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:—