For on thy deck, though dark it be, A female form I see; And I have sworn this sainted sod Shall ne'er by woman's fect be trod! THE LADY. «Oh! Father, send not hence my bark Through wintry winds and billows dark, I come, with humble heart, to share Thy morn and evening prayer; Nor mine the feet, oh! holy Saint, The brightness of thy sod to taint.. The lady's prayer Senanus spurn'd; HOW DEAR TO ME THE HOUR. AIR-The Twisting of the Rope. How dear to me the hour when day-light dies, And sun-beams melt along the silent sea, For then sweet dreams of other days arise, And memory breathes her vesper sigh to thee. And, as I watch the line of light that plays Along the smooth wave toward the burning west, I long to tread that golden path of rays, And think 't would lead to some bright isle of rest! TAKE BACK THE VIRGIN PAGE. WRITTEN ON RETURNING A BLANK BOOK. AIR-Dermott. TAKE back the virgin page, White and unwritten still; Yet let me keep the book; Dear thoughts of you! One wrong wish there! to admit any woman of the party; he refused to receive even a sister saint, St Cannera, whom an angel had taken to the island, for the express purpose of introducing her to him. The following was the ungracious answer of Senanus, according to his poetical biographer: Cui Prasul, quid fœminis Commune est cum monachis? Nec te nec ullam aliam See the Acta Sanct. Hib. page 610. According to Dr Ledwich, St Senanus was no less a personage than the river Shannon; but O'Connor, and other antiquarians, deny this metamorphosis indignantly, Haply, when from those eyes Worthy those eyes to meet; Thoughts that not burn, but shine Pure, calm, and sweet! And, as the records are, Through the cold deep- Tell through what storms I stray, You still the unseen light Guiding my way! THE LEGACY. AIR-Unknown. WHEN in death I shall calm recline, Of the brightest hue, while it linger'd here: Bid her not shed one tear of sorrow To sully a heart so brilliant and light; But balmy drops of the red grape borrow, To bathe the relic from morn till night. When the light of my song is o'er, Then take my harp to your ancient hall; Hang it up at that friendly door, Where weary travellers love to call.' Then if some bard, who roams forsaken, Revive its soft note in passing along, Oh let one thought of its master waken Your warmest smile for the child of song. Keep this cup, which is now o'erflowing, To grace your revel when I'm at rest; Never, oh! never its balm bestowing On lips that beauty hath seldom blest! But when some warm devoted lover To her he adores shall bathe its brim, Then, then my spirit around shall hover, And hallow each drop that foams for him. HOW OFT HAS THE BENSHEE CRIED. AIR-The Dear Black Maid. Sweet bonds, entwined by Love! In every house was one or two harps, free to all travellers, who were the more caressed the more they excelled in music.— O'HALLORAN. AIR-Garyone. While the daughters of Erin keep the boy The same as he look'd when he left the shore. you roam, When a cup to the smile of dear woman goes round, EVELEEN'S BOWER. AIR-Unknown. On! weep for the hour, When to Eveleen's bower The Lord of the valley with false vows came; From the heavens that night, And wept behind her clouds o'er the maiden's shame. From the chaste cold moon, But none will see the day, When the clouds shall pass away, Which that dark hour left upon Eveleen's fame. We may roam through this world like a child at a feast, And Heaven smiled again with her vestal flame; For sensitive hearts and for sun-bright eyes. you roam, When a cup to the smile of dear woman goes round, The white snow lay On the narrow path-way, Where the Lord of the valley cross'd over the moor; Show'd the track of his footstep to Eveleen's door. Oh! remember the smile which adorns her at home. Every trace on the path where the false Lord came; In England, the garden of beauty is kept By a dragon of prudery, placed within call; That the garden's but carelessly watch'd after all. When a cup to the smile of dear woman goes round, In France, when the heart of a woman sets sail, But just pilots her off, and then bids her good bye! I have endeavoured here, without losing that Irish character which it is my object to preserve throughout this work, to allude to the sad and ominous fatality by which England has been deprived of so many great and good men at a moment when she most requires all the aids of talent and integrity. This designation, which has been applied to Lord Nelson before, is the title given to a celebrated Irish hero, in a poem by O'Gnive, the bard of O'Niel, which is quoted in the Philosophical Survey of the South of Ireland, page 433. Con, of the hundred fights, sleep in thy grass-grown tomb, and upbraid not our defeats with thy victories! Fos, ultimus Romanorum.. But there's a light above That stain upon the snow of fair Eveleen's fame. LET ERIN REMEMBER THE DAYS OF OLD. LET Erin remember the days of old, Ere her faithless sons betray'd her; Which he won from her proud invader; This brought on an encounter between Malachi (the Monarch of Ireland in the tenth century) and the Danes, in which Malachi defeated two of their champions, whom he encountered successively hand to hand, taking a collar of gold from the neck of one, and carrying off the sword of the other, as trophies of his victory.»—WABNER's History of Ireland, vol. 1, book 9. 2. Military orders of knights were very early established in Ireland. Long before the birth of Christ, we find an hereditary order of chivalry in Ulster, called Curaidhe na Craoibhe ruadh, or the knights of the Red Branch, from their chief seat in Emania, adjoining to the palace of the Ulster kings, called Teagh na Craoibhe ruadh, or the Academy of the Red Branch; and contiguous to which was a large hospital, founded for the sick knights and soldiers, called Bronbhearg, or the house of the sorrowful soldier.»-O'HALLORAN'S Introduction, etc. part. i, chap. 5. On Lough Neagh's bank as the fisherman strays, He sees the round towers of other days, From the heretic girl of my soul shall I fly, THE SONG OF FIONNUALA..2 AIR-Arrah dear Eveleen. SILENT, oh Moyle! be the roar of thy water, Call my spirit from this stormy world? Sadly, oh Moyle! to thy winter wave weeping, COME, SEND ROUND THE WINE. AIR-We brought the Summer with us. COME, send round the wine, and leave points of belief To be wither'd and stain'd by the dust of the schools. But, while they are fill'd from the same bright bowl, The fool who would quarrel for difference of hue Deserves not the comfort they shed o'er the soul. Shall I ask the brave soldier, who fights by my side It was an old tradition, in the time of Giraldus, that Lough Neagh had been originally a fountain, by whose sudden overflowing the country was inundated, and a whole region, like the Atlantis of Plato, overwhelmed. He says that the fishermen, in clear weather, used to point out to strangers the tall ecclesiastical towers under the water. Piscatores aquæ illius turres ecclesiasticas, quæ more patriæ arctæ sunt et altæ, necnon et rotunda, sub undis manifeste, sereno tempore conspiciunt et extraneis transeuntibus, reique causas admirantibus, frequenter ostendunt.-Topogr, Hib. Dist. 2. c. 9. BELIEVE ME, IF ALL THOSE ENDEARING AIR-My Lodging is on the cold Ground. BELIEVE Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms, Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art, my heart To make this story intelligible in a song, would require a much greater number of verses than any one is authorised to inflict upon an audience at once; the reader must therefore be content to learn, in a note, that Fionnuala, the daughter of Lir, was, by some supernatural power, transformed into a swan, and condemned to wander, for many hundred years, over certain lakes and rivers in Ireland, till the coming of Christianity, when the first sound of the It is not while beauty and youth are thine own, mass-bell was to be the signal of her release.-I found this fanciful fiction among some manuscript translations from the Irish, which And thy cheeks unprofaned by a tear, were begun under the direction of that enlightened friend of Ire-That the fervour and faith of a soul can be known, To which time will but make thee more dear! land, the late Countess of Moira. Oh! the heart that has truly loved, never forgets, No. III. TO THE MARCHIONESS DOWAGER OF DONEGAL. WHILE the Publisher of these Melodies very properly inscribes them to the Nobility and Gentry of Ireland in general, I have much pleasure in selecting one from that number to whom my share of the Work is particularly dedicated. Though your Ladyship has been so long absent from Ireland, I know that you rememher it well and warmly-that you have not allowed the charm of English society, like the taste of the lotus, to produce oblivion of your country, but that even the humble tribute which I offer derives its chief claim upon your interest from the appeal which it makes to your patriotism. Indeed, absence, however fatal to some affections of the heart, rather strengthens our love for the land where we were born; and Ireland is the country, of all others, which an exile must remember with enthusiasm. Those few darker and less amiable traits, with which bigotry and misrule have stained her character, and which are too apt to disgust us upon a nearer intercourse, become softened at a distance, or altogether invisible; and nothing is remembered but her virtues and her misfortunes-the zeal with which she has always loved liberty, and the barbarous policy which has always withheld it from her-the case with which her generous spirit might be conciliated, and the cruel ingenuity which has been exerted to wring her into undutifulness.»' of Charles and his ministers, and remembering just enough of past sufferings to enhance the generosity of their present sacrifice. The plaintive melodies of Carolan take us back to the times in which he lived, when our poor countrymen were driven to worship their God in caves, or to quit for ever the land of their birth (like the bird that abandons the nest which human touch has violated); and in many a song do we hear the last farewell of the exile,' mingling regret for the ties he leaves at home, with sanguine expectations of the ho nours that await him abroad-such honours as were won on the field of Fontenoy, where the valour of Irish Catholics turned the fortune of the day in favour of the French, and extorted from George the Second that Cursed he the laws which memorable exclamation, deprive me of such subjects!» Though much has been said of the antiquity of our music, it is certain that our finest and most popular airs are modern; and perhaps we may look no further than the last disgraceful century for the origin of most of those wild and melancholy strains, which were at once the offspring and solace of grief, and which were applied 10 the mind, as music was formerly to the body, decantare loca dolentia.»> Mr Pinkerton is of opi po nion that none of the Scotch popular airs are as old as the middle of the sixteenth century; and, though musical antiquaries refer us, for some of our melodies, that there are few, of a civilized description (and by to so early a period as the fifth century, I am persuaded this I mean to exclude all the savage Ceanans, cries,3 etc.), which can claim quite so ancient a date as Mr Pinkerton allows to the Scotch. But music is not the only subject upon which our taste for antiquity is rather unreasonably indulged; and, however heretical it may be to dissent from these romantic speculations, I cannot help thinking that it is possible to love our in her honour and happiness, without believing that country very zealously, and to feel deeply interested It has often been remarked, and oftener felt, that ancestors were kind enough to take the trouble of Irish was the language spoken in Paradise; that our our music is the truest of all comments upon our his-lishing the Greeks; or that Abaris, the Hyperborean, tory. The tone of defiance, succeeded by the languor of despondency- a burst of turbulence dying away softness-the sorrows of one moment lost in the levity of the next—and all that romantic mixture of mirth and sadness, which is naturally produced by the efforts of a lively temperament, to shake off, or forget, the wrongs which lie upon it :-such are the features of our history and character, which we find strongly and faithfully reflected in our music; and there are many airs which, I think, it is difficult to listen to, without recalling some period or event to which their expression seems peculiarly applicable. Sometimes, when the strain is open and spirited, yet shaded here and there by a mournful recollection, we can fancy that we behold the brave allies of Montrose, 2 marching to the aid of the royal cause, notwithstanding all the perfidy into A phrase which occurs in a letter from the Earl of Desmond to the Earl of Ormond, in Elizabeth's time.-Serinia Sacra, as quoted by Curry. 2 There are some gratifying accounts of the gallantry of these Irish auxiliaries in The Complete History of the Wars in Scotland, under Montrose. (1666). See particularly, for the conduct of an Irishman at the battle of Aberdeen, chap. 6, p. 49; and, for a tribute to the bravery of Colonel O'Kyan, chap. 7, p. 55. Clarendon owns that the Marquis of Montrose was indebted for much of his miraculous success to this small band of Irish heroes under Macdonnell. was a native of the North of Ireland.6 By some of these archæologists, it has been imagined that the Irish were early acquainted with counterpoint;7 and they endeavour to support this conjecture The Associations of the Hindu Music, though more obvious and defined, were far less touching and characteristic. They divided their songs according to the seasons of the year, by which (says Sir William Jones) they were able to recal the memory of autumnal merriment, at the close of the harvest, or of separation and melancholy during the cold months, etc. Asiatic Transactions, vol. 3, on the Musical Modes of the Hindus. What the Abbé du Bos says of the symphonies of Lully, may be asserted, with much more probability, of our hold and impassioned airs: Elles auroient produit de ces effets, qui nous paroissent fabuleux dans le récit des anciens, si on les avoit fait entendre à des hommes d'un naturel aussi vif que les Athéniens.-Reflex, sur la Peinture, etc. tom. 1, sect. 45. 2 Dissertation, prefixed to the second volume of his Scottish Ballads. Of which some genuine specimens may be found at the end of Mr Walker's work upon the Irish Bards. Mr Bunting has disfigured his last splendid volume by too many of these barbarous rhapsodies. 4 See Advertisement to the Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Dublin. › O'Halloran, vol. 1, part. 1, chap. 6. 6 Id. ib. chap. 7. It is also supposed, but with as little proof, that they understood the diésis, or enharmonic interval.-The Greeks seem to have formed their ears to this delicate gradation of sound: and, whatever difficulties or objections may lie in the way of its practical use, we must agree with Mersenne (Préludes de l'Harmonie, quest. 7), that the by a well-known passage in Giraldus, where he dilates, with such elaborate praise, upon the beauties of our national minstrelsy. But the terms of this eulogy are too vague, too deficient in technical accuracy, to prove that even Giraldus himself knew any thing of the artifice of counter-point. There are many expressions in the Greek and Latin writers which might be cited, with much more plausibility, to prove that they understood the arrangement of music in parts; yet I believe it is conceded in general by the learned, that, however grand and pathetic the melody of the ancients may have been, it was reserved for the ingenuity of modern Science to transmit the « light of Song through the variegating prism of Harmony. Indeed the irregular scale of the early Irish (in which, as in the music of Scotland, the interval of the fourth was wanting) must have furnished but wild and refractory subjects to the harmonist. It was only when the invention of Guido began to be known, and the powers of the harp3 were enlarged by additional strings, that our melodies took the sweet character which interests us at present; and, while the Scotch persevered in the old mutilation of the scale,4 our music became theory of music would be imperfect without it; and, even in prac tice (as Tosi, among others, very justly remarks, Observations on Florid Song, chap. 1, sec. 16), there is no good performer on the violin who does not make a sensible difference between D sharp and E flat, though, from the imperfection of the instrument, they are the same notes upon the piano-forte. The effect of modulation by enharmonic transitions is also very striking and beautiful. The words otλhex and ét spopoyta, in a passage of Plato, and some expressions of Cicero, in Fragment. lib. ii, de Republ., induced the Abbé Fragnier to maintain that the ancients had a knowledge of counter-point. M. Barette, however, has answered him, I think, satisfactorily.-(Examen d'un passage de Platon, in the 3d vol. of Histoire de l'Acad.) M. Huet is of opinion (Pensées Diverses) that what Cicero says of the music of the spheres, in his dream of Scipio, is sufficient to prove an acquaintance with barmony; but one of the strongest passages which I recollect in favour of the supposition, occurs in the Treatise, attributed to Aristotle, ΠεριΚόσμου - Μουσική δε οξεις αμα και βαρεις, κ. τ. λ. Another lawless peculiarity of our music is the frequency of what composers call consecutive fifths; but this is an irregularity which can hardly be avoided by persons not very conversant with the rules of composition; indeed, if I may venture to cite my own wild attempts in this way, it is a fault which I find myself continually committing, and which has sometimes appeared so pleasing to my ear, that I have surrendered it to the critic with considerable reluctance. May there not be a little pedantry in adhering too rigidly to this rule?-I have been told that there are instances in Haydn of an undisguised succession of fifths; and Mr Shield, in his Introduction to Harmony, seems to intimate that Handel has been sometimes guilty of the same irregularity. 3 A singular oversight occurs in an Essay upon the Irish Harp, by Mr Beauford, which is inserted in the Appendix to Walker's Historical Memoirs. The Irish (says be), according to Bromton, in the reign of Henry II, had two kinds of harps, 'Hibernici tamen in duobus musici generis instrumentis, quamvis præcipitem et velocem, suavem tamen et jucundam,' the one greatly bold and quick, the other soft and pleasing. -How a man of Mr Beauford's learning could so mistake the meaning, and mutilate the grammatical construction of this extract, is unaccountable. The following is the passage as I find it entire in Bromton, and it requires but little Latin to perceive the injustice which has been done to the words of the old chronicler :* Et cum Scotia, hujus terræ filia, utatur lyra, tympano et choro, ac Wallia cithara, tubis et choro Hibernici tamen in duobus musici generis instrumentis, quamvis precipitem et velocem, svavem tamen et jucundam, crispatis modulis et intricatis notulis, efficiunt harmoniam, -Hist. Angelic. Script, pag. 1075. I should not have thought this error worth remarking, but that the compiler of the Dissertation on the Harp, prefixed to Mr Bunting's last Work, has adopted it implicitly. The Scotch lay claim to some of our best airs, but there are strong traits of difference between their melodies and curs. They had for gradually more amenable to the laws of harmony and counter-point. In profiting, however, by the improvements of the moderns, our style still kept its originality sacred from their refinements; and, though Carolan had frequent opportunities of hearing the works of Geminiani, and other masters, we but rarely find him sacrificing his native simplicity to the ambition of their ornaments, or affectation of their science. In that curious composition, indeed, called his Concerto, it is evident that he laboured to imitate Corelli; and this union of manners, so very dissimilar, produces the same kind of uneasy sensation which is felt at a mixture of different styles of architecture. In general, however, the artless flow of our music has preserved itself free from all tinge of foreign innovation,' and the chief corruptions, of which we have to complain, arise from the unskilful performance of our own itinerant musicians, from whom, too frequently, the airs are noted down, encumbered by their tasteless decorations, and responsible for all their ignorant anomalies. Though it be sometimes impossible to trace the original strain, yet, in most of them, auri per ramos aura refulget,»2 the pure gold of the melody shines through the ungraceful difficult duty of a compiler is to endeavour, as much foliage which surrounds it; and the most delicate and as possible, by retrenching these inelegant superfluities, and collating the various methods of playing or singing each air, to restore the regularity of its form, and the chaste simplicity of its character. I must again observe, that, in doubting the antiquity of our music, my scepticism extends but to those polished specimens of the art, which it is difficult to conceive anterior to the dawn of modern improvement; and that I would by no means invalidate the claims of Ireland to as early a rank in the annals of minstrelsy as the most zealous antiquary may be inclined to allow her. In addition, indeed, to the power which music must always have possessed over the minds of a people so ardent and susceptible, the stimulus of persecution was not wanting to quicken our taste into enthusiasm; the charms of song were ennobled with the glories of martyrdom, and the acts against minstrels, in the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth, were as successful, I doubt not, in making my countrymen musicians, as the penal laws have been in keeping them Catholics. With respect to the verses which I have written for these Melodies, as they are intended rather to be sung than read, I can answer for their sound with somewhat more confidence than their sense; yet, it would be affectation to deny that I have given much attention to merly the same passion for robbing us of our Saints, and the learned Dempster was, for this offence, called The Saint Stealer. I suppose it was an Irishman who, by way of reprisal, stole Dempster's beautiful wife from him at Pisa.-See this anecdote in the Pinacotacca of Erythraus, part 1, page 25. 1 Among other false refinements of the art, our music (with the exception perhaps of the air called Mamma, Mamma, and one or two more of the same ludicrous description) has avoided that puerile mimickry of natural noises, motions, etc. which disgraces so often the works of even the great Handel himself. D'Alembert ought to bave had better taste than to become the patron of this imitative affectation. Discours Préliminaire de l'Encyclopédie.—The reader may find some good remarks on the subject in Avison upon Musical Expression; a work which, though under the name of Avison, was written, it is said, by Dr Brown. * Virgil, Æneid, lib. 6, v. 204. |