Mr H. L. Rolfe, the celebrated Irish painter, has just finished a large natural history picture, entitled "A Border Feud." The scene is laid on a Scotch loch. An otter has succeeded in taking a salmon, which it has just commenced to devour; an eagle is flying away, having been disappointed of its prey. This last effort of Mr Rolfe's is the most successful which has yet appeared from his studio.
The Christian Knowledge Society is bringing out a revised edition of their Gaelic translation of the Book of Common Prayer.
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.