Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry Part 25

In strong and firm tunes, having a syllable for every note is a perfection, though one hard to be attained without harshness, from the crowd of consonants in English. With soft tunes, on the other hand, it is commonly better to have in most lines two or more light notes to one syllable, so that the words may be dwelt on and softly sounded; but where and how must be determined by the taste of the writer.

The sound of the air will always show the current of thought, its pauses and changes; and a nice attention and bold sympathy with these properties of a tune is necessary to lyrical success.

A great advantage, too, of writing for existing airs is the variety of metres thus gained, and the naturally greater variety of thought and expression thus suggested.

We have spoken, in reference to Ballads, of the use of Choruses and Burdens, and said that we thought there were some Ballads which were injured by them; but all songs, save (perhaps) those of desperate sorrow, gain by burden lines and choruses. They are almost universal in the Native Irish and Lowland Scotch. Beranger has employed them in most of his songs, and Moore in many of his. A chorus should, of course, contain the very spirit of the song--bounding, if it be gay; fierce, if it be bold; doting, if it loves. Merely repeating one verse between, or at the head or tail of another, is not putting a chorus; it must be _the_ verse which beats the best on your ear, and has the most echo in your heart. So, too, of burdens; they are not made merely by bringing in the same words in like places. They must be marked words forcibly brought in.

Irish choruses have often a glorious effect in English songs, nor need anyone familiar with the peasantry, or with Edward O'Reilly's Irish Writers, published as the first part of the _Transactions of the Iberno-Celtic Society_ be at any loss for them.

These are some of the minutiae of song-writing, which we note for the consideration of our young writers, leaving them to add to or modify these, according to their observation.

Of course, different men and different moods will produce various cla.s.ses of songs. We shall have places for all, Songs for the Street and Field require simple words, bold, strong imagery, plain, deep pa.s.sions (love, patriotism, conciliation, glory, indignation, resolve), daring humour, broad narrative, highest morals. In songs for the wealthier cla.s.ses, greater subtlety, remoter allusion, less obvious idiom and construction, will be tolerable, though in all cases we think simplicity and heartiness needful to the perfect success of a song.

If men able to write will fling themselves gallantly and faithfully on the work we have here plotted for them, we shall soon have Fair and Theatre, Concert and Drawing-room, Road and Shop, echoing with Songs bringing home Love, Courage, and Patriotism to every heart.

--------------------------------------------------------------- [49] This essay, together with another of less value, was reprinted from _The Nation_ by M. J. Barry as an introduction to his "Songs of Ireland" 1845. [Ed.]

INFLUENCES OF EDUCATION.

"Educate, that you may be free." We are most anxious to get the quiet, strong-minded People who are scattered through the country to see the force of this great truth; and we therefore ask them to listen soberly to us for a few minutes, and when they have done to think and talk again and again over what we say.

If Ireland had all the elements of a nation, she might, and surely would, at once a.s.sume the forms of one, and proclaim her independence.

Wherein does she now differ from Prussia? She has a strong and compact territory, girt by the sea; Prussia's lands are open and flat, and flung loosely through Europe, without mountain or river, breed or tongue, to bound them. Ireland has a military population equal to the recruitment of, and a produce able to pay, a first-rate army. Her harbours, her soil, and her fisheries are not surpa.s.sed in Europe.

Wherein, we ask again, does Ireland now differ from Prussia? Why can Prussia wave her flag among the proudest in Europe, while Ireland is a farm?

It is not in the name of a kingdom, nor in the formalities of independence. We could a.s.sume them to-morrow--we could a.s.sume them with better warrants from history and nature than Prussia holds; but the result of such a.s.sumption would perchance be a miserable defeat.

The difference is in Knowledge. Were the offices of Prussia abolished to-morrow--her colleges and schools levelled--her troops disarmed and disbanded, she would within six months regain her whole civil and military inst.i.tutions. Ireland has been struggling for years, and may have to struggle many more, to acquire liberty to form inst.i.tutions.

Whence is the difference? Knowledge!

The Prussians could, at a week's notice, have their central offices at full work in any village in the kingdom, so exactly known are their statistics, and so general is official skill. Minds make administration--all the desks, and ledgers, and powers of Downing Street or the Castle would be handed in vain to the ignorants of ---- any untaught district in Ireland. The Prussians could open their collegiate cla.s.ses and their professional and elementary schools as fast as the order therefor, from any authority recognised by the People, reached town after town--we can hardly in ten years get a few schools open for our people, craving for knowledge as they are. The Prussians could re-arm their glorious militia in a month, and re-organise it in three days; for the mechanical arts are very generally known, military science is familiar to most of the wealthier men, discipline and a soldier's skill are universal. If we had been offered arms to defend Ireland by Lord Heytesbury, as the Volunteers were by Lord Buckinghams.h.i.+re, we would have had to seek for officers and drill-sergeants--though probably we could more rapidly advance in arms than anything else, from the military taste and aptness for war of the Irish People.

Would it not be better for us to be like the Prussians than as we are--better to have religious squabbles unknown, education universal, the People fed, and clad, and housed, and independent as becomes men; the army patriotic and strong; the public offices ably administered; the nation honoured and powerful? Are not these to be desired and sought by Protestant and Catholic? Are not these things _to be done_, if we are good and brave men? And is it not _plain_, from what we have said, that the reason for our not being all that Prussia is, and something more, is ignorance--want of civil and military and general knowledge amongst all cla.s.ses?

This ignorance has not been our fault, but our misfortune. It was the interest of our ruler to keep us ignorant, that we might be weak; and she did so--first by laws, prohibiting education; then by refusing any provision for it; next, by perverting it into an engine of bigotry; and now, by giving it in a stunted, partial, anti-national way. Practice is the great teacher, and the possession of independence is the natural and best way for a People to learn all that pertains to freedom and happiness. Our greatest voluntary efforts, aided by the amplest provincial inst.i.tutions, would teach us less in a century than we would learn in five years of Liberty.

In insisting on education we do not argue against the value of _immediate independence_. _That would be our best teacher._ An Irish Government and a national ambition would be to our minds as soft rains and rich sun to a growing crop. But we insist on education for the People, whether we get it from the Government or give it to themselves as a round-about, and yet the only, means of getting strength enough to gain freedom.

Do our readers understand this? Is what we have said _clear_ to _you_, reader!--whether you are a shopkeeper or a lawyer, a farmer or a doctor? If not, read it over again, for it is your own fault if it be not clear. If you now know our meaning, you must feel that it is your duty to your family and to yourself, to your country and to G.o.d, to _act_ upon it, to go and remove some of that ignorance which makes you and your neighbours weak, and therefore makes Ireland a poor province.

All of us have much to learn, but some of us have much to teach.

To those who, from superior energy and ability, can teach the People, we now address ourselves.

We have often before and shall often again repeat, that the majority of our population can neither read nor write, and therefore that from the small minority must come those fitted to be of any civil or military use beyond the lowest rank. The People may be and are honest, brave, and intelligent; but a man could as well dig with his hands as govern, or teach, or lead without the elements of Knowledge.

This however, is a defect which time and the National Schools must cure; and the duty of the cla.s.s to which we speak is to urge the establishment of such Schools, the attendance of the children at them, and occasionally to observe and report, either directly or through the Press, whether the admirable rules of the Board are attended to. In most cases, too, the expenditure of a pound-note and a little time and advice would give the children of a school that instruction in national history and in statistics so shamefully omitted by the Board. Reader!

will you do this?

Then of the three hundred Repeal Reading-rooms we know that some, and fear that many, are ill-managed, have few or no books, and are mere gossiping-rooms. Such a room is useless; such a room is a disgrace to its members and their educated neighbours. The expense having been gone to of getting a room, it only remains for the members to establish fixed rules, and they will be supplied with the a.s.sociation Reports (political reading enough for them), and it will be the plain duty of the Repeal Wardens to bring to such a room the newspapers supplied by the a.s.sociation. If such a body continue and give proofs of being in earnest, the Repeal a.s.sociation will aid it by gifts of books, maps, etc., and thus a library, the centre of knowledge and nursery of useful and strong minds, will be made in that district. So miserably off is the country for books, that we have it before us on some authority that there are _ten counties in Ireland without a single book-seller in them_. We blush for the fact; it is a disgrace to us; but we must have no lying or flinching. There is the hard fact; let us face it like men who are able for a difficulty--not as children putting their heads under the clothes when there is danger. Reader! cannot you do something to remedy this great, this disabling misery of Ireland? Will not you _now_ try to get up a Repeal Reading-room, and when one is established get for it good rules, books from the a.s.sociation, and make it a centre of thought and power?

These are but some of the ways in which such service can be done by the more for the less educated. They have other duties often pointed out by us. They can sustain and advance the different societies for promoting agriculture, manufactures, art, and literature in Dublin and the country. They can set on foot and guide the establishment of Temperance Bands, and Mechanics' Inst.i.tutes, and Mutual Instruction Societies.

They can give advice and facilities for improvement to young men of promise; and they can make their circles studious, refined, and ambitious, instead of being, like too many in Ireland, ignorant, coa.r.s.e, and lazy. The cheapness of books is now such that even Irish poverty is no excuse for Irish ignorance--that ignorance which prostrates us before England. We must help ourselves, and therefore we must educate ourselves.

FOREIGN TRAVEL.

We lately strove to induce our wealthier countrymen to explore Ireland before they left her sh.o.r.es in search of the beautiful and curious. We bid the economist search our towns and farms, our decayed manufactures, and improving tillage. Waving our s.h.i.+llelagh, we shouted the cragsman to Glenmalure and Carn Tual, and Achill and Slieve League. Ma.n.u.script in hand, we pointed the antiquary to the hundred abbeys of North Munster, the castles of the Pale, the palaces and sepulchres of Dunalin, Aileach, Rath Croghan, and Loughcrew, and we whispered to our countrywomen that the sun rose grandly on Adragool, that the moon was soft on Lough Erne ("The Rural Venice"), and that the Nore and Blackwater ran by castled crags like their sweet voices over old songs.

But there are some who had not waited for our call, but had dutifully grown up amid the sights and sounds of Ireland, and knew the yellow fields of Tipperary, and the crash of Moher's wave, and the basalt barriers of Antrim, and the moan or frown of Wexford over the graves of '98, and there are others not yet sufficiently educated to prize home excellence. To such, then, and to all our brethren and sisters going abroad, we have to say a friendly word.

We shall presume them to have visited London, Woolwich, the factories of Lancas.h.i.+re and Warwick, and to have seen the c.u.mberland lakes, and therefore to have seen all worth seeing in England, and that they are bound for somewhere else. For a pedestrian not rich there is Wales--the soft vales of the far North and South Clwyd, and the Wye and Llanrwst, and the central mountain groups of Snowdon, and still finer of Cader Idris. But if he go there we pray him not to return without having heard and, so far as he could, noted down a few airs from the harp and cruit, collected specimens of the plants and minerals of Wales for the museum (existing or to be) of his native town, studied the statistics of their great iron works or their little home-weaving; nor, if he has had the sense and spirit to take a Welsh and an Irish vocabulary, without some observations on the disputed a.n.a.logy of the two languages, and how far it exists in general terms, as it certainly does in names of places. By the way, we warn him that he will know little of the peasantry, and come home in the dark about Rebecca, unless he can speak Welsh. The Welsh have been truer to their language than we were to ours; their clergy ministered in it; their people refused their tongues to the Saxon as if 'twere poison; and even their n.o.bles, though tempted by England, welcomed the bard who lamented the defeat of Rhuddlan, and gloried in the frequent triumphs of Glendower.

But let us rather cla.s.sify pursuits than countries.

We want the Irish who go abroad to bring something back besides the weary tale of the Louvre and Munich, and the cliffs of the Rhine, and the soft airs of Italy. We have heard of a patriot adventurer who carried a handful of his native soil through the world. We want our friends to carry a purpose for Ireland in their hearts, to study other lands wisely, and to bring back all knowledge for the sustenance and decoration of their dear home.

How pleasantly and profitably for the traveller this can be done. There is no taste but may be interested, no capacity but can be matched, no country but can be made tributary to our own. The historian, the linguist, the farmer, the economist, the musician, the statesman, and the man of science can equally augment their pleasure and make it minister to Ireland.

Is a man curious upon our language? He can (not unread in Neilson, nor unaccompanied by O'Reilly's Dictionary) trace how far the Celtic words mixed in the cla.s.sical French, or in the patois of Bretagne or Gascony, coincide with the Irish; he can search in the mountains of North Spain, whether in proper names or country words there be any a.n.a.logy to the Gaelic of the opposite coast of Ireland.

The proper names are the most permanent, and if there be any truth in Sir William Betham's theories, the names of many a hill and stream in Tuscany, North Africa, and Syria ought to be traceable to an Irish root. Nor need this language-search be limited to the south. Beginning at the Isle of Man, up by c.u.mberland (the kingdom of Strath Clyde), through Scotland, Denmark, Norway, to Ireland, the constant intercourse in trade and war with Ireland, and in many instances the early occupation by a Celtic race, must have left indelible marks in the local names, if not the traditions, of the country. To the tourist in France we particularly recommend a close study of the _History of the Gauls_, by Amadeus Thierry.

The student of our ecclesiastical history, whether he hold with Dr.

Smiles that the Irish Church was independent, or with Dr. Miley, that it paid allegiance to Rome, may delight in following the tracks of the Irish saints, from Iona of the Culdees to Luxieu and Boia (founded by Columba.n.u.s), and St. Gall, founded by an Irishman of that name. Rumold can be heard of in Mechlin, Albhuin in Saxony, Kilian in Bavaria, Fursey in Peronne, and in far Tarentum the traveller will find more than one trace of the reformer of that city--the Irishman, St.

Cathaldus. We cannot suppose that any man will stray from Stackallen, or Maynooth at least, without keeping this purpose in mind, nor would it misbecome a divine from that Trinity College of which Ussher was a first Fellow.

Our military history could also receive much ill.u.s.tration from Irish travellers going with some previous knowledge and studying the traditions and ground, and using the libraries in the neighbourhood of those places where Irishmen fought. Not to go back to the Irish who (if we believe O'Halloran) stormed the Roman Capital as the allies of Brennus of Gaul, nor insisting upon too minute a search for that Alpine valley where, says MacGeoghegan, they still have a tradition of Dathy's death by lightning, there are plenty of places worth investigating in connection with Irish military history. In Scotland, for example, 'twere worth while tracking the march of Alaster MacDomhnall and his 1,500 Antrim men from their first landing at Ardnamurchan through Tippermiur, Aberdeen, Fivy, Inverlochy, and Aulderne, to Kilsyth--victories, won by Irish soldiers and chiefs, given to them by tradition, as even Scott admits, though he tries to displace its value for Montrose's sake, and given to them by the highest cotemporary authorities--such as the Ormond papers.

Then there is the Irish Brigade. From Almanza to Fontenoy, from Ramillies to Cremona, we have the names of their achievements, but the register of them is in the libraries and war offices and private papers of France, and Spain, and Austria, and Savoy. A set of visits to Irish battle-fields abroad, ill.u.s.trated from the ma.n.u.scripts of Paris, Vienna, and Madrid, would be a welcomer book than the reiterated a.s.surances that the Rhone was rapid, the Alps high, and Florence rich in sculpture, wherewith we have been dinned.

We have no lives of our most ill.u.s.trious Irish generals in foreign services--Marshal Brown, the Lacys, Montgomery of Donegal, the rival of Was.h.i.+ngton; and yet the materials must exist in the offices and libraries of Austria, Russia, and America.

Talking of libraries, there is one labour in particular we wish our countrymen to undertake. The constant emigration of the princes, n.o.bles, and ecclesiastics of Ireland, from the Reformation downwards, scattered through the Continent many of our choicest collections. The ma.n.u.scripts from these have been dispersed by gift and sale among hundreds of foreign libraries. The Escurial, Vienna, Rome, Paris, and Copenhagen are said to be particularly rich in them, and it cannot be doubted that in every considerable library (religious, official, or private) on the Continent some MSS. valuable to Ireland would be found.

In many cases these could be purchased, in some copied, in all listed.

The last is the most practical and essential labour. It would check and guide our inquiries now, and would prepare for the better day, when we can negotiate the restoration of our old muniments from the governments of Europe.

A study of the monuments and museums throughout France, Spain, Italy, and Scandinavia, in reference to the forts, tombs, altars, and weapons of ancient Ireland, would make a summer pleasant and profitable.