Lent, 1869.
I.
We like sheep have gone astray,
Kyrie eleison!
Each his own misguided way,
Kyrie eleison!
Wandering farther, day by day,
Kyrie eleison!
II.
Shepherd kind, oh! lead us back;
Christe eleison!
Wrest us from our dangerous track,
Christe eleison!
Lest the wolves thy flock attack;
Christe eleison!
III.
Ope for us again thy fold,
Kyrie eleison!
Night approaches, drear and cold;
Kyrie eleison!
Death, perchance, and woes untold;
Kyrie eleison!
Richard Storrs Willis.
The Modern Street-ballads Of Ireland.
The home of the street-ballad, pure and simple, is in Ireland. It has nearly vanished in England, destroyed by the penny newspaper, which contains five times as highly spiced food for the money. In Ireland it still exists and supplies the place of the newspaper, not only in appeals to the passion or reason, but as a general chronicle of every event of importance, local or national, Very often both are combined, and the leading article and the account of political insult will be run into rude rhyme together, and the story of a murder be interspersed with reflections on its sin. The quantity of ballads is, of course, enormous, and to expect that any but a small portion should possess more poetry than a newspaper article would be unreasonable. But all are not of this prosaic class, and some possess the genuine spirit of poetry under their rude but often spirited diction.
The first question naturally asked is, Whence comes this enormous flood of ballads? Who are the poets who produce them on every imaginable subject, even the most verse-defying public meeting, or in praise of humblest of politicians? Like the immortal Smiths and Joneses, that make the thunder of the Times, their names never appear, and though the ballad or the leading article—and both have done so—may influence the fate of nations, it will bring to the author only his stipulated hire. At present, the street-ballads of Ireland are mostly composed by the singers themselves. In ancient days, the weavers and tailors and the hedge-schoolmasters used to be a fruitful source of supply, the sedentary occupations of the former being popularly supposed to foster the poetic talent, The latter class has vanished, and if here and there one exists, it is in the shape of a red-nosed, white-haired veteran, who is entertained in farmers' houses and country shebeens, in memory of his ancient glory, when sesquipedalian, long words and "cute" problems made him the monarch of the parish next to the priest himself. However, the singer of the ballad is, in most instances, the writer, who is only anxious for a subject of interest on which to exercise his muse, and generally turns out half-a-dozen verses of the established pattern in half an hour. This he takes to the publisher, who not only allows him no copyright, but does not even make a discount in the price of his stock in trade, for which he pays the same as his brother bards, who, finding his ballad popular, will straightway strain their voices to it. But then he has the same privilege with their productions, so that it is all right in the long run. The ballads are printed on the coarsest of paper with the poorest of type, and generally with a worn-out woodcut of the most inappropriate description at the head. Thus, for instance, I have one, where a portrait of Jerome Bonaparte does duty over the "Lamentation of Lawrence King for the murder of Lieut. Clutterbuck."
The ballad-singers are of both sexes, and are very dilapidated specimens. The tone in which they send their voices on the shuddering air is utterly indescribable—a sort of droning, pillelu falsetto, at once outrageously comical and lugubrious. They sing everything in the same melancholy cadence, whether lamentation or love-song. Very often, two, more especially of women, will be together. The first will sing the first two lines of a quatrain alone, and then the second will join in, and they rise to the height of discord together. Fair-days are their days of harvest, although in cities like Cork or Waterford they may be seen on every day except Sunday. A popular ballad will often have a very large sale, and will find its way all over the country.
The greater portion of ballads composed in this way are, of course, destitute of anything like poetry—mere pieces of outrageous metaphor and Malapropoian long words, for which last the ballad-singers have a ridiculous fondness. The singers sing in a foreign language; they have lost the sweet tongue peculiarly fitted for improvised poetry, in which their predecessors the bards, down to the date of less than one hundred years ago, sang so sweetly and so strongly, with such dramatic diction and happy boldness of epithet. The language of the Saxon oppressor is from the tongue, and not from the heart. As the mother of the late William Carleton used to say, "the Irish melts into the tune;" the English doesn't, and so many of the finest of the ancient melodies are now songs without words. "Turlogh O'Carolan," "Donogh MacConmara," and the "Mangaire Sugach" have not left their successors among the "English" poets of the present day. Among a people naturally so eloquent as the native Irish, not even the drapery of an incongruous language can entirely obscure the native vigor and strength of thought. A ballad is sometime seen which, though often unequal and rude, is alive with impassioned poetry, fierce, melancholy, or tender, and it almost always becomes a general favorite, and is preserved beyond its day to become a part of the standard stock. The songs of so genuine a poet as William Allingham, who is the only cultivated Irish poet who has had the taste and the spirit to reproduce in spirit and diction these wild flowers of song, have been printed on the half-penny ballad-sheets, and sung at the evening hearth and at the morning milking all over Ireland. "Lovely Mary Donnelly" and the "Irish Girl's Lamentation" have become, in truth, a part of the songs of the nation, touching alike the cultivated intellect and the untutored heart.