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Dear head of my darling,

How gory and pale These aged eyes saw thee,

High spiked on their jail! That cheek in the summer sun Ne'er shall grow warm;

Nor that eye e'er catch light,

But the flash of the storm!

A curse, blessed ocean,

Is on thy green water,
From the haven of Cork,
To Ivera of slaughter;
Since thy billows were dyed

With the red wounds of fear

Of Muiertach Oge,

Our O'Sullivan O'Beare!

'N this

IN

IRISH BALLADRY

paper and the preceding one I have dealt with a group of Irish poets whose lives offer a pathetic interest from resembling causes, and who were filled with that spirit which has given birth to an unique literature. But you are not to think that even with these, "high sons of the lyre" though they be, we have done more than to open the book of Irish balladry. I shall make bold to pronounce that ballad literature the finest in the world. The dominant note is one of lament for the lost liberty of Erin. Often a single deathless song is all that we have of the poet. Scattered over a period of about three hundred years, born of an oppression without parallel and a resistance without precedent, of a struggle ever renewed and ever defeated, this ballad literature of Ireland, of the Irish soil and

of the Irish heart, is the priceless treasure of a people that has lost everything beside. No literature in the world has more vitality than this to say that it is written in blood and tears, is to speak without metaphor. Ireland may well rejoice her sad heart with this glorious possession-the testament of her martyrs, the pledge of her fealty, the witness of her undying hope.

It has been finely said that a people who, though subjugated, still cling to their native language, hold as it were the key to their prison. The bitter destiny of the Irish race has willed it to lose in great part this most precious inheritance; yet, out of a calamity so profound, has the spirit of this people wrested an unique triumph. For of the conqueror's tongue it has forged a mighty weapon that has prevailed more than armies and fleets; out of his alien speech it has raised a witness to confound him. In the magic legend, as we read, the enchanted horn, object of all men's desire, was awarded only to those of

pure heart and noble purpose. So have the Irish poets taken the oppressor's language as worthier of it than he, and they have breathed into it the genius of their race, and they have built from it a literature whose glory far outshines his barren conquest.

Strange is the destiny of the Celt! Conquered, he is yet conquering by grace of that native genius which could never bow to the law of subjugation; by virtue of that renascent spirit which has survived the deadliest blows of national misfortune. "You must not laugh at us Celts," said our great kinsman Renan. "We shall never build a Parthenon, for we have not the marble; but we are skilled in reading the heart and soul. We bury our hands in the entrails of a man and withdraw them full of the secrets of infinity."

This precious blue flower of Irish poesy is not a blossom that blows but once in a hundred years. True, it has its periods of vigour and splendour, and again its seasons of apparent decline. Through all it lives, as a thing

that the finger of God has touched with immortal life. Then one day, with a stirring at the heart, the secret of its life is suddenly revealed in fruitage and flower, as our own poet has conceived:

Unchilled by the rain and unwaked by the wind,
The lily lies sleeping thro' Winter's cold hour,
Till Spring's light touch her fetters unbind,

And daylight and liberty bless the young flower.

For the sap is always at the root. And in our late day, when it is sometimes charged that Irishmen have begun to renounce their age-long aspiration; when it is perhaps true. that they have less patience than of yore with a literature that is effective chiefly for regret, -even now have we not seen the wondrous miracle appointed to this ever-faithful race? The winter is over once more, the bare branch again puts forth green leaves, and the dewy Irish heaven is filled with the glory of song!

Ah, dear kinsfolk of that ever faithful yet

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