forgotten the poets and ballad singers. They were the " newsmen and censors of their time a large and various class, ranging from the accomplished gentleman, who, like Fitzgerald, paraphrased Horace, or like McDonald, of Claragh, translated Homer into Gaelic, down to the poor performer and worse versifier who earned his "bit and sup" by nightly concerts in the village tavern. Chanting a tongue strange to their oppressors, but not beyond the chance of detection, they threw all their political poems into an allegorical form. At one time "the pretender" was "a blackbird," pining in a foreign cage, and sorely troubled, though waited on by lords and ladies; at another, "a little dark man;" sometimes Ireland, personified as a fairy, appeared to the poet, wailing and refusing to be comforted, while her beloved was far away: "My priests are banished, my warriors wear And my child, my son, my beloved heir, In other moods, a girl sings of her banished lover, and declares her belief that he will return from France to vindicate her cause against cruel and oppressive relatives; or the poet addresses his country in the guise of a dear mistress, assuring her of his constancy, and foretelling happier days to come: "Rise up, my boy! make ready My horse, for I forth would ride To follow the modest damsel That dwells on the green hill's side; O, she's sweeter to me, ten times over, Another bard declares his constancy still more significantly: "I'll leave my people, both friend and foe; But from you, sweetheart, O, never! O, no! * Mangan's Trans. in Duffy's Ballad Poetry of Ireland. Dublin, 1846. More homely, but not less popular, was he who typified pastoral Ireland in a dun cow, "with a face like a rose, and a dewlap of snow." To her the Irish farmer tells his griefs without restraint. He questions her as to her old friends, and answers in the same stanza, "Ah, Drimin Dhu deelish, a pride of the flow; * Ah, where are your folks -are they living, or no? Leaving them, he speaks of himself, and declares :"But if I could get sight of the crown on his brow, By night and day travelling, to London I'd go; Till I'd beat on the kettle drums, Drimin Dhu, O!” Not content with loving allegories, the house of Hanover and their chief partisans were satirized under various fanciful symbols, all of which, of course, a gesture or a sign made perfectly intelligible to the audience, who had the pieces hot from the composer's lips, in a speech common to both. The most notable of the Jacobite bards were Carolan, (born in Meath in 1670, died in 1731,) McDonnell, of Claragh, in Cork, (born in 1691, died 1754,) O'Sullivan, of Kerry, (born about the beginning of the eighteenth century, died 1784.) Carolan excelled as a musician more than as a poet, while McDonnell and O'Sullivan possessed the true poetic fire, and knew how to cultivate and subject it to the rules of art. A vast procession, bearing laurels, or something very like laurel, follows behind. these masters of Irish song. The number it is impossible to count, or the precise merit of each to distinguish. We can only estimate their merit from the scanty translations that have been made, and their numbers from the accounts of the two great "bardic sessions," periodically held at Charleville, in Cork, and Burrin, in Limerick. At these assemblies, between one and two hundred composers of words, or airs, attended annually, till within ten years of the end of the century. The Ulster session held at Belfast, in 1792, numbered threescore. *Ferguson's Trans. McCarthy's Book of Irish Ballads. This species of Jacobite organization, while very hard to be got at by the new dynasty, was of very little avail to the old. It served rather to keep alive than to increase or direct the expectation of change. Though irritating in detail to "the Brunswickers," it was powerless in the aggregate. It had in fact no aggregate. Yet its history illustrates a truth that we have often perceived evidences of elsewhere, which is, that those who administer and those who oppose a government are equally apt to overrate each other's power. The governors, being within the edifice, see where it is vulnerable, and become nervously anxious; the assailants, looking at that imposing outside, are often overawed by an appearance of strength, which is only an appearance. Thus, in 1715, when the partisans of James "the Third" partially rose in arms at Preston and in Scotland, all the registered priests in Ireland were ordered to be arrested and transported beyond seas; all the chapels, or mass houses," were ordered to be shut up, though there was not the least symptom of insurrection at the time. 66 It was the custom once to urge, as very creditable to 'Irish loyalty," that our Jacobites did not rise en masse, or at least attempt a diversion, in 1715. The fact seems to be, that they were unable to rise. Without chiefs, or organization, or arms, what could they do but wait for events, as they did? The Rapparees were dying out, and all the candidates for military life had sailed away. as wild geese. A few Irish officers did join in the Scottish rising of 1715, but they were chiefly from the continent. Some of them, like Chevalier Wogan, suffered imprisonment, were liberated, and returned to foreign service. The house of Brunswick was placed on the throne, in accordance with the laws regulating "the Protestant succession." The first of them George I., the son of the electress Sophia, granddaughter to James I., was bred a Catholic, but apostatized in view of the English throne. He stood fourth in descent from the first Stuart, who ruled over the three kingdoms, and consequently combined in his own person the traditions and the blood 212 PROTESTANT REFORMATION IN IRELAND. of all the sovereigns since the conquest. But this he had only maternally and with much mixture, while hard by, in France, lived the immediate heir of the line. As between titles, the Stuarts had the best of it; but the Guelphs, becoming Protestants, could command all the party created and enriched by "the reformation," and disciplined by "the revolution:" having that party, success was easy. It was, at Queen Anne's death, a very doubtful matter, for a month, which scale would sink or rise. Had the legitimists acted promptly, the day was theirs. Had Ormond taken Arbuthnot's counsel, and proclaimed King James in London streets, the Stuarts might have reigned again. But Anne died suddenly, and without a will; the noble Jacobites hesitated; the people had no power; the whigs were resolute, and the crown of England passed to a third-rate German family. James "the Third" was not a person to supply the want of nerve in his adherents. Something of a libertine, and a good deal of a glutton, he had little of the heroic in him. He allowed the first elector to take his throne without any great resistance. After this he mar ried the granddaughter of Sobieski, the famous king of Poland, and rejoiced over the heirs for whom he had made no provision. In 1720, Charles Edward was born, and in 1725, Henry Benedict, afterwards "Cardinal York." The former dashed the Sobieski with the Stuart blood, and, in one of the most romantic expeditions ever undertaken, displayed some strokes of courage and policy worthy of the best of his ancestors. |