The street-ballads may be divided into five classes: patriotic, love-songs, lamentations, eulogies, and chronicles.
The patriotic songs are disappointing. There are few to stir the heart like the war-notes of Scotland. The reason is obvious. The triumphs were few and fleeting, and the song of the vanquished was only of hope or despair. They must sing in secret and be silent in the presence of the victors. In most of the political songs allegory is largely used. Ireland is typified under the form of a lonely female in distress, or a venerable old lady, or some other figure is used to disguise the meaning. Of course the street ballad-singers dare not sing anything seditious, and even the whistling of the "Wearing of the Green" will call down the rebuke of the "peeler." The ballads that express the hatred of the people to their rulers are sung in stealth and are often unprinted. They are not usually the production of the hackneyed professional ballad-singers, and are consequently of a much higher order. The following is a good specimen, It is entitled
The Irishman's Farewell To His Country.
Oh! farewell, Ireland: I am going across the stormy main,
Where cruel strife will end my life, to see you never again.
'Twill break my heart from you to part; acushla astore machree.
But I must go, full of grief and woe, to the shores of America.
"On Irish soil my fathers dwelt since the days of Brian Borue.
They paid their rent and lived content convenient to Carricmore.
But the landlord sent on the move my poor father and me.
We must leave our home far away to roam in the fields of America.
"No more at the churchyard, astore machree,
at my mother's grave I'll kneel.
The tyrants know but little of the woe the poor man has to feel.
When I look on the spot of ground that is so dear to me,
I could curse the laws that have given me cause to depart to America.
"Oh! where are the neighbors, kind and true, that
were once my country's pride?
No more will they be seen on the face of the green,
nor dance on the green hillside.
It is the stranger's cow that is grazing now,
where the people we used to see.
With notice they were served to be turned out or starved,
or banished to America.
"O! Erin machree, must our children be exiled all over the earth?
Will they evermore think of you, astore,
as the land that gave them birth?
Must the Irish yield to the beasts of the field?
Oh! no—acushla astore machree.
They are crossing back in ships, with vengeance on their lips,
from the shores of America."
The songs which were in vogue among the young and enthusiastic Fenians were, as might be supposed, of an entirely different nature. They were not peasants, but half-educated artisans. The proscribed National Cork Songster contains probably more rant and fustian than any similar number of printed pages in existence. The verses, of course, bear a family resemblance to those that appeared in the Nation for a couple of years previous to the events of '48, and in many instances are reproductions. Those of a modern date are still more extravagant, if possible, than that deluge of enthusiastic pathos; for among the Nation poets were Thomas Davis and James Clarence Mangan, while among those of the Fenians of 1866 there is but one that deserves the slightest shred of laurel. Charles J. Kickham, now under sentence of fourteen years' penal servitude in her Britannic Majesty's prisons, has written two or three pieces of genuine ballad-poetry of great merit, which the people have at once adopted as household songs. "Rory of the Hill" is of remarkable spirit. It begins:
"That rake up near the rafters,
Why leave it there so long?
The handle of the best of ash
Is smooth and straight and strong.
And mother, will you tell me
Why did my father frown,
When to make hay in summer-time
I climbed to take it down?
She looked up to her husband's eyes,
While her own with light did fill,
'You'll shortly know the reason why,'
Said Rory of the Hill."
The love-songs, that are sung by the colleens at the soft dewy dawn, as they sit beside the sleek cows just arisen from beneath the hedge, the nimble finger streaming the white milk into the foaming pail, while the lark's song melts down from that speck beneath the cloud, and the blackbird and thrush warble with ecstasy in the hedge, the morning light shining across the dewy green fields; or at
"Eve's pensive air,"
when the shadows are growing long, although the tops of the swelling uplands are bright, and the crows are winging home, and the swallows darting in the still air; or, in the winter evenings, when the candles are lighted in the kitchen, and busy fingers draw the woof, while the foot beats time to the whirring wheel, are very numerous, and generally of a higher order of merit than the patriotic songs. The pulses of the heart are freer and its utterance dearer in human love than in love of country. The beauties in which the Irish girls excel all others—the blooming cheeks, and brilliant eyes, and wealth of flowing hair, are the main objects of compliment, and are often transformed into personifications of endearment. Colleen, the universal term for young maidens, seems but a corruption of coolleen, which means a head of curls or abundant tresses. Grey and blue eyes are especially objects of endearment, and even in the ancient Irish poems, green-eyed is not unfrequently used, which is not so unnatural as the English reader may suppose, the Irish word expressing the indefinable tint of some lighter blue eyes, being untranslatable into English. [Footnote 18]
[Footnote 18: "Sweet emerald eyes."—Massinger. "How is that young and green-eyed Gaditana?" Longfellow's Spanish Student.]