Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

FENIAN LITERATURE.

Street Ballads, Popular Poetry, and Household Songs of Ireland. Collected and arranged by Duncathail (Dublin, M'Glashan & Gill.)

ment suddenly collapsed in the disgust of the would-be leaders and the laughter of officials and friends of the Government who for months previously had been in a state of ignorant terror.

The mistake that the British public made in giving undue importance to the rebellious FENIAN literature has not attracted its literature of the Young Ireland party, and fair share of attention. Whilst the prisoners thus overrating the strength of the agitation, who profess to despise and defy British law was not, however, greater than the mistake are occupying the Four Courts on all the now universally made in the opposite directechnicalities of certiorari, mandamus, and tion. The vast mass of our readers will criminal information, it would be a mistake learn with surprise that not only is there in to imagine that the copious legal arguments Ireland a collection of Fenian writings pubwith which the Irish journals abound are the lished in 1865 quite equal in point of literaonly contributions for which the reading pub-ry ability to anything in the same strain lic are indebted to the Fenians. The abor- published from 1843 to 1848, but (which is tive rebellion of '48 was more of a literary far more important than any question of imposture than any thing else. The Young literary merit) a collection of writings which Ireland party wrote so well that they man- has found its way into the cabins and whisaged to excite the interest of all classes ex-ky-shops of the lower classes. cept the people of Ireland. In this country we became familiar with the anti-English ballads of Davis and Duffy. The song beginning

Who fears to speak of Ninety-eight?

and the stirring verses of Ferguson, M Carthy, and Barry were very generally read here, and they were criticized as literary efforts, in no unfriendly spirit, by English writers. But we all fell into the delusion, as the authors themselves are now ready to acknowledge, that these political poems were known to the masses in Ireland. The people knew very little about the authors, and less about their works. They had heard of Gavan Duffy as an opponent of O'Connell, but they never heard of The Muster of the North,' or The Voice of Labour.' It was only when some of these gentlemen got down to Ballingarry that their eyes were opened to the political blindness of the peasantry. The people looked with astonishment and doubt upon such totally unknown leaders as O'Gorman, O'Brien, and Dillon. It is said that some grey-haired farmers, when the rumour spread that fighting was intended, asked “if Boney was come across?" and others inquired "if Lord Edward was really come back?" or "if the Counsellor (meaning O'Connell) was friend of theirs?" Then the briefless barristers and clever young gentlemen who had never grown tired of repeating, with a little verbal alteration, the dictum of Fletcher of Saltoun, "Let me make the ballads and I care not who make the laws," began to discover the difference between making ballads and securing readers. The move

a

In '48 a good many editors of newspapers were arrested, but not one ballad-singer. In '65 only one disloyal editor, Mr. Clark Luby, has been arrested; but the arrests of ballad-singers in Cork, Dublin, Tralee, Limerick, and the country towns of the south have given constant employment to the police. Not a fair is held in Ireland now at which the authorities do not take precautions for seizing upon the ballad-singers and confiscating their seditious wares. Amongst the most peremptory orders sent from the Castle to the stipendiary magistrates are those touching the suppression of popular ballads. This gives to the Fenian conspiracy a character far graver than the affair of 48, and recalls some of the features of the times of Wolfe Tone. The Wexford insurgents of 1798 never saw a treasonable newspaper; but they were familiar with the rebellion-teaching verses of M Birney, and such ballads as The Wearing of the Green.' Indeed the latter may be found even now amongst the street literature reprinted by the Fenians and purchased extensively by the people. The Young Irelanders nev er would have re-published such lines as these,

[ocr errors]
[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

But that the Fenians should have circulated these verses with their own halfpenny productions, shows that they have had a more correct appreciation of the popular taste. Of their own street ballads, the following is one which has attained extensive popularity. As a ballad slip it appears anonymously; but Mr. M'Glashan's publication gives its authorship to a Fenian with an extraordinary name, Mr. Charles J. Kickham, of Mullinahone, the same Mr. Charles J. Kickham, we presume, who was arrested with the famous Head Centre and prison-breaker, Stephens:

PATRICK SHEEHAN.

My name is Patrick Sheehan,
My years are thirty-four;
Tipperary is my native place,
Not far from Galtymore;
I came of honest parents,

But now they're lying low; And many a pleasant day I spent In the Glen of Aherlow.

My father died; I closed his eyes
Outside our cabin door;
The landlord and the sheriff too
Were there the day before!
And then my loving mother,
And sisters three also,

Were forced to go with broken hearts
From the Glen of Aherlow.

It was the broad daylight! And when I found that I was blind, My tears began to flow; I longed for even a pauper's grave In the Glen of Aherlow.

O blessed Virgin Mary,

Mine is a mournful tale; A poor blind prisoner here I am, In Dublin's dreary gaol; Struck blind within the trenches, Where I never feared the foe; And now I'll never see again

My own sweet Aherlow!

There is a touch of genius in the shadowy way in which the author announces the death of the three sisters in the lines beginning,

The news I heard nigh broke my heart.

As to the political effect of such a ballad, we have no hesitation in declaring our conviction that there is more danger in the disaffection that this artfully-told story of Patrick Sheehan may produce, than in all the writings of the Young Ireland party, and all the contemptible blusterings of the now so-called national organs the Nation and the Irishman. In this ballad Mr. Kickham undoubtedly constructs his verses so as to touch the heart of the class to which, we believe, he himself belongs.

Of an apparently ruder stamp, but com

For three long months, in search of work, posed with equal cunning, is a street ballad

I wandered far and near;

I went then to the poor-house,

For to see my mother dear;

The news I heard nigh broke my heart;
But still, in all my woe,

I blessed the friends who made their graves
In the Glen of Aherlow.

Bereft of home and kith and kin,

With plenty all around,

I starved within my cabin,
And slept upon the ground;
But cruel as my lot was,

I ne'er did hardship know
'Till I joined the English army,
Far away from Aherlow.

"Rouse up there," says the Corporal,
"You lazy Hirish hound;
Why don't you hear, you sleepy dog,
The call to arms' sound?
Alas, I had been dreaming
Of days long, long ago;
I woke before Sebastopol,
And not in Aherlow.

I groped to find my musket-
How dark I thought the night!
O blessed God, it was not dark,

called By Memory Inspired.' It is copied from a broad-sheet which was found hawking about the country, headed with a rude woodcut of two men leaning pensively on a in one hand and bottle in the other, suppostable, and a standing cavalier, with a glass ed to be engaged singing to them. Its anonymous author has boldly mixed up the moral-force tribune with Mitchell and the men of '98:

By Memory inspired,

And love of country fired,

The deeds of MEN I love to dwell upon;
And the patriotic glow

Of my spirit must bestow

A tribute to O'Connell that is gone, boys, gone! Here's a memory to the friends that are gone.

In October, 'Ninety-seven
May his soul find rest in Heaven-
William Orr to execution was led on :

The jury, drunk, agreed

That IRISH was his creed;

For perjury and threats drove them on, boys,

on :

Here's the memory of John Mitchell that is

gone!

[blocks in formation]

September, Eighteen-three, Closed this cruel history,

Their paltry successors in the combined line of business are to be found brawling and boasting at national associations and town councils. But not so the Fenian contributors to this little volume or to the columns of the suppressed journal, the Irish People. Luby, O'Leary, Stephens, and their associates, never condescended to attend public meetings or take any part in the clap-trap of the ordinary Irish agitations. They confined their publicaction to the pages of their weekly organ, and we must not shut our eyes to the fact that that organ, the Irish People, presented a contrast to other anti-Saxon newspapers. As a literary production, the Fenian paper was well written. Its principles of rebellion were decided and clear; but its style, though earnest, was apparently moderate and calm. When Dr. Cullen wrote an inflammatory pastoral, denouncing England and the English, and telling the people that they were grossly misgoverned, but winding up by only asking for a collection towards the Catholic Bishop's pet university, the Irish People coldly dissected the Archbishop's pastoral, and, in much better English, drew the logical conclusion from his Grace's vio

When Emmett's blood the scaffold flowed upon: lent premises. Hence the sweeping charge

Oh, had their spirits been wise,
They might then realize

Their freedom-but we drink to Mitchell that is gone, boys, gone:

Here's the memory of the friends that are gone!

This ballad is a key to the historical knowledge or historical ignorance of the multitude by whom it is eagerly read. The leaders of the Young Ireland party-Smith O'Brien, Meagher, Gavan Duffy are all (with the suggestive exception of Mitchell) totally ignored. No reference is made to Grattan, Charlemont, or Flood. The only real popular heroes appear to be O'Connell and a set of uncompromising rebels. There are some lines in it which show that the author has thoroughly grasped the genius of his countrymen: for example, that episode in the death of Lord Edward

[blocks in formation]

which a certain section of the Roman Cathagainst the rebels. As far as this volume, editolic party in Ireland have been making Irish People are concerned, we have failed ed by "Duncathail," and the numbers of the

to discover those incitements to assassinating priests and landlords of which so much has been said; and indeed it seems that the only evidence produced goes the other way, for it turns out to be merely a private letter written to Luby, expostulating with him for not hinting at the advantage of thus disposing of the clergy and proprietors. The most vigorous onslaught on the landlords which this Fenian volume contains is the following :

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]

[ocr errors]

The wounded wood-dove lies dead at last!
The pine long-bleeding, it shall not die!
This song is secret. Mine ear it passed
In a wind o'er the plains at Athenry.

These lines, so unintelligible, no doubt, to most of our readers, indicate Mr. De Vere's thorough appreciation of the Celtic mind; but the following passage in a more ambitious poem, "The Bard Ethell,' is, if possible, still more characteristic:

I forgive old Cathbar, who sank my boat;
Must I pardon Feargal, who slew my son-
Or the pirate, Strongbow, who burned Granote,
They tell me, and in it nine priests, a nun,
And (worst) St. Finian's old crosier staff?"
At forgiveness like that I spit and laugh!

- And who is the author of this fiery admonition to the Irish landlords? No one can suspect him of being a Head Centre. He is a professor in the Catholic University; he is even one of the territorial class; he is One of the ablest of the Irish Judges, Mr. -it is only fair to add-a highly-cultivated Justice Keogh, in charging the jury at the gentleman, Mr. Aubrey De Vere. Dunca- Special Commission in Dublin, remarked thail, the Fenian editor, avows in his Pre- that, though rebellious ideas may exist in face, that he publishes the compilation to the mass of the people, such ideas have re"cheer the reposing soldier amid the camp-ceived no encouragement whatever from fires of the bivouac; to sing to the listening any intelligent or educated quarter. We ears of Age the songs of memory and of hope, to Youth the song of love, to Manhood authority for reasons now given. are compelled to differ from this eminent and Womanhood that of patriotism and duty, to the Child the strain which he may not forget, and which may win him to his home, should he stray, and bind him to Ireland in weal or woe;' to pour the precious balm of love upon the weary feet of Ireland; and to "cheer the hearts of those who may be capable of serving her with more than words or songs." In doing this he has acted judiciously in mingling with such popular strains as 'Mackenna's Dream,' The Green Little Shamrock,' The Boys of Wexford,' The Galloping O'Hogan,' The Western Winds,' and Arthur M'Coy,' some of the less directly rebellious poems of writers like Mr. De Vere. Very few, however, of his verses have penetrated the ears of the peasantry. The only one, indeed, that seems to have caught the fancy of the common people is a mysterious little effusion, in which he speaks of Ireland under her mystical names.

THE LITTLE BLACK ROSE.

The Little Black Rose shall be red at last;
What made it black but the March wind dry,
And the tear of the widow that fel on it fast?
It shall redden the hills when June is nigh!

The Silk of the Kine shall rest at last;
What drove her forth but the dragon-fly?
In the golden vale she shall feed full fast,
With her mild gold horn and her slow, dark

eye.

THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXII.

From the Victoria Magazine.

A STORM.

"Oh, I have suffered
With those that I saw suffer! A brave vessel,
Who had no doubt some noble creatures in her,
Dash'd all to pieces. Oh! the cry did knock
Against my heart. Poor souls, they perished."

OFTEN during the summer months just past, and while looking at the gentle rippling surface of Carmarthen Bay, I have heard the exclamation, "How I should like to see a storm!" The summer visitors went their way, however, without being gratified by witnessing that grandest of all nature's sights, a storm at sea; but winter has come in with a noisy herald, and the trumpet voice of the blast that proclaimed the last month of 1865 will long be remembered.

For nearly a fortnight there had been warning voices in the air, "the sea and the waves roaring," hungry for human prey. The heavens one hour hung with heavy black clouds; another, great white pillowy masses, between which drifted a fleecy veil. Then again an even grey pall would be drawn across the ethereal blue; earth and heaven would seem to unite; and the va

1481.

poury screen press almost palpably upon | old Welch superstition of the goblin hounds, you; hiding away the fierce blast, you knew, who are said to sweep through the air, by the action and tremble in the thick hot chilling the listener's blood by their yells air, must be blowing somewhere.

How the sea muttered and thundered upon the sands at low water; and then as the tide rose again, what a sheet of angry foam there came up, as if the depths had been at war; foam which, caught by the sudden gusts of wind, was whirled high up the cliffs and hung upon the many-hued rocks and yellow furze.

There is not usually much sea-rack here, but we have had plenty of it these three weeks past; and there it now lies, "rugged and brown," dire witness of storms out in the heart of the Atlantic; lies, grim enough by day, but by night gleaming with phosphorescent light.

Day after day the warning grew plainer; until at last the storm king himself was close upon us.

Upon Monday the symptoms grew more demonstrative; the sun rose red and angry, and sank in a perfect glory of rainbow hues, drawing down upon his departing footsteps a dark curtain, as if to shut out the havoc and distress that he left to revel during the long wild night.

It was low water just after sundown, and for awhile all was tolerably calm. Then a distant throbbing went vibrating along the crests of the hills, most resembling the echo that lingers in the vaulted roof of a cathedral after a mighty burst from the organ. Far away upon the low level beach the sea song was murmuring, exquisitely sweet and solemn, but in it weird voices seemed mingling in eerie song, voices broken by shrill cries and shrieks, which it was almost impossible to believe the piping of wild birds, and which amply accounted for the

and shouts.

The wind did not treat us long to this gentle music; Old Boreas was only striking the key-note, presently he began sounding the chords, gently at first, taking breath, as it might be, between each effort, and listening for the effect.

Until just as the waves touched the cliffs, and the harsher roar told me they were breaking against Selwyne, a fierce gust of wind swept over the hill, striking the house like a hammer, and causing the roof to rattle again. There was a crash, a shiver, and all was over for the present, although you could still hear the mighty rush of the blast as it careered along on its course, and by the time it had sighed itself out, the waves were rushing into the caves, and the vaulted roofs resounded again with hollow mockery.

Some minutes passed, the distant moaning of the tide and soughing of the wind only heard, and then the very hill seemed to bend, while over it came a mighty rushing wind.

Shorter and shorter grew the pauses in the storm, nearer and louder the distress of the sea, until the hurricane was upon us.

What a scene it was then; how the waves and winds seemed to outvie each other in wild defiance, drowning any poor weak human voices, appalling the senses, and forcing upon the mind that verily God's voice is in the tempest !

But is there no other voice?

What is it that wakes the dull sinking sickening pain at the listener's heart, as there wells up the involuntary prayer — "God help those at sea."

SCRIPTURE ENIGMAS.

WHO left St. Paul for worthless mammon's sake?

1

What sleeping prophet did an angel wake?
Whose offering of faith did God accept?
What gentlewoman's death the widows wept?
What Jewish maiden, from a lowly place,
A mighty monarch's throne was called to grace?
By the initials find the doom

To which the path of sinners tend;
Which casts o'er life its awful gloom,
And deeply darkens to the end.

Who suffered deeds of which he was afraid?
What youth, the sage's counsel disobeyed?
Who would not leave king David in his woe?
Whose kindly works did grieving widows
show?

Who boldly slew the oppressor of his land,
And then led on a valiant patriot band?
In the initals of these names,
A world-wide fault we find,
Which sows the seeds of hate and fear
And misery 'mid mankind.

« VorigeDoorgaan »