FOREWORD

ERIN'S bardic poems, ballads and folk-songs carry her story back to the Christian dawn and even earlier. They are history with the added charm of a personal note, a thrill of actuality, not to be found in annals and chronicles. They sing the hopes and fears of the people in epic moments of their national life. When we read the story of Clontarf, we sympathize in a faroff way with the issues there decided. But who among us feels the loss of Brian as did his friend Mac Liag, the poet? He wrote of the dead monarch as an aide de camp might have written of Washington, as Rudyard Kipling has written of Lord Roberts. This poetic narrative of battles fought and won is a golden commentary extending throughout the whole course of Irish history. In many cases the poets were participants of the scenes they described; for it was the bard's duty to accompany his prince on the field of battle and incite him to deeds of valor. The songs about Hugh O'Donnell and Patrick Sarsfield were sung by men whose fortunes were bound up with those of their leaders. Music was made to serve the selfsame end, and the twofold tradition is as vivid as it is intimate. This tradition enables us to appreciate the true inwardness of Irish history in a way that the tomes of the annalist utterly fail to do.

From the cradle to the grave the Irishman's life is set to music. It begins with the lullabies of infancy; keening ends it, when the spirit leaves the body. Work has its songs as well as play; there are lovesongs and dances, and never are the songs so beautiful as when the lover is poet. Devotion turns to song instinctively; so do joy and sorrow, longing and despair. Nothing so great, nothing so small but the Irishman may put it into verse and enrich it with melody.

In telling this story the attempt is made to place in relief everything that throws light on the character of the Gael—his manner of life, his ideals, his attitude toward the supernatural. The spirit in which the task is undertaken is frankly Irish. No writer taking the traditional English view of dominant races and subject peoples could do it justice. For ages England has tried to make Ireland English-English in custom, English in speech, English in religion. The experiment has lasted seven centuries; yet the Irish are almost as Gaelic to-day as ever. More than that, they have made Irishmen of the invaders themselves. Norman barons, Elizabethan adventurers, Stuart "Undertakers," Cromwellian Ironsides, all have come under the spell. If it had not been for difference in religion, Ireland would have presented a united front to England, and Erin's right to govern herself could not have been withheld. When, therefore, reference is made to persecution, the intention is not to establish invidious distinctions, but to draw attention to the alien spirit of English rule.

It was the words of an Irish servant girl that set the writer thinking on this subject. He was a boy then. It was the time of disturbances and coercion acts. He asked the girl what it was the Irish people wanted. "They want to be free," she answered. Every English lad is brought up to believe that England is the home of liberty and that, where the Union Jack flies, slavery cannot exist. Yet here was an Irish girl, palpably sincere, who said Ireland was not free. Her words lay in the writer's heart, germinated and bore fruit in the belief in Ireland for the Irish. There is nothing in this attitude of mind disloyal to England's best self; for true love of fatherland cannot rest on the slavery of others.

The more the songs of Ireland are understoodthe story they tell, the conditions which gave them birth, the nature of Gaelic music and the manner of its preservation-the better the Irish genius will be appreciated, and from appreciation springs sympathy, which is the mother of helpful kindliness.

The plan of the work is simple. In the opening chapter it is shown how music and song formed an organic part of the most ancient Irish civilization-a civilization which long antedates the Anglo-Norman invasion of the twelfth century. It is then explained how this tradition was kept alive through long ages by the bards, minstrels and harpers. Chapter three dwells on the extraordinary fact of the preservation of Irish music independent of any written record. The nature of Irish music is the theme of chapter four, and a description follows of the part played by

song in the daily life of the people. Fairy mythology and spirit lore and the tales of the Red Branch and the Fianna lead naturally to a discussion of the more strictly historic aspect of Irish song. The last four chapters are practically a history in verse and melody of the struggle of the Irish with the stranger from the field of Clontarf to the "Dawning of the Day" of relative freedom.

The writer's thanks are due to Dr. Patrick W. Joyce and Dr. Douglas Hyde for their kindly interest and the permission to use musical and poetic examples. Obligation to Dr. George Sigerson's "Bards of the Gael and Gall," to the poems of Mr. Arthur Perceval Graves and Mr. William Butler Yeats is also gladly acknowledged.