songs that in the first lullaby (No. 21), though it is only four bars long, the same melodic idea is repeated four times; yet so beautiful is the strain that there is no suggestion of monotony. The second lullaby (No. 22) is a period, composed of two contrasting phrases, simple indeed, but not so ingenuous as the companion lullaby with its entire absence of The first example probably belongs to a very early period of musical art. Together the two lullabies make a song of exquisite beauty, and the lyric with which they have inspired Mr. Graves is a charmingly poetic development of the nurse-song formula alluded to above. Here is the first verse: contrast. I've found my bonny babe a nest On Slumber Tree. I'll rock you there to rosy rest, Oh, lulla lo, sing all the leaves On Slumber Tree. Till ev'rything that hurts or grieves The Goltree, or music of sorrow, is most characteristically exemplified in the cry which the Irish people use to lament their dead. They call it the keen, and its effect is weird and unearthly. When the last confession has been said and death is momentarily expected, all of the family kneel around the dying person. Holy water is sprinkled about the room and all join in reciting the litany for the dying. When death comes, all rise and join in the death chant, and everyone who hears it says a prayer for the soul which is gone. The chant closely fol lows the natural accent of grief, now rising in protest, now sinking in despair. The words are ex clamations of grief, like Ochone! Ochone! (Alas! Alas!) and they are sung again and again at intervals. Dr. Joyce tells us that every neighborhood has-or used to have within recent years-its two or three women who were the recognized keeners of the place. These women, cloaked in somber garb, rock backwards and forwards about the dead, singing the immemorial death music. Between these outbursts of melodious grief some kinsman of the deadmother or child, husband or wife, brother or sister— will break into passionate lamentation, addressing the corpse in terms of endearment, and calling to mind happy days gone by. Sometimes these outbursts are in the highest degree eloquent. Listen to this mother's apostrophe to her son, spoken within the last fifty years: O women, look on me, women; look on me, women; look on me in my sorrow. Have you ever seen any sorrow like mine? Have you ever seen the like of me in my sorrow? Arrah! then, my darling, it is your mother that calls you. How long you are sleeping. Do you see all the people round you, my darling, and I sorely weeping? Arrah! what is this paleness on your sweet face? Sure, there was no equal to it in Erin for beauty and fairness. Your hair was heavy as the wing of a raven, and your hand was whiter than the hand of a lady. Is it a stranger that must carry me to my grave and my son lying here? Can classic sorrow show anything more beautiful? Here is a keen which Dr. Joyce says he learned "long, long ago." Frequent hearing printed it on his memory. It is divided into bars, as though it were mensural music, but Dr. Joyce says that the notes over which the pause mark (a little semicircle with a dot over it) is placed may be sustained to any length, according to the power or inclination of the singer. This liberty of treatment makes it a free recitative rather than a symmetrical melody. The plain chant of the Church is full of melody of this kind, melody without regularly recurrent accent, and owing its rhythm to the words with which it is associated. Occasional examples are also to be met with in modern music, as, for example, the page of unbarred, improvisation-like music in Mendelssohn's pianoforte sonata, Opus 6. The spirit of wild mourning which pervades this keen transcends ordinary rules, but in its noble extravagance, is full of heart-searching beauty. It is the music of natural rhetoric unrestrained, yet confessing an aesthetic order which can more readily be felt than defined. But death music was not only sung; it was played on the pipes. The pipers marched at the head of the funeral procession and the esteem in which the deceased person was held might be gauged by their number. Sir John Graham Dalyell, the author of "Musical Memories of Scotland," illustrates this point in his description of the obsequies of Matthew Hardy, a piper of note in his day. Hardy was a wee mortal, only two feet high, but he had the spirit of a giant and Dalyell calls him "the life and soul of his countrymen." They buried him in Rathmichael Churchyard, in April, 1737, and his coffin was preceded by no fewer than eight couples of pipers, who played a dirge composed by Carolan. Where is that dirge to-day? Fortunately, Petrie has recorded some magnificent examples, one of which is here given. (Ex. 39.) Mr. Graves and Sir Charles Stanford have linked this magnificent air with the memory of Owen Roe O'Neill. The Italian Galilei, writing about the middle of the sixteenth century, refers to the use of the music of pipes in war. He adds, "With it also they accompany their dead to the grave, making such mournful strains as to invite, nay, to almost force, bystanders to weep." Music of Ireland is luxuriant in songs of sorrow. In addition to the keens for the departed there are laments for the living also-songs of famine, execution songs, songs of exile, emigrant songs, laments for national calamities, like the battle of Armagh and the flight of the "Wild Geese." The laments for heroes slain, for cities stormed and garrisons massacred may fittingly be described in chapters on the part played by song in Ireland's his tory. A species of lament still heard is the " Execution Song." Dr. Joyce gives an air which he has often heard in Dublin set to tales of murder and sudden death. The verses, doggerel though they often are, acquire a grim horror from their subject. Here are a couple of verses taken from such chants and sung in the streets. These songs are commonly printed on a broadside, with a skull and crossbones, coffin or gallows by way of illustration. The verse, as Dr. Joyce points out, usually takes the form of a "Last Dying Speech." It was a cruel murder; the truth I now must own. "Twas Satan strongly tempted me, as we were both alone; Then with a heavy hatchet, I gave Connolly a fall, And I cut him up in pieces, which appeared the worst of all. The formula, "Come all ye," with which the second. quotation begins, has served as introduction to popular songs almost without number. The musician is a street singer and he is inviting the people to listen to him. Come all ye tender Christians; I hope you will draw near. A doleful lamentation I mean to let you hear; How a child of only ten years old did swear our lives away. May the Lord have mercy on our souls against the Judgment Day. A more beautiful class of lamentations are the songs of exile. Ireland to the Irishman is ever Holy Ireland. When a native of Connaught is compelled to forsake the old home, he makes a pilgrimage to the birthplace of St. Columba. A flagstone marks |