CHAPTER III

HOW THE SONGS CAME DOWN TO US

THE bards and musicians form individual strands in the tradition which links us with the Celtic past. Another strand is the people themselves-the common people, the peasantry. Singers from pure love, musicians untaught by any teacher save God, men and women, from childhood to age, bore their part in preserving Ireland's birthright of song.

A truly remarkable circumstance about this tradition is the fact that until recent times it was independent of written record. The Irishman did not know what it was not to trust to his memory; to this day the Irish piper rarely makes use of notes; as for the people at large, they sang the old tunes because they could not remember the time when they did not know them. A mother crooned their infancy with lullabies; the sound of the spinning song was as familiar to them as the glow of the peat on the hearth. Without conscious effort, they learned a number of songs which became part of their being, like the language they spoke. Strains of gladness and sorrow, tunes wedded to the tasks of daily life, left an indelible impress on the mind. It is in facts like these that we must seek an explanation of the survival of Irish music.

It may be objected that, though such a tradition will hold good for a number of generations, it does

not furnish sufficient grounds for belief in the high antiquity attributed to many examples of Irish melody. In our slavish regard for the written word, we are apt to forget the tenacity of the human memory. We need a Coleridge to remind us that a fact once apprehended by the human mind is retained for ever. If we forget, it is not because the record has been destroyed, but because the throng of impressions prevents its coming to the surface. Touch the right note of suggestion and it will emerge anew. But the life of the Irish peasant was simpler than the life we lead to-day. The chambers of the memory had fewer guests and they were better entertained. In the whirl of modern existence, one impression crowds upon another so quickly that our mind is a blur, rather than a succession of easily recoverable images. If it be true, as we are told, that the liturgies of the East were handed down orally, from master to novice, for hundreds of years, and thus preserved in their original purity, there can be no difficulty in believing in the perpetuation of Irish music, independent of any written record. music, especially when it is associated with words, is infinitely easier to remember than liturgical

sentences.

For

The Irish musician was not deemed competent unless he knew his music as perfectly as the storytellers knew the tales of Deirdre and Finn Mac Cool. That is the reason why no use was made of notation. If it had been thought necessary to write down the old tunes, the Irish people could easily have done

it-none better than they. People sometimes rush to the conclusion that, because the old melodies were not recorded, the Irish must have been ignorant of notation. An appeal to history will quickly dismiss this fallacy. The monasteries of St. Gall and Ratisbon, renowned from the beginning for the cultivation of the Gregorian chant, were founded by Irishmen. Between these great centers of musical learning and Ireland there was continual intercourse. It is obvious, therefore, that, if the Irish had chosen to write down their melodies, instead of leaving them to the safeguarding of popular remembrance, they could have done so. Their own priests, at home, were thoroughly conversant with the Gregorian notation and could easily have used it for secular purposes as it was used in other countries. But it never occurred to them to do so. The Irish cherished their songs so dearly that artificial aids to memory would have struck them as a needless encumbrance. The monstrous idea that the old tunes could die only dawned on the Celtic mind in an age of decadence. Even persecution was powerless to suppress them, for the persecutors themselves came under their spell. A more dangerous enemy was the gradual Anglicization of the people. The spirit which made people whip their children for talking Irish was little likely to breed affection for Irish songs. But the deadliest enemy of all was famine. The calamities of the years 1845-6 did more to destroy Ireland's music than either the intolerance of the Saxon or the supineness of the Celt. The old folks, those natural depositaries of tradition and lovers of the

ancestral song, died off in thousands, and the young people, growing up in a land blasted by misfortune, had nobody to teach them the ancient lore of the race. Many fled to America, and, if their children to-day are ignorant of Irish music and poetry, it must be written down, not as a fault, but as a misfortune. Fault or misfortune, the present generation ought to remedy the defect.

The famine would have dealt Irish music its death blow had it not been for the patriotism of a few noble-minded men. These men were the collectors and recorders of Irish songs and dances. Burke Thumoth, who published a book of Irish airs as far back as 1720, was the pioneer in this truly Irish undertaking and he had one or two imitators in a small way in the same generation. But the systematic work of collecting the old music really began with Edward Bunting, who, between the years 1796 and 1840, published three volumes of Irish tunes, the majority of them taken down from the playing of the last sad remnant of the Irish harpers. Bunting, enthusiast though he was, had little science, and the crowning achievement of Irish song collecting was done by that great Celticist, Dr. George Petrie, one of the brightest names in the annals of Irish art and letters, the worthy brother in antiquarian research of Eugene O'Curry. From boyhood days the collecting of the old tunes was Petrie's passion. Throughout his long life of usefulness, whenever he heard an Irish melody which was unfamiliar to him, he noted it down. His holidays he spent now in one province, now in another,

But

penetrating into little frequented parts of the country, sometimes with O'Curry for companion, always with his faithful notebook and his beloved violin.

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When we feel grateful to Thomas Moore for "The Meeting of the Waters," we also owe thanks to George Petrie, who took down the air from the singing of an old peasant woman in Sligo and thus found the poet his inspiration. To Petrie melody was that divine essence without which music is as a soulless body" and, of all national airs, he considered those of Erin the most beautiful. Yet, with the modesty of a true scholar, he belittled his work as a collector, called it a hobby, a recreation, whereas, in reality, it was the life work of a man whose spirit was "finely touched" to music and destined to do a work for Erin worthy to rank with the achievements of her greatest warriors and sages. He took almost infinite pains to secure a correct record of the songs he noted down. Though not a musical pedagogue and, therefore, liable to unessential errors which a precisian would not fall into, Petrie had the greater gifts of a fine ear and a keen sense of rhythm. Added to this he possessed the crowning virtue of a philosophic conception of the way in which a collector of folk-songs should do his work. He never fell into the sin of which Moore and his musical collaborator, Sir Thomas Stevenson, were so often guilty: he never modified an ancient melody to suit modish ideas of musical beauty. His honesty was invincible; he set down what he heard with the exactitude of an archaeologist.