THE MONTHLY CHRONICLE. THE BALLAD POETRY OF IRELAND. The Popular Songs of Ireland. Collected and Edited, with Introductions and Notes, by T. CROFTON CROKER, Esq. London: Henry Colburn, 1839. Songs and Ballads. By SAMUEL LOVER. London: Chapman & Hall, 1889. THAT which is true, in a greater or lesser degree, of the Ballad Poetry of every country, is especially true of the popular songs of Ireland. The moral and social characteristics of the people are faithfully reflected in their music and their lyrical poetry—both of which are defective as works of refined and cultivated Art, but full of the wild beauty and impassioned energy of Nature. The traditional music of the Irish discovers exquisite sensibility rather than a knowledge of the science of composition. The native minstrels were profound masters of simple Melody, but were apparently ignorant of the subtle resources of Harmony. It would be difficult to trace throughout the entire body of Irish music a single proof that its composers were acquainted with counterpoint. The poetry that was married to their irregular strains is equally inartistical, and equally remarkable for warm feeling, for unpremeditated grace, and for a singular waywardness of imagination, which exercises a sort of disturbing influence over the whole. The union-perfect of its kind-forms a complete representation of the national temperament; and perhaps it might be added with truth that in no other record can be found so striking an epitome of the national history. An Irish song cannot be said to resemble any other description of lyric. It constitutes a class per se. It not only develops the usual elements of the popular lyric in a state of greater intensity than the songs of any other country in the world, but it exhibits combinations and contrasts, strange and abrupt transitions, mixed sympathies, and an inextinguishable enthusiasm of the animal spirits which have no existence elsewhere. Unlike the popular songs of other nations it is not so much distinguished by the predominance of any particular quality, as by a marvellous blending of qualities the most opposite and the most irreconcilable. Thus in French songs we expect a certain idiomatic gaiety and brilliant wit-in Spanish songs, picturesque images and a chivalric spirit in Italian songs, languishing passion and the romance of the beautiful in the songs of Poland, heroic ardour and a gathering of historical glories-- and in the songs of Germany, fervid devotion and legendary interest; but in the songs of Ireland we look for all these attributes modified and intermingled, and producing effects peculiar, powerful, and agitating. We can point out with sufficient accuracy the leading characteristics of all other national songs, as we do the styles of particular painters or schools of art; but we should be puzzled to describe, with similar brevity and distinctness, the characteristics of productions in which reckless fancy, melting pathos, arch vivacity, religious sentiment, broad exaggerations of the ludicrous, love, heroism, and tradition, appear to be alike indigenous. That interflow of grief and joy that intense spirituality - that metempsychosis of humour and pathos, for which Irish songs are so remarkable-cannot be very easily reduced to a verbal delineation. Moore has felicitously depicted their prevailing character in the well-known lines addressed to the country itself: "Erin! the smile and the tear in thine eyes, Blend like the rainbow that hangs in thy skies; Saddening through pleasure's beam ; And thus it is truly that the final impression is that of sadness. A low wail runs through their cheeriest music, and even at the height of the most festive and exulting delight, you feel that a single touch of the wire would melt it all into the deepest woe.* These peculiarities must obviously be traced to the circumstances of the people. Misgivings and disappointments pervade their lives, and exercise an inevitable influence over their poetry and music. With a temperament originally buoyant and vivacious, quick sensibility, ardent affections, and a strenuous love of justice, their history exhibits an unbroken struggle against oppression, which forces all the qualities of their nature into fierce excitation, but through which they have maintained, with almost miraculous integrity, that high sense of honour which the worst examples and the most dangerous temptations cannot corrupt, and that keen "mother wit," which appears to be only sharpened by adversity. Wrong-doing and suffering embitter their scanty pleasures, but have not quenched the love of pleasure; and if pain and sadness are ever present in their mirth, they have this remarkable compensation, that their mirth is always at hand to make light of their troubles. The comic songs of Ireland are less understood in England, and, indeed, every where out of Ireland, than those which are of a sentimental or pensive cast. The language of calamity is, perhaps, universal, while humour depends on local associations, idioms, and immediate sympathies. But were it otherwise, it would be difficult for any race of men to enter with a complete zest into Irish humour, nurtured as it is amidst circumstances which elsewhere would destroy the capacity for enjoyment, and utterly extinguish the susceptibility to the ridiculous. Irish humour, like Antæus, seems to spring with increased elasticity from the ground, and the greater the depth of mis It is not a little curious that some of the most melancholy Irish lyrics are frequently converted into "country dances "- the popular corruption of the French contre-danse, which is strictly a cotillon-by the simple process of altering the time; while, on the other hand, the "rollicking" tunes of the country are as often made the vehicles of the most plaintive melody. The celebrated air of “ Savourneen Dheelish" may be cited as an instance of the former, and the old halfmad lilt, called "The Red-haired Man's Wife," of the latter. "The Red-haired Man's Wife" is universally known by the exquisite words of Moore, beginning with "At the mid hour of night." But although these transformations are singularly favoured by the checkered genius of the songs, it must be confessed that the humorous pieces suffer the change into pathos better than the pathetic bear to be turned into mirth; for grief is at the bottom of them all in common, and Irish merriment always seems to be verging on despair. fortune the higher the spirits mount into the air. Prosperous communities do not display anomalies of this kind. With them all influences are literal and direct. They calculate realities and have no leisure, or no need, for the play of the imagination. When they are overtaken by an evil, they set about remedying it with appropriate means. An Englishman meets trouble with an air of business, because his whole experience, his thoughts, feelings, hopes, and projects, run in the channels of business. An Irishman, having no business, having no sordid interests of any sort, living upon chance, and practising the philosophy of laughter, to keep him in good humour with his destiny, turns off his troubles with a jest, because he knows that he cannot remedy them. Absolute hopelessness makes him a wit. When his "hat is on, his house is thatched," and that which would be privation to an Englishman is luxury to him. In the words of one of the popular ditties, that Irishman may be accounted superior to the frowns of fortune who is able to flourish a shillelagh over a dinner of meat! he "lives in state, And lives above the frowns of fate,' With his stick, stone platter, and bit of meat, When the English population have been reduced to this state of destitution, they may begin to understand that God-send of hilarity, which floats like the atmosphere over the miseries of Ireland! But we are afraid it will require some such revolution in the affairs of the animal appetites, to bring them acquainted with this strange condition of the imagination. Yet, although Irish humour is not fully appreciated out of Ireland, it never fails to provoke mirth. Its grotesque and figurative excesses — its odd analogies its expressive volubility—and that incessant effervescence of good nature with which it brims over are irresistible. It is even more popular than any other kind of humour. The jibes and eccentricities of Mr. Harley, representing the vein of "Cockney fun," the ludicrous extravagance of Mr. Hill, the representative of Yankee absurdity, or the gross "nigger" burlesque of Mr. Rice, completely fail in comparison with the rich, mellifluous, and inexhaustible humour of Power, who convulses the audience from his entrance to his exit. The reason of this is, that the sources of Irish humour lie deeper, and that, depending less upon verbal ingenuity and grimace than upon subtle truth and universal nature, it partakes, in a considerable degree, of the character of wit. Now-assuming, for convenience, the instances to which we have alluded as illustrations of classes of national humour-the ridiculous buffoonery of Mr. Rice is merely a bad caricature of a particular genus, which may admit of endless distortions but no varieties: the drollery of Mr. Hill consists of nothing but a succession of the same sort of jokes, in which the process of exaggeration is applied to one topic after another; and the deadly liveliness of Mr. Harley is composed of conventional cants, word-catching, and facemaking. It is very evident that none of these classes of humour can make any permanent impression. If they excite laughter, it passes off like smoke. They die in the very instant of applause. But Irish humourwith its perpetual sunshine, its remote similitudes, its instinctive apprehension of the ridiculous, its readiness, the poetry by which it is unconsciously coloured, and the striking fact that, unlike a picture of mere idleness, it is the type of constitutional enthusiasm resisting the gloomy suggestions of social misery possesses a charm that belongs to no other class or descrip tion of humour. We invariably associate it with the image of want struggling manfully against despair of courage and devotion in the worst exigencies of fortune of a disposition patient under suffering, keenly sensitive to insult, and always grateful for kindness of a spirit not to be broken down by the most aggravated calamities and a temper of hope and joy that never meets trouble half way, and takes a pleasant revenge on it when it comes. Much, no doubt, of its fascination is to be referred to the revelation it affords us of a character as uncommon as it is interesting; full of generosity and tenderness, bold to a fault, fertile in expedients, selfpossessed and enduring, and inspired by a genius capable of all thingsexcept success. It is to be remarked also, that this humour is conventional only in the national sense. The tide of eloquence that flows through it is affluent and fresh, gushing from natural springs, and never diverted into artificial channels. What in England is called slang-the cheap refuge of the witless-is unknown in Ireland. A species of vulgar ribaldry that prevails amongst the illiterate and dissipated classes of the metropolis is designated "Dublin slang," but it has no resemblance to the language of wit or humour familiar to the provinces, and may be described as one of those grafts of vile taste which flourish in all capital cities. Cant words or phrases are not only never heard in Ireland, but could not be transplanted into the soil. The genius of the people is too original, racy, and discursive, to admit of such substitutes for invention. The occasion furnishes its own soubriquets and epigrams; and that power of rapid declamation, taking the most picturesque and unexpected shapes of wild and powerful eloquence, which is common to the whole peasantry, would render such common-places an encumbrance rather than a help. In no other country is passion expressed with such terrible concentrated force, or humour so distinguished by spontaneity, by depth of colouring, or versatility. The malediction of the Irish peasant possesses all the poetry of an oriental denunciation, with tenfold its withering power; his jest flashes upon invisible points, and lights them up by a single touch: sometimes he mingles both, and produces unconscious wit of the most exquisite quality at the height of his frenzy. But we are afraid that these traits are not often transplanted from the teeming soil of heedless life into the artificial lyric without losing something of their freedom and freshness. Irish humour suffers especially by being clipped into verse: its wild flow is restrained, and nothing more than its salient characteristics can be preserved. The raconteur alone can give full effect to the rich imagination with which the every-day dialogues of Irish life are flooded; and hence the legends and stories of Ireland approach more nearly to a true representation of Irish humour than the best songs, many of which, for the same reason, are interspersed with snatches of recitation, that are drawn in by the singers to complete the effects which the verses leave imperfect. If a collection could be made of Irish repartees, of sustained conversations, of fragments of expression at meeting and parting, and in other varieties of circumstances, gathered on the roadside, and at fairs and patterns from actual observation, it would present much more eloquent evidence of the genius of the people than all the song-books that have ever been printed. Pictures of the cabins, of the habits and costume, and of the temper, tastes, and general character of the peasantry, may be strikingly exhibited in humorous songs; but the wit that springs from miscellaneous collision the occasional and incidental outbursts of the sanguine and poetical temperament - the sinister mirth that lurks under the drooping lash cannot be caught with sufficient breadth and luxuriance in comic rhymes, the drollery of which consists chiefly in grotesque associations and coarse blunders. The Irish hay-maker, in the farce of the "Irishman in Italy," who is carried out to the Bay of Naples, and thinks he is entering the Bay of Dublin (a mistake by no means surprising, from the remarkable resemblance they bear to each other), and who expresses his wonder to see his own "paceable hill of Howth spitting fire," is by no means an exaggeration. The astonishment he expresses at the strange sights in the streets, and the stranger stiletto practices of the people, the courage and presence of mind he discovers in difficulties that would sorely perplex an Englishman, and the ingenuity with which he foils the cunning Italian stratagems that bring the life of his benefactor into danger, give a faithful view, as far as the scope of the design admits, of the adaptive and inventive qualities, the generosity and personal bravery of the genuine Hibernian. But the Irishman is not often presented in our comedies with similar felicity: the brogue is frequently burlesqued by the most miserable kind of malapropisms, and verbal quibbling is substituted for the sly and liquorish joke. Now it is a curious fact that the lower orders of the Irish never make puns; and whenever such poor and transparent tricks are assigned to them on the stage, the gratuitous slander must be laid at the door of the author or the actor. Their humour refers to things, not to words. Yet sometimes. they are even made responsible for downright cockneyisms. Thus, in the popular extravaganza, called "Teddy the Tiler," the Irish labourer, when the picture of Wat Tyler is pointed out to him, asks "What Tyler?" and reiterates the question over and over again, after the repeated response of "Wat Tyler," to the uproarious delight of the gallery. In the farce of the "Hundred Pound Note" (written by an English author), the Irish character is in some places hit off with better success. When the lover, who has sent his servant with a letter to his mistress, puts a flurry of inquiries to the honest fellow on his return, and at last asks, Does he think she loves him? the answer is admirably characteristic: "Love you! Her heart's under your foot!" This condensed strength of expression, summing up a world of description in a single picturesque phrase, is happily illustrative of the ordinary language of the peasantry, which on the most common-place occasions takes the shape of eloquent brevity. When an Irishman is relating the treachery of another, and is anxious to present a forcible image of the deception of a false friend, he will tell you that the traitor "cut the ground from under his feet," a phrase that has now passed almost into general use, but which, in its original earnestness, in the power of the conception, showing the sudden gulf into which the victim fell, and was swallowed up for ever, is not wanting in a certain kind of savage sublimity. Innumerable instances of the pathetic and the ridiculous might be cited from the experience of any individual who has traversed the provinces, particularly in the west and south. An old woman, trudging with a heavy load at her back towards the city of Cork, paused on her weary journey, as the gay phaeton with spanking horses and brilliant liveries of one of the wealthy families of the southern metropolis approached. Leaning her back against the low mud wall on the side of the road, she gazed upon the splendid equipage as it swept past her- the ribands and laces of the happy ladies who sat in the open carriage fluttering and cracking in the winds; and, looking after it mournfully for a few moments in silence, rocking her head to and fro, she comforted her forlorn poverty with the exclamation |