Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry Part 22

Much may be saved--the Gaelic language and the music of the past may be handed uncorrupted to the future; but whatever may be the subst.i.tutes, the Fairies and the Banshees, the Poor Scholar and the Ribbonman, the Orange Lodge, the Illicit Still, and the Faction Fight are vanishing into history, and unless this generation paints them no other will know what they were.

It is chiefly in this way we value the work before us. In it Carleton is the historian of the peasantry rather than a dramatist. The fiddler and piper, the seanachie and seer, the match-maker and dancing-master, and a hundred characters beside are here brought before you, moving, acting, playing, plotting, and gossiping! You are never wearied by an inventory of wardrobes, as in short English descriptive fictions; yet you see how every one is dressed; you hear the honey brogue of the maiden, and the downy voice of the child, the managed accents of flattery or traffic, the shrill tones of woman's fretting, and the troubled gush of man's anger. The moory upland and the corn slopes, the glen where the rocks jut through mantling heather, and bright brooks gurgle amid the scented banks of wild herbs, the shivering cabin and the rudely-lighted farm-house are as plain in Carleton's pages as if he used canvas and colours with a skill varying from Wilson and Poussin to Teniers and Wilkie.

But even in these sketches his power of external description is not his greatest merit. Born and bred among the people--full of their animal vehemence--skilled in their sports--as credulous and headlong in boyhood, and as fitful and varied in manhood, as the wildest--he had felt with them, and must ever sympathise with them. Endowed with the highest dramatic genius, he has represented their love and generosity, their wrath and negligence, their crimes and virtues, as a hearty peasant--not a note-taking critic.

In others of his works he has created ideal characters that give him a higher rank as a poet (some of them not surpa.s.sed by even Shakespeare for originality, grandeur, and distinctness); but here he is a genuine Seanachie, and brings you to dance and wake, to wedding and christening--makes you romp with the girls, and race with the boys--tremble at the ghosts, and frolic with the fairies of the whole parish.

Come what change there may over Ireland, in these _Tales and Sketches_ the peasantry of the past hundred years can be for ever lived with.

--------------------------------------------------------------- [44] _Tales and Sketches ill.u.s.trating the Irish Peasantry._ By William Carleton. James Duffy, Dublin, 1845. 1 vol., 8vo., pp. 393.

IRISH SCENERY.

We no more see why Irish people should not visit the Continent than why Germans or Frenchmen ought not to visit Ireland; but there is a difference between them. A German rarely comes here who has not trampled the heath of Tyrol, studied the museums of Dresden and the frescoes of Munich, and shouted defiance on the bank of the Rhine; and what Frenchman who has not seen the vineyards of Provence and the bocages of Brittany, and the snows of Jura and the Pyrenees, ever drove on an Irish jingle? But our n.o.bles and country gentlemen, our merchants, lawyers, and doctors--and what's worse, their wives and daughters--penetrate Britain and the Continent without ever trying whether they could not defy in Ireland the _ennui_ before which they run over seas and mountains.

The cause of this, as of most of our grievances, was misgovernment, producing poverty, discomfort, ignorance, and misrepresentation. The people were ignorant and in rags, their houses miserable, the roads and hotels shocking; we had no banks, few coaches, and, to crown all, the English declared the people to be rude and turbulent, which they were not, as well as drunken and poor, which they a.s.suredly were. An Irish landlord who had ill-treated his own tenants felt a conscientious dread of all frieze-coats; others adopted his prejudices, and a people who never were rude or unjust to strangers were considered unsafe to travel amongst.

Most of these causes are removed. The people are sober, and are rapidly advancing to knowledge, their political exertions and dignity have broken away much of the prejudices against them, and a man pa.s.sing through any part of Ireland expects to find woeful poverty and strong discontent, but he does not fear the abduction of his wife, or attempts to a.s.sa.s.sinate him on every lonely road. The coaches, cars, and roads, too, have become excellent, and the hotels are sufficient for any reasonable traveller. One very marked discouragement to travelling was the want of information; the maps were little daubs, and the guide-books were few and inaccurate. As to maps we are now splendidly off. The Railway Commissioners' Map of Ireland, aided by the Ordnance Index Map of any county where a visitor makes a long stay, are ample.

We have got a good general guide-book in Fraser, but it could not hold a twentieth of the information necessary to a leisurely tourist; nor, till the Ordnance Memoir is out, shall we have thorough hand-books to our counties. Meantime, let us not burn the little guides to Antrim, Wicklow, and Killarney, though they are desperately dull and inexact--let us not altogether prohibit Mrs. Hall's gossip, though she knows less about our Celtic people than the Malays; and let us be even thankful for Mr. O'Flanagan's volume of the Munster Blackwater (though it is printed in London) for his valuable stories, for his minute, picturesque, and full topography, for his antiquarian and historic details, though he blunders into making Alaster M'Donnell a Scotchman, and for his hearty love of the scenery and people he has undertaken to guide us through.

And now, reader, in this fine soft summer, when the heather is blooming, and the sky laughing and crying like a hysterical bride, full of love, where will ye go--through your own land or a stranger's? If you stay at home you can choose your own scenery, and have something to see in the summer, and talk of in the winter, that will make your friends from the Alps and Apennines respectful to you.

Did you propose to study economies among the metayers of Tuscany or the artisans of Belgium, postpone the trip till the summer of '45 or '46, when you may have the pa.s.sport of an Irish office to get you a welcome, and seek for the state of the linen weavers in the soft hamlets of Ulster--compare the cattle herds of Meath with the safe little holdings of Down and the well-found farms of Tipperary, or investigate the statistics of our fisheries along the rivers and lakes and sh.o.r.es of our island.

Had a strong desire come upon you to toil over the glacier, whose centre froze when Adam courted Eve, or walk amid the brigand pa.s.ses of Italy or Spain--do not fancy that absolute size makes mountain grandeur, or romance--to a mind full of pa.s.sion and love of strength (and with such only do the mountain spirits walk) the pa.s.ses of Glenmalure and Barnesmore are deep as Chamouni, and Carn Tual and Slieve Donard are as near the lightning as Mount Blanc.

To the picture-hunter we can offer little, though Vand.y.k.e's finest portrait is in Kilkenny, and there is no county without some collection; but for the lover of living or sculptured forms--for the artist, the antiquarian, and the natural philosopher, we have more than five summers could exhaust. Every one can see the strength of outline, the vigour of colour, and the effective grouping in every fair, and wake, and chapel, and hurling-ground, from Donegal to Waterford, though it may take the pen of Griffin or the pencil of Burton to represent them. An Irishman, if he took the pains, would surely find something not inferior in interest to Cologne or the Alhambra in study of the monumental effigies which mat the floors of Jerpoint and Adare, or the cross in a hundred consecrated grounds from Kells to Clonmacnoise--of the round towers which spring in every barony--of the architectural perfection of Holycross and Clare-Galway, and the strange fellowship of every order in Atha.s.sel, or of the military keeps and earthen pyramids and cairns, which tell of the wars of recent and the piety of distant centuries. The Entomology, Botany, and Geology of Ireland are not half explored; the structure and distinctions of its races are but just attracting the eyes of philosophers from Mr. Wilde's tract, and the country is actually full of airs never noted, history never written, superst.i.tions and romances never rescued from tradition; and why should Irishmen go blundering in foreign researches when so much remains to be done here, and when to do it would be more easy, more honourable, and more useful?

In many kinds of scenery we can challenge comparison. Europe has no lake so dreamily beautiful as Killarney; no bays where the boldness of Norway unites with the colouring of Naples, as in Bantry; and you might coast the world without finding cliffs so vast and so terrible as Achill and Slieve League. Glorious, too, as the Rhine is, we doubt if its warmest admirers would exclude from rivalry the Nore and the Blackwater, if they had seen the tall cliffs, and the twisted slopes, and the ruined aisles, and glancing mountains, and feudal castles through which you boat up from Youghal to Mallow, or glide down from Thomastown to Waterford harbour. Hear what Inglis says of this Avondhu:--

"We have had descents of the Danube, and descents of the Rhine, and the Rhone, and of many other rivers; but we have not in print, as far as I know, any descent of the Blackwater; and yet, with all these descents of foreign rivers in my recollection, _I think the descent of the Blackwater not surpa.s.sed by any of them._ A detail of all that is seen in gliding down the Blackwater from Cappoquin to Youghal would fill a long chapter. There is every combination that can be produced by the elements that enter into the picturesque and the beautiful--deep shades, bold rocks, verdant slopes, with the triumphs of art superadded, and made visible in magnificent houses and beautiful villas with their decorated lawns and pleasure grounds."

And now, reader, if these kaleidoscope glimpses we have given you have made you doubt between a summer in Ireland and one abroad, give your country "the benefit of the doubt," as the lawyers say, and boat on our lake or dive into our glens and ruins, wonder at the basalt coast of Antrim, and soften your heart between the banks of the Blackwater.

IRISH MUSIC AND POETRY.

No enemy speaks slightingly of Irish Music, and no friend need fear to boast of it. It is without a rival.

Its antique war-tunes, such as those of O'Byrne, O'Donnell, Alestrom, and Brian Boru, stream and crash upon the ear like the warriors of a hundred glens meeting; and you are borne with them to battle, and they and you charge and struggle amid cries and battle-axes and stinging arrows. Did ever a wail make man's marrow quiver, and fill his nostrils with the breath of the grave, like the ululu of the north or the wirrasthrue of Munster? Stately are their slow, and recklessly splendid their quick marches, their "Boyne Water," and "Sios agus sios liom,"

their "Michael Hoy," and "Gallant Tipperary." The Irish jigs and planxties are not only the best dancing tunes, but the finest quick marches in the world. Some of them would cure a paralytic and make the marble-legged prince in the _Arabian Nights_ charge like a f.a.g-an-Bealach boy. The hunter joins in every leap and yelp of the "Fox Chase"; the historian hears the moan of the penal days in "Drimindhu," and sees the embarkation of the Wild Geese in "Limerick's Lamentation"; and ask the lover if his breath do not come and go with "Savourneen Deelish" and "Lough Sheelin."

Varied and n.o.ble as our music is, the English-speaking people in Ireland have been gradually losing their knowledge of it, and a number of foreign tunes--paltry scented things from Italy, lively trifles from Scotland, and German opera cries--are heard in our concerts, and what is worse, from our Temperance bands. Yet we never doubted that "The Sight Entrancing," or "The Memory of the Dead," would satisfy even the most spoiled of our fashionables better than anything Balfe or Rossini ever wrote; and, as it is, "Tow-row-row" is better than _poteen_ to the teetotalers, wearied with overtures and insulted by "British Grenadiers" and "Rule Brittannia."

A reprint of _Moore's Melodies_ on lower keys, and at _much_ lower prices, would probably restore the sentimental music of Ireland to its natural supremacy. There are in Bunting but two good sets of words--"The Bonny Cuckoo," and poor Campbell's "Exile's of Erin." These and a few of Lover's and Mahony's songs can alone compete with Moore.

But, save one or two by Lysaght and Drennan, almost all the Irish political songs are too desponding or weak to content a people marching to independence as proudly as if they had never been slaves.

The popularity and immense circulation of the _Spirit of the Nation_ proved that it represented the hopes and pa.s.sions of the Irish people.

This looks like vanity; but as a corporation so numerous as the contributors to that volume cannot blush, we shall say our say. For instance, who did not admire "The Memory of the Dead"? The very Stamp officers were galvanised by it, and the Attorney-General was repeatedly urged to sing it for the jury. He refused--he had no music to sing it to. We pitied and forgave him; but we vowed to leave him no such excuse next time. If these songs were half so good as people called them, they deserved to flow from a million throats to as n.o.ble music as ever O'Neill or O'Connor heard.

Some of them were written to, and some freely combined with, old and suitable airs. These we resolved to have printed with the music, certain that, thus, the music would be given back to a people who had been ungratefully neglecting it, and the words carried into circles where they were still unknown.

Others of these poems, indeed the best of them, had no antetypes in our ancient music. New music was, therefore, to be sought for them. Not on their account only was it to be sought. We hoped they would be the means of calling out and making known a contemporary music fresh with the spirit of the time, and rooted in the country.

Since Carolan's death there had been no addition to the store. Not that we were without composers, but those we have do not compose Irish-like music, nor for Ireland. Their rewards are from a foreign public--their fame, we fear, will suffer from alienage. Balfe is very sweet, and Rooke very emphatic, but not one pa.s.sion or a.s.sociation in Ireland's heart would answer to their songs.

Fortunately there was one among us (perchance his example may light us to others) who can smite upon our harp like a master, and make it sigh with Irish memories, and speak sternly with Ireland's resolve. To him, to his patriotism, to his genius, and, we may selfishly add, to his friendship, we owe our ability now to give to Ireland music fit for "The Memory of the Dead" and the "Hymn of Freedom," and whatever else was marked out by popularity for such care as his.

In former editions of the _Spirit_[45] we had thrown in carelessly several inferior verses and some positive trash, and neither paper nor printing was any great honour to the Dublin press. Every improvement in the power of the most enterprising publisher in Ireland has been made, and every fault, within our reach or his, cured--and whether as the first publication of original airs, as a selection of ancient music, or as a specimen of what the Dublin press can do, in printing, paper, or cheapness, we urge the public to support this work of Mr. James Duffy's--and, in a pecuniary way, it is his altogether.

We had hoped to have added a recommendation to the first number of this work, besides whatever attraction may lie in its music, its ballads, or its mechanical beauty.

An artist, whom we shall not describe or he would be known,[46] sketched a cover and t.i.tle for it. The idea, composition, and drawing of that design were such as Flaxman might have been proud of. It is a monument to bardic power, to patriotism, to our music and our history. There is at least as much poetry in it as in the best verses in the work it ill.u.s.trates. If it do nothing else, it will show our Irish artists that refinement and strength, pa.s.sion and dignity, are as practicable in Irish as in German painting; and the lesson was needed sorely. But if it lead him who drew it to see that our history and hopes present fit forms to embody the highest feelings of beauty, wisdom, truth, and glory in, irrespective of party politics, then, indeed, we shall have served our country when we induced our gifted friend to condescend to sketching a t.i.tle-page. We need not describe that design now, as it will appear on the cover of the second number, and on the t.i.tle-page of the finished volume.

--------------------------------------------------------------- [45] A splendid edition of this work, greatly enlarged, and printed in The Irish Exhibition Buildings, was issued by Messrs. Duffy and Sons, September, 1882.

[46] The artist referred to was Sir Frederick Burton. [Ed.]

BALLAD POETRY OF IRELAND.

How slow we have all been in coming to understand the meaning of Irish Nationality!

Some, dazzled by visions of pagan splendour, and the pretensions of pedigree, and won by the pa.s.sions and romance of the olden races, continued to speak in the nineteenth century of an Irish nation as they might have done in the tenth. They forgot the English Pale, the Ulster Settlement, and the filtered colonisation of men and ideas. A Celtic kingdom with the old names and the old language, without the old quarrels, was their hope; and though they would not repeat O'Neill's comment as he pa.s.sed Barrett's castle on his march to Kinsale, and heard it belonged to a Strongbownian, that "he hated the Norman churl as if he came yesterday"; yet they quietly a.s.sumed that the Norman and Saxon elements would disappear under the Gaelic genius like the tracks of cavalry under a fresh crop.

The Nationality of Swift and Grattan was equally partial. They saw that the government and laws of the settlers had extended to the island--that Donegal and Kerry were in the Pale; they heard the English tongue in Dublin, and London opinions in Dublin--they mistook Ireland for a colony wronged, and great enough to be a nation.

A lower form of nationhood was before the minds of those who saw in it nothing but a parliament in College Green. They had not erred in judging, for they had not tried to estimate the moral elements and tendencies of the country. They were as narrow bigots to the omnipotency of an inst.i.tution as any c.o.c.kney Radical. Could they, by any acc.u.mulation of English stupidity and Irish laziness, have got possession of an Irish government, they would soon have distressed every one by their laws, whom they had not provoked by their administration, or disgusted by their dulness.

Far healthier, with all its defects, was the idea of those who saw in Scotland a perfect model--who longed for a literary and artistic nationality--who prized the oratory of Grattan and Curran, the novels of Griffin and Carleton, the pictures of Maclise and Burton, the ancient music, as much as any, and far more than most, of the political nationalists, but who regarded political independence as a dangerous dream. Unknowingly they fostered it. Their writings, their patronage, their talk was of Ireland; yet it hardly occurred to them that the ideal would flow into the practical, or that they, with their dread of agitation, were forwarding a revolution.

At last we are beginning to see what we are, and what is our destiny.

Our duty arises where our knowledge begins. The elements of Irish nationality are not only combining--in fact, they are growing confluent in our minds. Such nationality as merits a good man's help and wakens a true man's ambition--such nationality as could stand against internal faction and foreign intrigue--such nationality as would make the Irish hearth happy and the Irish name ill.u.s.trious, is becoming understood. It must contain and represent the races of Ireland. It must not be Celtic, it must not be Saxon--it must be Irish. The Brehon law and the maxims of Westminster, the cloudy and lightning genius of the Gael, the placid strength of the Sasanach, the marshalling insight of the Norman--a literature which shall exhibit in combination the pa.s.sions and idioms of all, and which shall equally express our mind in its romantic, its religious, its forensic, and its practical tendencies--finally, a native government, which shall know and rule by the might and right of all; yet yield to the arrogance of none--these are components of _such_ a nationality.

But what have these things to do with the "Ballad Poetry of Ireland"?

Much every way. It is the result of the elements we have named--it is compounded of all; and never was there a book fitter to advance that perfect nationality to which Ireland begins to aspire. That a country is without national poetry proves its hopeless dulness or its utter provincialism. National poetry is the very flowering of the soul--the greatest evidence of its health, the greatest excellence of its beauty.

Its melody is balsam to the senses. It is the playfellow of childhood ripens into the companion of his manhood, consoles his age. It presents the most dramatic events, the largest characters, the most impressive scenes, and the deepest pa.s.sions in the language most familiar to us.

It shows us magnified, and enn.o.bles our hearts, our intellects, our country, and our countrymen--binds us to the land by its condensed and gem-like history, to the future by examples and by aspirations. It solaces us in travel, fires us in action, prompts our invention, sheds a grace beyond the power of luxury round our homes, is the recognised envoy of our minds among all mankind and to all time.