ON THE DRUIDICAL CHANTS PRESERVED IN THE CHORUSES OF POPULAR SONGS IN ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, IRELAND, AND FRANCE.
By Charles Mackay, LL.D., F.S.A., Author of the Gaelic Etymology of the English and Lowland Scotch, and the Languages of Western Europe.
The learned Godfrey Higgins informs us in his Anacalypsis that "every word in every language has originally had a meaning, whether a nation has it by inheritance, by importation, or by composition." He adds that it is evident if we can find out the original meaning of the words which stand for the names of objects, great discoveries may be expected. The Duke of Somerset, in our day, expresses the same truth more tersely when he says that "every word in every language has its pedigree."
All who are acquainted with the early lyrical literature of England and Scotland, preserved in the songs and ballads of the days immediately before and after Shakspere, must sometimes have asked themselves the meaning of such old choruses as "Down, down, derry down," "With a fal, lal, la" "Tooral, looral," "Hey, nonnie, nonnie," and many others. These choruses are by no means obsolete, though not so frequently heard in our day as they used to be a hundred years ago. "Down, down, derry down," still flourishes in immortal youth in every village alehouse and beershop where the farm labourers and mechanics are accustomed to assemble. One of the greatest living authorities on the subject of English song and music—Mr William Chappell—the editor of the Popular Music of the Olden Time, is of opinion that these choruses, or burdens, were "mere nonsense words that went glibly off the tongue." He adds (vol. i., page 223), "I am aware that 'Hey down, down, derry down,' has been said to be a modern version of 'Ha, down, ir, deri danno,' the burden of an old song of the Druids, signifying, Come let us haste to the oaken grove (Jones, Welsh Bards, vol. i., page 128), but this I believe to be mere conjecture, and that it would now be impossible to prove that the Druids had such a song." That Mr Chappell's opinion is not correct, will, I think, appear from the etymological proofs of the antiquity of this and other choruses afforded by the venerable language which was spoken throughout the British Isles by the aboriginal people for centuries before the Roman invasion, and which is not yet extinct in Wales, in Ireland, in the Isle of Man, and in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
Julius Cæsar, the conqueror of Gaul and Britain, has left a description of the Druids and their religion, which is of the highest historical interest. That system and religion came originally from Assyria, Egypt, and Phœnicia, and spread over all Europe at a period long anterior to the building of Rome, or the existence of the Roman people. The Druids were known by name, but scarcely more than by name, to the Greeks, who derived the appellation erroneously from drus, an oak, under the supposition that the Druids preferred to perform their religious rites under the shadows of oaken groves. The Greeks also called the Druids Saronides, from two Celtic words sar and dhuine, signifying "excellent or superior men." The Celtic meaning of the word "Druid" is to enclose within a circle, and a Druid meant a prophet, a divine, a bard, a magician; one who was admitted to the mysteries of the inner circle. The Druidic religion was astronomical, and purely deistical, and rendered reverence to the sun, moon, and stars as the visible representatives of the otherwise unseen Divinity who created man and nature. "The Druids used no images," says the Reverend Doctor Alexander in his excellent little volume on the Island of Iona, published by the Religious Tract Society, "to represent the object of their worship, nor did they meet in temples or buildings of any kind for the performance of their sacred rites. A circle of stones, generally of vast size, and surrounding an area of from twenty feet to thirty yards in diameter, constituted their sacred place; and in the centre of this stood the cromlech (crooked stone), or altar, which was an obelisk of immense size, or a large oblong flat stone, supported by pillars. These sacred circles were usually situated beside a river or stream, and under the shadow of a grove, an arrangement which was probably designed to inspire reverence and awe in the minds of the worshippers, or of those who looked from afar on their rites. Like others of the Gentile nations also, they had their 'high places,' which were large stones, or piles of stones, on the summits of hills; these were called carns (cairns), and were used in the worship of the deity under the symbol of the sun. In this repudiation of images and worshipping of God in the open air they resembled their neighbours the Germans, of whom Tacitus says that from the greatness of the heavenly bodies, they inferred that the gods could neither be inclosed within walls, nor assimilated to any human form; and he adds, that 'they consecrated groves and forests, and called by the names of the gods that mysterious object which they behold by mental adoration alone.'
"In what manner and with what rites the Druids worshipped their deity, there is now no means of ascertaining with minute accuracy. There is reason to believe that they attached importance to the ceremony of going thrice round their sacred circle, from east to west, following the course of the sun, by which it is supposed they intended to express their entire conformity to the will and order of the Supreme Being, and their desire that all might go well with them according to that order. It may be noticed, as an illustration of the tenacity of popular usages and religious rites, how they abide with a people, generation after generation, in spite of changes of the most important kind, nay, after the very opinions out of which they have risen have been repudiated; that even to the present day certain movements are considered of good omen when they follow the course of the sun, and that in some of the remote parts of the country the practice is still retained of seeking good fortune by going thrice round some supposed sacred object from east to west."
But still more remarkable than the fact which Doctor Alexander has stated, is the vitality of the ancient Druidic chants, which still survive on the popular tongue for nearly two thousand years after their worship has disappeared, and after the meaning of these strange snatches and fragments of song has been all but irretrievably lost, and almost wholly unsuspected. Stonehenge, or the Coir-mhor, on Salisbury Plain, is the grandest remaining monument of the Druids in the British Isles. Everybody has heard of this mysterious relic, though few know that many other Druidical circles of minor importance are scattered over various parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. In Scotland they are especially numerous. One but little known, and not mentioned by the Duke of Argyll in his book on the remarkable island of which he is the proprietor, is situated between the ruins of the cathedral of Iona and the sea shore, and is well worthy of a visit from the thousands of tourists who annually make the voyage round the noble Isle of Mull, on purpose to visit Iona and Staffa. There is another Druidic circle on the mainland of Mull, and a large and more remarkable one at Lochnell, near Oban, in Argyllshire, which promises to become as celebrated as Stonehenge itself, combining as it does not only the mystic circle, but a representation, clearly defined, of the mysterious serpent, the worship of which entered so largely into all the Oriental religions of remote antiquity. There are other circles in Lewis and the various islands of the Hebrides, and as far north as Orkney and Shetland. It was, as we learn from various authorities, the practice of the Druidical priests and bards to march in procession round the inner circle of their rude temples, chanting religious hymns in honour of the sunrise, the noon, or the sunset; hymns which have not been wholly lost to posterity, though posterity has failed to understand them, or imagined that their burdens—their sole relics—are but unmeaning words, invented for musical purposes alone, and divested of all intellectual signification.
The best known of these choruses is "Down, down, derry down," which may either be derived from the words dun, a hill; and darag or darach, an oak tree; or from duine, a man; and doire, a wood; and may either signify an invitation to proceed to the hill of the oak trees for the purposes of worship, or an invocation to the men of the woods to join in the Druidical march and chant, as the priests walked in procession from the interior of the stone circle to some neighbouring grove upon a down or hill. This chorus survives in many hundreds of English popular songs, but notably in the beautiful ballad "The Three Ravens," preserved in Melismata (1611):—
There were three ravens sat on a tree,
Down-a-down! hey down, hey down.
They were as black as black might be,
With a down!
Then one of them said to his mate,
Where shall we now our breakfast take,
With a down, down, derry, derry, down!
A second well-known and vulgarised chorus is "Tooral looral," of which the most recent appearance is in a song which the world owes to the bad taste of the comic muse—that thinks it cannot be a muse until it blackens its face to look like a negro:—
Once a maiden fair,
She had ginger hair,
With her tooral looral lá, di, oh!
And she fell in love
Did this turtle dove
And her name was Dooral,
Hoopty Dooral! Tooral looral, oh my!
This vile trash contains two Celtic or Gaelic words, which are susceptible of two separate interpretations. Tooral may be derived from the Celtic turail—slow, sagacious, wary; and Looral from luathrail (pronounced laurail)—quick, signifying a variation in the time of some musical composition to which the Druidical priests accommodated their footsteps in a religious procession, either to the grove of worship, or around the inner stone circle of the temple. It is also possible that the words are derived from Tuath-reul and Luath-reul (t silent in both instances), the first signifying "North star," and the second "Swift star;" appropriate invocations in the mouths of a priesthood that studied all the motions of the heavenly bodies, and were the astrologers as well as the astronomers of the people.
A third chorus, which, thanks to the Elizabethan writers, has not been vulgarised, is that which occurs in John Chalkhill's "Praise of a Countryman's Life," quoted by Izaak Walton:—
Oh the sweet contentment
The countryman doth find.
High trolollie, lollie, lol: High trolollie, lee,
These words are easily resolvable into the Celtic; Ai! or Aibhe! Hail! or All Hail! Trath—pronounced trah, early, and la, day! or "Ai, tră, là, là, là"—"Hail, early day! day," a chorus which Moses and Aaron may have heard in the temples of Egypt, as the priests of Baal saluted the rising sun as he beamed upon the grateful world, and which was repeated by the Druids on the remote shores of Western Europe, in now desolate Stonehenge, and a thousand other circles, where the sun was worshipped as the emblem of the Divinity. The second portion of the chorus, "High trolollie lee," is in Celtic, Ai tra la, la, li, which signifies, "Hail early day! Hail bright day!" The repetition of the word la as often as it was required for the exigencies of the music, accounts for the chorus, in the form in which it has descended to modern times.
"Fal, lal, là," a chorus even more familiar to the readers of old songs, is from the same source. Lord Bathurst, afterwards Earl of Dorset, wrote, in 1665, the well-known ballad, commencing:—
To all you ladies now on land,
We men at sea indite,
But first would have you understand
How hard it is to write.
With a fal, lal, là, and a fal lal, là,
And a fal, lal, lal, lal, là.
Fal is an abbreviation of Failte! welcome! and là as already noted signifies a day. The words should be properly written Failte! la! la! The chorus appears in the "Invitation to May," by Thomas Morley, 1595:—
Now is the month of Maying,
When merry lads are playing,
Fal, la, là!
Each with his bonnie lass,
Upon the greeny grass,
Fal, la, là!
The Celtic or Druidical interpretation of these syllables is, "Welcome the day."
"Fal, lero, loo," appears as a chorus in a song by George Wither (1588-1667):—
There was a lass—a fair one
As fair as e'er was seen,
She was indeed a rare one,
Another Sheba queen.
But fool, as I then was,
I thought she loved me true,
But now alas! she's left me,
Fal, lero, lero, loo.
Here Failte, as in the previous instance, means welcome; lear (corrupted into lero), the sea; and luaidh (the d silent), praise; the chorus of a song of praise to the sun when seen rising above the ocean.
The song of Sir Eglamour, in Mr Chappell's collection, has another variety of the Failte or Fal, la, of a much more composite character:—
Sir Eglamour that valiant knight,
Fal, la, lanky down dilly!
He took his sword and went to fight,
Fal, la, lanky down dilly!
In another song, called "The Friar in the Well," this chorus appears in a slightly different form:—
Listen awhile and I will tell
Of a Friar that loved a bonnie lass well,
Fal la! lál, lal, lal, lá! Fal la, langtre down dilly!
Lan is the Gaelic for full, and dile for rain. The one version has lanky, the other langtre, both of which are corruptions of the Celtic. The true reading is Failte la, lan, ri, dun, dile, which signifies "Welcome to the full or complete day! let us go to the hill of rain."
Hey, nonnie, nonnie. "Such unmeaning burdens of songs," says Nares in his Glossary, "are common to ballads in most languages." But this burden is not unmeaning, and signifies "Hail to the noon." Noin or noon, the ninth hour was so called in the Celtic, because at midsummer in our northern latitudes it was the ninth hour after sunrise. With the Romans, in a more southern latitude, noon was the ninth hour after sunrise, at six in the morning, answering to our three o'clock of the afternoon. A song with this burden was sung in England in the days of Charles the Second:—
I am a senseless thing, with a hey!
Men call me a king, with a ho?
For my luxury and ease,
They brought me o'er the seas,
With a heigh, nonnie, nonnie, nonnie, no!
Mr Chappell cites an ancient ballad which was sung to the tune of Hie dildo, dil. This also appears to be Druidical, and to be resolvable into Ai! dile dun dile! or "Hail to the rain, to the rain upon the hill," a thanksgiving for rain after a drought.
Trim go trix is a chorus that continued to be popular until the time of Charles the Second, when Tom D'Urfrey wrote a song entitled "Under the Greenwood Tree," of which he made it the burden. Another appears in Allan Ramsay's Tea-table Miscellany:—
The Pope, that pagan full of pride,
He has us blinded long,
For where the blind the blind does guide,
No wonder things go wrong.
Like prince and king, he led the ring
Of all inquitie.
Hey trix, trim go trix!
Under the greenwood tree.
In Gaelic dream or dreim signifies a family, a tribe, the people, a procession; and qu tric, frequently, often, so that these words represent a frequent procession of the people to the hill of worship under the greenwood tree.
In Motherwell's "Ancient and Modern Minstrelsy," the ballad of Hynd Horn contains a Celtic chorus repeated in every stanza:—
Near Edinburgh was a young child born,
With a Hey lilli lu, and a how lo lan!
And his name it was called young Hynd Horn,
And the birk and the broom bloom bonnie.
Here the words are corruptions of aidhe (Hail); li, light or colour; lu, small; ath, again; lo, day-light; lan, full; and may be rendered "Hail to the faint or small light of the dawn"; and "again the full light of the day" (after the sun had risen).
In the Nursery Rhymes of England, edited by Mr Halliwell for the Percy Society, 1842, appears the quatrain:—
Hey dorolot, dorolot,
Hey dorolay, doralay,
Hey my bonnie boat—bonnie boat,
Hey drag away—drag away.
The two first lines of this jingle appear to be a remnant of a Druidical chant, and to resolve themselves into,
Aidhe, doire luchd—doire luchd,
Aidhe doire leigh, doire leigh.
Aidhe, an interjection, is pronounced Hie; doire, is trees or woods; luchd, people; and leigh, healing; and also a physician, whence the old English word for a doctor, a leech, so that the couplet means
Hey to the woods people! to the woods people!
Hey to the woods for healing, to the woods for healing.
If this translation be correct, the chorus would seem to have been sung when the Druids went in search of the sacred mistletoe, which they called the "heal all," or universal remedy.
There is an old Christmas carol which commences—
Nowell! Nowell! Nowell! Nowell!
This is the salutation of the Angel Gabriel.
Mr Halliwell, in his Archaic Dictionary, says "Nowell was a cry of joy, properly at Christmas, of joy for the birth of the Saviour." A political song in a manuscript of the time of King Henry the Sixth, concludes—
Let us all sing nowelle,
Nowelle, nowelle, nowelle, nowelle,
And Christ save merry England and spede it well.
The modern Gaelic and Celtic for Christmas is Nollaig—a corruption of the ancient Druidical name for holiday—from naomh, holy, and la, day, whence "Naola!" the burden of a Druidical hymn, announcing the fact that a day of religious rejoicing had arrived for the people.
A very remarkable example of the vitality of these Druidic chants is afforded by the well-known political song of "Lilli Burlero" of which Lord Macaulay gives the following account in his History of England:—
"Thomas Wharton, who, in the last Parliament had represented Buckinghamshire, and who was already conspicuous both as a libertine and as a Whig, had written a satirical ballad on the administration of Tyrconnel. In his little poem an Irishman congratulates a brother Irishman in a barbarous jargon on the approaching triumph of Popery and of the Milesian race. The Protestant heir will be excluded. The Protestant officers will be broken. The great charter and the praters who appeal to it will be hanged in one rope. The good Talbot will shower commissions on his countrymen, and will cut the throats of the English. These verses, which were in no respect above the ordinary standard of street poetry, had for burden some gibberish which was said to have been used as a watchword by the insurgents of Ulster in 1641. The verses and the tune caught the fancy of the nation. From one end of England to the other all classes were constantly singing this idle rhyme. It was especially the delight of the English army. More than seventy years after the Revolution a great writer delineated with exquisite skill a veteran who had fought at the Boyne and at Namur. One of the characteristics of the good old soldier is his trick of whistling Lilliburllero. Wharton afterwards boasted that he had sung a king out of three kingdoms. But, in truth, the success of Lilliburllero was the effect and not the cause of that excited state of public feeling which produced the Revolution."
The mysterious syllables which Lord Macaulay asserted to be gibberish, and which in this corrupt form were enough to puzzle a Celtic scholar, and more than enough to puzzle Lord Macaulay, who, like the still more ignorant Doctor Samuel Johnson, knew nothing of the venerable language of the first inhabitants of the British Isles, and of all Western Europe, resolve themselves into Li! Li Beur! Lear-a! Buille na la, which signify, "Light! Light! on the sea, beyond the promontory! 'Tis the stroke (or dawn) of the day!" Like all the choruses previously cited, these words are part of a hymn to the sun, and entirely astronomical and Druidical.
The syllables Fol de rol which still occur in many of the vulgarest songs of the English lower classes, and which were formerly much more commonly employed than they are now, are a corruption of Failte reul! or welcome to the star! Fal de ral is another form of the corruption which the Celtic original has undergone.
The French, a more Celtic people than the English, have preserved many of the Druidical chants. In Beranger's song "Le Scandale" occurs one of them, which is as remarkable for its Druidic appositeness as any of the English choruses already cited:—
Aux drames du jour,
Laissons la morale,
Sans vivre à la cour
J'aime le scandale;
Bon!
Le farira dondaine
Gai!
La farira dondé.
These words resolve themselves into the Gaelic La! fair! aire! dun teine! "Day! sunrise! watch it on the hill of fire (the sacred fire)"; and La! fair! aire! dun De! "Day! sunrise! watch it on the hill of God."
In the Recueil de Chanson's Choisies (La Haye, 1723, vol. i., page 155), there is a song called Danse Ronde, commencing L'autre jour, pres d'Annette of which the burden is Lurelu La rela! These syllables seem to be resolvable into the Celtic:—Luadh reul! Luadh! (Praise to the star! Praise!); or Luath reul Luath (the swift star, swift!); and La! reul! La! (the day! the star! the day!).
There is a song of Beranger's of which the chorus is Tra, la trala, tra la la, already explained, followed by the words—C'est le diabh er falbala. Here falbala is a corruption of the Celtic falbh la! "Farewell to the day," a hymn sung at sunset instead of at sunrise.
Beranger has another song entitled "Le Jour des Morts," which has a Druidical chorus:—
Amis, entendez les cloches
Qui par leurs sons gemissants
Nous font des bruyans reproches
Sur nos rires indecents,
Il est des ames en peine,
Dit le pretre interessé.
C'est le jour des morts, mirliton, mirlitaine.
Requiscant in pace!
Mir in Celtic signifies rage or fuss; tonn or thonn, a wave; toinn, waves; and tein, fire; whence those apparently unmeaning syllables may be rendered—"the fury of the waves, the fury of the fire."
Tira lira la. This is a frequent chorus in French songs, and is composed of the Gaelic words tiorail, genial, mild, warm; iorrach, quiet, peaceable; and là, day; and was possibly a Druidical chant, after the rising of the sun, resolving itself into Tiorail-iorra la, warm peaceful day!
Rumbelow was the chorus or burden of many ancient songs, both English and Scotch. After the Battle of Bannockburn, says Fabyan, a citizen of London, who wrote the "Chronicles of England," "the Scottes inflamed with pride, made this rhyme as followeth in derision of the English:—
"Maydens of Englande, sore may ye mourne
For your lemans ye 've lost at Bannockisburne,
With heve a lowe!
What weeneth the Kyng of Englande,
So soone to have won Scotlande,
With rumbylowe!"
In "Peebles to the Play" the word occurs—
With heigh and howe, and rumbelowe,
The young folks were full bauld.
There is an old English sea song of which the burden is "with a rumbelowe." In one more modern, in Deuteromelia 1609, the word dance the rumbelow is translated—
Shall we go dance to round, around,
Shall we go dance the round.
Greek—Rhombos, Rhembo, to spin or turn round.
The word is apparently another remnant of the old Druidical chants sung by the priests when they walked in procession round their sacred circles of Stonehenge and others, and clearly traceable to the Gaelic—Riomball, a circle; riomballach, circuitous; riomballachd, circularity.
The perversion of so many of these once sacred chants to the service of the street ballad, suggests the trite remark of Hamlet to Horatio:—
To what base uses we may come at last!
......
Imperial Cæsar, dead and turned to clay,
May stop a hole to keep the winds away.
The hymns once sung by thousands of deep-voiced priests marching in solemn procession from their mystic shrines to salute with music and song, and reverential homage, the rising of the glorious orb which cheers and fertilises the world, the gift as well as the emblem of Almighty Power and Almighty Love, have wholly departed from the recollection of man, and their poor and dishonoured relics are spoken of by scholars and philosophers, as trash, gibberish, nonsense, and an idle farrago of sounds, of no more philological value than the lowing of cattle or the bleating of sheep. But I trust that all attentive readers of the foregoing pages will look upon the old choruses—so sadly perverted in the destructive progress of time, that demolishes languages as well as empires and systems of religious belief—with something of the respect due to their immense antiquity, and their once sacred functions in a form of worship, which, whatever were its demerits as compared with the purer religion that has taken its place, had at least the merit of inculcating the most exalted ideas of the Power, the Love, and the Wisdom of the Great Creator.
ON VISITING DRUIM-A LIATH, THE BIRTH-PLACE OF DUNCAN BAN MACINTYRE.
The homes long are gone, but enchantment still lingers,
These green knolls around, where thy young life began,
Sweetest and last of the old Celtic singers,
Bard of the Monadh-dhu', blithe Donach Bàn!
Never mid scenes of earth, fairer and grander,
Poet first lifted his eyelids on light;
Free mid these glens, o'er these mountains to wander,
And make them his own by the true minstrel right.
Thy home at the meeting and green interlacing
Of clear-flowing waters and far-winding glens,
Lovely inlaid in the mighty embracing
Of sombre pine forests and storm-riven Bens.
Behind thee these crowding Peaks, region of mystery,
Fed thy young spirit with broodings sublime;
Each cairn and green knoll lingered round by some history,
Of the weird under-world, or the wild battle-time.
Thine were Ben-Starrav, Stop-gyre, Meal-na-ruadh,
Mantled in storm-gloom, or bathed in sunshine;
Streams from Corr-oran, Glash-gower, and Glen-fuadh
Made music for thee, where their waters combine.
But over all others thy darling Bendorain
Held thee entranced with his beautiful form,
With looks ever-changing thy young fancy storing,
Gladness of sunshine and terror of storm—
Opened to thee his heart's deepest recesses,
Taught thee the lore of the red-deer and roe,
Showed thee them feed on the green mountain cresses,
Drink the cold wells above lone Doire-chro.
How did'st thou watch them go up the high passes
At sunrise rejoicing, a proud jaunty throng?
Learn the herbs that they love, the small flow'rs, and hill grasses,
And made them for ever bloom green in thy song.
Yet, bard of the wilderness, nursling of nature,
Would the hills e'er have taught thee true minstrel art,
Had not a visage more lovely of feature
The fountain unsealed of thy tenderer heart?
The maiden that dwelt by the side of Maam-haarie,
Seen from thy home-door, a vision of joy,
Morning and even the young fair-haired Mary
Moving about at her household employ.
High on Bendoa and stately Ben-challader,
Leaving the dun deer in safety to bide,
Fondly thy doating eye dwelt on her, followed her,
Tenderly wooed her, and won her thy bride.
O! well for the maiden that found such a lover,
And well for the poet, to whom Mary gave
Her fulness of love until, life's journey over,
She lay down beside him to rest in the grave.
From the bards of to-day, and their sad songs that dark'n
The day-spring with doubt, wring the bosom with pain,
How gladly we fly to the shealings and harken
The clear mountain gladness that sounds in thy strain.
On the hill-side with thee is no doubt or misgiving,
But there joy and freedom, Atlantic winds blow,
And kind thoughts are there, and the pure simple living
Of the warm-hearted folk in the glens long ago.
The muse of old Maro hath pathos and splendour,
The long lines of Homer majestic'lly roll;
But to me Donach Bàn breathes a language more tender,
More kin to the child-heart that sleeps in my soul.
J. C. SHAIRP.
St Andrews.