successful Irish melodrama. The concluding verse, however, was not given. It runs thus:

An' if the colour we must wear is England's cruel red,
Let it remind us of the blood that Ireland has shed;

Then pull the shamrock from your door, and throw it on the sod,
And never fear, twill take root there, though under foot 'tis trod !
When laws can stop the blades of grass from growin' as they grow,
And when the waves in summer-time their colour dare not show,
Then I will change the colour, tro, I wear in my caubeen,

But till that day, plaze God, I'll stick to wearin' o' the green.

The Irish melodies of Moore have not been unfairly described as merely "pretty," but a few of them which are patriotic are vigorous enough-though even they are decried by hostile critics as consisting merely of English thoughts, clothed in English words, but set to Irish music. Their inspiration, however, is decidedly more Celtic than Saxon. For instance, what can be more definitely anti-Saxon in its rhapsodical fervour than the following:

Oh for the swords of former times,

Oh for the men who bore them!

When armed for right, they stood sublime,

And tyrants crouched before them.

When pure yet, ere courts began

With honours to enslave him;

The best honours won by man,
Were those which virtue gave him.

or than this wail for the fallen:

Forget not the field where they perished,
The truest, the last of the brave!

All gone, and the bright hopes we cherished
Gone with them, and quenched in the grave.

Oh! could we from death but recover

Those hearts as they bounded before,

In the face of high heaven to fight over
This combat for freedom once more.

And in this the spirit of many of the purely Celtic songs is faithfully reflected :

Remember thee! Yes, while there's life in this heart,

It shall never forget thee, all 'lorn as thou art.
More dear in thy sorrow, thy gloom, and thy showers,
Than the rest of the world in her sunniest hours.

No! thy chains as they rankle, thy blood as it runs,
But make thee more painfully dear to thy sons,
Whose hearts, like the young of the desert bird's nest,
Drink love in each life-drop that flows from thy breast.

Nationalist song writing, however, languished rather until the Young Ireland revival of 1848. Much as the writers of that period bemoaned their inability to quite catch the spirit, or emulate the force and fire of the minstrelsy of Ancient Ireland, they showed pretty conclusively that they were masters of the English language, and had extensive acquaintance with English literature. If their style was purely English, their sentiments, without doubt, were desperately anti-English, and they found no difficulty in their intelligible expression. Moreover, their code of political morality was wholly different to that of the political leaders of our days. It exhorted toleration of minor differences of opinion, so that all Ireland should unite in the Nationalist cause, and by employing none but worthy methods, win righteous triumph over their country's enemies. As Davis sang:

A nation's voice, a nation's voice

It is a solemn thing!

It bids the bondage-sick rejoice-
'Tis mightier than a king;
'Tis like the light of many stars,

The sound of many waves

Which brightly look through prison bars,

And sweetly sound in caves.

Yet is it noblest, godliest known

When righteous triumph swells its tone.

The one thing necessary, according to Davis, was to unite in hate of the Saxon :

We hate the Saxon and the Dane,

We hate the Norman men,

We cursed their greed for blood and gain,

We curse them now again.

Yet start not, Irish-born man,

If you're to Ireland true,

We heed not blood, nor creed, nor clan

We have no curse for you.

Davis, too, had exalted aspirations which look particularly oldfashioned and out of place in these days:-

May Ireland's voice be ever heard
Amid the world's applause;

And never be her flagstaff stirred,
But in an honest cause !

May freedom be her every breath,

Be justice ever dear ;

And never an ennobled death

May son of Ireland fear!

So the Lord God will ever smile

With guardian grace upon our isle.

When this was written, it need hardly be said, boycotting and dynamiting were things of the future.

The Fenian organ, the Irish People, also produced poetry of a high class; but it was less Celtic in form, spirit, and even in choice of subject than that to which Young Ireland gave birth. "Speranza's" (Lady Wylde) contributions consisted of poems on divers themes not directly referring to Ireland, as also did those of Mr. T. C. Irwin; the ballads of Casey and Kickham, however, were distinctly racy of the soil, and breathed the same uncompromising spirit of resistance to British "tyranny." Naturally, these last have become very popular in Ireland. Kickham's "Rory of the Hill," a rebel, whose parting with his wife before taking the field, is thus spiritedly described :

She looked at him with woman's pride,

With pride and woman's fears;
She flew to him, she clung to him,

And dried away her tears;

He feels her pulse beat truly,

While her arms around him twine :

May God be praised for your stout heart,
Brave little wife of mine !”

He swung his first-born in the air,

And joy his heart did fill-

"You'll be a freeman yet, my boy!"

Said Rory of the Hill.

Casey's "Risin' of the Moon," picturing a rebel muster at midnight; "O'Donnell Abu," by an unknown writer, which celebrates the discomfiture of the Sassenach by "Dauntless Red Hugh," as long ago as A.D. 1597, after this fashion :

Proudly the note of the trumpet is sounding,

Loudly the war cries arise on the gale,

Fleetly the steed by Loc Suilig is bounding,
To join the thick squadrons in Saimear's green vale.

On, every mountaineer,

Strangers to flight and fear;

Rush to the standard of Dauntless Red Hugh;

Bonnaught and Gallowglass

Throng from each mountain pass;

On for Old Erin-O'Donnell Abu !

and the "Fenian Men," who are glorified in this wise:-
See who comes over the red-blossomed heather,

Their green banners kissing the pure mountain air,
Heads erect, eyes to front, stepping proudly together,
See freedom sits throned on each proud spirit there.

Down the hills twining,

Their blessed steel shining

Like rivers of beauty they flow from each glen,

From mountain and valley,

'Tis Liberty's rally;

Out and make way for the Fenian men!—

are the Fenian ballads which stand highest in popular estimation; and their pride of place is only disputed by Sullivan's "God save Ireland," a song written in commemoration of the "Manchester Martyrs," that is, of the three Irishmen who were hanged in Manchester in 1867 for the murder of an English policeman.

Land-league poetry deals exclusively with the land troubles, and inculcates as the highest political virtues the practices of boycotting and non-payment of rent. Of the songs "Murty Hynes" is first favourite. Murty has committed the heinous sin of taking a derelict farm, but repents :

"I own my crime," says Murty, "but I'll wash out the stain

I'll keep that farm no longer: I'll give it up again."

This crime against land-league law is known as "land grabbing," and another ballad formulates a vow against it:

But these things shall no more be done,

We swear from coast to coast:

In the name of the Father,

And of the Son,

And of the Holy Ghost!

Coming down to the street ballads-the lowest strata of Nationalist literature-we find that on the whole they are less seditious than the poetry we have been discussing. But, as a rule, they are wretched doggerel, and lack the rollicking humour which characterised the same class of compositions of an earlier period. For instance, the ballads of Zozimus, a street singer of the Repeal era, did little more than make harmless fun of unpopular people, as the bard did of the prosecutor of O'Connell, Mr. T. B. C. Smith. O'Connell's conviction, it should be recalled, was quashed by the House of Lords:--

Oh musha, Dan who let you out?

Says the T. B. C.

Did you creep up the spout?

Says the T. B. C.

There are locks both great and small,

Did you dare to break them all?

Or did you scale the prison wall?
Said the T. B. C.

No, I did not pick a lock,

Says the Dan Van Vought,
Nor did I break a bolt,

Says the Dan Van Vought.
My cause was on the Rock,

'Twas the Lord that broke the lock,
And freed His bantam cock,

Says the Dan Van Vought.

The modern method of punishing an obnoxious official is to "set" him for the hired assassin, or rake up long-forgotten scandals concerning his private life.

Mr. Parnell shares with the Phoenix Park murderers the questionable honour of the eulogies of modern street poets. The Leagueleader's impeachment by Mr. Forster in Parliament shortly after the Phoenix Park murders is thus referred to in one of them: :

Parnell's the man that stood the scorn,

Of the British lion and the unicorn.

Undaunted he defied the coercive, gagging lot ;

And braced his manly heart,

And hurled back the dart,

Aimed at his fame and his good name by horrid old Buckshot.

Carey, the informer, as might be expected, is denounced with all the vehemence of uncultured virulence :

Since man's creation 'till this generation,

Or since Adam on earth first came,

In one whole million, there's no such villian,

And James Carey is his name.

There are also many lamentations in the choicest doggerel over the fate of the Phoenix Park murderers. Joe Brady, the greatest hero of them all, is made to mourn over his own death :

Good Christians all, on you I call

To hear my lamentation;

Likewise on those who have been my foes,

And caused my degradation.

In my youth and bloom I've met my doom,

On the shameful gallows tree;

It breaks my heart to have to part

With friends and country.

A very popular ballad celebrates "Tim Healy's return for

Monaghan":

Each Monaghan boy did jump for joy,

And loud were their hurrays:

At the corner shop they tuk a drop,
And sounded Tim Healy's praise.