STREET SONGS AND BALLADS AND ANONYMOUS VERSE. BY JOHN HAND. IRELAND Owes much to her ballad poetry, and not a little to that portion of it which is associated with the streets. Most, if not all, nations owe more or less to poetry. The songs of Homer, even more than her banded might, preserved Greece independent for over a thousand years. The ballads of Spain kept Spanish patriotism brightly burning thoughout the centuries which saw the Moor rooted in the land, and finally, by the potency of their magic, swept Boabdil and his legions from Granada-from Spain-tore down the Crescent from the high places of the Saracen, and raised in its stead once again the glorious emblem of man's salvation-the Cross of the Redeemer. For Ireland, the ballad and the song have done more than for even Spain or Greece. It is true, she has not obtained a result so significantly brilliant as that achieved by Spain. She has not succeeded, after all her struggles, in shaking herself free of the foreigner's yoke. Spain, like Ireland, was seized and held by a foreign foe; but that foe, though infidel, was less rapacious and less brutal than the pretentious Christian one that fastened upon Ireland. The Moor was the patron of learning, and gave almost lavish encouragement to the arts and sciences in the celebrated schools which he established at Cordova and throughout Spain. The Englishman's instruments of civilization in Ireland were the sword and the halter-the destruction of her schools, the violation and robbery of her sanctuaries, the outlawry of her language and its teachers. It was not the province of England to build up, to foster and encourage learning there, but to despoil, to destroy, and to brutalize, by every means that the dark fiend himself might suggest, the Irish race, because, forsooth, the children of that race refused to reach out their arms, and meekly receive the shackles of the slave. Learning was banned in Ireland, but the Irish mother, with a fervor almost amounting to religious devotion, taught her child the old ballads and songs which told of Ireland and of Ireland's faith, and which her own mother in a similar way had taught to her. From Cape Clear to the Giant's Causeway, in every peasant homestead throughout the length and the breadth of the land, were those songs sung and those ballads conned over. Under God they have been the means of preserving her nationality and her faith through centuries of disasters and persecutions such as a nation never before suffered and survived. When English laws put the ban of outlawry on her bards, and finally destroyed them, did England even then succeed in her nefarious design? No!-the song lived, though the lips that first chanted it were silent for ever. The ballad never lost its significance or its power; generation after generation were swayed by the magic of its numbers-the fierceness of its invective, the pathos of its love, or the wild agony of its wail, still exercised the same talismanic effect on the Irish heart. The Irish language, with its graceful idioms and epigrammatic terseness, was peculiarly adapted for poetry. Even when fairly translated into the English tongue, much of the beauty of the original is perceptible. What a magnificent ballad have we not in poor Clarence Mangan's beautiful translation of Dark Rosaleen.' It is unsurpassed by any ballad of any language-a real gem-classic as Homer. It was to such ballads as this Ireland was accustomed prior to that long night of darkness and agony which set in upon her with the reign of England's Elizabeth. Such were her "Streets Ballads" in those days; and it can be readily imagined what an effect such a ballad as 'Dark Rosaleen,' sung or recited in the native tongue, would have on the excitable Irish temperament-how it would stir, how it would fascinate, how it would impress and mold, the susceptible Irish heart. Why, even in the foreign tongue, in the heavy, and by no means poetical language of England, the blood runs faster as it is declaimed-it carries you along in its grand flow, and its every impassioned sentiment becomes your own. But in the old tongue in the language of the land, the effect of a such a ballad would be magical. Since the days when it became treason to love their country, the Irish bards usually adopted allegory, such as we find in Dark Rosaleen.' They sang of Ireland as the 'Dark Little Rose,' the 'Shan Van Vocht,' the 'Coolin,' and under a hundred other names. A great writer has said that the Irish are one of the most poetic of the peoples on earth; that in them is the true spirit poetry to be found. With an old, brave race, such as the Irish, having grand traditions and proud memories, it could scarcely be other. Nature is the great rudimentary school in which poetry is imbibed; and in "green Erin of the streams" the child of the land is ever present face to face with the high teacher, in what mood soever she chooses to array herself. And though he may never measure a line of poetry, or indeed know the difference between iambics and the Hill of Howth, he is not the less a poet, for his soul drinks in the glories of nature, and responds to her thousand fitful but always beautiful aspects. Ireland has been happily termed the "land of song.' In the preChristian, as in the Christian era, song was her delight, and she delighted to excel in the art. It swayed her with a certainty as true as the moon sways the tides. ... Nine out of every ten men you meet with in Ireland are poets; and the tenth man will, in all probability, be a Saxon or other "benighted foreigner.” The majority of them, however, it need scarcely be added, remain "mute inglorious Miltons," but might, and no doubt would, under different circumstances become glorious ones. In Ireland, rustic bards swarm thick as blackberries in harvest-time, and not a few of the craft have we ourselves personally known. As in every other department, so in the rhyming trade, there is always to be found in each parish or district a workman superior to his fellows. The Irish street ballad proper was on every conceivable subjectembraced love, politics, religion, war, shipwreck, in fact, took in the whole range of creation-sun, moon, stars, skies, and the earth, with all its belongings, but more particularly that delightful portion of it ycleped the "Emerald Isle." Indeed it was no uncommon thing for a countryman, on being asked to sing, to inquire on what subject the company would wish him to oblige-whether they would have a love, or love-and-murder, a rale ould Irish" (meaning a national), a controversial, or a sea song. We have often heard the question asked in this way, when the minstrel would take his cue from the majority, and treat them to what they liked best. 66 Love was a deity the rustic bard very frequently bowed before. Her he invoked, and to her he poured out the woes of his wounded spirit in swelling numbers. Here is one who tells us he came a stranger to the country about Ardee, where he lost his heart. He thus makes us acquainted with the sad tale : "When first to this country a stranger I came, I placed my affections on a comely fair maid, She was proper, tall and handsome, in every degree, "I courted lovely Mary at the age of sixteen, Her waist it was slender, and her carriage genteel; Till at length a young weaver came for her to see, Stole the flower of this country and the Rose of Ardee." Poor fellow, this was a sad ending to his dreams. Though the provocation was great, he did not commit suicide, however. After cursing the weaver" by day and by night," he proceeds "When I get my week's wages to the Shebeen I'll go, Once more my own true love, the Rose of Ardee." After a good deal of "lamenting," the bard arrives at a philosophic conclusion, and ends by bidding his false fair one an eternal farewell. "Farewell, lovely Mary, tho' fled from my sight, There is another characteristic effusion, entitled the 'Star of Slane.' Observe how the bard displays his knowledge of history and mythology. It is so loaded with classic allusions that, like the "other" straw breaking the camel's back, one other would be more than it could actually bear. Bright Sol, Paris, the Grecian Queen, Troy, Cæsar, Cleopatra, Alexander, Cupid, Diana, Susanna, and the River Boyne, are all marshaled up to give effect. This was the style of versification most admired, particularly when the words were, as here, of “learned length and thundering sound." Who but an Irish street-balladist could express affection for the angel of his love in so happy a manner as does the wooer of Peggy Brady? What colleen but would melt at so moving and so artless an assurance. The unselfishness of the declaration is most refreshing read in an age sordid as the present. "O Peggy Brady, you are my darlin', You are my lookin'-glass from night to mornin', I'd rather have you without a farthin' Than Susy Gallagher, wid her house and garden." The polemical ballad was always in high favor. The Church was persecuted with fiendish malignity; and the people loved and clung to her the more for that very persecution. Innumerable were the ballads written in her behalf, or portraying her sufferings— the majority of them, from a literary point of view, being the very quintessence of absurdity; yet they were disseminated and sung, and kept the subject ever green in the susceptible hearts of the Irish peasantry. Of the religious class, the controversial was perhaps most admired. It gave scope to the bard for the display of his biblical lore and sublime invective, qualities altogether indispensable to the rustic muse. "One morning in July," the poet tells us -he was "ranging" over "Urker Hill," when a church and chapel adjacent had a regular "set to "-to use a modern phrase. The Protestant church was the aggressor on the occasion, scornfully alluding to the poverty-stricken appearance of her rival. But she had evidently calculated without her host, for the chapel, putting forth all her powers, administered her such a drubbing as Lutheran structure never received before. The church had made some grave charges, but, 66 The prudent chapel then made answer, And was not angry, nor yet confused, Sayin', madam, sittin' in yer pomp an' grandeur, I beg the favor to be excused, I do renegade and flatter none, I was erected by true Milesians, An' my ordination is the Church of Rome!" This was an effective hit, but is even surpassed by what follows. "I do remimber, in former ages, Till by false teachin' ye did invade us Needless to say that under such admirably administered castigation, the church was forced to succumb. 'The Ass and the Orangeman's Daughter,' as the title implies, was another classic production. It proved, besides, a mine of wealth -a very Golconda-to scores of street minstrels. Few public men had more ballads written about them than Daniel O'Connell. For fully forty years every town and hamlet in Ireland was flooded with poetic effusions in praise of the Liberator. The death of O'Connell, all unexpected as it was, produced a deep sensation throughout Ireland, and plunged the entire country into profound grief. The national grief found expression in divers ways, and not the least sincere and real was its burden as uttered through the verse of the rustic bard, and sang through the streets of every town and village in the land. Some of these ballads had a prodigious salenot less than a million copies of several of them being sold in an incredibly short space of time. Erin's Lament' ran through countless editions. Large crowds used to surround the street minstrel as, with stentorian lungs, he poured forth the words of the ballad, which, by the way, were attached to a beautiful and plaintive melody. The ballads were purchased as fast as they could be handed out. The singer generally sang the song right through, and then started afresh as follows: "One morning ranging for recreation, Down by a river I chanced to rove, I was struck with wonder, so I stood and pondered, Is O'Connell gone, old Granua's son? For his sweet voice will no more rejoice, Whilst our harp quite mute lies in Tara's hall." In a similar fashion are reviewed the principal incidents in the career of the departed; and the song relates that "The Emancipation, without hesitation, To our lovely island he soon brought o'er, And our clergy crowned him with wreaths of glory, Our chapel bells they do ring melodious, Where no vile scorpion dare cross the door; Quite broken hearted, from us departed, The pride of Kerry, brave Dan 's no more." The Rights of Man' is another allegorical effusion. The bard had a vision, and among other phenomena the following quaint picture is limned : "Through the azure sky I then did spy A man to fly and for to descend, And lights came down upon the ground He prayed sincere for the rights of man." Again we have 'The Banished Defender,' in which politics, religion, and pikes are beautifully mingled. In the first verse the poet tells us he is fled to the mountains, and in the next-probably forgetting what he had told us in the former-we are assured that he is a convict in Van Dieman's Land. Here is a sample: |