Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry Part 24

Coleridge has some skilful repet.i.tions and exquisite versification in his "Ancient Mariner," "Genevieve," "Alice du Clos," but nowhere a systematic burden. Campbell has no burdens in his finest lyric ballads, though the subjects were fitted for them. The burden of the "Exile of Erin" belongs very doubtfully to him.

Macaulay's best ballad, the "Battle of Ivry," is greatly aided by the even burden line; but he has not repeated the experiment, though he, too, makes much use of repeating lines in his Roman Lays and other ballads.

While, then, we counsel burdens in Historical Ballads, we would recognise excepted cases where they may be injurious, and treat them as in _no case_ essential to perfect ballad success. In songs, we would almost always insist either on a chorus, verse, or a burden of some sort. A burden need not be at the end of the verse; but may, with quite equal success, be at the beginning or in the body of it, as may be seen in the Scotch Ballads, and in some of those in the _Spirit of the Nation_.

The old Scotch and English ballads, and Lockhart's translations from the Spanish, are mostly composed in one metre, though written down in either of two ways. Macaulay's Roman Lays and "Ivry" are in this metre.

Take an example from the last:--

"Press where ye see my white plume shine, amid the ranks of war, And be your Oriflamme to-day the helmet of Navarre."

In the old ballads this would be printed in four lines, of eight syllables and six alternately, and rhyming only alternately, thus:--

"Press where ye see my white plume shine, Amid the ranks of war, And be your Oriflamme to-day The helmet of Navarre."

So Macaulay himself prints this metre in some of his Roman Lays.

But the student should rather avoid than seek this metre. The uniform old beat of eight and six is apt to fall monotonously on the ear, and some of the most startling effects are lost in it. In the _Spirit of the Nation_ the student will find many other ballad metres. Campbell's metres, though new and glorious things, are terrible traps to imitation, and should be warily used. The German ballads, and, still more, Mr. Mangan's translations of them, contain great variety of new and safe, though difficult, metres. Next in frequency to the fourteen-syllable line is that in eleven syllables, such as "Mary Ambree" and "Lochinvar"; and for a rolling brave ballad 'tis a fine metre. The metre of fifteen syllables with double rhymes, (or accents) in the middle, and that of thirteen, with double rhymes at the end, is tolerably frequent, and the metre used by Father Prout, in his n.o.ble translation of "Duke D'Alencon," is admirable, and easier than it seems. By the way, what a grand burden runs through that ballad:--

"Fools! to believe the sword could give to the children of the Rhine, Our Gallic fields--the land that yields the Olive and the Vine!"

The syllables are as in the common metre, but it has thrice the rhymes.

We have seen great materials wasted in a struggle with a crotchety metre; therefore, though we counsel the invention of metres, we would add that unless a metre come out racily and appropriately in the first couple of verses, it should be abandoned, and some of those easily marked metres taken up.

A historical ballad will commonly be narrative in its form, but not necessarily so. A hymn of exultation--a call to a council, an army, or a people--a prophecy--a lament--or a dramatic scene (as in Lochiel), may give as much of event, costume, character, and even scenery as a mere narration. The varieties of form are infinite, and it argues lack of force in a writer to keep always to mere narration, though when exact events are to be told that may be the best mode.

One of the essential qualities of a good historical ballad is truth. To pervert history--to violate nature, in order to make a fine clatter, has been the aim in too many of the ballads sent us. He who goes to write a historical ballad should master the main facts of the time, and state them truly. It may be well for those perhaps either not to study or to half-forget minute circ.u.mstances until after his ballad is drafted out, lest he write a chronicle, not a ballad; but he will do well, ere he suffers it to leave his study, to reconsider the facts of the time or man, or act of which he writes, and see if he cannot add force to his statements, an antique grace to his phrases, and colour to his language.

Truth and appropriateness in ballads require great knowledge and taste.

To write an Irish historical ballad, one should know the events which he would describe, and know them not merely from an isolated study of his subject, but from old familiarity, which shall have a.s.sociated them with his tastes and pa.s.sions, and connected them with other parts of history. How miserable a thing is to put forward a piece of vehement declamation and vague description, which might be uttered of any event, or by the man of any time, as a historical ballad. We have had battle ballads sent us that would be as characteristic of Marathon or Waterloo as of Clontarf--laments that might have been uttered by a German or a Hindu--and romances equally true to love all the world over.

Such historical study extends not merely to the events. A ballad writer should try to find the voice, colour, stature, pa.s.sions, and peculiar faculties of his hero--the arms, furniture, and dress of the congress, or the champions, or the troops he tells of--the rites wherewith the youth were married--the dead interred, and G.o.d worshipped; and the architecture--previous history and pursuits (and, therefore, probable ideas and phrases) of the men he describes.

Many of these things he will get in books. He should shun compilations, and take up original journals, letters, state papers, statutes, and cotemporary fictions and narratives as much as possible. Let him not much mind Leland or Curry (after he has run over them), but work like fury at the Archaeological Society's books--at Harris's Hibernica, at Lodge's Desiderata Curiosa Hibernica, at Strafford's Pacata, Spencer's View, Giraldus's Narrative, Fynes Moryson's Itinerary, the Ormond Papers, the State Papers of Henry the Eighth, Stafford's and Cromwell's and Rinuccini's Letters, and the correspondence and journals, from Donald O'Neill's letter to the Pope down to Wolfe Tone's glorious memoirs.

In the songs, and even their names, many a fine hint can be got; and he is not likely to be a perfect Balladist of Ireland who has not felt to tears and laughter the deathless pa.s.sions of Irish music.

We have condemned compilations; but the ballad student may well labour at Ware's Antiquities. He will find in the History of British Costume, published by the Useful Knowledge Society, and in the ill.u.s.trated work now in progress called Old England, but beyond all other books, in the historical works of Thierry, most valuable materials. Nothing, not even the Border Minstrelsy, Percy's Relics, the Jacobite Ballads, or the Archaeological Tracts, can be of such service as a repeated study of the Norman Conquest, the Ten Years' Study, and the Merovingian Times of Augustine Thierry.

We know he has rashly stated some events on insufficient authority, and drawn conclusions beyond the warrant of his promises; but there is more deep dramatic skill, more picturesque and coloured scenery, more distinct and characteristic grouping, and more lively faith to the look and spirit of the men and times and feelings of which he writes, in Thierry, than in any other historian that ever lived. He has almost an intuition in favour of liberty, and his vindication of the "men of '98"

out of the slanderous pages of Musgrave is a miracle of historical skill and depth of judgment.

In the Irish Academy in Dublin there is a collection (now arranged and rapidly increasing) of ancient arms and utensils. Private collections exist in many provincial towns, especially in Ulster. Indeed, we know an Orange painter in a northern village who has a finer collection of Irish antiquities than all of the Munster cities put together. Accurate observation of, and discussion on, such collections will be of vast service to a writer of historical Ballads.

Topography is also essential to a ballad, or to any Historian. This is not only necessary to save a writer from such gross blunder as we met the other day in Wharton's Ballad, called "The Grave of King Arthur,"

where he talks of "the steeps of rough Kildare," but to give accuracy and force to both general references and local description.

Ireland must be known to her Ballad Historians, not by flat, but by shaded maps, and topographical and scenic descriptions; not by maps of to-day only, but by maps (such as Ortelius and the maps in the State Papers) of Ireland in time past; and, finally, it must be known by the _eye_. A man who has not raced on our hills, panted on our mountains, waded our rivers in drought and flood, pierced our pa.s.ses, skirted our coast, noted our old towns, and learned the shape and colour of ground and tree and sky, is not master of all a Balladist's art. Scott knew Scotland thus, and, moreover, he seems never to have laid a scene in a place that he had not studied closely and alone.

What we have heretofore advised relates to the Structure, Truth, and Colouring of ballads; but there is something more needed to raise a ballad above the beautiful--it must have Force. Strong pa.s.sions, daring invention, vivid sympathy for great acts--these are the result of one's whole life and nature. Into the temper and training of "A Poet," we do not presume to speak. Few have spoken wisely of them. Emerson, in his recent essay, has spoken like an angel on the mission of "The Poet."

Ambition for pure power (not applause); pa.s.sionate sympathy with the good, and strong, and beautiful; insight into nature, and such loving mastery over its secrets as a husband hath over a wife's mind, are the surest tests of one "called" by destiny to tell to men the past, present, and future, in words so perfect that generations shall feel and remember.

We merely meant to give some "Hints on the Properties of Historical Ballads"--they will be idle save to him who has the mind of a Poet.

--------------------------------------------------------------- [48] A "Ballad History of Ireland."

THE SONGS OF IRELAND.[49]

There are great gaps in Irish song to be filled up. This is true even of the songs of the Irish-speaking people. Many of the short s.n.a.t.c.hes preserved among them from olden times are sweet and n.o.ble; but the bulk of the songs are very defective. Most of those hitherto in use were composed during the last century, and therefore their structure is irregular, their grief slavish and despairing, their joy reckless and bombastic, their religion bitter and sectarian, their politics Jacobite and concealed by extravagant and tiresome allegory. Ignorance, disorder, and every kind of oppression weakened and darkened the lyric genius of Ireland. Even these, such as they are, diminish daily in the country, and a lower cla.s.s comes in. We have before us a number of the ballads now printed at Cork, in Irish, and English and Irish mixed.

They are little above the street ballads in the English tongue. If Hardiman's and Daly's collections be fair specimens (as we believe they are) of the Irish Jacobite songs, we should not care to have more than a few of them given to the people; but, perhaps, there may be twenty, which, if printed clearly in slips, would sell as ballads in the Irish districts.

a.s.suming that the morsels given in O'Reilly's catalogue of Irish writers do not exaggerate the merits of the older bards, their works would supply numberless pastoral, love, joy, wailing, and war songs. A popular editor of these could condense them into three or four verses each--cut them so as exactly to suit the airs, preserve the local and broad historical allusions, but remove the clumsy ornaments and exaggerations. This is what Ramsay, Burns, and Cunningham did with the Lowland Scotch songs, and thus made them what they are--the best in Europe. This need not prevent complete editions of these songs in learned books; but such books are for libraries, not cabins.

There is one want, however, in _all_ the Irish songs--it is of strictly national lyrics. They are national in form and colour, but clannish in opinion. In fact, from Brian's death, there was no thought of an Irish nation, save when some great event, like Aodh O'Neill's march to Munster, or Owen Roe's victory at Beinnburb, flashed and vanished.

These songs celebrate M'Carthy or O'More, O'Connor or O'Neill--_his_ prowess, _his_ following, _his_ hospitality; but they cry down his Irish or "more than Irish" neighbour as fiercely as they do the foreign oppressor. True it is, you will find amid the flight of minstrels one bolder than the rest, who mourns for the time when the Milesians swayed, and tells that "a soul has come into Eire," and summons all the Milesian tribes to battle for Ireland. But even in the seventeenth century, when the footing of the Norman and Saxon in Ireland was as sure as that of the once-invading Milesians themselves, we find the cry purely to the older Irish races, and the bounds of the nation made, not by the island, but by genealogy.

We may remark, in pa.s.sing, that on no hypothesis did these same Milesians form more than the aristocracy of ancient Ireland--a cla.s.s--a race of conquerors.

Dr. MacHale has made a n.o.ble attempt to supply this deficiency by his translation of Moore into Irish; but we are told that the language of his translation is too literary, and that the people do not relish these songs. A stronger reason for their failure (if in so short a time their fate can be judged) is, that the originals want the idiom and colour of the country, and are too subtle in thought. This remark does not apply to Moore's love songs, not to some, at least, of his political lyrics, and we cannot doubt that, if translated into vernacular Irish, and printed as ballads, they would succeed. For the present nothing better can be done than to paraphrase the _Songs of the Nation_ into racy and musical Irish; though a time may come when someone born amid the Irish tongue, reared amid Gaelic a.s.sociations, instructed in the state of modern Ireland, and filled with pa.s.sion and prophecy, shall sing the union and destiny of all the races settled on Irish ground, till the vales of Munster and the cliffs of Connaught ring with the words of Nationality.

But whatever may be done by translation and editing for the songs of the Irish-speaking race, those of our English-speaking countrymen are to be written. Moore, Griffin, Banim, and Callanan have written plenty of songs. Those of Moore have reached the drawing rooms; but what do the People know even of his? Buy a ballad in any street in Ireland, from the metropolis to the village, and you will find in it, perhaps, some humour, some tenderness, and some sweetness of sound; but you will certainly find bombast, or slander, or coa.r.s.eness, united in all cases with false rhythm, false rhyme, conceited imagery, black paper, and blotted printing. A high cla.s.s of ballads would do immense good--the present race demean and mislead the people as much as they stimulate them; for the sale of these ballads is immense, and printers in Dublin, Drogheda, Cork, and Belfast live by their sale exclusively. Were an enterprising man to issue the choice songs of Drennan, Griffin, Moore, on good paper, and well printed, he would make a fortune of "halfpenny ballads."

The Anglo-Irish songs, though most of the last century, are generally indecent or factious. The cadets of the Munster Protestants, living like garrison soldiers, drinking, racing, and dancing, wrote the one cla.s.s. The clergy of the Ulster Presbyterians wrote the other. "The Rakes of Mallow" and "The Protestant Boys" are choice specimens of the two cla.s.ses--vigorous, and musical, and Irish, no doubt, but surely not fit for this generation.

Great opportunities came with the Volunteers and United Irishmen, but the men were wanting. We have but one good Volunteer song. It was written by Lysaght, after that ill.u.s.trious militia was dissolved.

Drennan's "Wake of William Orr" is not a song; but he gave the United Men the only good song they had--"When Erin First Rose." In "Paddy's Resource," the text-book of the men who were "up," there is but one tolerable song--"G.o.d Save the Rights of Man;" nor, looking beyond these, can we think of anything of a high cla.s.s but "The Sean Bhean Bhochd," "The Wearing of the Green," Lysaght's "Island," and Reynolds'

"Erin-go-bragh," if it be his.

Two of Lady Morgan's songs, "Savournah Dilis" and "Kate Kearney," have certainly gone through all cla.s.ses; and perhaps we might add a little to these exceptions; but it is a sad fact that most of the few good songs we have described are scarce, and are never printed in a ballad shape.

There is plenty, then, for the present race of Irish lyrists to do.

They have a great heritage in the national music. It has every excellence and every variety. It is not needful for a writer of our songs to be a musician, though he will certainly gain much accuracy and save much labour to others and himself by being so. Moore is a musician of great attainments, and Burns used to compose his songs when going over, and over, and over the tune with or without words. But constantly listening to the playing of Irish airs will enable any man with a tolerable ear, and otherwise qualified, to write words to them.

Here, we would give two cautions. First--that the airs in Moore's Melodies are very corrupt, and should never be used for the study of Irish music. This is even more true of Lover's tunes. There is no need of using them, for Bunting's and Holden's collections are cheaper, and contain pure settings. Secondly--that as there are hundreds of the finest airs to which no English words have been written, and as the effect of a song is greatly increased by having one set of words always joined with one tune, our versifiers should carefully avoid the airs to which Moore, Griffin, or any other Irishman has written even moderately good words.

In endeavouring to learn an air for the purpose of writing words to it, the first care should, of course, be to get at its character--as gay, hopeful, loving, sentimental, lively, hesitating, woeful, despairing, resolute, fiery, or variable. Many Irish airs take a different character when played fast or slow, lightly or strongly; but there is some one mode of playing which is best of all, and the character expressed by it must determine the character of the words. For nothing can be worse than a gay song to calm music, or ma.s.sive words to a delicate air; in all cases _the tune must suggest, and will suggest, to the lyrist the sentiment of the words_.

The tune will, of course, fix the number of lines in a verse.

Frequently the number and order of the lines can be varied. Three rhymes and a fall, or couplets, or alternate rhymes, may answer the same set of notes; or rhymes, if too numerous, may be got rid of by making one long, instead of two short lines. Where the same notes come with emphasis at the ends of musical phrases, the words should rhyme, in order to secure the full effect. The doubling two lines into one is most convenient where the first has accents on both the last syllables, for you thus escape the necessity of double rhyming. In the softer airs the effect of this is rather agreeable than otherwise.

Talking of double rhymes, they are peculiarly fitted for strong political and didactic songs, for the abstract and political words in English are chiefly of Latin origin, of considerable length and gravity, and have double accents. The more familiar English words (which best suit most songs) contain few doubly-accented terminations, and are, therefore, little fitted for double rhyming.

Expletive syllables in the beginning of lines where the tune is sharp and gay are often an improvement, but they should never follow a double rhyme.