The third part, corroborating the first theme and rounding the song to a perfect close, both in verse and melody, has the two lines:

By the blue skies that sparkle

Through that soft branching screen.

It is not till the last three measures that the ternary character of "Uileacan dubh O" (Ex. 14) is established. But the return at that juncture to the concluding and most beautiful part of the principal theme is at once grateful to the ear and satisfying to the intelligence. In " The Coulin " (Ex. 1) the section of contrast-we should call it the subordinate theme, if the composition were a sonata-is only four bars long. But it fulfills its office perfectly. The change from the long-drawn-out elegiac notes to a rhythm of alternate long and short notes suggestive of the dance, is striking and beautiful. Even this brief subordinate theme closes with à glance at the principal theme.

This same air of "The Coulin" affords a good example of the vine-like elegance of melodies molded by Celtic rhythm. The old musicians were scrupulously obedient to the laws of metre; but they moved so easily in their self-imposed bonds that, in airs like the "Lament for Owen Roe O'Neil" (Ex. 39) and "The Twisting of the Rope" they seem almost to have emancipated themselves from the limitations of measured music.

Here and there in the writings of authors up to the twelfth century we find references to Irish music

which suggest that harmony-then in its crude beginnings on the continent of Europe-was more advanced in Ireland. Mr. Grattan Flood is inclined to believe that the words "Modulabiliter decantare " in St. Adamnan's life of St. Patrick refer to the singing of hymns in counterpoint by Irish monks. About the year 653 St. Gertrude of Brabant sent over to Ireland for St. Foilian and St. Ultan to come to teach her nuns of the abbey of Nivelle the art of psalmody. She would hardly have done this if music had been cultivated to as high a pitch in her own country or in Germany. John Scotus Erigena, the famous Irish schoolman, who died in 875, is the first author to refer to the primitive form of harmony known as organum. Northumbria, famous above the rest of England for the skill of its inhabitants in singing in parts, owed Christianity to St. Aidan and his Irish missionaries, and we have seen that music was an essential part of Celtic Christianity from the earliest times. Taken separately, these facts may seem very slim testimony upon which to base any claims on behalf of the Irish to a superior knowledge of harmony. Cumulatively, however, they form a body of evidence that cannot be disregarded. If the proof of the Celtic origin of harmony is slight, that of other European peoples is slighter still. At the same time, it would be idle to make an exclusive claim on behalf of any race to the discovery of either harmony or musical form. It is in the highest degree probable that crude harmonies were sung and played by ancient peoples long

before the Christian era. On behalf of the Irish, however, we may with a modest assurance claim that they seem to have shown a greater natural aptitude than any other people for the practice of form and harmony.

Two facts in the popular lore of the subject support this view. One is the use, time out of mind, by the Irish pipers, of a primitive kind of harmony. The Scotch pipes, on the contrary, were purely a melody instrument. The other fact is the survival of an air with a traditional undersong, or cronan. This air is the famous "Ballinderry," which was given to Bunting by Dr. Crawford of Lisburn. Ex. 17. Ballinderry.

The air is linked by Arthur Perceval Graves with a young woman's lament for her lover at sea.

While she sings the upper part, the neighbors, gathered around, commiserate her by singing a softly murmured Ochone! Ochone-(alas! alas!) intoning the words on four notes, which are again and again repeated and, at the close, sung in unison by both soloist and chorus. This is an authentic example of a folk-song bass, and a remarkable thing about it is its form, which is that of the "ground," or fixed bass, much favored by Henry Purcell and carried to perfection by John Sebastian Bach. With these four regularly recurrent notes the peasant singers of Ireland, combining them with the soprano melody, made the two principal chords in music, dominant and tonic, the pillars on which has been erected the towering superstructure of modern harmony. When these primitive musicians had shown the way all the world might follow.

CHAPTER V

SONGS OF JOY AND SORROW

THE life of the Irishman has been set to music from the cradle to the grave. His earliest recollections are the lullabies with which his mother crooned him to sleep, ditties of the old folks in the chimney corner, songs the women sang while they spun the flax. In boyhood his feet began to move to jigs and reels. Work had its music likewise, and love awakened tender strains of its own. For sterner moods there were songs of freedom, and legend lived in airs of Deirdre and Finn Mac Cool. Sorrow recalled laments and death evoked the piercing note of the keen. The Irishman has songs for every age, every mood, every state of life.

As love is the beginning of all things, with lovesongs we may best begin a chapter on the Irish music of daily life. Erin's most beautiful love-songs echo the passion of the peasant muse. Poets are amorists rather than lovers; for them the conceit is commonly more than the sentiment. But when the peasant sings of love, he does so because it has made his life a poem. He is tormented by a delicious pain and he seeks relief in song. By and by the singer is forgotten; but the song lives on. For these songs have a simplicity, an earnestness, as fine as the passion that inspired them.