
 he gravely repels her affection, deplores the madness of 
 their passion, and yet forgives her for her share in it. He 
 proudly tells her of the details of the battle in which hero 
 after hero fell, until he and her husband, King Alill of 
 Munster, encountered one another and perished at each 
 other's hands. Again growing considerate for her, he warns 
 her of the dangers of the battlefield, and above all cautions 
 her against the haunting spirit of the Morrigan, one of the 
 Battle goddesses or demons of the Gael. Of these there 
 were three weird sisters, Anann or Ana, Bove or Bauv, and 
 Macha, all malignant beings. " In an ancient glossary 
 
THE PRETERNATURAL IN EARLY IRISH POETRY I 55 
 
 quoted by Stokes," writes Dr. Joyce in his Social History of 
 Irelafid^ " Macha's mast-food is said to be the heads of men 
 slain in battle." The accounts of these battle furies are 
 somewhat confused, but they were all called Morrigan and 
 Bauv. Morrigan means great queen ; Bauv did not appear, 
 as a rule, in queenly shape, but as a carrion crow fluttering 
 over the heads of the combatants. Bauv was the war 
 goddess among the ancient Gauls from whom her legend 
 was brought to Ireland. Strangely enough, not many years 
 ago, a small pillar stone was found in France with an 
 interesting votive inscription upon it, addressed to this 
 goddess under the name of Cathu (Irish Cath = battle) 
 bodvae (the Irish Bauv). 
 
 Fothad Canann goes on to tell the queen where his 
 special accoutrements, weapons, and treasures of jewelry are 
 to be found on the battlefield, and he enters into a curiously 
 close description of his draught-board, a very masterpiece of 
 art. He ends his conversation by promising that she shall 
 be famous to all time for these ghostly ranns or verses 
 addressed to her, if she will raise him a worthy tomb — a 
 far-seeing monument, for the sake of her love to him. 
 There follows a final Christian touch, not improbably one 
 of those Monkish interpolations, introduced at the close 
 of Pagan poems in order to justify their circulation, but 
 contradicted by the phantom's previous statement, that he 
 was returning not to the fires of Purgatory, but to the 
 companionship of the warrior band. 
 
 We have dealt with cases of reincarnation as described 
 in the old Pagan Irish poems. Here is an instance of a 
 kindred character, but not one of transmigration of soul. 
 This remarkable poem, of which a translation follows, refers 
 to the rejuvenations of an old Irish princess, more fortunate 
 than Tithonus, who received the fateful gift of immortality 
 only to wither slowly in the arms of the Goddess Aurora. 
 This princess, on the contrary, was dowered with seven 
 periods of youth and so, during her Pagan period, was 
 
156 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 wedded to one prince of the Gael after another. The poem, 
 uttered by her, expresses, however, in the language of the 
 late tenth century her misery when she finds that her youth 
 is to be renewed no more, and her final position is thus 
 quaintly described in the prose introduction to this lament 
 of the old woman of Beare, or Beara, from which The 
 G Sullivan Bear takes his title, and round whose shores 
 the British fleet anchors in the great harbour of Berehaven. 
 
 THE LAMENT OF THE OLD WOMAN OF BEARE.* 
 
 The reason why she was called the Old Woman of Beare was that 
 she had fifty foster children in Beare. She had seven periods of youth, 
 one after another, so that every man who had lived with her came to 
 die of old age, and her grandsons and great-grandsons were tribes and 
 races. For a hundred years she wore the veil which Cummin had 
 blessed upon her head. Thereupon old age and infirmity came upon 
 her. 'Tis then she said : 
 
 Ebb-tide to me as of the sea ; 
 
 Reproaches free old age o'ertake ; 
 Full limbs and bosom favours follow, 
 
 The lean and hollow they forsake. 
 
 The Beldame I of Beare confessed, 
 
 Who once went dressed in garments fine ; 
 
 111 Fortune's miserable mock, 
 
 Not even a cast-off smock is mine. 
 
 At riches now girls' eyes grow bright. 
 
 Not at the sight of heroes bold ; 
 But when ive lived, ah then, ah then, 
 
 We gave our love to men, not gold. 
 
 Swift chariots glancing in the sun, 
 
 Swift steeds that won the bright award — 
 
 Their day of plenty hath gone by. 
 
 My blessings lie with their dead lord. 
 
 * Founded on Professor Kuno Meyer's prose version of this tenth 
 century Irish poem. The introductory words are his translation from 
 the early Irish. 
 
THE PRETERNATURAL IN EARLY IRISH POETRY 1 57 
 
 My body bends its bitter load 
 
 Towards the abode ordained for all, 
 And when He deems my days are done, 
 
 Then let God's Son my soul recall. 
 
 My arms, if now their shape is seen, 
 
 Are bony, lean, discoloured things ; 
 Yet once they fondled soft and warm, 
 
 Form after form of gallant kings. 
 
 To-day, alas, when they are seen, 
 
 They are such lean, long skeletons, 
 'Twere folly now to cast their wrecks 
 
 Around the necks of fair kings' sons. 
 
 When maidens hail the Beltane bright 
 With footsteps light and laughter sweet, 
 
 Then unto me, a withered crone. 
 The loud lament alone is meet. 
 
 No sheep are for my bridals slain, 
 
 None now are fain for converse kind ; 
 My locks of gold, turned leaden pale, 
 
 Lie hid a wretched veil behind, 
 
 I do not deem it ill at all, 
 
 A mean white veil should thrall them so ; 
 With ribbons gay they once were dressed 
 
 Above the good ale's festal flow. 
 
 The Stone of Kings on Femer fair. 
 
 Great Ronan's Chair * in Bregon's bound — 
 
 'Tis long since storms upon them prey, 
 Their masters' tombs decay around. 
 
 The Great Sea's waters talk aloud, 
 
 Winter arises proud and grey ; 
 Oh, Fermuid, mighty son of Mugh,t 
 
 I shall not meet with you to-day. 
 
 * Inauguration stones, or stone chairs, on which the candidate king 
 or prince stood to receive the wand of office, " a straight white wand, 
 a symbol of authority and also an emblem of what his conduct and 
 judicial decisions should be — straight and without a stain." — Dr. Joyce, 
 Social History of Ireland, Book I, p. 46. 
 
 t One of her princely lovers. 
 
158 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 I know what they are doing now ; 
 
 They row and row and row across 
 The rustling reeds of Alma's Ford — 
 
 Death-cold each Lord, alas, my loss ! 
 
 'Tis, " Oh my God ! and Ochonee ! " 
 To-day to me, whate'er my fate, 
 
 Even in the sun my cloak I wear ; 
 Time shall not now repair my state. 
 
 Youth's summer sweet in which we were 
 And autumn fair I too have spent ; 
 
 But winter's overwhelming brow 
 Is o'er me now in anger bent. 
 
 Amen ! So be it ! Woe is me ! 
 
 Each acorn from its tree takes flight ; 
 After the banquet's joyful gleam. 
 
 Can I esteem a prayer-house bright ? 
 
 I had my day with kings indeed, 
 
 Rich wine and mead would wet my lip, 
 
 But all among the shrivelled hags 
 ^Yhey-water now in rags I sip. 
 
 Upon my cloak my locks stream white. 
 My head is light, my memory numb ; 
 
 Through cheek and chin grey bristles grow, 
 A beldame lo ! I am become. 
 
 Seven flood-waves over me were cast, 
 Six ebb-tides passed into my blood ; 
 
 Too well I know, too well indeed, 
 The seventh ebb will lead no flood. 
 
 The flood-wave never more shall stir 
 With laughing whirr my kitchen now 
 
 Many my comrades in the gloom. 
 
 But Death's black doom is on each brow 
 
 Isles of the Sea to you 'tis sweet 
 Again to greet the flooding brine ; 
 
 After my seventh ebb I know 
 
 Time's joyous flow shall not be mine. 
 
THE PRETERNATURAL IN EARLY IRISH POETRY 1 59 
 
 The smallest place that meets my eyes 
 
 I cannot recognise aright. 
 What was in flood with flowing store 
 
 Is all in ebb before my sight. 
 
 Miss Hull reminds us, when dealing with the literature of 
 vision, of Caesar's statement in Book IV, chapter 15, of the 
 Gallic War, that " one of the chief convictions which the 
 Druids of Gaul desired to instil, is that souls do not perish, 
 but pass, after death, from one body to another ; and they 
 think this is the greatest incentive to valour, as it leads men 
 to despise the fear of death." 
 
 Undoubtedly there is much evidence in early Irish 
 mythology of transmigration from form to form : thus the 
 De Danann hero-god, Lugh, was re-born in Cuchulain, and 
 Diarmuid is a reincarnation in Ossianic times of Angus 
 the De Danann love-god, whose "love spot" or beauty 
 fascinated all women. 
 
 There is this difference, however, between the teaching 
 of the Gaulish Druids as observed by Csesar and that con- 
 tained in early Irish Druidic influences. There was no 
 belief in a life beyond the grave in ancient pagan Ireland. 
 As Miss Hull puts it : 
 
 The mortals who went into Magh Mell, or the Irish pagan 
 Elysium, did not go there by means of, or after death, they went as 
 visitors, who could at will return again to earth. The distinction is 
 essential. Until after the introduction of Christian teaching, the idea 
 of a life after death seems to have been non-existent. It is quite 
 different when we come to the late dialogues between Oisin and 
 St. Patrick, which makes up a large portion of the Ossianic poetical 
 literature. Though anti-Christian in tone, Oisin has so far adopted 
 the standpoint of the Saint that he admits the continued existence 
 of Fionn and his warriors after death, the point of contention between 
 them being where and under what circumstances this existence is 
 carried on. Such a line of argument would have been impossible in 
 pre-Christian times, when the idea of a future existence had not yet 
 been conceived of. 
 
 Manannan Mac Lir, himself the son of a Celtic sea deity, 
 after whom the ocean is sometimes called the Plain of Lir — 
 
l6o IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 and who probably is the shadowy origin of Shakespeare's 
 King Lear — was the King of the Land of Promise of Sorcha 
 (" clearness "), or Magh Mell the " Honey Plain." Thither 
 Bran, who is connected with Manannan in the oversea 
 voyage myths, sails under the influence of a beautiful 
 princess who describes the marvellous land in the delightful 
 strains of which an original verse translation is subjoined. 
 This passage appears as a poem contained in the prose 
 tale called The Voyage of Bra7i Son of Febal to the Land of 
 the Living. The whole of the tale and interspersed poems 
 have been published under the editorship of Professor Kuno 
 Meyer, by David Nutt. It was probably first written down 
 early in the eighth, perhaps late in the seventh century. 
 
 THE ISLES OF THE HAPPY. 
 
 Once when Bran, son of Feval, was with his warriors in his royal 
 fort, they suddenly saw a woman in strange raiment upon the floor of 
 the house. No one knew whence she had come or how she had 
 entered, for the ramparts were closed. Then she sang these quatrains 
 to Bran while all the host were listening : 
 
 A branch I bear from Evin's apple trees 
 
 Whose shape agrees with Erin's orchard spray ; 
 
 Yet never could her branches best belauded 
 Such crystal-gauded bud and bloom display. 
 
 There is a distant Isle, deep sunk in shadows, 
 Sea horses round its meadows flash and flee ; 
 
 Full fair the course, while-swelling waves enfold it. 
 Four pedestals uphold it o'er the sea. 
 
 All eyes' delight, that Plain of Silver glorious. 
 
 Whereon victorious hosts with joy engage, 
 Swift coracle and chariot keen contending, 
 
 A race unending run from age to age. 
 
 White the bronze pillars that this Fairy Curragh,* 
 
 The Centuries thorough, coruscating prop. 
 Through all the World the fairest land of any 
 
 Is this whereon the many blossoms drop. 
 
 * Plain, as the Curragh of Kildare. 
 
THE PRETERNATURAL IN EARLY IRISH POETRY l6l 
 
 And in its midst an Ancient Tree forth flowers, 
 Whence to the Hours beauteous birds outchime ; 
 
 In harmony of song, with fluttering feather, 
 They hail together each new birth of Time. 
 
 And through the Isle smile all glad shades of colour, 
 
 No hue of dolour mars its beauty lone. 
 'Tis Silver Cloud Land that we ever name it, 
 
 And joy and music claim it for their own. 
 
 Not here are cruel guile or loud resentment. 
 
 But calm contentment, fresh and fruitful cheer ; 
 
 Not here loud force or dissonance distressful. 
 But music melting blissful on the ear. 
 
 No grief, no gloom, no death, no mortal sickness. 
 Nor any weakness our sure strength can bound ; 
 
 These are the signs that grace the race of Evin ; 
 Beneath what other heaven are they found ? 
 
 Then mayhap Silver Land shall meet thy vision, 
 
 Where sea gems for division leap to land. 
 The monstrous Deep against the steep is dashing ; 
 
 Ilis mane's hoar lashing whitens all the strand. 
 
 Great wealth is his and bright-hued treasure-showers. 
 Who links his hours, Land of Peace, with thine. 
 
 To strains of sweetest music is he listening. 
 
 He drains from glistening cups the choicest wine. 
 
 Pure golden chariots on the Sea Plain fleeting 
 
 Give joyful greeting to the golden Sun ; 
 Pure silver chariots on the Plain of Sporting, 
 
 With chariots of pure bronze consorting, run. 
 
 Swift steeds are on the sward there, golden yellow. 
 While crimson steeds to fellow them are seen ; 
 
 And some with coats of sleek far-shining azure 
 Stretch at full measure o'er the racing green. 
 
 A Hero fair, from out the dawn's bright blooming. 
 
 Rides forth, illuming level shore and flood ; 
 The white and seaward plain he sets in motion. 
 
 He stirs the ocean into burning blood. 
 
1 62 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 A host across the clear blue sea comes rowing, 
 Their prowess showing, till they touch the shore ; 
 
 Thence seek the Shining Stone * w^here Music's measure 
 Prolongs the pleasure of the pulsing oar. 
 
 It sings a strain to all the host assembled ; 
 
 That strain untired has trembled through all time ! 
 It swells with such sweet choruses unnumbered. 
 
 Decay and Death have slumbered since its chime. 
 
 Evna of many shapes, beside the waters, 
 
 Thy thousand daughters many-hued to see — 
 
 How far soe'er or near the circling spaces 
 Of sea and sand to their bright faces be — 
 
 If even one approach the music thrilling 
 Of wood-birds trilling to thy Land of Bliss, 
 
 Straightway the beauteous band is all resorting 
 Unto the Plain of Sporting, where he is. 
 
 Thus happiness with wealth is o'er us stealing, 
 And laughter pealing forth from every hill. 
 
 Yea ! through the Land of Peace at every Season 
 Pure Joy and Reason are companions still. 
 
 Through all the Isle's unchanging summer hours 
 
 There showers and showers a stream of silver bright ; 
 
 A pure white cliff that from the breast of Evin 
 Mounts up to Heaven thus assures her light. 
 
 Thrice fifty distant Isles of fame to Westward, 
 Seavi^ard or coastward in the ocean lie ; 
 
 Larger those Isles by twice or thrice than Erin, 
 And many marvels therein meet the eye. 
 
 Long ages hence a Wondrous Child and Holy, 
 Yet in estate most lowly shall have birth ; 
 
 Seed of a Woman, yet whose Mate knows no man — 
 To rule the thousand thousands of the earth. 
 
 His sway is ceaseless ; 'twas His love all-seeing 
 That Earth's vast being wrought with perfect skill. 
 
 All worlds are His ; for all His kindness cares ; 
 But woe to all gainsayers of His Will. 
 
 * An Irish vocal Memnon. 
 
THE PRETERNATURAL IN EARLY IRISH POETRY 1 63 
 
 The stainless heavens beneath His Hands unfolded, 
 
 He moulded Man as free of mortal stain. 
 And even now Earth's sin-struck sons and daughters 
 
 His Living Waters can make whole again. 
 
 Not unto all of you is this my message 
 
 Of marvellous presage at this hour revealed. 
 
 Let Bran but listen from Earth's concourse crowded 
 Unto the shrouded wisdom there concealed. 
 
 Upon a couch of languor lie not sunken, 
 
 Beware lest drunkenness becloud thy speech ! 
 
 Put forth, O Bran, across the far clear waters. 
 And Evin's daughters haply thou may'st reach. 
 
 It will be seen at the end of this poem that Christian 
 influences were being obtruded upon Pagan thought. 
 Everything points to a pre-Christian origin of this tale. But 
 St. Patrick and his successors evidently enjoyed these old 
 Pagan tales, realising their beauty and the nobility of thought 
 which often characterises them, and pressing them into the 
 service of the Church by means of such interpolated 
 passages as the above poem contains. 
 
 As a matter of fact the Pagan over-sea voyage idea was 
 so deeply rooted in the Irish mind that the Monkish writers 
 readily took it over and converted it to their own purposes, 
 and we thus pass on to semi-Christian visions, such as the 
 well-know^n Voyage of Maeldtme^ which Tennyson, at my 
 suggestion, made his own, after studying the first complete 
 English version of it given by Dr. Joyce in his Old Celtic 
 Romances. Other voyages of the kind are The Navigation 
 of the So?is of OCorra^ and the Voyage of Snedgtis and 
 Mac Riagla. The legend of St. Brendan, as told in Irish 
 literature, differs both from the Latin version and those of 
 France and Germany. Matthew Arnold's poem is based on 
 these foreign versions and introduces the incident of Judas 
 Iscariot being allowed out of Hell for one day in the year, 
 owing to an act of humanity when on earth. The following 
 curious hymn of St. Philip, which must be my last poetical 
 
 M 2 
 
164 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 example of early Irish Vision Literature, is an instance of 
 the influence of pre-Christian Wonderland. I have translated 
 it from the Liber Hymnoriu?!, edited by Professor Atkinson 
 and Bishop Bernard : 
 
 THE IIVxMN OF ST. PHILIP. 
 From the Early Irish. 
 
 Philip the Apostle holy 
 
 At an Aonach * once was telling 
 Of the immortal birds and shapely 
 
 Afar in Inis Eidheand dwelling. 
 
 East of Africa abiding 
 
 They perform a labour pleasant ; 
 Unto earth has come no colour 
 
 That on their pinions is not present. 
 
 Since the fourth Creation morning 
 
 When their God from dust outdrew them, 
 
 Not one plume has from them perished, 
 And not one bird been added to them. 
 
 Seven fair streams with all their channels 
 Pierce the plains wherethrough they flutter, 
 
 Round whose banks the birds go feeding, 
 Then soar thanksgiving songs to utter. 
 
 Midnight is their hour apportioned. 
 When, on magic coursers mounted, ' 
 
 Through the starry skies they circle. 
 To chants of angel choirs uncounted. 
 
 Of the foremost birds the burthen 
 
 Most melodiously unfolded 
 Tells of all the works of wonder 
 
 God wrought before the world He moulded. 
 
 Then a sweet crowd heavenward lifted. 
 
 When the nocturn bells are pealing, 
 Chants His purposes predestined 
 
 Until the Day of Doom's revealing. 
 
 * A fair or open air assembly. 
 
THE PRETERNATURAL IN EARLY IRISH POETRY 1 65 
 
 Next a flock whose thoughts are blessed, 
 
 Under twilight's curls dim sweeping, 
 Hymn God's wondrous words of Judgment 
 
 When His Court of Doom is keeping. 
 
 One and forty on a hundred 
 
 And a thousand, without lying. 
 Was their number, joined to virtue. 
 
 Put upon each bird-flock flying. 
 
 Who these faultless birds should hearken, 
 
 Thus their strains of rapture linking, 
 For the very transport of it, 
 
 Unto death would straight be sinking. 
 
 Pray for us, O mighty Mary ! 
 
 When earth's bonds no more are binding, 
 That these birds our souls may solace, 
 
 In the Land of Philip's finding. 
 
1 66 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 DR. JOYCE'S IRISH WONDER BOOK 
 
 Old world geographies, as Dr. Joyce points out, generally 
 contained a chapter on the Mirabilia or Wonders, whether 
 natural, preternatural or artificial, of each of the countries 
 described; yet in spite of the claims of all other climes 
 from the days of Herodotus down to those of the latest of 
 our tellers of travellers' tales, De Rougemont and Cook, he 
 gravely maintains that for such marvels " no other country 
 in Europe," at any rate, " is fit to hold a candle to Ireland." 
 Certainly it would be hard to beat his records of strange 
 happenings in The Island of Saififs, though there are 
 perhaps incidents in the Voyage of Maeidime, his own 
 Wonde7's beyo?id T/mle, which eclipse those of Antonius 
 Diogenes, and which are at any rate more grotesquely 
 strange than the marvels which he now sets before us. For 
 example, take these two specimens from his Old Celtic 
 Roma7Kes : 
 
 As soon as it was light they saw land and made toward it. While 
 they were casting lots to know who should go and explore the country, 
 they saw great flocks of ants coming down to the beach, each of them 
 as large as a foal. The people judged by their numbers and by their 
 eager, hungry look, that they were bent on eating both ship and crew ; 
 so they turned their vessel round and sailed quickly away. 
 
 Their multitudes countless, prodigious their size ; 
 
 Were never such ants seen or heard of before. 
 They struggled and tumbled and plunged for the prize, 
 And fiercely the famine fire blazed from their eyes, 
 
 As they ground with their teeth the red sand of the shore. 
 
DR. Joyce's irish wonder book 167 
 
 What an opportunity for Lord Avebury had he been 
 living at the time ! He certainly would have beaten no 
 cowardly retreat from the contemplation of these Brobdignag 
 ecitones praedatores. 
 
 Nor can Dr. Joyce parallel upon Irish terra firma his 
 elephant-hided monster of The Wall-circled Isle who : 
 
 Threw up his heels with a wonderful bound 
 
 And ran round the isle with the speed of a hare, 
 
 But a feat more astounding is yet to be told ; 
 
 He turned round and round in his leathery skin ; 
 
 His bones and his flesh and his sinews he rolled — 
 He was resting outside while he twisted within. 
 
 Then, changing his practice with marvellous skill, 
 His carcase stood rigid and round went his hide ; 
 
 It whirled round his bones like the wheel of a mill — 
 He was resting within while he twisted outside. 
 
 After such a wonder beyond Thule, how wanting in 
 distinction are these instances of Welsh wonders which we 
 have lately come across. 
 
 I heard it stated yester morning that a ship of lead swam on the 
 breakers, that a ship of copper sank to the bottom of the sea — that is 
 one of the seven wonders. I've heard it stated that the sweet dove 
 was on the sea keeping a public tavern, with her tiny cup to taste the 
 liquor — that is another of the seven wonders. 
 
 Four Other wonders of a similar type are described, and 
 the Welsh folk-lorist then concludes : 
 
 I've heard it stated that the swallow was in the sea, putting on a 
 horseshoe with her hammer of gold and silver anvil, and there are the 
 seven wonders for you. 
 
 What are these and pellet- making partridges and a self- 
 acting sickle and a book-reading moon and even a cart- 
 loading pig to an island of red-hot animals from whom 
 Maeldune and his men snatched, not roasted chestnuts, but 
 the juiciest of apples, or what are they to " An island which 
 
 I 
 
1 68 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 dyed white and black," and from which the voyagers fled lest 
 they should share the fate of the white sheep which turned 
 black when flung across a hedge and become all niggeryfied 
 on the spot. 
 
 Yet Dr. Joyce's New Wonders of Old Ireland will hold 
 their own even against such marvels as these, though many 
 of them are at the great disadvantage of being supposed to 
 be true. 
 
 Here we have a new set of wonderful islands and in 
 especial Inishglora, off the coast of Mayo, whose air and soil 
 preserve dead bodies from decay. There they were left 
 lying in the open air retaining their looks unchanged and 
 growing their nails and hair quite naturally, " so that a 
 person was able to recognise not only his father and grand- 
 father, but even his ancestors to a remote generation." Such 
 powers of recognition seem quite an Irish inspiration. 
 
 Nennius, as well as Giraldus and the Norse Kongs 
 Skuggio, are the chroniclers of this wonder. Were these 
 wonderful bodies mummies of their forbears laid out in 
 sight of their descendants at periodical tribal gatherings ? 
 
 The Irish came from the East and an early colony may 
 have embalmed their dead. 
 
 The splitting of Mutton Island near Miltown Malbay 
 into three is a natural wonder, not only recorded in all the 
 principal Irish annals as having occurred on St. Patrick's 
 Eve in a.d. 804, but still vividly imprinted upon local 
 tradition. Evidently this disruption was caused by a shock 
 of earthquake, and to a similar cause may be attributed what 
 were regarded as the miraculous disappearances of lakes, 
 Lee and Seeoran, in a.d. 848 and a.d. 1054 respectively. 
 
 The record in a.d. 864 on the turning of Loch Leane in 
 West Meath to blood for nine days, and that of a shower of 
 blood in a.d. 875, are easily explicable in the latter instance 
 by the whirling up into the air, as Dr. Joyce points out, " of 
 water, coloured deep red by millions of little scarlet fungi 
 and its descent to earth in distant places, and in the former 
 
DR. Joyce's irish wonder book 169 
 
 case by a sudden growth and no less sudden disappearance 
 of these minute scarlet fungi about Loch Leane." 
 
 The tidal well of Corann is fabled to have been 
 set going by St. Patrick. For when driving the demon 
 reptiles into the Atlantic and so working one of the Irish 
 wonders, the Saint was so overcome by the foul, fiery 
 breath of one of them, that in an agony of despair he 
 struck his fist " against the solid rock, whereupon a well of 
 sweet water burst forth from it." 
 
 "That this well ebbed and flowed, keeping time with 
 the sea, is of course the creation of the people's imagina- 
 tion," writes Dr. Joyce, "but it is a fact known beyond 
 doubt that it sometimes rises and falls in a remarkable and 
 unaccountable way." 
 
 We are here reminded of the alternate flow of hot and 
 cold water in an African spring, as described by Herodotus 
 and ridiculed by his critics, as was his account of the Pigmies, 
 though the existence of both marvels have been recently 
 estabhshed. Herodotus no doubt was occasionally imposed 
 upon by the Egyptian priests and others for their own 
 purposes, and Giraldus Cambrensis, one of the authorities 
 for his Irish Wonders quoted by Dr. Joyce, had good reason 
 for taking some of them for granted and applying others to 
 suit the purpose of the Norman invaders. 
 
 As a Churchman, Gerald Barry supports such tales of 
 wonder as that of St. Colman's ducks, which not only refused 
 to be boiled but even avenged any injury or disrespect to 
 the Church or clergy by deserting their pond, which there- 
 upon became putrid, so destroying its use for man or beast. 
 Not till the offender was punished did the ducks return and 
 their pond become clear and wholesome again. 
 
 Giraldus also records this charming story, which all bird 
 lovers would like to believe : 
 
 On one occasion St. Kevin of Glendalough had his hands stretched 
 out in prayer, pahns up, through the little window of his cell, when a 
 blackbird laid her eggs in one palm and sat on them. When the Saint 
 
lyo IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 at last observed the bird, after his prayer, he remained motionless in 
 pity ; and in gentleness and patience he held on till the young ones 
 were hatched and flew away. 
 
 Giraldus professed to hold the popular belief in the 
 man-wolves of Ossory who, according to ancient Irish 
 writings, were human beings who passed seven years of their 
 lives as wolves, ravaging sheep folds and devouring cattle 
 in pairs and then returning to their human forms whilst 
 another wolf-pair took their place for a similar period. 
 
 Giraldus is never wanting in a good story when it serves 
 his purpose, and he tells " a very circumstantial one " about 
 a wolf who came up to a benighted priest and his youthful 
 companion, and addressing them in very good Gaelic told 
 them there was no danger to them from him and his 
 comrades, and after spending the night in converse with 
 them by their fire, thus answered an inquiry of the priest 
 as to whether, in his opinion, the hostile people, the " Anglo- 
 Normans," who had lately landed in Ireland, would hold 
 the country for any length of time. 
 
 The anger of the Lord has fallen on an evil generation, and on 
 account of the sins of our nation and the monstrous vices of the people, 
 he has given them into the hands of their enemies. This foreign race 
 shall be quite secure and invincible so long as they shall walk in the 
 ways of the Lord and keep His Commandments, but we know that the 
 path leading to sinful pleasures is easy and human nature is prone to 
 follow ill example ; so if this strange people shall hereafter learn our 
 wicked habits from living amongst us, they will no doubt, like us, 
 draw down upon themselves the vengeance of divine Providence. 
 
 The sanctimonious wolf then went off with himself. 
 
 Of course Giraldus, as Dr. Joyce pithily puts it, invented 
 this story, "for the double pious purpose of favouring his 
 Anglo-Norman friends and having a good hearty slap at the 
 Irish people." But the wolf's prophecy as to what would 
 happen if the Normans became more Irish than the Irish 
 is curiously suggestive. Dr. Joyce's authorities for his 
 wonders, besides Giraldus and Kongs Skuggio's The Royal 
 
DR. JOYCES IRISH WONDER EOOK 171 
 
 Mirror^ written about a.d. 1250 in the Norse language, are 
 The Boolv of Ballyinote^ a large manuscript volume full of 
 miscellaneous pieces in the Irish language, copied into that 
 book towards the end of the 14th century, an ancient manu- 
 script (H. 3 17) in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, 
 the third part of Roderick O'Flaherty's Ogygia, and Sir 
 James Ware's Antiqidties of Ireland. 
 
 Much of this material is all but unreadable and much of 
 it is meaningless, and Dr. Joyce deserves great credit there- 
 fore for dishing up this pemmican, as he calls it, in such a 
 palatable form as the above extracts from his volume prove 
 him to have done. 
 
 But let us record just a few more of his wonders. The 
 Island of Loch Cre or Inishmameo had three wonderful 
 properties. No one guilty of any great sin could die in it ; 
 the body of no unrepentant sinner could be buried in it ; 
 and no woman or the female of any animal could enter it. 
 It is unfortunate that St. Kevin did not take up his quarters 
 there and so escape having to protect his privacy by woman- 
 slaughter. It is a greater pity that the island has quite lost 
 its misogynistic defences and is no longer a safe asylum for 
 the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 from the assaults of the suffragettes. 
 
 Aviation is so much with us nowadays that the following 
 marvel, recorded by Kongs Skuggio, may really have been 
 only a foreshadowing of what is to be expected from Sabbath- 
 breaking air-craftsmen. " On a Sunday, while the people 
 were at Mass in Clonmacnoise, there dropped from the air, 
 hanging from a rope, an anchor, the fluke of which caught 
 in an arch of the Church door. The astonished people 
 looked upwards along the rope and saw a ship floating on 
 top. One of the crew leaped overboard and dived and 
 swam down to loosen the anchor, when some of the 
 congregation seized and held him while he struggled to free 
 himself; till the bishop, who happened to be just then 
 present, directed them to let him go ; for, as he said, if held 
 
17- IRISH I-ITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 down he would die as if held under water. They let him 
 go and up he floated, when the crew cut the rope at the top 
 and the ship sailed away out of sight." The old Norseman 
 gravely adds, of course as he heard the story : — " and the 
 anchor has since lain in Clonmacnoise Church as a witness 
 that the event really occurred." 
 
 Dr. Joyce appears to have been reading Mr. Wells when 
 he was transcribing this story from the Norse, for he calls 
 attention to the circumstance " that the original narrator 
 of this wonder believed the crew of the ship to have been 
 the inhabitants of the upper air . . . who had ventured for 
 once on an unusual voyage of discovery down to the earth." 
 
 The last wonder described by Dr. Joyce is the Lia Fail, 
 or Coronation Stone of Tara, on which the ancient kings of 
 Ireland were crowned and " which uttered a shout when- 
 ever a king of the true Scotic or Irish race stood or sat on 
 it." This stone, so ran the tradition, was brought out of 
 Lochlann or Scandinavia by the Dedannan conquerors and 
 served as their Coronation stone and that of the Milesians 
 who conquered them in turn. Scottish writers affirm that 
 when the Scotic princes, Fergus, Angus, and Lome, the 
 three sons of Ere of Dalriada in North Antrim, conquered 
 western Scotland in 503 a.d., Fergus, with the consent of 
 the King of Ireland, caused the Lia Fail to be brought over 
 to Alba (Scotland) and had himself crowned on it, there 
 being an ancient prophecy that, into whatsoever land the 
 Lia Fail was brought, there a prince of the Scotic or Irish 
 race should be crowned, a prophecy which Hector Boece, 
 the Scottish writer, presents in this Latin form : 
 
 Ni fallat fatum, Scoti, quocunque locatum 
 Invenient lapidem, regnare tenentur ibidem. 
 
 On account of this prophecy, writes Dr. Joyce, " the stone 
 received the name of Lia Fail, which according to the 
 Scotch authorities means the stone of Destiny, and upon a 
 stone supposed to be the true Lia Fail, the Scottish kings 
 
DR. JOYCES IRISH WONDER BOOK 1 73 
 
 were crowned at Scone, and the Kings of England, since 
 the time of our James I., have been crowned in West- 
 minster Abbey. 
 
 Unfortunately for the truth of this legend, Dr. Petrie 
 has proved that the Lia Fail was in Tara four centuries 
 after the time of the alleged removal to Scotland. Anti- 
 quaries of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries affirm 
 that the stone was in Tara, and indeed the poet scholar 
 Kineth O'Hartigan, who died in the year 975, visited Tara 
 with the object of describing it. After mentioning in detail 
 several monuments which he found still existing there, he 
 states that he was actually standing on the Lia Fail : 
 
 The stone which is under my two feet, 
 From it is called Inis Fail ; 
 Between two strands of strong tide, 
 The Plain of Fal (as a name) for all Erin. 
 
 Fal was the proper name of the stone of which the genitive 
 form is Fail as it appears in Lia Fail. The word Lia 
 means a stone, and Lia Fail is literally the ' stone of Fal.' " 
 Dr. Petrie attempts, in his Essay on Tara, to identify as 
 the true Lia Fail a pillar stone now standing on the Forradh 
 of Tara, as the present writer can vouch, taken, as he asserts, 
 from The Mound of Hostages in 1821 and placed to mark 
 the grave of some rebels killed in 1798. But Dr. Joyce 
 controverts Dr. Petrie's view, having been assured by one 
 of the men who helped in the removal of the stone in 
 question, that it was not brought from the Mound of 
 Hostages where the true Lia Fail was recorded to have 
 stood, but from the bottom of the trench surrounding the 
 Forradh itself, where it had been lying prostrate for genera- 
 tions. Furthermore, Dr. Joyce wisely observes that the 
 pillar stone believed by Dr. Petrie to be the Irish Corona- 
 tion stone is of a size and shape quite unsuitable for stand- 
 ing on during the ceremonies of installation and coronation ; 
 and seeing that the stone weighs considerably more than a 
 
174 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 ton it would be impracticable to carry it about, as the 
 legends say the Dedannans carried the Lia Fail in their 
 overland journeys in Scandinavia, Scotland and Ireland and 
 on oversea voyages in their hide-covered wicker boats. Dr. 
 Joyce's conclusion, therefore, is that the true Lia Fail 
 remains still in Tara buried and hidden somewhere in the 
 soil ; probably in the position where the old writers place it 
 on the north side of the Mound of Hostages. 
 
 Here is indeed an opportunity for such energetic Irish 
 antiquaries as Sir Henry Bellingham or Mr. Francis Joseph 
 Bigger; indeed, what have they been about not to have 
 unearthed the true Lia Fail before King George's Corona- 
 tion, and there put it to the test which the Westminster 
 stone has ignominiously failed to stand, for there is 
 certainly no record of that impostor having "let out a 
 shout " since kings of the true Scotic and Irish race have 
 been crowned upon it in the Abbey. 
 
 Dr. Joyce's volume contains other good things besides 
 the wonders of Ireland. His genius for investigation has 
 enabled him to identify some of Spenser's Irish Rivers 
 whose names have hitherto puzzled the poet's commen- 
 tators. He gives us two striking folk tales of horror in The 
 Destructiofi of Tiern?}ias and Fergus G Mara and the Demons, 
 his short biographies of Ireland's three patron saints, St. 
 Patrick, St. Brigit, and St. Columkille, and of her scholar 
 saint Donatus, Bishop of Fiesole, are good reading, as are 
 his contrasted sketches of an Irish and Norman warrior, 
 Cahal O'Conor of the Red Hand and Sir John de Courcy ; 
 and lastly he tells a pathetic tale of his native Glenosheen 
 in the dialect of the Limerick peasantry of seventy years 
 ago, which might have been written by William Carleton 
 himself, so human is its interest and so vivid is its 
 colouring. 
 
FOLK SONG 
 
 An Address delivered before the Cymmrodorion Section of 
 THE Welsh National Eisteddfod of 1906 at Carnarvon, 
 
 AND brought up TO DATE 
 
 There seems to be a general impression that the folk songs 
 of the British Isles have been already collected, and are all 
 to be found within the covers of old song books or on the 
 broadside ballad sheets published in London and the larger 
 provincial towns. There could be no graver error. 
 Hundreds, not to say thousands, of British and Irish folk 
 songs remain uncollected, if we are to judge by the results 
 obtained within the last few years under the auspices of the 
 Folk Song Societies. Mr. Cecil Sharp has collected 500 
 songs in Somerset and Devon, but mainly in the former 
 county, and declares that very many more tunes might still 
 be collected in these counties. A hundred songs have 
 come before the Folk Song Society from Leicestershire 
 alone, and Mr. Vaughan Williams has dealt with a vast 
 body collected by him in East Anglia. In his preface to 
 his collection of sixty-one folk songs he writes : — "Although 
 the field covered by the tunes in this Journal is in one sense 
 very large, in another it is very small, since it is only a 
 small part of each county which I have searched for songs, 
 and the time spent has been of necessity very short. What 
 results might not be obtained from a systematic and sym- 
 pathetic search through all the villages and towns of 
 England ? And yet this precious heritage of beautiful 
 melody is being allowed to slip through our hands through 
 mere ignorance or apathy." I may here say that the Folk 
 
176 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Song Society was founded at my suggestion in 1898, for the 
 purpose of collecting and publishing folk songs, ballads and 
 tunes. Its first meeting was held at the rooms of the Irish 
 Literary Society of London, of which I was then honorary 
 secretary, and it is now on a secure basis. Its president is 
 Lord Tennyson, its vice-presidents Sir Hubert Parry, who 
 may be said to represent England and Wales, Sir Alexander 
 Mackenzie standing for Scotland, and Sir Charles Villiers 
 Stanford being the Irish representative. Mr. Frederick 
 Keel is honorary secretary, and the committee has amongst its 
 members such distinguished folk song collectors as Sir Ernest 
 Clarke, Mr. Frank Kidson, Mr. J. A. Fuller Maitland, Miss 
 Broadwood, Mr. Cecil Sharp, and Dr. Vaughan Williams. 
 Lady Gomme, the leading authority on old English singing 
 games, is its honorary treasurer. The society publishes in 
 its Journal, of which sixteen parts have appeared, such 
 contributions of traditional songs as may be chosen by a 
 committee of musical experts, and from time to time holds 
 meetings at which these songs are introduced and form the 
 subject of performance, lecture and discussion. A legal 
 opinion having been obtained upon the subject, the society 
 guarantees that all versions of songs and words published in 
 their Journal are the copyright of the collectors supplying 
 them, and are printed on behalf of that collector, whose 
 permission must be obtained for any reproduction thereof. 
 
 Ireland, with its Home Rule tendencies, felt, however, 
 that her own folk song affairs needed special treatment, and 
 an Irish Folk Song Society has been started under the 
 secretaryship of Mrs. Milligan Fox, who has recently made 
 a valuable find of manuscripts and memorials relating to 
 Edward Bunting, from whose three collections Thomas 
 Moore took so many of his Irish melodies, and is, like Mr. 
 Hughes, the first joint editor with her of its Journal, an 
 enthusiastic and successful folk song collector. 
 
 Before this Irish Folk Song Society was formed, our Irish 
 Literary Society, after negotiations with Sir C. V. Stanford, 
 
FOLK SONG 177 
 
 published the Petrie collection of the ancient airs of Ireland, 
 which had fallen into his hands — a gathering of nearly 2,000 
 tunes of which not 200 had been previously given to the 
 public. This collection is, I believe, the largest ever got 
 together by a single individual, and is of extraordinary interest. 
 
 Meantime, moreover, the officials of the Feis Ceoil, an 
 Irish National musical festival much on the lines of the 
 Eisteddfod, have been gathering Irish airs from the pipers 
 and fiddlers attending its meetings by means of the phono- 
 graph, and the Gaelic League, which encourages traditional 
 singing in Irish, has also got together a considerable body 
 of hitherto unpublished airs. 
 
 Finally, as far as Ireland is concerned, I can report the 
 publication of two other great bodies of fresh Irish melodies. 
 My old friend Dr. Joyce, who has done so much for Irish 
 history, archaeology, romance and music, has issued, with 
 Messrs. Longmans, the great long-lost collection of Irish airs 
 gathered by Pigott and Ford, a Cork musician of the last 
 century, which the doctor had at last run to earth and pur- 
 chased. He has also included in his volume selections from 
 Professor Goodman's fine collection of Munster airs, so that 
 his volume contains nearly a thousand unknown Irish tunes, 
 chiefly from the counties of Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Leitrim 
 and Sligo. He has besides shown me a pile of yet un- 
 published folk songs. 
 
 Crossing over from Dublin to Holyhead, I met 
 the collector of another vast body of Irish music, 
 Mr. O'Neill, for long the distinguished chief of police in 
 Chicago. This folk song enthusiast, beginning by setting 
 down the Irish airs learnt at his Irish-speaking mother's 
 knee, and then through a course of years tapping the 
 memories of fellow-countrymen who had drifted to Chicago 
 from all the four corners of the Green Isle, has succeeded 
 in putting together some 1,850 airs, of which at least 500 
 have never before been in print. The great value of this 
 collection consists in the number of instrumental airs which 
 
lyS IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 it contains. Levy's book of The' Dance Music of Ireland is 
 dwarfed beside it. 
 
 About nineteen years ago Mr. W. H. Gill, brother of the 
 Northern Deemster, came to me with an inquiry as to the 
 possible Irish origin of some Manx folk songs which he had 
 collected. It turned out that, after failing to secure more 
 than a dozen fresh folk songs in the Isle of Man, he had 
 altered his methods of research, and had thus collected 250 
 airs, some of English, some of Scotch, some of Norse, and 
 some of Irish origin, yet all domesticated in little Elian 
 Vannin. Besides these, Mr. Speaker Moore has got to- 
 gether a considerable body of hitherto unnoted Manx airs. 
 
 There is no concerted effort being made to collect the 
 many unpublished airs still floating in the Highlands, though 
 I have heard of a couple of male enthusiasts who have been 
 thus engaged within recent years ; but Miss Murray, an 
 American lady of Scotch descent, has collected no less than 
 150 airs of a most distinctive character in the Hebrides, and 
 a charming article on the subject from her pen is contained 
 in a recent number of the Celtic Review^ and more recently 
 Mrs. Kennedy Eraser has brought out a delightful collection 
 of Hebridean airs finely harmonised and with Gaelic and 
 English words to them. I think I have conclusively proved 
 that the treasures of our recently published, unpublished 
 and even uncollected folk songs are surprisingly large. 
 
 By what methods have these folk songs been gathered ? 
 Let us listen to the experiences of some of the collectors 
 named above. Mr. Henry Berstow supplied Miss Lucy Broad- 
 wood, the second secretary of the Folk Song Society, with most 
 of her Sussex songs. He was sixty-eight years old in 1893 
 when he sang them to her. He was a native of Horsham, 
 which, up to that year, he had never left for a night, except 
 once for a week. He is well known in Sussex and parts of 
 Surrey as a bellringer, and also in great request as a singer. 
 He is proud of knowing 400 songs, and keeps a valuable 
 list of their titles. He once, by request, sang all his songs 
 
FOLK SONG 179 
 
 to an inquiring stranger. It took a month to do it, but 
 many of these he refused to sing to Miss Broadwood, 
 considering them to be unfit for ladies' ears, and though by 
 their titles they promised to be amongst the very oldest 
 ballads, he could not detach the tunes from the words, and 
 the airs have therefore remained unnoted. He learnt, as 
 he said, very many of these old songs and " ballets " from 
 shoemakers, who were always singing at their work. Others 
 he learnt from labourers, who often could not read. For 
 many a day he tried to learn an old song from a certain 
 carter, but the man was shy and would not sing it, because 
 he thought Mr. Berstow wanted to laugh at his "burr" 
 (Sussex for " accent "). At length Mr. Berstow laid a deep 
 plot. A confederate lured the carter into an alehouse, where 
 Mr. Berstow sat hidden in an inner parlour. Flattered by 
 his treacherous boon companion, the carter presently burst 
 forth into his favourite " ballet," and Mr. Berstow Hstened, 
 learnt and sang the song from that day forth. 
 
 The first secretary of the Folk Song Society, Mrs. Kate 
 Lee, was emboldened to attempt an even more desperate 
 enterprise. To get hold of some folk songs which she knew 
 were reserved for the ears of the frequenters of a country 
 inn in The Broads, she obtained admittance as a waitress at 
 the ordinary table, and when the diners had settled down to 
 beer, tobacco, and song, she got those precious folk songs into 
 her head, and kept them there for the benefit of the society. 
 Except in the remote glens, amongst primitive peoples, 
 few folk songs remain to be gleaned from the younger 
 generation, but Miss Murray has been fortunate enough to 
 make a remarkable collection, chiefly among the young 
 island girls of the Hebrides. They were very shy about 
 crooning before her, and could hardly be got to believe that 
 the airs she set down from their chanting were what they 
 had been reciting. To them the words only gave a sug- 
 gestion of music, and they had therefore unconsciously 
 assimilated the wild and uncommon airs to which the tunes 
 
 N 2 
 
l8o IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 were matched. Like Mr. Berstow, they could not detach 
 the tune from the words, and but for the latter the airs 
 would have been lost. 
 
 In less primitive places, folk songs are preserved by 
 elderly and old people alone. This is true for Mr. Sharp's 
 collection, his singers ranging from sixty to nearly ninety 
 years of age, and Mr. W. H. Gill has had the same 
 experiences in the Isle of Man. The Manx are a shy race, 
 and he had much difficulty in coaxing the old tunes out of 
 them. Friendliness, combined with judicious backsheesh^ in 
 the way of snuff, tobacco, tea, and ale, unloosened their 
 tongues and revived their memories. He extracted one 
 excellent tune from a one-legged man who had played the 
 fiddle in his youth, and could not be got to remember the 
 air in question till he had propped himself up against the 
 wall, and had drawn his crutch for a long time across his 
 shoulder, as if playing upon the long-disused instrument. 
 With the air thus recovered in his head, he found himself 
 able to hum it to Mr. Gill. 
 
 I myself picked up a long lost Irish air under curious 
 circumstances at Harlech. I was at work in my study, 
 when my ears were saluted by an unmistakably Irish tune 
 played on a hand organ. The air was unfamiliar to me, 
 and I accordingly went out and asked the organ grinder 
 about it. " It is The Beautifid City of S/igo," he replied. 
 " I have played it on the road for forty years, and my father 
 had played it as many before me. He bought the organ at 
 the sale of a gentleman's property in Liverpool." The 
 tune had become rather blurred, owing to the age of the 
 instrument, but by putting the organ grinder at a little 
 distance on the terrace outside my house, and whistling the 
 air as he played it through the window to my wife as she 
 sat pencil in hand at the piano, I succeeded in recovering 
 it. The air was set by Sir Charles Stanford to a lyric of 
 my own, suggested by the traditional title, and is now one 
 of Mr. Plunket Greene's most successful songs. 
 
FOLK SONG T5T 
 
 Dr. Stokes, in his Life of Petrie, describes how that 
 famous archaeologist and delightful man collected folk songs 
 in the Isle of Arran. Hearing that a certain household in 
 one of the islands " had music," he visited it, when the day's 
 work was done, with his friend, Eugene O' Curry. He found 
 an expectant group of the islanders round the turf fire, and 
 the proceedings began by the singing of a tune which Petrie 
 wished to add to his repertory. O'Curry first took down 
 the Irish words, which, of course, helped to establish the 
 measure of the air, then Petrie began to note the tune, 
 stopping from time to time to make sure that he had got 
 the correct version of each strain, and then getting the 
 singer to repeat it again throughout. Having thus secured 
 the air, he would play it on his violin, an instrument of 
 singular sw^eetness and power, as few others could have 
 played it. The effect upon a music-loving people was 
 electrical. Young and old broke out into expressions of 
 eager delight, and after an encore a new air wasjsimilarly 
 dealt with. 
 
 What is the origin of folk song ? Evidently there is a 
 musical instinct in the young of all races. How early do we 
 note our children crooning of their own accord when in a 
 contented or happy frame of mind ? As with the child, so, 
 I believe, with the early races. Calls to cattle, street and 
 country cries with intonations, such as the "jodling" of the 
 Tyrolese, strike one as amongst the probable beginnings of 
 folk songs. 
 
 The songs of occupation would seem to be extended 
 instances of these primeval chants. The occupation sug- 
 gests certain measures ; thus the rocking of the cradle, the 
 blow of the hammer on the anvil, the sweep of the oars in 
 the water, the turning of the spinning wheel — each invites a 
 rhythmic chant, monotonous at first, but afterwards taking on 
 melodic cadences which become tunes. 
 
 And here the genius of various languages comes in, as 
 has been pointed out by Francis Korbay, the Hungarian 
 
l82 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 musician, in an article in Harper's Magazine. The 
 length of the Hungarian words tends to a peculiar rhythm, 
 classically known as the " choriambic," and the Hungarian 
 folk songs are all stamped with that pecuUar measure. In 
 great contrast to these airs are the folk songs of The Prin- 
 cipality, which are largely trochaic in measure, especially 
 when of instrumental origin, and with a tendency to dissyl- 
 labic line endings, sometimes three times repeated, an effect 
 helped doubtless by the cadences which are peculiar to 
 Welsh harp music. 
 
 This mention of the harp suggests that to that instrument 
 narrative poems were chanted or cantilated, often at great 
 length. Words then were of prime consequence, and the 
 bard, even upon the battlefield, would recite the achieve- 
 ments of his fathers, as an incitement to his chieftain. It 
 is stated indeed that the bard thus chanted on the old Irish 
 battlefields, surrounded by a group of harpers, who accom- 
 panied him, almost with the effect of a military band. 
 Thus, no doubt, arose the clan marches, and where the 
 chiefs fell fighting, the lamentations over fallen heroes 
 common to the Gaelic and Cymric branches of the 
 Celts. 
 
 It would not appear as if chorus songs w-ere of early 
 origin, though there is a hint or tw^o of something of the 
 kind in early Irish literature. In the Fenian tales there is 
 occasional reference to the Dord, which would appear to be 
 a concerted cry or chorus, a cry of warning, if not a war 
 cry. And in some of the early Irish airs, such as '"Tis 
 pretty to be in Ballindery," there is an indication of a 
 chorus. Later on, in Irish and Highland music, we find 
 chorus songs of occupation, called " Lubeens " amongst the 
 Irish and " Luinings " amongst the Highlanders. These 
 seem to follow solos and alternate improvised utterances 
 in song, such amoebean contests as we find in the eclogues 
 of Theocritus and Virgil, and in Welsh airs with choruses 
 such as " Hob y Deri Dando." 
 
FOLK SONG 1 8 
 
 I have suggested that each language has its own 
 rhythmic genius ; its accent, brogue, burr, or whatever you 
 call it, is part of this, and a clever musical Scot told me he 
 was prepared to show how the Scotch intonation affected 
 Scotch music. If this be so, it is obvious that a popular 
 air carried from one country to another will become modi- 
 fied by the rhythmical genius of the race amongst which 
 it is domesticated. A case in point is the air known in 
 Ireland as the " Cruiskeen lawn," an air of considerable 
 antiquity, and, I believe, sung in an early form to one of 
 Sedulius's Latin hymns. That air was played to me at the 
 Moore Centenary by a Swedish musician many years ago 
 as a Norse air. It no doubt passed into Norway when 
 Dublin was the capital of the Norse empire, and the tides 
 of music flowed strongly between Ireland and Scandinavia. 
 That same air is regarded by the Welsh as one of their 
 National melodies, namely, " The Vale of Clwyd," and it is 
 famous, in another form, in Scotland as " John Anderson, 
 my jo, John." A beautiful tune, " The Cobbler of Castle- 
 berry," known now as " The Cuckoo Madrigal," is evidently 
 an English air twisted into an Irish shape, and a Welsh 
 hymn on the New Jerusalem is an English sacred air thrown 
 into a much finer Welsh form. 
 
 All this suggests a fascinating aspect of folk song from 
 what might be called the point of view, not of comparative 
 philology, but " comparative philophony." The root of an 
 air would be looked for probably amongst Oriental peoples, 
 like the Indians and Persians, who, according to Dr. Petrie, 
 have set our Irish slumber tunes and ploughmen's whistles 
 agoing. Thence it would be traced in its various develop- 
 ments amongst different nationalities, till it reached a point 
 of alteration which would make it unrecognisable to any but 
 those who had thus followed it step by step from its primi- 
 tive source. All this, of course, has to be systematically 
 followed up, but what a joy to a great musical grammarian ! 
 
 Early Scotch musical manuscripts, and some of Bunting's 
 
184 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 earliest printed Irish tunes, show folk airs in a very elemen- 
 tal condition. The musical grammarian might very well 
 trace these growing up into beautiful Scotch and Irish 
 melodies. He would also find them degenerating in course 
 of time into poor variants. How are we to account for 
 these processes, and for the corresponding improvement 
 and deterioration of the words to which these folk songs 
 were sung? Surely, that very word "folk-song" gives the 
 key to the explanation. One of the folk chants a song to a 
 rude tune on a rude instrument. It is taken up, improved 
 in rhythm, improved in air, and often benefited by an 
 improved instrument — a harp of thirty strings, for example, 
 as opposed to one with a dozen. A consummation is 
 finally reached. A musical genius arises. Under his 
 cultivation the simple rose of the hedgeside blossoms into 
 the perfect garden flower. And to match this beautiful 
 melody, perfect words are needed, if indeed thay have not 
 inspired the absolute air. A Thomas Moore or a Robert 
 Burns, with his " Minstrel Boy " or his " Scots wha hae wi' 
 Wallace bled," crystallises the melody for ever. 
 
 Other airs are not so fortunate. Partnered by vulgar 
 or meaningless or dissolute words, they drop out of favour, 
 and many of these are at this very moment hiding their 
 heads among the Welsh vales and mountains. Even 
 Moore's instinct was not unerring, and some of his melodies 
 have ceased to hold the public, because the words written 
 to the airs have proved to be of an ephemeral kind. 
 
 Again beautiful, though distinctly secular tunes, are 
 pressed into the services of the churches. Many of the 
 Welsh love songs, I am told, are now used as Welsh hymns, 
 and to restore them to their former use would probably be 
 regarded as desecration. Some of the Welsh rollicking 
 airs, too much associated in the past with the tavern and 
 rowdy revelry, are now altogether discountenanced, while 
 their instrumental use as dances, such as are favoured in 
 Ireland and Scotland, is a thing of the past in Wales ; 
 
POLK SONG 185 
 
 though a whisper reaches me that school children are 
 obtaining permission to use their limbs in a way for which 
 there is good scriptural precedent, and, perhaps, some of the 
 good old Welsh dance measures may yet be revived. The 
 child is the father of the man and the mother of the woman. 
 But, above all, there is a dangerous tendency to alter the 
 musical accents of characteristic Welsh airs on the part of 
 some Welsh musicians, whilst some modern Welsh lyrists 
 violate the very principles of Welsh rhythm by breaking up 
 the musical measures which were themselves suggested by 
 that rhythm. 
 
 The suggestion contained in the preface to the Cam- 
 brian Minstrelsy that this collection of about 180 Welsh 
 airs is a complete compendium of Welsh song, in the sense 
 that every Welsh air possessing permanent value has been 
 included in it, appears to me to be an ill-advised utterance 
 on the part of the editors of that undoubtedly interesting 
 collection. 
 
 I am given to understand that Mrs. Mary Davies, who 
 as Mary Davis won so many laurels of song, possesses 
 a MS. collection of Welsh airs unknown to the editors 
 of the Minstrelsy^ in which there are many hitherto un- 
 published airs, some of them of great beauty. I under- 
 stand, too, that my friends Sir Harry Reichel and Dr. Lloyd 
 Williams, of University College, Bangor, have between them 
 quite a couple of hundred of Welsh airs, many of which are 
 of permanent value. I am glad to find also that it is the 
 practice of the Bangor College authorities not only to rescue 
 from oblivion characteristic Welsh melodies which come in 
 their way, but to mate them to suitable Welsh words, and 
 then arrange them for performance at their University 
 functions. There are several other considerable unpub- 
 hshed collections of Welsh airs, and with this information 
 before me I cannot think that the inquiries of the editors of 
 the Cambrian Mi?istrelsy have been sufficiently searching 
 to justify their statement that there are not 200 Welsh 
 
1 86 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 airs of permanent value in existence. Indeed, that state- 
 ment is a distinct reflection upon the great and proUfic 
 musical genius of the Welsh, who long before the time of 
 Geraldus Cambrensis were singing songs in four parts, and 
 down along the ages, influenced by martial and patriotic 
 traditions, carried music in the forefront of their fights for 
 freedom, and at the present day are regarded as the most 
 actively musical race in the British Isles. Wales, too, has 
 been generously susceptible to external musical influences 
 without sacrificing her own musical individuality, and that 
 she will never lose as long as she adheres to her national 
 language. 
 
 Griffith Ap Cynan, a Welsh King by an Irish Princess, 
 gathered the Irish and Welsh bards together to regulate the 
 canon of Welsh National music, and it is stated that from 
 that day till the times of Llewelyn the canon was kept to. 
 If this be true, the following statement of Dr. Crotch must 
 be taken, not with a grain, but with a pillar of salt : 
 " British and Welsh National music must be considered as 
 one, since the original British music was with the inhabi- 
 tants driven into Wales. It must be owned that the regular 
 measure and diatonic scale of the Welsh music is more 
 congenial to English taste in general, and appears at first 
 more natural to the experienced musician than those of the 
 Irish and Scotch. Welsh music not only solicits an accom- 
 paniment, but being chiefly composed for the harp is 
 usually found with one ; and indeed in harp tunes there 
 are often solo passages for the bass as well as for the treble ; 
 it often resembles the scientific music of the 17th and 
 1 8th centuries, and there is, I believe, no probability that 
 this degree of refinement was an introduction of later 
 times. ' Ffarwel Ednyfed Fychan ' is a tune bearing the 
 name of the councillor, minister and general of Llewelyn 
 the Great in the 13th century, and yet is remarkable for the 
 characteristics for which I have mentioned it." 
 
 The question of the modes of Welsh music has, I under- 
 
FOLK SONG 187 
 
 Stand, been recently discussed in the columns of Y Brytho7i 
 from a very different point of view. Doubtless the old tunes 
 turning up in England do show a connection between the 
 early English and Welsh tunes, but to suggest that England 
 and Wales were distinguished from the Irish and Scots by 
 not using modal tunes at an early period is preposterous. I 
 have had an interesting letter from Mr. Griffithj of the 
 Dolgelly County School, on this very question, from v/hich 
 I make a few quotations : " I would like to call your atten- 
 tion to the efforts to represent the old folks' performances 
 of Welsh music. To name but a few of the points where it 
 fails : the accent, or want of it; the melodic intervals, often 
 not diatonic, and even wavering, not through ignorance 
 or vocal incapacity ; the grace notes, or more accurately 
 perhaps explanatory or commentatory notes, often highly 
 elaborate and queerly timed with respect to any possible 
 bars, and certain tricks of utterance, perhaps not unconnected 
 with grace notes. If the ordinary trained musician is set to 
 copy down these vocal performances, he will ignore all these 
 things, strictly ruled though they be by tradition, and he 
 will give us but the merest approximation in the polite 
 musical dialect of the day. He has often done even worse 
 in Wales; looked at the whole thing from a harmony 
 exercise point of view, and calmly altered the most 
 characteristic intervals, as in the case of the old hymn tune 
 ' Bangor,' which has been treated in this way. Now, I think 
 it is important that an attempt should at once be made to 
 represent these vanishing idioms of music on paper. I am 
 convinced for one thing that there is much behind them, 
 a highly developed art, some psychology, and possibly 
 ethnology. In any case, it is a shame to look at them 
 dying, and even to try to kill them, as any successful choir 
 trainer must do, and not to get a record of them. What 
 about the phonograph in this connection ? " 
 
 I cordially agree with these views of Mr. Griffith's, with 
 this small reservation. So-called traditional singing is often 
 
l88 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 corrupt, not only because old rules are imperfectly re- 
 membered, but because the introduction of foreign fashions 
 in the way of variations and flourishes has been imposed 
 upon the original tradition. There is an apposite story of 
 a Hebridean priest, who was so annoeyd by the choric 
 confusion in his church created by the many variants upon 
 a hymn tune sung by a Gaelic-speaking congregation, that 
 he insisted upon its being sung in its simplest modal form, 
 with all grace notes left out. The Irish minstrels were 
 undoubtedly much influenced in the i8th century by an 
 Italian tendency of this kind, even Carolan showing it in 
 many of his jigs, planxties, and concertos. The traditional 
 singers of the Gaelic League will have to face this fact, and 
 so, probably, will the Welsh traditional singers of the future, 
 if they are to preserve their National music in its primitive 
 purity. 
 
 All that I have said leads up to the necessity of every 
 nation regarding it as a pious duty to collect in the most 
 perfect manner, to arrange in the most perfect manner, and 
 to mate to the most perfect words, its own folk tunes. 
 Wales has yet to do this. The airs are to collect in 
 numbers which I believe will prove surprising. They will 
 then have to be set in various ways, in the simplest of all 
 forms for school children and people unable to reach the 
 highest musical culture ; in art forms for educated amateur 
 singers and for the professional singers, of whom Wales is 
 so justly proud. It will be found, I think, that apart from 
 the mere arranging of these folk songs for soloists and 
 choruses in a separate form, Welsh music, when thoroughly 
 explored on its inslrumental and vocal sides, will prove to 
 indicate theme after theme suitable for treatment in oratorio 
 or opera, overture or sonata. 
 
 Patient, careful investigation will in course of time 
 enable Welsh musicians to go very near at any rate to 
 establishing a chronological order of the Welsh tunes, by 
 internal and external evidence, just as the great English 
 
FOLK SONG 189 
 
 scholars have pretty well succeeded, after infinite pains, in 
 establishing a chronological order of Shakespeare's plays. 
 At present we have little to go by. Confirmation of 
 historical and traditional events has come through the 
 collection of folk songs even within the last few years. 
 You here in Wales, with your language living in every shire 
 of the Principality, have a far better chance of recapturing 
 the fugitive songs and tunes of your forefathers than we 
 Irishmen, or your English neighbours. For, apart from 
 your linguistic advantage, there is a greater spread of 
 musical knowledge amongst Welshmen, and a greater 
 capacity therefore for taking down your native airs. It 
 has been suggested that a Welsh folk song branch should 
 be affiliated with the Folk Song Society, which acts on 
 an international basis and invites contributions of folk 
 songs from all nations. But whether you accept this 
 suggestion or set up an independent folk song society of 
 your own, I make no earthly doubt that you have enough 
 material to occupy you within your own borders for at least 
 a generation to come. You have to get all the variants 
 of your many Welsh folk songs into your musical museum, 
 and select from them the very best for national purposes. 
 You have to collect the legends with which these folk songs 
 are connected and the local history to which they relate. 
 You have to decide upon the right methods of playing and 
 singing the airs, how many of them are to be left in their 
 old modes, how many adapted to modern scales. You will 
 have to decide as to how many of the Welsh lyrics to which 
 the airs are now sung are worthless from the literary point 
 of view, how many to be restored or improved as Burns 
 and Allan Cunningham restored and improved the Scotch 
 songs. You must do as the Germans are now doing, that 
 is to say, you must treat folk song and the folk lore con- 
 nected with it practically as well as archgeologically. 
 
 You must gather its mutilated remains as well as its 
 perfect examples into collections which will serve as 
 
IQO IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 illustrative museums. This material will be available, not 
 only for giving local colour and suitable form to reproduc- 
 tions of old world themes, but would be also available for 
 works of a larger kind, instrumental and vocal. Much folk 
 lore would be incidentally collected along with the songs, 
 and experts would know into what most fitting hands to 
 place all fresh literary and musical finds with a view to 
 their being first dealt with from an historical, linguistic, and 
 ethnological standpoint, and then, where advisable, adapted 
 for current use. This treatment of folk songs should satisfy 
 the views of the two schools of collectors, the antiquarian 
 and the artistic* 
 
 * The delivery of this address, which was musically illustrated by a 
 party of singers chosen from the Eisteddfod Choir, was followed by 
 another given by Principal Reichel, of Bangor University College. The 
 interest created by these addresses led to the formation of the now 
 flourishing Welsh Folk Song Society. 
 
EDWARD BUNTING 
 
 Mrs. Milligan Fox, the energetic honorary secretary of 
 the Irish Folk Song Society, while purchasing a harp at a 
 leading London warehouse inquired whether any of the old 
 harpers ever called in there to buy strings. "Well, no," 
 replied the attendant ; " but a gentleman was in here not long 
 ago who bought a harp, and when giving the order said, ' It 
 is only right that I should have a harp in my house, for it 
 was my grandfather who preserved the music of the ancient 
 Irish harpers.' " 
 
 Mrs. Fox thus got into communication with Dr. Louis 
 Macrory of Battersea, Edward Bunting's grandson, and 
 eventually obtained from him and from his cousin, Mrs. 
 Deane of Dublin, a large mass of documents relating to 
 their grandfather's famous collections of Irish music. Much 
 of this material had never before been published, and in 
 especial the Gaelic originals of a number of songs collected 
 by Patrick Lynch nearly no years ago, during a tour 
 through Connaught. 
 
 This find would have alone justified the issue of such a book 
 as Mrs. Milligan Fox's Annals of the Irish Harpers, But 
 there is besides much correspondence relating to the publica- 
 tion of Bunting's three collections of Irish airs, harmonised 
 by himself, that throws an exceedingly interesting light upon 
 the period of the Irish RebeUion of 1798 and the decade 
 immediately following it, and is, therefore, eminently deserv- 
 ing of preservation. 
 
192 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Edward Bunting, but for whose collections of old Irish 
 music Moore's melodies would never have seen the light, 
 was the son of an English mining engineer, settled in 
 the north of Ireland in the last quarter of the i8th century. 
 His mother was a descendant of one Patrick Gruana 
 O'Quinn, who had fallen in the Great Irish Rising of 1642. 
 Left unprovided for by his father, he received so good a 
 musical education from his brother Anthony that we find 
 him at the age of eleven acting as deputy to a Belfast 
 organist, Mr. William Ware, and, indeed, so outshining him 
 as a performer that his employer was glad to secure him as 
 a permanent assistant, not only at the organ, but as a teacher 
 of the pianoforte to his pupils throughout the neighbouring 
 county. The zeal of the boy-teacher, reinforced by a 
 caustic tongue, from which he suffered through life, were 
 often productive of ludicrous scenes. As an instance, he 
 afterwards reported to Dr. Petrie, that on one occasion 
 a lady pupil was so astonished " at the audacity of his 
 reproofs that she indignantly turned round upon him and 
 well boxed his ears." 
 
 He lodged with and became fast friends of the 
 McCrackens, whose love for Irish folk music as well as the 
 influence of Dr. James MacDonnell, the moving spirit in 
 the Belfast Harper's Festival of 1792, drew him into 
 that collection, study and arrangement of old Irish music 
 w^hich for the next fifty years absorbed all the time he had 
 to spare from his duties as a professional musician. 
 
 As Mrs. Fox suggests, it is not improbable that Dr. 
 IMacDonnell's Belfast harp gathering was intended by him 
 to divert attention from the great political meeting held in 
 Belfast during the same week by the United Irelanders, with 
 whose methods he was not in sympathy. 
 
 Bunting was retained by Dr. MacDonnell to take down 
 the airs played by the nine harpers who assembled on the 
 occasion. He was barely nineteen at the time, but the 
 impression left upon him by that gathering never passed 
 
EDWARD BUNTING 193 
 
 from his mind, and nearly fifty years afterwards he could 
 thus write of it : 
 
 The meeting in Belfast was better attended than any that had yet 
 taken place, and its effects were more permanent, for it kindled an 
 enthusiasm throughout the North which still burns bright in some 
 honest hearts. All the best of the old Irish harpers (a race of men 
 then nearly extinct and now gone for ever), Denis Hempson, Arthur 
 O'Neill, Charles Fanning and seven others, the least able of whom 
 has not left his like behind, were present. Hempson, who realised the 
 antique picture drawn by Cambrensis and Galilei, for he played with 
 long crooked nails, and in his performance "the tinkling of the small 
 wires under the deep tones of the bass " was peculiarly thrilling, took 
 the attention of the editor with a degree of interest which he can 
 never forget. 
 
 He was the only one who played the very old, the 
 aboriginal music of the country, and this he did in a style 
 of such finished excellence as persuaded Bunting that the 
 praises of the old Irish harp in Cambrensis, Fuller and 
 others, instead of being, as the detractors of the country are 
 fond of asserting, ill-considered and indiscriminate, were in 
 reality no more than a just tribute to that admirable instru- 
 ment and its then professors. 
 
 But more than anything else, the conversation of Arthur O'Neill, 
 who, though not so absolute a harper as Hempson, was more a man of 
 the world and had ti'avelled in his calling over all parts of Ireland, 
 won and delighted the editor. All that the genius of later poets and 
 romance writers has feigned of the wandering minstrel was realised in 
 this man. There was no house of note in the North of Ireland, as far 
 as Meath on the one hand and Sligo on the other, in which he was not 
 well known and eagerly sought after. 
 
 For four years after the Harpers' Festival Bunting 
 devoted himself to collecting airs in the counties of Derry 
 and Tyrone, and then passed into Connaught, whither in 
 his own words " he was invited by the celebrated Richard 
 Kirwan of Craggs, the philosopher and founder of the Royal 
 Irish Academy, who was himself an ardent admirer of Irish 
 
 o 
 
194 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 native music, and who was of such influence in that part of 
 the country as procured the editor a ready opportunity of 
 obtaining tunes in both high and low circles." 
 
 As a consequence of this Folk Music Campaign, 
 Bunting in the year 1796 produced his first volume of sixty- 
 six native Irish airs never before published. Shordy before 
 this, after a picnic to Ram's Island in Lough Neagh, at 
 which Russell, the Wolfe Tones and the McCrackens were 
 present, Bunting played " The Parting of Friends," one of 
 the airs in his collection. " Overcome by the pathos of the 
 music, and bursting into tears Mrs. Wolfe Tone left the 
 room." The music chosen was indeed singularly appro- 
 priate, "since tragedy loomed darkly" over the parting 
 friends; "for two of them the scaffold \vaited, for a third 
 death in a condemned cell." 
 
 Bunting's 1796 collection fell into Thomas Moore's 
 hands very soon after its publication. " Robert Emmet," 
 writes Moore, " during those college days, used frequently 
 to sit by me at the pianoforte while I played over the airs 
 from Bunting's Irish collection, and I remember one day, 
 when we were thus employed, his starting up as if from 
 a reverie while I played "The Fox's Sleep," exclaim- 
 ing passionately, " Oh, that I were at the head of twenty 
 thousand men marching to that air." 
 
 To this air Moore afterwards wrote his well-known lyric 
 Let Eri7i re7neniber the Days of Old. 
 
 Eleven years after this Moore and Stevenson included 
 in their first number of sixteen Irish melodies no less than 
 eleven from Bunting's first collection, but with no acknow- 
 ledgment of the source from which they were taken. Great 
 bitterness arose out of this unpermitted appropriation, which 
 was all the more vexatious because Bunting had evidendy 
 intended that the airs in his collection should in course of 
 time appear as songs and ballads to words by other well- 
 known lyrical writers of the day. 
 
 The period between the issue of Bunting's first and 
 
EDWARD BUNTING 1 95 
 
 second volumes was one of great storm and stress for Ireland. 
 It included the risings of 1798 and 1803, in which his friends 
 the McCrackens, Russell and others were implicated, and 
 for their share in which Wolfe Tone, Henry Joy McCracken, 
 Thomas Russell and Robert Emmet suffered death, 
 
 Robert Emmet and Thomas Russell were among a 
 group of lyrical writers, which included Miss Balfour and 
 Dr. Drennan, whom Bunting drew around him in order to 
 furnish songs for his second volume which might compete 
 successfully with those of Moore. These songs were 
 founded upon Irish originals collected at the recommenda- 
 tion of the McCrackens by Patrick Lynch, an Irish scholar 
 and schoolmaster who had toured Connaught, folk-song 
 collecting, first by himself, and then along with Bunting. 
 Some of these Gaelic songs were translated, though too 
 artificially, into English lyrics by Miss Balfour and others ; 
 Bunting had also made a great but unsuccessful effort to 
 induce Thomas Campbell, the poet, to take a leading part 
 in this work and so come into competition with Moore, but 
 he failed to secure the Scotch poet in this capacity, though 
 Campbell contributed three poems to the collection. Then 
 a most untoward event occurred. Thomas Russell, the 
 preiix chevalier of the United Irelanders and one of the 
 Irish Folk Song band, was apprehended and executed on 
 the evidence of Patrick Lynch, who, on suspicion of com- 
 plicity with him, had been fixed upon to identify Russell, 
 and who, in order to save his own neck, had reluctantly 
 given damning evidence against his friend and employer. 
 This, of course, caused Lynch to be dismissed from the 
 employment of the McCrackens, and Dr. McDonnell, who 
 had shown Loyalist proclivities after Russell's rising, was, 
 for the time being, in their black books and Bunting's, 
 though they subsequently made friends with him again. 
 
 The band of enthusiastic folk song collectors was then 
 divided, and the publication of Bunting's second volume 
 languished. When it ultimately appeared in 1809, Moore 
 
 o 2 
 
196 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 and Stevenson at once proceeded to pillage airs from it, and 
 the poet had a very easy task in excelling the poor transla- 
 tions from Irish originals that served for its lyrics. 
 
 Moore, at a later period, was perfectly frank in replying 
 to Bunting's charge that the original airs had been altered 
 by Stevenson to suit his words. In an entry in his diary 
 of July 15th, 1840, he thus writes: "Bunting lays the 
 blame of all these alterations upon Stevenson, but poor Sir 
 John was entirely innocent of them ; as the whole task of 
 selecting the airs, and in some instances shaping them to 
 the general sentiment which the melody appeared to me to 
 express, was undertaken solely by myself." " Had I not 
 ventured," he adds in his diary for the same date, " on these 
 very admissible liberties, many of the songs now most 
 known and popular would have been still sleeping with all 
 their authentic dross about them in Mr. Bunting's first 
 volume. The same charge is brought by him respecting 
 those airs which I took from the second volume of his 
 collection." 
 
 Bunting married, as an old bachelor. Miss Mary Ann 
 Chapman, the daughter of Mrs. Chapman, a widow and 
 Lady Principal of a school in Dublin. His marriage, 
 which proved an extremely happy one, brought Bunting 
 from Belfast to Dublin. This uprooting of his old connec- 
 tions, though difficult, was wise, for it enabled him to break 
 away from habits of life in which he was becoming con- 
 firmed, and which were casual and unwise. His fresh start 
 in Dublin proved satisfactory in every respect. He secured 
 plenty of musical work, and the companionship of men like 
 Petrie, Stokes, O'Curry and others kept up the flame of his 
 enthusiasm for his life work, the preservation and publication 
 of native Irish music. Yet it was not until after a long 
 interval that Bunting in 1840 produced his last collection, 
 and as it proved his magfitim opus. It was received with 
 high commendation by the leading critics, and assured the 
 editor's lasting fame. It is well described by Robert 
 
EDWARD BUNTING 197 
 
 Chambers " as a national work of the deepest antiquarian and 
 historical interest. Were we to institute a literary comparison 
 we could say that Moore's Irish melodies had about them 
 all the fascination of poetry and romance, Bunting's col- 
 lections all the sterner charms of truth and history." He 
 adds, " When we hear Sir John Stevenson's Irish melodies 
 played by a young lady on the pianoforte, or even on the 
 pedal harp, we do not hear the same music which O'Cahan, 
 Carolan and Hempson played. It is as much altered as 
 Homer in the translation of Pope. For the true present- 
 ment of this music to modern ears we require the old sets 
 as preserved in the volumes of Bunting and ' the Irish 
 harp' played by an Irish harper." Dr. Petrie concludes 
 his memoir of his great predecessor in Irish Folk Song 
 collecting with these words : " The publication of his last 
 volume was, for the very few years which he survived it, 
 not only a matter of the greatest happiness and consolation 
 to him, but it excited him to devote the leisure of those 
 years to the rearrangement of the old airs and to terminate 
 his labours by leaving behind him a complete, uniform and 
 very nearly perfect collection of Irish music." 
 Moore's verdict was a very different one : 
 
 Received from Cramers and Co. a copy of Bunting's newly 
 published collection of Irish Airs, which they have often written to me 
 about, as likely, they thought, to furnish materials for a continuance 
 of the Melodies. Tried them over with some anxiety, as, had they 
 contained a sufficient number of beautiful airs to make another volume, 
 I should have felt myself bound to do the best I could with them, 
 though still tremblingly apprehensive lest a failure should be the 
 result. 
 
 Was rather relieved I confess on finding, with the exception of a few 
 airs, which I have already made use of, the whole volume is a mere 
 mess of trash. 
 
 Considering the thorn I have been in poor Bunting's side by 
 supplanting him in the one great object of his life (the connection of 
 his name with the fame of Irish Music), the temper in which he now 
 speaks of my success (for some years since he was rather termagant on 
 the subject) is not a little creditable to his good nature and good 
 sense. 
 
198 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Posterity has reversed Moore's shallow musical judgment. 
 Sir Charles Villiers Stanford has, by an act of historical 
 justice, largely restored Moore's melodies to the forms in 
 which they are presented by Bunting. 
 
 " llie mess of trash " in Bunting's third volume has, 
 moreover, furnished Sir Charles with many beautiful airs 
 for his own arrangement to lyrics suggested by the spirit and 
 written in the measures of the old Gaelic songs. 
 
 Mrs. Milligan Fox and her sister. Miss Alice Milligan, 
 whose Irish scholarship is evident throughout The Annals of 
 the Irish Harpers, have taken in hand a good piece of work 
 in dealing with the Bunting MSS. and correspondence as they 
 have done. But in a future edition the O'Neill and Lynch 
 diaries might be condensed with advantage, and some 
 of the additional space thus secured allotted to further 
 translations from the Gaelic originals to which Bunting's airs 
 were sung. 
 
 Limits of space make it impossible to enter into two or 
 three very interesting speculations raised by Mrs. Milligan 
 Fox, which we hope will be publicly discussed. Was 
 O'Curry justified in discrediting the hst of Irish musical 
 terms supplied to Bunting by Arthur O'Neill, who was, by 
 all accounts, an honourable man ? Was Petrie, as is now 
 generally believed, justified in his contention that the form 
 of Old Irish airs has been more correctly preserved by the 
 Irish Folk singers than by the Irish harpers, to whose 
 records of them Bunting pins his faith ? 
 
 Lastly, do not the Irish Harp tunes stand, as a rule, 
 quite apart from the airs of the Irish Folk songs, as the 
 Welsh Harp tunes are proved to stand apart from the airs 
 of the Welsh Folk songs ? Is it not therefore reasonable to 
 suppose that airs in pentatonic or other incomplete scales 
 which still exist in Ireland and Wales side by side with 
 diatonic tunes dating from the twelfth century, at any rate, 
 take their origin in the main either from the use of early- 
 gapped instruments, or from the secular use amongst the 
 
EDWARD BUNTING ^99 
 
 Irish and Welsh Catholic peasantry of their Church's earliest 
 forms of plainsong ? Can any direct connection be set up, 
 as suggested by Petrie, between Persian and Indian lullabies 
 and those of Ireland, and can such early Irish airs as the 
 Plough tunes be proved to have a like connection with 
 the East ? 
 
200 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 GEORGE PETRIE AS AN ARTIST AND 
 MAN OF LETTERS 
 
 George Petri e was born in Dublin on the ist January, 
 1790, of a Scotch mother and Irish father, though it must 
 be owned that his father was not of Irish stock, although he 
 had cast in his lot with our fellow-countrymen, being the 
 son of a Scotchman settled in Dublin. He was an eminent 
 Portrait and Miniature Painter, and was a man of literary 
 culture as well. He was at pains to give his son the best 
 education available, and therefore sent him to the school of 
 Mr. Whyte, of Grafton Street, and there, sitting perhaps 
 at the same desk at which Thomas Moore and Richard 
 Brinsley Sheridan had sat before him, he acquired that 
 sound knowledge of the English and classical languages 
 which he afterwards turned to such good account when he 
 became a man of letters. 
 
 As a boy George Petrie took after his father's taste for 
 Art, and was allowed to assist him in painting miniatures 
 at an early age. Indeed, when only fifteen he gained the 
 Silver Medal for a group of figures in the School of the 
 Dublin Society ; hence his father, though he had intended 
 him for the profession of Surgery, was not loath to allow 
 him to follow the bent of his genius and to devote himself 
 to landscape painting, being the more inclined to this 
 course from the fact that the boy was delicate and more 
 suited to an open air than to an indoor life. 
 
 One of the early recollections which Dr. Petrie has left 
 on record was of a touching scene, of which when a boy he 
 
GEORGE PETRIE 201 
 
 was an unwilling spectator. His artist father had executed 
 a commission for Sarah Curran, daughter to that distin- 
 guished orator and member of the Irish Bar, John Philpot 
 Curran. She had been betrothed to Robert Emmet, whose 
 Hfe paid the penalty of his compHcity in the rebellion of 
 1803 ; and knowing that Mr. James Petrie had painted 
 Emmet, she requested that a portrait from memory, aided 
 by his former studies of her lover, should be painted for 
 her, and that when completed she might visit his studio 
 alone. A day and hour were named by the artist ; but his 
 boy, unaware of the arrangement, was seated in a recess of 
 the window, concealed by a curtain, when the lady, closely 
 veiled, entered the room. She approached the easel, and 
 gazed long and earnestly on the picture of her lover, then 
 leaned her head against the vv-all and wept bitterly. The 
 boy, attracted by her sobs, knew not how to act. She was 
 quite unconscious of his presence, and before he could 
 make up his mind what he ought to do, she recovered her 
 self-control, drew down her veil, and left the room. 
 
 At the Drawing School of the Dublin Society Petrie 
 met with Danby and O'Conor, and these three young Irish 
 artists became bosom friends. Up to the year 1809, his 
 studies as landscape painter were carried on in the counties 
 of Dublin and Wicklow, and with such enthusiasm that he 
 would start on foot at nightfall when his day's work was 
 done, so that by walking all night he might reach, before 
 sunrise, some chosen spot for study among the Wicklow 
 mountains. In the following year he first visited Wales, 
 and re-visited it a few years afterwards wdth his friends 
 Danby and O'Conor. 
 
 Dr. Stokes, to whose fine biography of Petrie I am 
 indebted for the bulk of my information about him, is of 
 opinion that the influence of these tours in Wales and of 
 the Welsh scenery can be as definitely traced through 
 all Petrie's works as that of his Yorkshire surroundings 
 upon Turner's art. 
 
202 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 In 1820, the taste for illustrated Landscape Annuals 
 was at its height, and this helped forward the art of water- 
 colour painting of which Turner was the exponent in 
 England, and Petrie had become the exponent in Ireland ; 
 indeed, he supplied no less than ninety-six illustrations to 
 CromweU's Excursions in Ireland, twenty-one to Brewer's 
 Beauties of Ireland^ sixteen to Fisher's historical Guide to 
 A?idenf and Modern jDnbli?i, besides contributing to other 
 works, such as Wright's Tours and the Guide to Wicklow 
 and Killarney. 
 
 A review of Petrie's Art work in these Landscape 
 Annuals and Guides, published in the Dtiblin SaUtrday 
 Magazine of March, 1866, criticises Petrie's talents in these 
 fitting terms : 
 
 His refined taste and love of truth influenced him even at the 
 commencement of his career to discard all conventional tricks of Art. 
 He was emphatically our first draughtsman ; and so accurate was his 
 pencil that a drawing by Petrie made at any period of his artistic life 
 possesses the value for truthfulness of a photograph. But he was more 
 than a draughtsman, his drawings and pictures were peculiarly imbued 
 with that indescribable charm which for want of a better word has 
 been styled " feeling," and which only genius of the highest order can 
 confer. His simplest sketch assumed the character of a painted poem ; 
 a green hillside, a shattered cross, a ruined watch tower, as treated by 
 his genius, became the subject of a picture the indescribable charm of 
 which riveted the attention and set the imagination to work. 
 
 But the letterpress illustrated by him in these books of 
 excursions and tours was as a rule so inferior, that Petrie 
 conceived the idea of bringing out a book of the kind both 
 written and illustrated by himself. His tours in Aran and 
 other parts of Ireland so charmingly recorded by him 
 formed the basis for such a work, though he never com- 
 pleted it. 
 
 Is it too late for an enterprising publisher to make a 
 selection of Petrie's engravings in the pubHshed tour books, 
 combining them with the letterpress in his journal, and 
 that contributed by him to the Dublin and Irish Penny 
 
GEORGE PETRIE 203 
 
 Magazines ? It would make a delightful and unique 
 volume. 
 
 As Dr. Stokes points out, " Petrie's Art works may be 
 divided into two classes ; his pictures which are simply 
 landscapes and those which illustrate National antiquities 
 in a beautiful setting of natural scenery. The most striking 
 characteristics of his landscape works are the power of 
 conveying simple poetry; the sense of solitude without 
 gloom ; his skilful use of effects with storm and haze in 
 giving grandeur to scenes otherwise insignificant, and his 
 delicate, aerial tones and sunlit mists. Perhaps the highest 
 effort of his genius as a landscape painter is ' The Home 
 of the Herons.' The scene is laid in Lough Atree, and 
 embraces the little group of islands from which the lake 
 has derived its name. These islands are adorned with 
 trees of naked growth, and the largest island of the group 
 has been taken possession of by the herons, which have 
 been allowed to retain it as a sanctuary and a home. The 
 day has been wet, but towards evening the clouds have 
 dispersed, the sun bursts forth, and the mists, rising as 
 steam from the mountain sides in the western light, form a 
 rainbow tinted veil of a most ideal loveliness, softening the 
 rugged outlines of the peaked and barren mountains, and 
 mingling their distant summits with the delicate blue of the 
 heaven above. The delicacy, tenderness, and transparency 
 in the painting of this picture, the high imaginative power 
 shown in the treatment of the subject, make it worthy of a 
 place among the highest efforts of landscape Art in the 
 Kingdom," and Dr. Stokes thus finely describes what he 
 considers to be the most remarkable specimen of those of 
 his works which illustrate our National antiquities : 
 
 The subject of this picture is one of the Celtic sepulchural 
 monuments of Pagan times commonly called Druidical Temples 
 situated on the Caah Hill near Dungiven in the county of London- 
 derry. This circle of monumental stone is one of several still remain- 
 ing on the mountain, which, according to the tradition of the peasantry 
 
204 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 of the district, are the tombs of the chiefs slain in a great battle fought 
 here, and from these the mountain received its name of Caah or Battle 
 Hill. The tall stones raise their dark forms against the saffron sky, 
 through which the evening star is just appearing and shedding its soft 
 light, while a few cattle stand perfectly motionless on the horizon. 
 The sense of solitude and breathless silence conveyed in this picture, 
 and the deep poetry in the simple treatment of the whole, can be felt 
 only by those who have seen it. 
 
 The poetical influence affecting Petrie's Art work is that 
 of Wordsworth, of whom he was a devoted admirer, for in 
 that poet he found " a responsive chord to his own genius 
 — calm, sober, cheerful and meditative." 
 
 I will add to the above views of his Art a quotation 
 from an Eloge on Petrie, delivered shortly after his death 
 before the Royal Irish Academy by my father, the late 
 Bishop of Limerick, when he was its President : 
 
 " Petrie's pencil was, for many years, put into requisition by those 
 who sought for the most perfect illustrations of Irish scenery and 
 topography. His drawings were engraved by the most celebrated 
 engravers, Goodall, Higham, Barber, Wickel, Brewer, George 
 Cooke, Greigg, Millar, and Stoners, all of whom remarked of his 
 works, ' beautifully outlined.' The pictures exhibited by him in 
 London and Dublin attracted the admiration of the most accomplished 
 Art critics. I have some idea," writes my father, "of the causes of 
 his success. I believe that it was due in the first instance to the 
 truthfulness with which he represented the grace and harmony of the 
 lines traced by Nature herself in the real landscape. He seems to 
 have perfectly appreciated their characteristics. He knew that these 
 lines are produced by natural agencies of various kinds working 
 simultaneously — by forces which shape the outline of a mountain, as 
 well as by those which determine the form of a leaf, it was his nice 
 perception or, call it if you will, an intuitive feeling — of the proper 
 flow of each separate line and of its relation to the other lines in the 
 picture which enabled him to produce drawings almost matchless in 
 delicacy and grace. His skill as a draughtsman was transcendent, 
 critics allege that as a colourist he was less successful. It is not given 
 to the same man to excel in every branch of his art. Still it must be 
 said of him that he showed a fine perception of harmony and balance 
 of colour, even though we may admit that he was sometimes deficient 
 in force. But the artist who could paint such pictures as his ' Pass of 
 
GEORGE PETRIE 205 
 
 Llanberis,' his ' Walk in Connemara,' his ' Shruel Bridge,' and ' The 
 Home of the Herons,' has secured for himself a high place in the list of 
 water-colour painters. These are works in which the artistic treatment of 
 the subject manifests an intense love of nature and a familiar acquain- 
 tance with the expressions of her everchanging face. And they possess 
 a higher merit. They are not the products of a merely meditative, 
 imitative Art, they are poetical in their conception and full of 
 imaginative power. Petrie had attained to a very distinguished 
 position as a painter, his brother artists in Ireland acknowledged his 
 eminence by conferring upon him the honourable office of President of 
 their National Academy, and artists of the highest repute in England, 
 by their correspondence and their friendship, bore testimony to the 
 respect which they entertained for him as a professional compeer." 
 
 Petrie's first contribution to Irish literature, as might 
 have been expected, took the form of art criticism. In his 
 six and twentieth year he wrote a series of leading articles 
 in the D2iblin Exaviiner, in which he deals with the condi- 
 tion of the fine arts in Ireland, and more particularly on the 
 attempts which had been made to establish an Academy of 
 Arts in Dubhn which had led to the exhibition of works 
 of Irish painters, between the years 1809 and 181 6. The 
 exhibitions had proved successful in the first instance, but 
 the Society had split up into two, the Irish and Hibernian 
 Societies of Arts, yet these two bodies came together again 
 and finally coalesced with the Dublin Society. 
 
 Public support of Art at first promising had died down, 
 and indeed the general absence of culture amongst the 
 artists and the want of public spirit which had followed the 
 provincialising of the Irish capital consequent on the 
 establishment of the Union were influences greatly adverse 
 to National Art. In five further articles his criticisms 
 became more general. He showed that the decline of 
 European art was due to inferiority in education amongst 
 modern artists, sculptors and architects, as compared with 
 that of earlier workers in these fields of art, and to a 
 tendency to look too much at the business side of art, 
 a view according to which success depended upon a 
 cultivation of the imitative powers ; while Ruskin's dictum 
 
206 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 that Art is to be considered as a writing or language, the 
 value of which must depend upon what the artist has in 
 him to say, was unrecognised by the public and by the 
 artists themselves. Petrie rightly pointed out the tendency 
 in the training of the schools of the Dublin Society to place 
 the special before the general education of its students, and 
 the consequent product of half educated, illiterate artists. 
 Dr. Stokes comments that this independent spirit and 
 severity of stricture upon the conduct of public men at a 
 time when independent thought was almost a crime and 
 independent action was nearly impossible, was admirable in 
 a young and struggling artist. Yet Petrie lived to illustrate 
 these critical views by his own works as a draughtsman and 
 painter. 
 
 He contributed to the Dublin literary journals of 1816 
 to 1818, but it was not until the year 1832 that, in company 
 with the Rev. Caesar Otway, he started the Dubliii Pen7iy 
 Journal " on new and exclusively national grounds and 
 with national as well as useful objects in view." Politics 
 and sectarian religion were excluded from the purview of 
 the magazine. The subjects chiefly chosen were, however, 
 such as were most likely to attract the attention of the 
 Irish people next to those of politics and polemics, viz. : the 
 history, biography, poetry, antiquities, natural history, 
 legends and traditions of the country. The journal 
 appeared on the 30th June, 1832, and was conducted with 
 great spirit, ability and success for more than a year, after 
 which it passed into other hands, declined in literary quality 
 and passed out of existence. 
 
 Ten years later Petrie became sole editor of another 
 work of the same aim and character, the Irish Penny 
 Jour7iaI^ which he carried on for a year. " There is no 
 more striking evidence of the absence of public opinion or 
 the want of interest in the history of the country on the 
 part of Irish society," writes Dr. Stokes, " than the failure of 
 these two works, and it is remarkable that the principal 
 
GEORGE PETRIE 207 
 
 demand for them was from London and the provincial 
 towns of England." 
 
 In literary merit, indeed, they were anything but 
 failures, as might be expected, when it is considered that 
 besides the names cf Otway, Petrie and O'Donovan, we 
 have among the contributors to the second work mentioned 
 those of O'Curry, Wills, Anster, Ferguson, Mangan, Aubrey 
 de Vere and Carleton. It is told of Southey, that he used 
 to say, when speaking of these volumes, that he prized them 
 as among the most valuable of his library. 
 
 In bidding farewell to his readers of the Irish PcJiny 
 Jouy7ial^ Petrie observes that the commendations of the 
 press "have not been altogether undeserved, and that the 
 proprietors indulge the pleasing conviction that the volume 
 now brought to a termination will live in the literature of 
 Ireland as one almost exclusively Irish." This hope has 
 been justified. These two volumes, the Dublin Pe?my Journal 
 and the Irish Penny Journal^ now fetch a high price, and 
 though the illustrations are, to a large extent, antiquated, 
 much of the letterpress deserves reprinting; indeed, not a few 
 of the poems and stories contained in these journals, such 
 as Mangan's Ike One Mystery and some of Carleton's Irish 
 Sketches, have already passed into Anglo-Irish Literature. 
 
 As a specimen of Petrie's literary powers at this period 
 a passage from his account of Monasterboice in the Irish 
 Penjiy Jotirnal may be cited : 
 
 In its present deserted and ruined state it is a scene of the 
 deepest and most solemn interest ; and the mind must indeed be dull 
 and earthly in which it fails to awaken feelings of touching and 
 permanent interest ; silence and solitude the most profound are 
 impressed on all its time-worn features ; we are among the dead only ; 
 and we are forced, as it were, to converse with the men of other days. 
 With all our frequent visits to these ruins, we never saw a single 
 human being amongst them but once. 
 
 It was during a terrific thunderstorm, which obliged us to seek 
 shelter behind one of the stone crosses for an hour. The rain 
 poured down in impetuous torrents, and the clouds were so black as to 
 
2o8 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 give the appearance of night. It was at such an awful hour, that a 
 woman of middle age, finely formed, and of a noble countenance, 
 entered the cemetery, and, regardless of the storm raging around, flung 
 herself down upon a grave, and commenced singing an Irish lamenta- 
 tion in tones of heartrending and surpassing beauty. This wail she 
 carried on as long as we remained ; and her voice coming on the car 
 between the thunderpeals had an effect singularly wild and unearthly ; 
 it would be fruitless to attempt a description of it. 
 
 The reader, if he knows what an Irishwoman's song of sorrow is, 
 must imagine the effect it would have at such a moment among those 
 lightning shattered ruins, and chanted by such a living vocal monument 
 of human woe and desolation. 
 
 As Dr. Stokes points out, Petrie may be said to be the 
 discoverer of the Aran Islands, at least from the antiquarian 
 point of view. He paid them two visits of considerable 
 duration, the first in the twenties of last century, before the 
 islands had been as much influenced from the mainland as 
 they have gradually become. Indeed, an interesting con- 
 trast might be made by a comparison between Dr. Petrie's 
 experiences on the islands and those of Mr. J. M. Synge. 
 It is, as a descriptive writer and painter of character, such 
 as he found it in Aran, that we are here concerned with 
 Dr. Petrie's relation to these islands. Quoting, with three 
 notes of exclamation, Pinkerton's statement that the wild 
 Irish are at this day known to be some of the veriest 
 savages in the globe, Petrie proceeds to show that after 
 visiting Aran out of a desire to meet the islanders who were 
 reputed to be the most primitive people within the five 
 corners of Ireland, he found them to be where uncon- 
 taminated, as in Aranmore and Innisheer, a brave and hardy 
 race, industrious and enterprising, simple and innocent, but 
 also thoughtful and intelligent ; credulous, and in matters of 
 faith what persons of a different creed would call super- 
 stitious, but, being out of the reach of religious animosity, 
 still strangers to bigotry and intolerance. Lying and 
 drinking — the vices which Arthur Young in his time 
 
GEORGE PETRIE 
 
 209 
 
 regarded as appertaining to the Irish character, formed at 
 least no part in it in Aran. Not that they were rigidly 
 temperate, instances of excess followed by the usual Irish 
 consequences of broken heads did occasionally occur; such 
 could not but be expected when their convivial temperament 
 and dangerous and laborious occupations are remembered. 
 " But," he adds, " they never swear, and they have a 
 high sense of decency and propriety, honour and justice. 
 In appearance they are healthy, comely and prepossessing; 
 in their dress, with few exceptions, clean and comfortable. 
 In manners serious yet cheerful and easily excited to gaiety; 
 frank and familiar in conversation, and to strangers polite 
 and respectful ; but at the same time wholly free from 
 servile adulation. They are communicative, but not too 
 loquacious; inquisitive after information, but delicate in 
 asking it and grateful for its communication." 
 
 Petrie describes four typical Aran islanders of his day, 
 Mr. O' Flaherty, one of the two aristocrats of the islands, 
 the Rev. Francis O'Flaherty, their venerable pastor, Tom 
 O'Flaherty, who combined the honourable practice of 
 medicine with the less distinguished calling of a tailor, and 
 lastly Molly M'Auley, the wise woman, though not in the 
 sense of being a witch; but space only permits of the 
 presentation of full-length portraits of the three O'Flahertys, 
 Mr. O'Flaherty, Tom the Tailor and Father Francis 
 O'Flaherty. 
 
 Mr. O'Flaherty may be justly called the pater patrice of the 
 Araners. He is the reconciler in all differences, the judge in all 
 disputes, the adviser in all enterprises, and the friend in all things. A 
 sound understanding and the kindest of hearts make him competent 
 to be all those ; and his decisions ar enever murmured against or his 
 affection met by ingratitude. Of the love they bear him many instances 
 might be adduced, but the following will be deemed suflkient, and 
 too honourable both to them and him to be omitted. 
 
 In 1822 a great number of the islanders had determined to emigrate 
 to America. A ship lay at anchor at Galway to convey them, and 
 they proceeded thither accompanied by Mr. O'Flaherty, to aid them 
 
 P 
 
2IO IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 to the last with friendship and advice. Several days elapsed before 
 the vessel was ready to set sail, and Mr. O'Flaherty still continued with 
 them ; but at last the hour to bid an everlasting adieu arrived. They 
 must know the Araners that could fancy the scene that then ensued. 
 
 Men and women all surrounded him — the former with cheeks 
 streaming with tears, and the latter uttering the most piercing lamenta- 
 tions ; some hung on his neck, some got his hands or arms to kiss, 
 while others threw themselves on the deck and embraced his knees. 
 
 It is no discredit that on such an occasion the object of so much 
 affectionate regard was more than unmanned, and it was a long time 
 before his health recovered the injury, or his face lost the sorrowful 
 expression caused by the grief of that parting. 
 
 Mr. O'Flaherty has read a good deal, but thought more, his 
 opinions bespeak at once a noble and liberal feeling and a singularly 
 sound and dispassionate judgment, the grandeur and sublimity of the 
 objects by which he is surrounded seem to have sunk into his soul and 
 formed his character. He is deeply religious, but altogether free from 
 narrow prejudice. All good men are to him alike. His religion has 
 something of a romantic character, and he feels his piety more excited 
 in the little deserted, roofless temple, among the rocks, beside his own 
 house, than it possibly could be in the most crowded and magnificent 
 church. In this solitary ruin he offers up his morning and evening 
 prayers ; and his figure in the centre of the nave looking towards the 
 mouldering altar, in the act of adoration, as I saw it once by chance, 
 will never be effaced from my recollection. 
 
 Mr. O'Flaherty's table is for his guests, everything that a man 
 accustomed even to luxurious living could desire ; but, in his own 
 habits, he is singularly abstemious, rarely taking any other beverage 
 than milk, although, when entertaining his friends, he conceals his 
 habits and sets an example of a more free but still temperate enjoyment. 
 His house, however, bespeaks the simplicity of the place, as well as the 
 usages of remote times. It is an oblong, thatched cottage, without 
 a second storey, containing five or six apartments, with a long porch, 
 forming a kind of hall, attached to the centre of the front. The 
 parlour is not boarded, nor do the chairs present the luxury of a soft 
 seat. Mr. O'Flaherty is of the middle stature, blue-eyed, but dark- 
 complexioned and dark-haired. His face is long and oval, and in its 
 expression mild, philosophic and benevolent. His dress is that of the 
 islanders, differing only in the substitution of a heavy cap for the hat 
 usually worn, and boots for their rude sandals. 
 
 Here is Tom O'Flaherty : 
 
 Tom is not himself an Araner, he came hither after the 
 memorable rebellion of 1798, in which, it is suspected, he was 
 
GEORGE PETRI E 211 
 
 somewhat concerned, and, finding an unoccupied theatre for the display 
 of his varied talents, has continued exercising them ever since, to the 
 perfect satisfaction of all ranks. 
 
 Tom, the tailor doctor, is really what many doctors are not, a 
 clever fellow, he has a sharp and clear intellect, and a singularly 
 retentive memory, stored with a variety of information, historical, 
 traditional, genealogical, and topographical, relative to the West of 
 Ireland. He has a romantic imagination, and is never happier, he 
 says, than when wandering about ancient ruins and among lakes and 
 mountains. He is a great talker, a great lover of tobacco, and a 
 great drinker — not a great drunkard — for it would be very difficult to 
 make him drunk, and a great humorist, qualities which are all very 
 Irish. A pint of whiskey he considers a small daily allowance ; and on 
 a late occasion, while attending Mr. O'Flaherty in a typhus fever, he 
 was limited to six glasses, he begged that the whisky might be given 
 to him in three equal portions or drams, morning and evening, so that, 
 as he expressed it, *' he might feel the good of it." 
 
 His humour is dry and original ; the following may be taken as 
 a specimen. Expressing my surprise to him one day on the extent of 
 his legendary lore, I inquired of him in what way he had acquired it. 
 This was his answer. "Faith, an' it's easily told. Not being like them 
 poor people (the Araners), you see, but having an independent profes- 
 sion," drawing his arms like a tailor, *' I spent my time visiting from one 
 gentleman's house to another, and as I was always sure of welcome, and 
 having had a particular taste for old stories, I always contrived to get 
 myself into the best possible situation for learning them, and faith, I 
 may say, the best part of my life has been spent there." "Where?" 
 I inquired. " Faith, just behind the whisky bottle ! " But Tom 
 O'Flaherty had other qualities of a better order. He was remarkable 
 for humanity and active benevolence. In the spring of 1822 some very 
 bad cases of typhus fever occurred in the island, one being that of a 
 stranger lately settled there. The islanders who, like all the poor 
 Irish, have a deep terror of this frightful disease, fled from him ; he 
 was without money or friends, and must have perished but for the 
 courage and humanity of Tom O'Flaherty. Tom first removed him on 
 his back from the infected house to a more airy situation, one of the 
 old Irish stone houses which he had prepared for his reception. He 
 then went to Mr. O'Flaherty and peremptorily demanded five shillings. 
 "For what purpose, Tom? Is it a drink?" said the other. "No, 
 trust me with it without asking any questions, I'll make no bad use of 
 it." The money was obtained, and immediately sent off to Galway for 
 the sick man. With this assistance, in addition to his own resources, 
 he was enabled to bring the poor man successfully through the fever. 
 
 P 2 
 
212 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 He visited him several times each day, sat with him, washed him, and 
 performed all the duties of a humane and skilful nurse. At the same 
 time he v^ould never let either his family or friends know that he was 
 thus employed, but gave them to understand that the man was dead, and 
 would ahvays proceed from home in a different direction from that which 
 led to the place of the patient, and reach it unseen by a circuitous 
 route ; nor is it likely that he would ever have undeceived them if he 
 had not had the pleasure of bringing back to society the man whom he 
 had thus rescued from the grave . . . Tom's independent spirit is equal 
 to his other good qualities. For several days' attendance on me to 
 various parts of the island I could not induce him to take any remunera- 
 tion. I was also told that he had a strict regard for truth. I shall 
 only add one more feature of his character which is peculiarly Irish — 
 namely, his pride of ancestry. Tom boasts the Milesian blood of the 
 ancient princes of Connaught. On tracing Mr. O'Flaherty's pedigree 
 for me one day, I inquired if he, too, was an O'Flaherty, "That I 
 am," said he, drawing himself up with some expression of pride, "as 
 good a one as Pat O'Flaherty himself." 
 
 Father Francis O'Flaherty is a native of Aranmore and received 
 his education in a college in Spain. After spending a few years as a 
 curate in some part of Connaught, he was appointed parish priest of 
 his native Islands whither he returned never again to leave them, and 
 has now been the unassisted teacher of his flock for forty years. The 
 unremittent toils attendant upon such a situation may well be con- 
 ceived ; but the dangers with which they are here accompanied, and 
 the courage necessary to meet them, can only be appreciated by a 
 recollection of the singular and peculiar region to which his duties 
 belong — namely, a cluster of islands washed by the waves of the Atlantic, 
 presenting in most places an iron bound coast and separated from each 
 other by rapid currents that never assume a tranquil appearance and are 
 seldom entirely free from danger. Courage is, indeed, a striking trait in 
 the character of this venerable man, and is strongly marked on the lip 
 and brows of his manly but toilworn and weather-beaten countenance, 
 a face that a physiognomist would look at for hours with pleasure, so 
 harmonious are its parts, so steady its expression of serious but mild 
 thought, and of manly firmness and simplicity. One of his peculiarities 
 was a too favourable idea of the excellence of human nature in general, 
 which afforded the surest testimony of the virtues of the simple people from 
 whom his knowledge of mankind had been derived. In illustration of 
 his belief that vice or depravity could not exist among mankind except 
 in the rare and solitary instances, Dr. Petrie was told that one of the 
 islanders, about to emigrate to America, on applying to a stranger in 
 
GEORGE PETRIE 213 
 
 the island for written insiructions how to act in a world of which he 
 had no experience, received from him a paper containing written 
 advice guarding him against a state of society where he would be 
 likely to meet many ready to take advantage of his innocence and 
 inexperience. Terrified at the dangers thus presented to his imagina- 
 tion, the simple Araner submitted it to Father Frank, that he might be 
 assured whether these dangers were real ; and the priest, on reading 
 the paper, indignantly tore it to pieces. " Believe not," said he, 
 "what this man says ; he must be a bad man to lead you to entertain 
 so vile an opinion of mankind. Suspect no one. There are, I fear, 
 some bad men in the world, but I trust and believe they are few. But 
 never suspect a man of being so without a sufficient reason." 
 
 Father Frank is poor. The unglazed windows of his humble 
 cottage and the threadbare appearance of his antique garments bespeak 
 a poverty beyond most that of his flock. He is, in fact, altogether 
 destitute of the comforts that should belong to old age. This is not 
 the fault of his parishioners, by whom he is ardently beloved ; they 
 would gladly lessen their own comforts to increase his, and have 
 frequently tried to force on him a better provision, which he has as 
 often refused. " What," said he on a late occasion to Mr. O'Flaherty, 
 who was remonstrating with him on this refusal, "what does a priest 
 want more than subsistence ? And that I have. Could I take any- 
 thing from these poor people to procure me comforts which they 
 require so much more themselves? No, no, Pat, say no more 
 about it." 
 
214 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 GEORGE PETRIE AS AN ANTIQUARY 
 
 " From his schoolboy days," writes my father, " Petrie 
 took an interest in the monumental remains which fell 
 under his observation in the neighbourhood of Dublin ; 
 and as his sketching tours led him afterwards into remote 
 parts of the county where dismantled castles and ruined 
 churches and time-worn crosses, besides furnishing subjects 
 for his pencil, excited his curiosity respecting their history 
 and age, his early predilections for antiquarian pursuits 
 must have been drawn out and fostered. 
 
 Nevertheless, he might perhaps have continued to 
 devote himself exclusively to the practices of his art as 
 a painter, if a ramble in company with some friends 
 through the western counties of Ireland had not brought 
 him in 1818 face to face with the ruins of the Seven 
 Churches at Clonmacnoise. There, indeed, he saw a group 
 of ecclesiastical remains, interesting in their architectural 
 features and picturesquely placed on the sloping shore of 
 our great western river; and he perpetuated the scene 
 by making it the subject of one of his most exquisitely 
 painted pictures. But these ruins excited a still deeper 
 interest in his mind, regarded as memorials of men who 
 lived, and the civilisation which subsisted on the spot 
 1,000 years before. 
 
 Looking around him in that great cemetery he was the 
 first to recognise to what an extent it was filled with 
 
GEORGE PETRIE 215 
 
 inscribed monuments, recording the names of distinguished 
 persons who had been buried there in former times. It 
 was a favourite place of sepulchre for kings and chiefs, for 
 bishops and abbots, for men of piety and learning, from the 
 sixth to the twelfth century. Applying himself first to the 
 copying of these inscriptions, he made drawings of above 
 three hundred of them. But as few of them had been 
 previously noted or explained in any previous work, he 
 was obliged to investigate for himself the histories of the 
 persons whose names were thus preserved. With a view 
 to the accomplishment of this object, he commenced, and 
 from that time continued, the formation of such a collection 
 of documents, whether in manuscript or in print, as he 
 hoped would lead to the illustration of the monuments. 
 After his visit to Clonmacnoise Petrie became an archaeo- 
 logist, devoting as much time and attention as he could 
 to the study of Irish history and antiquities." And it 
 was time he did so, for when, after his death, Margaret 
 Stokes, with the help of her brother Whitley, published 
 Petrie's Christian inscriptions, its first volume contained 
 the illustrations of 165 Clonmacnoise sepulchral inscrip- 
 tions, of which no less than sixty-one seen by Petrie are 
 now lost, buried for the most part, Professor Macalister 
 believes, in modern graves with the object of sanctifying 
 them. 
 
 Here in Petrie's own words are some glimpses of the 
 impressions made upon him by Clonmacnoise : 
 
 Let the reader picture to himself a gentle eminence on the margin 
 of a noble river, on which, amongst majestic stone crosecs and a multi- 
 tude of ancient grave-stones, are placed two lofty round towers and 
 the ruins of seven or eight churches, presenting almost every variety of 
 ancient Christian architecture. A few lofty ash trees, that seem of 
 equal antiquity and sanctity, wave their nearly leafless branches among 
 the silent ruins above the dead. To the right an elevated causeway 
 carries the eye along the river to the ruins of an ancient nunnery, and 
 on the left still remain the ruins of an old castle, once the palace of 
 the bishops, not standing, but rather tumbled about in huge masses on 
 
2l6 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 the summit of a lofty mound or rath, surrounded by a ditch or fosse, 
 which once received the waters from the mighty stream, now no longer 
 necessary. The background is everywhere in perfect harmony with 
 the nearer objects of this picture ; the chain of bare hills on either 
 side, now sere and wild, but once rich with woodland beauty, shut out 
 the inhabited country we so lately left, and the eye and mind are free 
 to wander with the majestic river in all its graceful windings in an 
 uninhabited and uninhabitable desert, till it is lost in the obscurity of 
 distance ! Loneliness and silence, save the sounds of the elements, 
 have here ar> almost undisturbed reign. Sometimes, indeed, the 
 attention is drawn by the scream of the wildfowl, which inhabits this 
 solitary region, or the shot of the lonely sportsman. At other times 
 we could hear the measured time of the oar, or rather paddle, of a 
 solitary boat, long before the little speck in the water became visible ; 
 and the melancholy song of the shepherd or the milk-girl, might some- 
 times be heard in the boggy flat, although the singer was too remote 
 to be visible. To such sounds I have been glad to turn for company 
 during the course of the day. 
 
 This is but an outline of Clonmacnoise, such as may be intelligible 
 to general readers. The deep interest which this astonishing place 
 afforded in detail, can only be appreciated by the enthusiastic painter 
 or accomplished antiquary. The former will understand the kind of 
 delight with which I was inspired by those groups of pilgrims, clothed 
 in draperies of the most picturesque form, and the most splendid and 
 varied colours. The aged sinner, supported by his pilgrim's staff, 
 barefooted and bareheaded, his large grey coat, the substitute for 
 the forbidden cloak or mantle, sweeping the road, his white hair 
 floating on the disregarded wind ! The younger man, similarly attired, 
 whose face betrays the deepest guilt, hurrying along with energetic 
 strides. The females of all ages, to whom uninquiring faith and 
 enthusiastic devotion seem natural and characteristic ; but, above all, 
 the young and beautiful girl, with pale face, blue eyes, long black 
 eyelashes, and dark hair, whose look betrays no conscious guilt, in 
 the midst of her sighing prayers, but rather a feeling of love and 
 devotion ; who, notwithstanding her religious duties, is not so entirely 
 unconscious of the power of her beauty but that she can spare an 
 occasional glance towards the strangers who are endeavouring to fix 
 her figure on their paper or on their memories — a figure, as a friend 
 well observed, that no one but Raphael coull draw. 
 
 Happy England ! Well may she boast of her clean and ornamented 
 cemeteries, and well may she glory in her national mausoleum. What 
 a contrast do the former offer to the neglected and unsightly grave- 
 yards of Ireland, and how striking and impressive the living splendour 
 
GEORGE PETRIE 217 
 
 of the latter, as compared with that which contains the best blood of 
 Ireland ! 
 
 Both are situated on the banks of mighty rivers, but that which 
 reflects the lofty towers of the one, shows them surrounded with the 
 splendour of the proudest city of the world, and it bears along its 
 surface the busy hum of a free and happy people. While the equally 
 noble stream which washes the banks of the other, pours its mass of 
 waters through a desert, and reflects no object but the passing cloud 
 and " The round towers of other days " ; and its silence is only disturbed 
 by the occasional wail for the dead, or the scream of the lonely wild 
 bird that haunts its waters. The temples of the first are still fair and 
 perfect, for they have been since their foundation objects of perpetual 
 care ; those of the other arc almost gone, for they have been for nearly 
 the same period of time the objects of sacrilege and plunder, till its 
 sanctuaries, no longer worth violating, were consigned to the elements 
 and time to complete the work of ruin. 
 
 There is not, perhaps, in Europe a spot where the feeling heart 
 would find more matter for melancholy reflection than among the 
 ancient churches of Clonmacnoise. Its ruined buildings call forth 
 national associations and ideas. They remind us of the arts and 
 literature, the piety and humanity, which distinguished their time, and 
 are the work of a people, who, in a dark age, marched among the 
 foremost on the road to life and civilisation, but who were unfortunately 
 checked and barbarised by those who were journeying in the same 
 course and ought to have cheered them on. 
 
 Petrie was now to show his great capacity as an organiser 
 of archaeology as well as an individual worker in its cult. 
 He was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy and 
 set to work at once in conjunction with other distinguished 
 members to raise the Academy from that state of torpor in 
 which it had remained for the previous quarter of a century. 
 As an instance of the apathy which had prevailed in its 
 management it may be mentioned that the King of 
 Denmark had some time before presented the Academy 
 with a fine collection of stone implements. These had, 
 however, been allowed to lie unnoticed and uncared for. 
 Similar antiquarian gifts to the Academy had actually been 
 deposited in the Museum of Trinity College for want of a 
 fitting place for their exhibition within the Academy's walls. 
 Indeed, Petrie told my father that between the time when 
 
2tS IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 he first saw them, and that when, as a member of the 
 Council, he rescued them from future danger, nearly one- 
 half of these articles, and those the most precious, had 
 disappeared. From this epoch dated a period of fruitful 
 activity in the Academy Committee of Antiquities, the 
 meetings of which had been actually suspended for the 
 seventeen years previous. My father was then secretary, 
 and he and Petrie and others helped forward the acquisition 
 of the various collections, such as the Underwood Collection 
 and those of Dean Dawson and Major Sirr, the assemblage 
 of which in the Academy's museum has given it a national 
 character. 
 
 Inspired by Petrie's scientific spirit in his method of 
 dealing with antiquities, the great Irish mathematician 
 MacCullagh purchased the Cross of Cong, and made that 
 splendid donation to the Academy, besides contributing 
 most generously towards the purchase of the Tara golden 
 torques. Petrie's contributions towards the Academy's 
 library were perhaps even more important. 
 
 "Whenever,"' writes my father, "opportunities afforded of acquiring 
 Irish MSS., he exerted his influence to induce the Academy to pur- 
 chase them. The grant placed at his disposal for this purpose being 
 often inadequate, he ventured more than once at his own risk to secure 
 MSS., the value of which he understood better than anyone, and which 
 he knew ought to be added to the Academy's collection. Thus at the 
 sale of Edward O'Reilly's MSS., after the Academy's grant of /50 
 had been exhausted, he purchased for himself some of the O'Cleary's 
 MSS., and afterwards gave them up to the Academy at cost price. 
 Having had the good fortune under similar circumstances to become 
 the possessor of the autograph copy of the second part of The Annals 
 of the Four Masters he generously surrendered it to the Academy for 
 the sum he had given for it, although, immediately on its becoming 
 known in the sale room what the MS. %vas, he was offered, in the first 
 instance, ;({^ioo over and above the purchase money, and was afterwards 
 pressed to name any sum that would induce him to resign it. In 
 acknowledgment of the generosity and zeal evinced on this occasion 
 by Petrie, the Academy passed a resolution declaring him a member 
 for life." 
 
GEORGE PETRIE 219 
 
 Petrie contributed many papers to the transactions 
 of the Academy, for three of which he was awarded its 
 gold medal. These were his Origin and Uses of the 
 Roimd Towers^ afterwards expanded into his famous work 
 on the subject; his essay on Military Architecture in 
 Ireland, and his essay on Tara Hill. The second in 
 order of these still remains unpublished. 
 
 The essay on the Irish Round Towers by which Petrie 
 has made a world-wide reputation, calls for our interested 
 attention. These remarkable towers had attracted the 
 observation of all Irish antiquaries, but the most astonish- 
 ing difference of opinion had been displayed in the views 
 taken of them. They had been described as Danish or 
 Phoenician in origin, and had been considered by some 
 to be fire temples; by others, places from which the 
 Druidical festivals were proclaimed; by others, again, 
 they were supposed to be astronomical observatories 
 or phallic emblems or Buddhist temples. Lasdy, to 
 come to supposed Christian uses, some theorists held 
 them to be Anchorite towers; others insisted that they 
 were penitential prisons. 
 
 The antiquaries who held these views belonged to the old 
 deductive school. Petrie was an inductive archaeologist. 
 No doubt, as my father writes : 
 
 There is something romantic in the notion of their being monuments 
 belonging to a race wholly lost in the mist of antiquity, and there is 
 something imposing in the parade of Oriental authorities and the jingle 
 of fanciful etymologies in which Valiancy and his disciples so freely 
 dealt. But I have never yet met any intelligent man who has taken 
 the pains to read through and understand Petrie's essay and who has 
 also gone out of his study and examined round towers with his own 
 eyes, and compared their masonry and architectural details with those 
 of the ancient ecclesiastical structures, beside which they often stand, 
 who is not ready to give his frank assent, I am speaking of the most 
 remarkable essay that was ever produced by an Irish antiquary. You 
 will therefore permit me to remind you what those conclusions were : 
 (i) that the towers are of Christian and ecclesiastical origin, and were 
 erected at various periods between the fifth and thirteenth centuries ; 
 
2 20 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 (2) that they were designed to answer at least a two-fold use — namely, 
 to serve as belfries and as keeps or places of strength in which the 
 sacred utensils, books, relics, and other valuables were deposited, and 
 into which the ecclesiastics, to whom they belonged, could retire for 
 security in cases of sudden predatory attack ; (3) that they were 
 probably also used when occasion required as beacons and watch 
 towers. If it were possible to overthrow or seriously to modify the 
 conclusions at which Petrie has arrived his essay would still continue 
 to be a pattern deserving the close imitation of writers undertaking to 
 treat of similar subjects. It is philosophic in its method ; its style is 
 clear and graceful without being pedantic ; it is copious in reference to 
 original authorities ; and, what is rare in works of a controversial nature, 
 it is remarkable for the good temper and good taste with which the 
 writer treats the reasonings of his opponents. 
 
 Moreover, Petrie has proved beyond doubt in this great 
 ecclesiastical essay that churches exist in Ireland that go 
 back to the fifth century, that others exhibiting decorated 
 details were founded in Ireland before the Norman Con- 
 quest, that there are evidences of the decorations of shrines 
 from the ninth to the fifteenth century, that the principal 
 cross at Clonmacnoise indicates that the Irish artists in the 
 tenth century were experienced and imaginative sculptors, 
 and that while the ornamental work of the ancient churches 
 differs remarkably from that seen on the Norman buildings 
 of England, it is in perfect accord with that of the Irish 
 illuminated MSS., jewelled reliquaries, sculptured crosses and 
 inscribed tombstones. He thus disposed for ever of the 
 aspersions upon the barbarity and want of civilisation 
 imputed to the early and mediaeval Irish by writers such as 
 Pinkerton.* 
 
 A second prize of ;£"2o was given to Mr. O'Brien 
 who skilfully supported the contention that the Round 
 Towers were of Danish origin, and Sir William Betham 
 wrote a most virulent attack against the decision of the 
 Council, maintaining that O'Brien's view was the correct 
 one. To Sir William's letter Petrie replied with great 
 
 * Churches and Oratories, 
 
GEORGE PETRIE 221 
 
 dignity, but with hitting powers of which he had not been 
 suspected.'^ 
 
 The circumstances, my father points out, which must be 
 considered the most important in Petrie's Hfe as giving 
 definiteness to his labours and completely developing his 
 powers, was his employment to take charge of the Topo- 
 graphical Department of the Irish Ordnance Survey in the 
 year 1833. The occasion for his services arose thus. 
 In the construction of the maps it was a matter of primary 
 necessity to determine the orthography of the names of 
 places ; but it also proved to be a matter of extreme 
 difficulty. 
 
 Various modes of spelling were found to be sanctioned 
 by common usage. Reference, therefore, had to be made to 
 documents of all kinds; and an inquiry involving com- 
 parison between the existing and the ancient state of the 
 country had to be instituted; in fact, questions relating to 
 the spelling of a town-land or a parish frequently gave rise 
 to elaborate researches, which were not disposed of until it 
 had been ascertained that the name was indicative of some 
 early sept, some ecclesiastical establishment, or ancient 
 chief. Thus the co-operation of the historian, the antiquary 
 and the philologist was found to be essential. The work 
 was under the direction of Lieutenant, afterwards Sir, 
 Thomas Larcom, who conceived the idea of drawing 
 together every species of local information relating to 
 Ireland, and embodying it in a Memoir accompanying the 
 Ordnance Survey maps. 
 
 Here, as the head of a literary staff, Petrie had the 
 assistance of several persons who possessed a good know- 
 ledge of the Irish language, and to whom he communicated 
 his own methods of systematic inquiry and the refinement of 
 a more extended scholarship. It was from Petrie that John 
 O'Donovan and Eugene O'Curry received the training which 
 enabled them afterwards to contribute in so many ways to 
 * Illustrations of Round Towers. 
 
22 2 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 that great development of Irish Hterature which took place 
 between 1840 and 1866. " Thus Petrie became the informing 
 spirit and great instructor of a School of Archaeology, not 
 only laying down the principles but exemplifying upon a 
 large scale the application to Antiquarian Science of the 
 principles of a philosophic induction. He first showed how 
 to make the contents of our Irish MSS. available for the 
 purposes of antiquarian research. He had large collections 
 made from passages bearing upon questions of topography, 
 history, architecture, and so forth, and he took pains to 
 satisfy himself that the true meaning of these was furnished 
 by scholars having a competent knowledge of the Irish 
 language. He explored almost every part of Ireland him- 
 self, filling in sketch books with careful drawings of ancient 
 remains ; and it was by means of a comparison of these 
 with one another, and with the notices of them contained in 
 ancient documents, that he established general and solid 
 conclusions respecting their nature. 
 
 It is true that the literary and ecclesiastical history of 
 Ireland had received important elucidations from the 
 labours of Archbishop Ussher, Sir James Ware and Colgan, 
 but before Petrie's time little had been done to illustrate our 
 topography, our prehistoric monuments, our military and 
 ecclesiastical architecture." Thus writes my father. But a 
 great disappointment awaited all believers in the value of 
 the great antiquarian w^ork being done for the Irish Ordnance 
 Survey by Petrie and his staff, which included besides 
 O'Donovan and O' Curry, O'Conor and Mangan. A full, 
 accurate and intensely interesting memoir of the county 
 of Derry was published, and hailed with delight and pride 
 by all patriotic Irishmen. But unfortunately the very finish 
 and detail of the work caused its interruption. The 
 question became a Treasury one, and all Irishmen know 
 what that means. The Memoir of Londonderry had hardly 
 appeared w^hen difficulties arose as to the cost of its 
 publication. As Dr. Stokes writes, this led to a partial 
 
GEORGE PETRIE 223 
 
 suspension of the topographical survey, and finally its 
 operations were put an end to by the Master-General of the 
 Ordnance. The staff were discharged, and the vast mass of 
 materia], comprising among other things, upward of four 
 hundred quarto volumes of letters and documents relating 
 to the topography, language, history, antiquities, produc- 
 tions and social state of almost every county in Ireland, 
 were directed to be kept in the Central OfBce of the 
 Survey. 
 
 Here is Mr. Wakeman's sketch of the work and workers 
 of the Ordnance Survey led by Mr. Petrie himself : 
 
 How well do I recollect my first sketching journey, when employed 
 on the intended Ordnance memoir. Dr. Petrie was the head of that 
 particular department of the survey to which I was attached. In the 
 little back parlour in Great Charles Street we used to meet daily ; by 
 we, I mean John O'Donovan, Eugene O'Curry, Clarence Mangan, 
 P. O'Keefe, J. O'Connor, besides two or three more. The duty of 
 the office was to collect every possible information, antiquarian or 
 topographical, about that particular portion of the country which was 
 at the time being surveyed. All sorts of old documents were examined, 
 old spellings of names compared and considered. O'Donovan and 
 O'Curry, even then the first Celtic scholars of the age, settled the 
 orthography of the towns, villages, baronies, or other divisions of land, 
 so that the Ordnance map might be as correct, in a literary sense, as 
 they undoubtedly were as surveys. At the same time Petrie's great 
 work on the Ecclesiastical Architecture of Ireland, as also his admirable 
 essay On the Atttiquities of Tara Hilly were being completed. Indeed, 
 we lived in such an atmosphere of antiquarianism, that a thousand 
 years ago seemed as familiar to us as the time when we first donned 
 breeches. For my own part, I felt as if I had a personal acquaintance 
 with Niall of the Nine Hostages, or Con of the Hundred Battles (or 
 bottles, as poor Mangan humorously mis-styled the hero), or with 
 Leogaire, who would not mind the exhortations of St. Patrick, but 
 insisted on being interred, sword in hand, in his rath at Tara, with his 
 face turned to the east, as bidding defiance to the men of Leinster. 
 Petrie, as head of the office, superintended everything ; and the mass 
 of antiquarian and topographical information collected far exceeded 
 the expectations of the most sanguine. A miserable system of false 
 economy caused the memoir to be abandoned ; and, from the character 
 of the matter collected, we can judge how great has been our loss that 
 the work had not been continued for at least a few years longer. I 
 
2 24 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 should like to dwell a moment on the scene of that very happy time 
 when we used to meet in Dr. Petrie's back parlour. There was our 
 venerable chief, with his ever-ready smile and gracious word ; then 
 poor Clarence Mangan, with his queer puns and jokes and odd little 
 cloak and wonderful hat, which exactly resembled those that broom- 
 stick-riding witches are usually represented with, his flax-coloured wig, 
 and false teeth, and the inevitable bottle of tar-water, from which he 
 would sip and sip all day — except when asleep, with a plain deal desk 
 for a pillow. By-the-by, it was in that office Mangan penned his since 
 famous ballad. The IVomaii of Thj-ee Cows, and I verily believe the 
 composition did not occupy him half an hour. Mangan was a man of 
 many peculiarities. In addition to the curious hat and little round 
 cloak, he made himself conspicuous by wearing a huge pair of green 
 spectacles, which had the efifect of setting off his singularly wan and 
 wax-like countenance with as much force as might be accomplished by 
 the contrast of colour. Sometimes, even in the most settled weather, 
 he might be seen parading the streets with a very voluminous umbrella 
 under each arm. 
 
 At this time O'Donovan was about thirty years of age. As in the 
 case of almost every man who has risen to distinction, he was an 
 unwearied worker, never sparing himself, and evidently holding his 
 occupation a labour of love. With all employed in the office he was 
 a general favourite, and in the intervals between his most serious 
 business would often give us some of his experiences as a traveller, 
 telling his tale in a rich emphatic manner peculiarly his own. 
 
 Then there was O'Connor, the companion of O'Donovan in very 
 many of his topographical expeditions, a man of kindly feeling, and 
 possessed of a very considerable amount of information on Irish 
 subjects. He died early, however, and without having given more 
 than a promise of taking a high place amongst those who have made 
 Irish history and antiquities their peculiar study. I must also mention 
 P. O'Keefe, perhaps at that time the most learned and accomplished 
 of all men employed in Petrie's department of the survey. His duties 
 were very similar to those of O'Donovan, and his loss to the survey, 
 when he retired to a non-literary or antiquarian life, was consider- 
 ably felt. 
 
 At the time I write of, Eugene Curry had really commenced that 
 course of application to the illustration of ancient Irish history which 
 has gained for him the proud appellation of the Chief Brehon and 
 Lexicographer of Ireland. He, too, belonged to our staff, and, during 
 the summer time, was engaged chiefly in travelling and collecting 
 information about old names and places for the use of the Ordnance 
 authorities. 
 
GEORGE PETRIE 225 
 
 Years passed away, and then, through the exertions of 
 Viscount Adare, afterwards Earl of Dunraven, a large and 
 remarkable meeting was held in London, at which it was 
 agreed that a deputation should wait upon Sir Robert 
 Peel and press upon him the resumption of the inter- 
 rupted Ordnance Survey work. Sir Robert consented to 
 appoint a Commission to take evidence and report on the 
 entire question. This Commission, consisting of Lord 
 Adare, Mr. Young, a Lord of the Treasury, and the Clerk 
 of the Ordnance, Captain Boldero, took evidence, on the 
 strength of which they unanimously recommended the 
 resumption of the Ordnance Survey work on the lines upon 
 which it had been previously conducted. But as happens 
 with Irish Commissions only too often, its Report bore no 
 fruit, and in the estimates for the following year no notice 
 was taken of the Survey so far as its topographical and 
 historical department was concerned. The vast stores of 
 unpublished information were deposited in the offices of 
 Mount Joy Barracks, but on application from the Royal 
 Irish Academy for the custody of a portion of these records, 
 more than one hundred volumes of manuscripts with eleven 
 volumes of antiquarian drawings, fully indexed and bound, 
 were presented to the Academy in November, i860. A 
 warm vote of thanks was paid to Sir Thomas Larcom, the 
 Academy recognising the gift "as the most valuable 
 accession ever made to their library," and expressing the 
 belief that scholars engaged in historical and topographical 
 studies would largely avail themselves of the materials thus 
 liberally placed within their reach. To this store some of 
 our antiquaries have certainly gone, notably Dr. Joyce, who 
 must there have found material for much of the matter 
 contained in his delightful Irish Natnes of Places. 
 
 Dr. Stokes's comment on the action of the English 
 Government in this affair is as follows : 
 
 In its endeavours to draw closer together the ties of friendship 
 between the countries and to foster goodwill and peace, the educated 
 
 Q 
 
226 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 mind of p^ngland has felt and complained of the want of reliable in- 
 formation as to the social state and history of the Irish people. Here 
 would have been the knowledge so wanting, undisturbed by politics, 
 passions or sectarianism. 
 
 But it was unhappily rejected while the means through the agency 
 of which such success had been obtained was broken up and scattered 
 abroad. 
 
 Looking at the relative conditions of Great Britain and Ireland, at 
 the social relations of the countries, at the ignorance of the Irish as 
 well as the English public, of the true history and resources of Ireland, 
 and at the desire expressed by all classes for the completion of the 
 work, it is hardly too much to say that this step was an error in states- 
 manship of the greatest magnitude. 
 
 During this Ordnance Survey period of Petrie's career 
 he wrote a number of delightful letters to Larcom, 
 Dunraven and O'Donovan, keeping them in touch with 
 the work as it progressed, advising or correcting his 
 subordinates, always in the best humour, and even 
 when, as in the case of O'Donovan, a little feehng was 
 excited, it was soon smoothed down by his unfaiHng 
 justice and tact. Here are just a few extracts from his 
 correspondence : 
 
 My dear Larcom, The whole of this ancient territory of West 
 Connaught is as yet the region of romance, with its solitary lakes 
 and mountains, its — 
 
 Desert isles and fairy lands forlorn, 
 
 the simplicity and honesty of its inhabitants, the costumes of the 
 women so exquisitely beautiful and simple — exactly as if they had 
 stepped out of the pictures of Raphael or Murillo. By the way, I 
 never saw so much beauty of female form in a wild district before as 
 I have met in this, and what is very remarkable, their hands are quite 
 aristocratic, small and elegantly formed in the highest degree. Burton, 
 the artist, who is one of our party, is almost mad with delight. He is 
 a charming fellow, and his company adds greatly to the pleasure of my 
 journey. 
 
 Here is an extract from a letter to Lord Dunraven, 
 
GEORGE PETRIE 2 27 
 
 combating the suggestion that he was dilatory over his 
 preparation of the work of the Round Towers : 
 
 I assure you solemnly that I never worked so hard and un- 
 remittingly in my life as I have at this for the last eight or ten months. 
 I go to work every day immediately after breakfast, and never stir till 
 four or half-past four o'clock, when, if the weather be fine, I turn out for 
 a little exercise before dinner. Then in the evenings I generally read 
 to prepare myself for the day following. I refuse all invitations to go 
 out lest it might interfere with my habits, and when I tell you that 
 within the last fortnight I refused going with Stokes to lona, which I 
 have long desired to visit, and with Smith and Kane to the County 
 Wicklow for a few days, you will, I trust, give me some credit for 
 firmness and devotion to my work. But the truth is, though I say it 
 as should not, the said work is a great labour, and particularly from 
 my anxiety to make it accurate on all points. 
 
 This is an interesting passage, for it explains much, at 
 any rate, of the causes which led to the belief that Petrie 
 was somewhat of a dilettante. The fact was that he was 
 extremely hard to please over his own work, and his con- 
 scientiousness was such that it occasionally delayed his 
 literary labour to a degree that provoked the remonstrance 
 of even his friends. This charge of dilatoriness has thus 
 been answered on Petrie's behalf by my father : 
 
 Petrie may not have been blameless in this regard, but I think 
 that valid excuses may be offered in mitigation of the censure which 
 has fallen upon him. In the first place, his health was always delicate 
 and his temperament sensitive, thus his total working power was less 
 than that of many other literary men ; his intense intellectual energy 
 was out of proportion with his physical strength, and besides all this 
 he was intentionally slow in his work, whether with the pencil or the 
 pen, because he was cautious and truthful and in the highest degree 
 fastidious. 
 
 In 1840 Petrie received the gold medal of the Academy 
 for his essay On the Afitiqidties of Tara Hill. This essay, 
 printed in the eighteenth volume of Transactions of the 
 Royal Irish Academy, was a portion of the memoir intended 
 to accompany the Ordnance Survey map of the county of 
 Meath. I adopt my father's summary of it. Its subject, as 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 the title indicates, is partly antiquarian, and partly historical ; 
 and it deserves special notice, because the latter element is 
 developed more perfectly in it than in any other of Petrie's 
 writings. Having gathered from our most ancient manuscripts 
 every notice contained in them of the Hill of Tara — a spot 
 celebrated by foreign as well as native writers as the chief 
 seat of the Irish monarchs, from the earliest dawn of their 
 history down to the middle of the sixth century — he pro- 
 ceeds, in the first instance, to analyse those which record 
 events connected with the civil and ecclesiastical history of 
 Ireland, and then goes on to show the exact agreement of 
 the monuments still remaining with the descriptions of raths 
 and other structures mentioned in ancient topographical 
 poems and tracts as having formely existed at Tara. The 
 first portion of the paper touches upon several subjects of 
 great interest. Such, for instance, is the account of the 
 compilation and promulgation of laws by Cormac Mac Art, 
 in the middle of the third century; and the compilation, 
 two hundred years later, of the Seafuhus Mor, in the time 
 and at the instance of St. Patrick. The hints which he has 
 given in this paper will afford valuable help towards the 
 settlement of some of the most perplexing questions con- 
 nected with our early Irish history. Though we may feel 
 sure that the catalogue of 142 kings who are recorded as 
 having reigned at Tara prior to its desertion in the year 565 
 is largely mythical, we should be rash in totally rejecting all 
 the statements for which we have no better authority than 
 bardic legends. Petrie has pointed out the probability of 
 some of these, and adduced confirmations of them, derived 
 from independent and trustworthy sources. One of the 
 most curious parts of the essay on Tara is that in which he 
 discusses the perplexing difficulties which beset the history 
 of St. Patrick — I might rather say, of the Saints Patrick, for 
 there were certainly two of the name — and proposes to 
 identify the second St. Patrick with Palladius. The recent 
 investigation of this subject by Dr. Todd has brought its 
 
GEORGE PETRIE 229 
 
 difficulties into a clearer light; but the solution of them seems 
 still almost beyond our reach. The second portion of the 
 essay furnishes a striking instance of the use to be made 
 of antiquarian research in establishing the authenticity of 
 documents. The Dinn Seaftc/ms, a well-known topographi- 
 cal work of great antiquity, contains tracts and poems 
 relating to Tara, some of which describe with considerable 
 minuteness the buildings which formerly stood there. With 
 the buildings so described Petrie was able with complete 
 certainty to identify the crumbling remains which are still 
 apparent. Such a confirmation of the accuracy of the 
 accounts disposes us to attach more credence than we 
 should otherwise have given to statements respecting the 
 uses to which the various structures were applied, and all 
 the details respecting the mode of life of their ancient 
 occupants. The truth of these very ancient testimonies 
 being corroborated in certain points, the probability of 
 their being in the main trustworthy is increased in a high 
 degree. 
 
 The results arrived at by Petrie on the subject of Irish 
 Military Architecture were equally important and en- 
 lightening, and these may be thus briefly summarised. That 
 Cambrensis was wrong in denying castles to Ireland 
 before the Norman occupation, such castles having been 
 erected, though in small numbers, shortly before that 
 occupation, and among these the Castle of Tuam. These 
 castles were round and not as lofty as the Round Towers. 
 
 Petrie, in opposition to current belief, held that the 
 Danes built few castles in Ireland, but that older forms of 
 defensive architecture under the names of Caisel, Rath, Lis, 
 Dun, Cathair, Mur and Tur existed in large numbers before 
 the first Danish invasion; that the Cathairs exceed all 
 other Irish fortifications in interest and historic importance, 
 and that they occur constantly in the west and south of 
 Ireland, and are probably of Greek origin. 
 
 As Count Plunkett has so well pointed out, Petrie 
 
230 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 was not merely a man of scientific spirit, he was also a 
 poet. He had the intuitions of the seer, and he divined 
 what he afterwards proved by link after link of careful 
 investigation. 
 
 His main contentions have been upheld, and even in 
 matters of detail his views have been confirmed by subse- 
 quent antiquaries in the most surprising manner. 
 
GEORGE PETRIE AS A MUSICIAN AND 
 AMONGST HIS FRIENDS 
 
 How early Petrie's love for Irish music had been is shown 
 by this anecdote communicated to me by Dr. Joyce, as it 
 had been related to him by Petrie himself: 
 
 When Petrie was a boy he was a good player upon a little single- 
 keyed flute. 
 
 One day he and some young companions set out for a visit to 
 Glendalough, then in its primitive state of solitude. While passing 
 Luggelaw they heard a girl near at hand singing a beautiful air. 
 Instantly out came paper and pencil, and Petrie took it down, and then 
 played it on his little flute. His companions were charmed with it ; and 
 for the rest of the journey — every couple of miles when they sat down to 
 rest, they cried, " Here, Petrie, out with your flute and give us that 
 lovely tune." That tune is now known as Luggelaw, and to it Thomas 
 Moore, to whom Petrie gave it, wrote his words (as lovely as the 
 music), No^ not more welcome, referring to Grattan's pleadings for 
 his country. 
 
 And this brings us to George Petrie's famous collection of 
 Irish music, in the gathering of which he had been engaged 
 with passionate interest from his seventeenth till after his 
 seventieth year. 
 
 At first he freely gave these folk airs to Thomas Moore 
 and Francis Holden, and even offered the use of his whole 
 collection to Edward Bunting. But finally, for fear that 
 the priceless hoard might be neglected or lost after his 
 death, and also as a protest against the methods of noting 
 and dealing with the airs pursued by Edward Bunting and 
 Moore and Stevenson respectively, Petrie agreed to edit 
 his collection for " The Society for the Preservation and 
 
232 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 Publication of the Ancient Music of Ireland," which was 
 founded in December, 1851. 
 
 One volume of this collection, comprising, however, 
 only about a tenth part of it, saw the light in 1857. A 
 supplement contains thirty-six airs, some of which Dr. 
 Stokes tells us were sent to Petrie by personal friends, 
 such as Thomas Davis the patriot, William AUingham the 
 poet, Frederick Burton the painter, and Patrick MacDowell 
 the sculptor ; " whilst physicians, students, parish priests, 
 Irish scholars and college librarians all aided in the good 
 work. But most of Petrie's airs have been noted by himself 
 from the singing of the people, the chanting of some poor 
 ballad-singer, the song of the emigrant — of peasant girls 
 while milking their cows, or performing their daily round of 
 household duty — from the playing of wandering musicians, 
 or from the whistling of farmers and ploughmen." And 
 this description by Dr. Stokes is typical of the method by 
 which the airs were obtained, in this instance on the islands 
 of Aran : 
 
 Inquiries having been made as to the names of persons " who had 
 music," that is, who were known as possessing and singing the old 
 airs, an appointment was made with one or two of them to meet the 
 members of the party at some cottage near to the little village of 
 Kilronan, which was their headquarters. 
 
 To this cottage, when evening fell, Petrie, with his manuscript 
 music-book and violin, and always accompanied by his friend, 
 Professor Eugene O' Curry, the famous Irish scholar, used to proceed. 
 
 Nothing could exceed the strange picturesqueness of the scenes 
 which night after night were thus presented. 
 
 On approaching the house, always lighted up by a blazing turf fire, 
 it was seen to be surrounded by the islanders, while its interior was 
 crowded by figures, the rich colours of whose dresses, heightened by 
 the firelight, showed with a strange vividness and variety, while their 
 fine countenances were all animated with curiosity and pleasure. 
 
 It would have required a Rembrandt to paint the scene. The 
 minstrel — sometimes an old woman, sometimes a beautiful girl or 
 a young man — was seated on a low stool in the chimney corner, while 
 chairs for Petrie and O'Curry were placed opposite, the rest of the 
 crowded audience remaining standing. The singer recommenced, 
 
GEORGE PETRIE 233 
 
 stopping at every two or three bars of the melody to permit the writing 
 of the notes, and often repeating the passage until it was correctly 
 taken down, and then going on with the melody exactly from the 
 point where the singing was interrupted. The entire air being at last 
 obtained, the singer, a second time, was called to give the song con- 
 tinuously, and when all corrections had been made, the violin — an 
 instrument of great sweetness and power — was produced, and the air 
 played as Petrie alone could play it, and often repeated. 
 
 Never was the inherent love of music among the Irish people more 
 shown than on this occasion ; they listened with deep attention, 
 while their heart-felt pleasure was expressed, less by exclamations than 
 by gestures ; and when the music ceased, a general and murmured con- 
 versation, in their own language, took place, which would continue till 
 the next song was commenced. 
 
 When Dr. Joyce was quite a young man he sent Petrie 
 some beautiful folk songs which he had, as a lad, collected 
 in his native Glenosheen. Petrie was delighted with these, 
 and Joyce became a frequent caller at the doctor's house 
 and heard his songs sung by Petrie's daughter Mary, who 
 in her youth was very beautiful; Sir Frederick Burton's 
 picture of " The Blind Girl at the Well " is an admirable like- 
 ness of her at that period. " How well," writes Dr. Joyce, 
 "I recollect the procedure when I returned to Dublin from 
 my vacation. One of the first things was to spend an 
 evening with the whole family, the father and the four 
 daughters, when Mary went through my new collection on 
 the piano with the rest listening, especially Petrie himself, 
 in wrapt delight, as she came across some exquisite air he 
 had not heard before. But of all the airs he was most 
 delighted with 'The Wicked Kerry Man,' now in my 
 Ancient Irish Miisic, page 84." 
 
 Some further airs drawn from the Petrie collection, after 
 the publication of the volume of 1857, have apeared in the 
 form of piano arrangements by Francis Hoffmann, and in 
 vocal settings in Sotigs of Old Ireland^ Songs of Erin, and 
 Irish Folk Songs, published by Boosey and Co., and in Irish 
 Songs and Ballads, published by Novello, Ewer and Co. 
 Now, however, the entire collection of about 1,800 airs 
 
234 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 in purely melodic form, exactly as they were noted down 
 by Petrie — a vast treasure-house of folk song, has been 
 published by Messrs. Boosey and Co., for our Irish Literary 
 Society under the editorship of Sir Charles V. Stanford. 
 
 And now for Petrie among his friends. 
 
 Here is a sketch by one of them, Samuel, afterwards 
 Sir Samuel Ferguson, showing him amongst his friends of 
 the Royal Irish Academy at one of their meetings : 
 
 The Provost of the University presides. His son, the distinguished 
 Humphrey Lloyd, sits near him. That animated individual with the 
 eager eye and broad forehead, who is reading the formula from the 
 demonstrating board, is Sir William Hamilton, the illustrious mathe- 
 matician and astronomer. This intelligent-looking personage, whose 
 countenance combines so much gravity and liveliness, is the Archbishop 
 of Dublin. There is Petrie — he with the Grecian brow, long hair, and 
 dark complexion — the accomplished antiquary ; and here is Pim, the 
 introducer of railroads into Ireland. Here sits the scientific Portlock, 
 with Apjohn, our leading chemist ; and this is Stokes, the great 
 physician of the lungs, . . . And who are these who have just 
 entered — one with a light step, huge frame, sharp Irish features and 
 columnar forehead ; the other lower in stature, of a paler complexion, 
 large featured, with the absent aspect of a man of learning? They are 
 Carleton, author of the Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry^ and 
 Anster, the translator of Faust. 
 
 I may here say that on the only occasion on which I 
 myself met Petrie, Dr. Anster was of the company, other 
 men of note being Leopold von Ranke, the historian of 
 the Popes (my father's brother-in-law), my father himself, 
 Dr. Ingram, Dr. Mahaffy, and Dr. Dowden. 
 
 " In the choice of his friends," writes Lady Ferguson, 
 " he was uninfluenced by political considerations, or any 
 narrow feeling of sectarianism, a quality which none but 
 those who know Ireland can sufficiently admire or estimate. 
 Loving his country and feeling for her wrongs, he was 
 liberal in politics, though from angry passions he ever held 
 aloof. At once a loyalist and a patriot, a combination 
 which, in these days, is in some minds unintelligible_, he 
 saw the real obstacles to his country's weal, in her want of 
 
GEORGE PETRIE 235 
 
 healthy pubhc opinion and self-respect, and gave the labour 
 of his life to overcome them." And to quote my father, in 
 this connection, " he largely helped towards achieving the 
 great problem of our day — the reconciliation of the cultivated 
 intelligence and loyalty, with the popular aspirations and 
 the sympathies of the country." 
 
 WilHam Stokes, Petrie's biographer and father of Whitley 
 and Margaret Stokes, was in his day one of the foremost 
 physicians of the world. " He was a rarely gifted man," 
 writes Lady Ferguson, " a man of genius, and yet eminently 
 practical. A lucid writer, a profound and most accurate 
 clinical observer, he was early recognised as a master in his 
 profession. But he was also a skilful practitioner, at once 
 full of kindness and sympathy, observant of every symptom, 
 and rich in resource. At the bedside he inspired confi- 
 dence, and often affection. As a teacher he was constantly 
 followed by crowds of admiring students. Like most men 
 of real power, he had many interests and pursuits outside 
 of his professional sphere. He was a keen archaeologist, 
 a true lover of his country. The tenderness of his nature 
 and his brilliant wit and humour were only manifested on 
 occasion, for his manner was often abstracted, but his 
 domestic affection and his love for his chosen friends never 
 failed. It was not everybody that could win his friendship," 
 as Petrie had done. And I can speak to a similar friend- 
 ship between him and my own father, and between him and 
 Lord Adare, afterwards the Earl of Dunraven, Sir Thomas 
 Larcom, and of course Whitley and Margaret Stokes. 
 Frederick Burton was also a close friend, and O'Curry and 
 O'Donovan, first his assistants on the Ordnance Survey, 
 were always afterwards his friends. Who indeed of note 
 in Ireland at that day was not a friend of " dear Petrie," 
 as he was universally called by his intimates. 
 
 "In 1857," writes Lady Ferguson, "the British Association met in 
 Dublin, and the Ethnological section went on an excursion to Aran of 
 the Saints. Stokes, Petrie, Burton, O'Curry were of the party, and 
 
236 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 remained behind with Ferguson, who secured a roomy cottage and 
 wrote to his wife to join him with their nephews, a servant and a well- 
 stocked hamper. Dr. Stokes wrote for his wife, son and daughter. 
 
 The combined party chartered a hooker with its crew and retained, 
 as guide, the local antiquary," doubtless Tom O'Flaherty, whose 
 portrait, drawn by Petrie, has already been presented. 
 
 *'The friends, so congenial in their tastes, passed a few M'eeks of 
 entire enjoyment. 
 
 They sailed from island to island, taking with them on board the 
 hooker all the local singers of whom they could hear. The music they 
 sang was noted by Petrie and rendered on his violin — the Irish words 
 recorded by O'Curry and translated by Whitley Stokes. Burton painted 
 the peasants and their children, and he and Ferguson and Margaret 
 Stokes sketched the ruins and other antiquarian objects, while Whitley 
 Stokes worked at the ancient inscriptions. The weather was pro- 
 pitious, and the friends thoroughly enjoyed the out-of-door life, the 
 pure air, and refreshing sea-breezes. 
 
 An incident of their sojourn which might have had serious results 
 may be recalled to memory. They had landed on Inismaen, leaving 
 one man only in charge of the hooker, and, taking the rest of the crew 
 on shore to carry their dinner to the pagan fort on the summit of the 
 island, proceeded to explore Inismaen. When the meal was over and 
 the hamper repacked, they descended, towards evening, to the place 
 where they had left the hooker ; but no boat was visible on the wide 
 horizon. At last, at a great distance, off the coast of Connemara, the 
 vessel was descried slowly making for Inismaen. It was apparent that 
 many hours must elapse before the boat could arrive, and as the sun 
 had set, and no shelter was possible, dancing for the sake of warmth 
 was resorted to by the shivering party. At last the hooker, manoeuvred 
 by its one man, arrived. He, when left in charge, had lighted his 
 pipe, and under its soothing influence had fallen asleep. The boat 
 drifted with the tide, and was almost on the rocks off the mainland 
 when the sleeper was aroused by shouts from another vessel. With 
 great difficulty he navigated his way back. It was almost midnight 
 when the party were under weigh for Aran Mor. The ocean was 
 luminous ; the track of the curragh — a light canvas boat in which to 
 land — was a veritable line of light. Every movement of its oars 
 seemed to cleave through molten fire, and to reveal marvels of nature 
 before undreamt of. The lustrous waves beneath, the silent stars over- 
 head, the dim outline of the rocky shore, and its utter solitude, impressed 
 and solemnised our spirits. It was an adventure not to be forgotten." 
 
 And here is another engaging account of a hoHday 
 
GEORGE PETRIE 237 
 
 ramble in which Petrie and his friends took part. Ferguson 
 and his wife, absent on their vacation rambles in 1864, 
 were joined in Sligo by their young English friends, Henry 
 and William Winterbotham, afterwards Parliamentary 
 Secretary for the Home Department and Member for 
 Stroud, respectively. " I come to Ireland for the enjoy- 
 ment of your society," wrote the elder brother ; " and when- 
 ever you are pleased to delve I am ready to hold the hod," 
 a reference to Sir Samuel Ferguson's antiquarian digging. 
 
 Here, too, came the Rev, Hercules Dickinson, later to 
 become Dean of the Chapel Royal, Petrie, Dr. James 
 Henthorn Todd, the famous scholar and antiquary, Dr. 
 Stokes and his daughter Margaret. 
 
 " Notwithstanding the dreary and tempestuous weather," writes 
 Lady Ferguson, "the group of friends had much enjoyment in congenial 
 society, added to the interest of the antiquities and scenery. The fine 
 cliffs, which at Slieve League rise to the height of 1,800 feet above the 
 Atlantic, are belted with lichens of brilliant hues. But in the autumn 
 of 1864 the country, the crops, and the inhabitants suffered from the 
 almost continuous rains, which made the chief food of the people — the 
 potatoes — more than usually wet and waxy. Sickness supervened, and 
 when it became known that a great physician was sojourning at the 
 hotel, Stokes was besieged every morning with petitions that he would 
 visit the sufferers in their cabins. The doctor, ever ready to assist the 
 poor, would take down all addresses, return to the breakfast table, 
 crumble some bread, crush a few lumps of sugar, and to these add a 
 little white powder — probably some preparation of soda or magnesia — 
 which he carried in a tiny box. With these ingredients he made pills, 
 which he placed in his waistcoat pocket. We started every day for 
 some scene of archaeological interest, where all but the doctor and the 
 present writer were set to sketch the various objects. They then 
 proceeded on a round of medical visits. The sufferers were generally 
 aged peasants. *A weakness about the heart,' an 'oppression on 
 the chest,' and rheumatic pains, were the ills of which they chiefly 
 complained. Dr. Stokes's manner was full of sympathy. He listened, 
 with his hand on the pulse, to all they had to say, with the utmost 
 patience. Then he prescribed, invariably the same remedy. With the 
 pills — which were to be taken at stated intervals — he produced half-a- 
 crown, with strict instructions to apply it to the purchase of mutton 
 chops, one of which was to be eaten daily. When rallied by his 
 
238 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 companion on the uniform treatment ordered for every complaint, 
 ' My dear friend,' he would say, * in whatever way these poor people 
 describe their sensations, their ailments spring from the same cause — no 
 change of diet, and their only food a wet root. The chops will do 
 them good so long as they last. As for their rheumatism, it is slightly 
 intensified by the wetness of this season — that is all.' He would 
 discourse, as we made our way across meadows, bogs and streams, 
 from one poor habitation to another, on the philosophy of health and 
 disease, and extort the admiration and respect of his listener by the 
 wide range of his knowledge and the depth of his sympathy for the 
 suffering and sorrowful condition. 
 
 The labours of the day were closed by a festive dinner, ending with 
 a bowl of punch, untouched by the juniors, but enjoyed in moderation 
 by the seniors. Conversation, flavoured with * Attic salt,' genial 
 humour, and sparkling wit, combined to make the repast 
 
 The feast of reason and the flow of soul. 
 
 Then came the solace and refreshment of music. Petrie's violin was 
 placed entreatingly in his hands by one of the younger members of the 
 party, whose reverent and affectionate attentions to the elders were 
 touching to witness, and soon 
 
 Amid the strings his fingers strayed 
 
 And an uncertain warbling made, 
 
 And oft he shook his hoary head. 
 
 But when he caught the measure wild. 
 
 The old man raised his face and smiled." 
 
 Petrie was not only a friend of humanity but devotedly 
 fond of animals, horses, dogs, cats and, indeed, as I may 
 say, of all living creatures. Dr. Stokes tells this very 
 characteristic story of him in this connection. 
 
 " During Petrie's residence in Charles Street, the kitten of 
 his favourite cat had its leg broken, when he rushed out for 
 one of his friends — then a practising surgeon, but failed to 
 find him ; he then called on another, but had hardly 
 knocked at the door, when, for the first time, the singularity 
 of his position struck him; for a moment he thought of 
 leaving the door, but waited to apologise for calling. The 
 door was opened, he was forced to come in, the candles 
 were lit in the study, and the servant, regardless of Petrie's 
 remonstrances, ran upstairs for his master, who was in bed. 
 
GEORGE PETRIE 239 
 
 In a few minutes the surgeon came down, carrying his boots 
 in his hand, and assuring him that no apologies were 
 necessary, he donned his hat and cloak, and accompanied 
 him to the house, when Petrie, almost dumb with confusion, 
 at last took courage to tell the nature of the case ; the good- 
 humoured answer was — ' Well, let me see the patient, at all 
 events.' He was brought to the kitten, the limb was 
 carefully put up, and the surgeon, refusing his fee, promised 
 to call next day; but as Petrie went to show him to the 
 door, the old cat, who had been watching the entire pro- 
 ceeding, sprang on the table, and carried her kitten to the 
 corner of the room. She then proceeded to undo all the 
 bandages, deliberately taking out pin by pin, while Petrie 
 watched in amazement, and the splints being removed, she 
 commenced licking the part, and thus continued with hardly 
 an intermission for some days and nights, when a cure was 
 effected without the slightest deformity ! " 
 
 Petrie's manifold services to his native land were soon 
 to end. During the spring of 1865, feeling that his time 
 w^ould not be long, he devoted himself to cataloguing his 
 museum, now included in the National Museum of Ireland. 
 This he did with an energy which led him to give up his 
 usual exercise, and on the 17th January, 1866, after an 
 illness that entailed no suffering and was unattended by any 
 failure of intellect, he peacefully expired in the arms of his 
 children. "He died," as his biographer writes, "as a 
 Christian man should do, not in triumph, nor yet in gloom, 
 but in calm resignation to the will of Him Who doeth all 
 things well." 
 
 His remains were followed to the tomb by the members 
 of the Royal Irish Academy ; they rest in a grave without 
 an epitaph in the cemetery of Mount Jerome. 
 
 But I am glad to believe that these three lectures * to his 
 
 * This and the two papers on George Petrie which immediately 
 precede it in this volume were delivered at Alexandra College, Dublin, 
 as the three " Margaret Stokes Memorial Lectures" for 1912. 
 
240 IRISH LITERARY AND MUSICAL STUDIES 
 
 memory and that of his dear friend, co-artist, co-antiquary 
 and co-musician, Margaret Stokes, are likely to prove the 
 cause of the erection of a worthy monument over the 
 remains of our greatest Irish Antiquary, " dear Petrie," as 
 we can all now unite to call him. 
 
 I conclude with a character sketch of Petrie by my 
 father, contained in the Eloge, which, as its President, he 
 delivered before the Royal Irish Academy shortly after his 
 friend's death : 
 
 Petrie united qualities which are seldom possessed by the same 
 individual ; he had the enthusiasm and the imaginative power which 
 are essential to the artist ; he also possessed the sagacity and calmness 
 of judgment which are commonly supposed to be characteristic of the 
 man of science. There was in him a singular gracefulness, combined 
 with masculine force. He was sensitive, without being morbid ; he 
 was playful, but never wayward ; he was candid in criticism, but never 
 gave a gratuitous wound to the feelings of an opponent. " He exerted," 
 as has been well said, " an influence which prompted and encouraged 
 many minds in liberal ideas — in genial and tolerant social views — in 
 the elegancies of native accomplishments, and in that appreciation of 
 the generous criticism which discovers the good achieved rather than 
 the shortcomings in works of literature and of art — an influence which 
 gave a rare charm to his society." 
 
 He often declared that though always a poor man, his life had 
 been one of great enjoyment, greater than falls to the lot of most men, 
 and that his chief happiness was in the society of so many loving, 
 lasting, and intellectual friends. 
 
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