Broad Sheet Irish Ballads
BEING A COLLECTION OF IRISH POPULAR SONGS WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY PADRAIC COLUM
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
There is a difference that is easily perceived between the street song and the song of the country-side. The second may contain some lonely thought, some personal emotion, but the first deals only with such passion, such humour, or such sentiment as the moving crowd can appreciate. It is easy to recall an example of either kind. Here is a song of the countryside :
I'm a stranger to this country : From Amerikay I came ; There's few here that knows me, But they can't tell my name.
Some say I'm foolish, And more say I'm wise. And some say I'm guilty Fair maids to beguile.
But we'll make them all liars If you'll come with me. To the Lands of Amerikay, My darling to be.
In the middle of the Ocean May there grow a willow tree On the day I prove false To the lass that loves me.
That the moon it may darken And show me no light The time I prove false To my own heart's delight
And here is a stanza from a song still sung in the streets of Dublin :
list to the strains of a poor Irish harper,
And scorn not the strings of his old withered hand,
Remember his fingers could once move more sharper
To raise up the strains of his dear native land.
'Twas long before the shamrock, our green Isle's loved emblem.
Was crushed in its beauty 'neath the Saxon lion's paw,
1 was called by the colleens around me assembled, The Bold Phelim Brady, the Bard of Armagh.
We know why the person in the second song should represent himself as a poor Irish harper, and why he should refer to the Shamrock, to the Green Isle, to the Saxon lion's paw. But we don't know why the hero of the first song should have come from the lands of Amerikay, nor why he should be suspected of beguiling damsels. The maker of the street-song must put together words that can carry across the street and hold the moving crowd and be plain to all.
One would think that imagination would be excluded from pieces composed under such circumstances. And yet imagination has come into some of the street-songs — dramatic imagination. " Willie Reilly " and " The Lamentation of Hugh Reynolds " are dramatic romances, and the dramatic situation is present in " The Croppy Boy," " The Boys of Wexford," "Johnny I hardly knew ye," "The Night before Larry was Stretched." This dramatic imagination distinguishes the street-songs from the songs of the countryside, which, in Ireland, are narrative, coming out of reverie and not out of a dramatic confrontation :
There is a difference that is easily perceived between the street song and the song of the country-side. The second may contain some lonely thought, some personal emotion, but the first deals only with such passion, such humour, or such sentiment as the moving crowd can appreciate. It is easy to recall an example of either kind. Here is a song of the countryside :
I'm a stranger to this country : From Amerikay I came ; There's few here that knows me, But they can't tell my name.
Some say I'm foolish, And more say I'm wise. And some say I'm guilty Fair maids to beguile.
But we'll make them all liars If you'll come with me. To the Lands of Amerikay, My darling to be.
In the middle of the Ocean May there grow a willow tree On the day I prove false To the lass that loves me.
That the moon it may darken And show me no light The time I prove false To my own heart's delight
And here is a stanza from a song still sung in the streets of Dublin :
list to the strains of a poor Irish harper,
And scorn not the strings of his old withered hand,
Remember his fingers could once move more sharper
To raise up the strains of his dear native land.
'Twas long before the shamrock, our green Isle's loved emblem.
Was crushed in its beauty 'neath the Saxon lion's paw,
1 was called by the colleens around me assembled, The Bold Phelim Brady, the Bard of Armagh.
We know why the person in the second song should represent himself as a poor Irish harper, and why he should refer to the Shamrock, to the Green Isle, to the Saxon lion's paw. But we don't know why the hero of the first song should have come from the lands of Amerikay, nor why he should be suspected of beguiling damsels. The maker of the street-song must put together words that can carry across the street and hold the moving crowd and be plain to all.
One would think that imagination would be excluded from pieces composed under such circumstances. And yet imagination has come into some of the street-songs — dramatic imagination. " Willie Reilly " and " The Lamentation of Hugh Reynolds " are dramatic romances, and the dramatic situation is present in " The Croppy Boy," " The Boys of Wexford," "Johnny I hardly knew ye," "The Night before Larry was Stretched." This dramatic imagination distinguishes the street-songs from the songs of the countryside, which, in Ireland, are narrative, coming out of reverie and not out of a dramatic confrontation :
Once I was at a Nobleman's wedding,
'Twas of a girl that proved unkind ;
But now she begins to think of her losses ;
Her former true lover comes into her mind.
The girl's "former true lover" appears at the wedding feast, but the maker of this typical countryside song makes
so little of his presence that the singers of to-day forget to mention his appearance. If "The Nobleman's Wedding"' had been made for the street the dramatic confrontation of the lover and the bridegroom would have been dwelt upon. The maker of the street-song is like the dramatist — he writes for an audience. But his audience is always casual^ and cannot be prepared by his art for anything imaginative. Only an event can prepare the crowd and it is an event that the street-song always celebrates.
Our popular songs in English begin with translations from the Gaelic. The people before the Famine had music as part of their lives, and they were constantly singing the songs out of their great traditional stock. When English began to be used familiarly in a district the songs most often sung at the celidh, the dance and the wake were translated. The words that took the place of the Gaelic words kept the rhythm of the music. One might describe the process of translation as a gradual transference from one language to another with the music remaining to keep the mould.
Sometimes the song was left with alternative stanzas in Gaelic and English, and sometimes Gaelic words were left as a refrain. Originals and translations remained side by side, and one was only a little more or a little less, familiar than the other. The mother of Carleton the novelist preferred to sing her songs in Gaelic, saying that the English words with the Irish tunes were like a quarrelling husband and wife, always at variance. The gradual transference left certain typical forms in Anglo-Irish popular song. For instance, there is in many of the pieces given on the ballad-sheets a rhythm that comes from an association with Irish music :
'Twas of a girl that proved unkind ;
But now she begins to think of her losses ;
Her former true lover comes into her mind.
The girl's "former true lover" appears at the wedding feast, but the maker of this typical countryside song makes
so little of his presence that the singers of to-day forget to mention his appearance. If "The Nobleman's Wedding"' had been made for the street the dramatic confrontation of the lover and the bridegroom would have been dwelt upon. The maker of the street-song is like the dramatist — he writes for an audience. But his audience is always casual^ and cannot be prepared by his art for anything imaginative. Only an event can prepare the crowd and it is an event that the street-song always celebrates.
Our popular songs in English begin with translations from the Gaelic. The people before the Famine had music as part of their lives, and they were constantly singing the songs out of their great traditional stock. When English began to be used familiarly in a district the songs most often sung at the celidh, the dance and the wake were translated. The words that took the place of the Gaelic words kept the rhythm of the music. One might describe the process of translation as a gradual transference from one language to another with the music remaining to keep the mould.
Sometimes the song was left with alternative stanzas in Gaelic and English, and sometimes Gaelic words were left as a refrain. Originals and translations remained side by side, and one was only a little more or a little less, familiar than the other. The mother of Carleton the novelist preferred to sing her songs in Gaelic, saying that the English words with the Irish tunes were like a quarrelling husband and wife, always at variance. The gradual transference left certain typical forms in Anglo-Irish popular song. For instance, there is in many of the pieces given on the ballad-sheets a rhythm that comes from an association with Irish music :
On the blood-crimsoned plain the Irish Brigade nobly stood, They fought at Orleans till the streams they ran with their blood. Far away from their homes in the arms of death they repose, For they fought for poor France and they fell by the hands of her foes.
And everyone who has listened to the ballad-singers will remember that internal as well as terminal correspondence is sought :
I speak in candour, one night in slumber My mind did wander near to Athlone The centre station of the Irish nation When a congregation unto me was shown. The writer of such a ballad was more familiar with the Gaelic than with the English way of making verse. Sometimes one finds a song in which the resemblance to a Gaelic original is more complete, as in the one from which this stanza is taken, in which all the correspondences, internal as well as terminal, are based upon a single vowel-sound :
On a Monday morning early, as my wandering steps did
lade me Down by a faimer's station and the meadows and green
lawns, I heard great lamentation the small birds they were
m.aking, Saying, We'll have no more engagements with the boys
of Mullabaun."
These Anglo-Irish songs would not give one the impression that there was a beautiful and subtle folk-poetry behind them. And yet many of the beautiful pieces given in " The Love Songs of Connacht," " The Religious Songs of Connacht," "Amhrain Chlainne Gaedheal," the "Ceol Sidhe " booklets, and occasionally with Petrie's music, were known in the districts where the Anglo-Irish songs were being made. Were none of the fine Gaelic songs then translated into English by the people ? I have found " Shaun O'Dwyer a Glanna " and « The Red-Haired Man's Wife " on the broad-sheets but in versions so corrupt as to be unintelligible. Other songs may have been translated into English, but so poorly that the versions have now been forgotten. It may be, too, that in the districts where it was necessary to make translations, the Gaelic tradition was already in its decadence and the best songs were no longer remembered. " The Convict of Clonmel," translated by Callanan, and "Pastheen Finn," by Ferguson, went back to the people, for they are to be found on the broad-sheets.
And everyone who has listened to the ballad-singers will remember that internal as well as terminal correspondence is sought :
I speak in candour, one night in slumber My mind did wander near to Athlone The centre station of the Irish nation When a congregation unto me was shown. The writer of such a ballad was more familiar with the Gaelic than with the English way of making verse. Sometimes one finds a song in which the resemblance to a Gaelic original is more complete, as in the one from which this stanza is taken, in which all the correspondences, internal as well as terminal, are based upon a single vowel-sound :
On a Monday morning early, as my wandering steps did
lade me Down by a faimer's station and the meadows and green
lawns, I heard great lamentation the small birds they were
m.aking, Saying, We'll have no more engagements with the boys
of Mullabaun."
These Anglo-Irish songs would not give one the impression that there was a beautiful and subtle folk-poetry behind them. And yet many of the beautiful pieces given in " The Love Songs of Connacht," " The Religious Songs of Connacht," "Amhrain Chlainne Gaedheal," the "Ceol Sidhe " booklets, and occasionally with Petrie's music, were known in the districts where the Anglo-Irish songs were being made. Were none of the fine Gaelic songs then translated into English by the people ? I have found " Shaun O'Dwyer a Glanna " and « The Red-Haired Man's Wife " on the broad-sheets but in versions so corrupt as to be unintelligible. Other songs may have been translated into English, but so poorly that the versions have now been forgotten. It may be, too, that in the districts where it was necessary to make translations, the Gaelic tradition was already in its decadence and the best songs were no longer remembered. " The Convict of Clonmel," translated by Callanan, and "Pastheen Finn," by Ferguson, went back to the people, for they are to be found on the broad-sheets.
At the time when the peasants of the east, the north and the south were turning to English, Dublin was a centre for ballad-making and ballad-singing. Petrie, referring to the beginning of the nineteenth century, writes : " Forty years ago their calling (the ballad-singers) was not only lawful and permitted, but even a somewhat respectable and lucrative one." la the years referred to Charles Lever, then a young student of Trinity College, dressed himself as a ballad-singer and sang in the streets. His gains for the day, according to a tradition which his friends have left, were thirty shillings. The printers of the broad-sheets could afford to pay men of fair wits, for according to the legend they gave Oliver Goldsmith, in his Trinity College days, five shillings a piece for street-songs, and that sum was nearly equivalent to our half guinea. The street-songs current in Dublin were nearly always written to Irish music, — " melodies," writes Petrie, " that travelled from the provinces to the metropolis to do duty for a while and then be forgotten." These Dublin songs began with flouts at the Teagues and Darbys, but Swift, during the controversy over the Drapier Letters, put into them some of the patriotism of the Pale.
The journalists in the United Irish movement left some patriotic songs on the street and on the roads around Belfast and Dublin. But we need not look to these for the origin of the famous Irish street-songs. The Irish countryside had long been filled with secret agrarian combinations, and the men in the societies had put dangerous words to the old Irish march tunes. Petrie (in 1855) recorded many of the tunes, but he found only a few of the words that
recently went with them. " Their preservation," he wrote, " would not be without value to the historian ; but unfortunately they are now most difficult to be procured, and particularly those which are most worthy of preservation, namely, the ballads in the Irish language which were never committed to print and rarely even to manuscript, so that they can only be sought in the dim and nearly forgotten traditions of the people," Perhaps Rafferty's "Amhrin na mBuachailli Bin " is the best made of the songs of the secret combinations. Petrie gives fragments of two of these songs, one in Irish and the other in English. The song in English refers to the secret society known as "The Carders"*:
The journalists in the United Irish movement left some patriotic songs on the street and on the roads around Belfast and Dublin. But we need not look to these for the origin of the famous Irish street-songs. The Irish countryside had long been filled with secret agrarian combinations, and the men in the societies had put dangerous words to the old Irish march tunes. Petrie (in 1855) recorded many of the tunes, but he found only a few of the words that
recently went with them. " Their preservation," he wrote, " would not be without value to the historian ; but unfortunately they are now most difficult to be procured, and particularly those which are most worthy of preservation, namely, the ballads in the Irish language which were never committed to print and rarely even to manuscript, so that they can only be sought in the dim and nearly forgotten traditions of the people," Perhaps Rafferty's "Amhrin na mBuachailli Bin " is the best made of the songs of the secret combinations. Petrie gives fragments of two of these songs, one in Irish and the other in English. The song in English refers to the secret society known as "The Carders"*:
Last Saturday night as I lay in my bed, The neighbours came to me and this 'twas they said — " Are you Captain Lusty i " I answered them " No " ; " Are you Captain Carder { " " Indeed I am so."
" Get up Captain Carder and look through your glass,
And see all your merry men just as they pass,
The clothing they wear 'tis rare to be seen
With their Liberty Jackets bound over with green."
The song in Irish refers to the French attempt at Bantry :
I have had news from the West and the South That Cork was burnt twice by the mob, General Hoche with his gold-hiked sword And he clearing the way for Bonaparte And oh, woman of the house, is it not pleasant i
It is through such secret songs that we come to " The Wearing of the Green," "The Shan Van Vocht," "The Peeler and the Goat," and other political ballads that have made a stir in Ireland,
The professional ballad-singer's stock was miscellaneous, from the first being made up of street-songs proper, familiar
* Their punitive measures consisted in drawing over naked bodies the combs used for carding wool.
country songs, ancient ballads taken out of collections, pieces out of periodicals. The popular tradition was still living in England when the ballad-singer came to our English speaking towns; and it furnished him with songs that would appeal to soldiers and sailors and wandering men, to housemaids and nurses, and to all who carried on the ballad-singing tradition. In the middle of the eighteenth century Goldsmith heard " Barbara Allen," and " Johnny Armstrong's Good Night" sung in the Irish midlands. Such English songs, according to Dr. Joyce, were sung to Irish airs and were modified by the music. The broad-sheets that the ballad-singer carried round with him were not merely memoranda ; they were — and they are still — popular anthologies and v/ere bought, kept and studied as we buy, keep and study books of poetry. One finds on them pieces that it would be impossible to sing — the ballad of Chevy Chase and other pieces as lengthy on the Passion of our Lord, or on the controversies between the Catholic and Protestant Churches.
About the middle of the nineteenth century little four-leaved song-books were published in the provincial towns and hawked about by ballad-singers and peddlars. They were less crudely printed, and had a more careful selection than the broadsheets. The popular literary pieces of the day appear on them — songs by Moore, Campbell and Burns, with street songs and traditional country-side songs. I am inclined to think that the literary Scots' song had an influence upon some of the anonymous songs that appear on these " Garlands," such as "The Willow Tree," and "My Love Johnny." These are not narrative pieces like the Anglo Irish songs, but lyrical pieces like the Scots' song, and they have no trace of Gaelic idiom. Also they happen to come from the North of Ireland with "I Know where I'm Going," and " The Lambs on the Green Hills."
In the present collection street-songs and the songs of the countryside are mixed together as on the broad-sheets. The ballad-singer stands in the market-place between the country and the city and he draws from both traditions. I have not put the songs in the political section into an historical .sequence. But the reader who knows the later Irish history can see the event that went to make each piece. Anglo Irish literary history begins, I suppose, after the surrender of Limerick, and after the unworthy "Lillibulero," the first political song one meets is the manly and fervent " Boyne Water." We have, too, some of the songs of the defeated Gael ; " The Blackbird " is a Jacobite song, and so is " I planted a Garden." The most famous Gaelic songs of the period were : " Farewell to Patrick Sarsfield " and " Shaun O'Dwyer a Glanna." I do not think the first has been translated into English by the people.
The French Revolution and the hope of French aid for an insurrection was to bring a spirit of hopefulness into the political songs of the people, and " The Shan Van Vocht," is full of revolutionary ardour. "Billy Byrne of Ballymanus" and "The Boys of Wexford," though they sing a new defeat, are still brave. The national idea remains in the songs, but it is the agrarian ferment that gives them passion. "An Drimin Donn Deelish," by John Walsh, has the bitterness of the evicted people and so has the anti-British "Patrick Sheehan." In the anonymous " Boys of Mullabaun " there is a plea for some young men who have been transported for belonging to an agrarian combination. The tyranny of the countryside meets a more deadly attack in the splendid satire of " The Peeler and the Goat." Some of the songs in this collection are by known writers — by John Casey, John Walsh, Charles Kickham, T. D. Sullivan and Robert Dwyer Joyce. But " The Rising Of the Moon," " Patrick Sheehan," " The Drinaun Donn," " The Boys of Wexford," and " God Save Ireland," are popular songs ; their makers wrote out of the same tradition and with the same intention as the men whose songs have come down to us without a name and they have been sung in the street and in the field, at the celidh and at the wake. Some of the translations from the Irish are by literary men also — " The Convict of Clonmel," by Callanan ; and " An Pastheen Finn," by Sir Samuel Ferguson. They, too, went from the journal to the broad-sheet. After all, it is only a failure in our information that prevents our naming the maker of every popular song. There is an idea that popular poetry is an impersonal thing, an emanation from the multitude, but I think this is an illusion. The multitude may change or may interpolate, may coarsen or may improve, but the song has been made by an individual. The songs given in this collection do not represent a fine ballad poetry. A few of them, "The Wearin' o' the Green," "The Rising o' the Moon," « The Shan Van Vocht," "By Memory Inspired," " The Peeler and the Goat," are good political songs, and some of the others, " Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye," and "The Night before Larry was Stretched," belong to literature because they contain some national teinper ; they have the harsh zest of life of people who are below decorum.
The songs in this collection are selected from those that have been popular in the English-speaking parts of Ireland for the past hundred years. A few of the pieces have not, as far as I am aware, appeared upon broad-sheets — " The Lambs on the Green Hills, " The Nobleman's Wedding," " My love is like the Sun," " I know where I'm Going," " An Allulu mo Wauleen." They are from the stock of traditional songs, and the printers of the broadsheets, had they come across them, would have printed each as " An Old Admired Song." Something must be said about the printing of the Irish words in "Shule Agra" and "The Cruskeen Lawn." They are in a spelling that does not represent the real sound, and that must look offensive to anyone who reads Irish. But I thought it was only right to reproduce the rude phonetics of the broad-sheet.
" Get up Captain Carder and look through your glass,
And see all your merry men just as they pass,
The clothing they wear 'tis rare to be seen
With their Liberty Jackets bound over with green."
The song in Irish refers to the French attempt at Bantry :
I have had news from the West and the South That Cork was burnt twice by the mob, General Hoche with his gold-hiked sword And he clearing the way for Bonaparte And oh, woman of the house, is it not pleasant i
It is through such secret songs that we come to " The Wearing of the Green," "The Shan Van Vocht," "The Peeler and the Goat," and other political ballads that have made a stir in Ireland,
The professional ballad-singer's stock was miscellaneous, from the first being made up of street-songs proper, familiar
* Their punitive measures consisted in drawing over naked bodies the combs used for carding wool.
country songs, ancient ballads taken out of collections, pieces out of periodicals. The popular tradition was still living in England when the ballad-singer came to our English speaking towns; and it furnished him with songs that would appeal to soldiers and sailors and wandering men, to housemaids and nurses, and to all who carried on the ballad-singing tradition. In the middle of the eighteenth century Goldsmith heard " Barbara Allen," and " Johnny Armstrong's Good Night" sung in the Irish midlands. Such English songs, according to Dr. Joyce, were sung to Irish airs and were modified by the music. The broad-sheets that the ballad-singer carried round with him were not merely memoranda ; they were — and they are still — popular anthologies and v/ere bought, kept and studied as we buy, keep and study books of poetry. One finds on them pieces that it would be impossible to sing — the ballad of Chevy Chase and other pieces as lengthy on the Passion of our Lord, or on the controversies between the Catholic and Protestant Churches.
About the middle of the nineteenth century little four-leaved song-books were published in the provincial towns and hawked about by ballad-singers and peddlars. They were less crudely printed, and had a more careful selection than the broadsheets. The popular literary pieces of the day appear on them — songs by Moore, Campbell and Burns, with street songs and traditional country-side songs. I am inclined to think that the literary Scots' song had an influence upon some of the anonymous songs that appear on these " Garlands," such as "The Willow Tree," and "My Love Johnny." These are not narrative pieces like the Anglo Irish songs, but lyrical pieces like the Scots' song, and they have no trace of Gaelic idiom. Also they happen to come from the North of Ireland with "I Know where I'm Going," and " The Lambs on the Green Hills."
In the present collection street-songs and the songs of the countryside are mixed together as on the broad-sheets. The ballad-singer stands in the market-place between the country and the city and he draws from both traditions. I have not put the songs in the political section into an historical .sequence. But the reader who knows the later Irish history can see the event that went to make each piece. Anglo Irish literary history begins, I suppose, after the surrender of Limerick, and after the unworthy "Lillibulero," the first political song one meets is the manly and fervent " Boyne Water." We have, too, some of the songs of the defeated Gael ; " The Blackbird " is a Jacobite song, and so is " I planted a Garden." The most famous Gaelic songs of the period were : " Farewell to Patrick Sarsfield " and " Shaun O'Dwyer a Glanna." I do not think the first has been translated into English by the people.
The French Revolution and the hope of French aid for an insurrection was to bring a spirit of hopefulness into the political songs of the people, and " The Shan Van Vocht," is full of revolutionary ardour. "Billy Byrne of Ballymanus" and "The Boys of Wexford," though they sing a new defeat, are still brave. The national idea remains in the songs, but it is the agrarian ferment that gives them passion. "An Drimin Donn Deelish," by John Walsh, has the bitterness of the evicted people and so has the anti-British "Patrick Sheehan." In the anonymous " Boys of Mullabaun " there is a plea for some young men who have been transported for belonging to an agrarian combination. The tyranny of the countryside meets a more deadly attack in the splendid satire of " The Peeler and the Goat." Some of the songs in this collection are by known writers — by John Casey, John Walsh, Charles Kickham, T. D. Sullivan and Robert Dwyer Joyce. But " The Rising Of the Moon," " Patrick Sheehan," " The Drinaun Donn," " The Boys of Wexford," and " God Save Ireland," are popular songs ; their makers wrote out of the same tradition and with the same intention as the men whose songs have come down to us without a name and they have been sung in the street and in the field, at the celidh and at the wake. Some of the translations from the Irish are by literary men also — " The Convict of Clonmel," by Callanan ; and " An Pastheen Finn," by Sir Samuel Ferguson. They, too, went from the journal to the broad-sheet. After all, it is only a failure in our information that prevents our naming the maker of every popular song. There is an idea that popular poetry is an impersonal thing, an emanation from the multitude, but I think this is an illusion. The multitude may change or may interpolate, may coarsen or may improve, but the song has been made by an individual. The songs given in this collection do not represent a fine ballad poetry. A few of them, "The Wearin' o' the Green," "The Rising o' the Moon," « The Shan Van Vocht," "By Memory Inspired," " The Peeler and the Goat," are good political songs, and some of the others, " Johnny I Hardly Knew Ye," and "The Night before Larry was Stretched," belong to literature because they contain some national teinper ; they have the harsh zest of life of people who are below decorum.
The songs in this collection are selected from those that have been popular in the English-speaking parts of Ireland for the past hundred years. A few of the pieces have not, as far as I am aware, appeared upon broad-sheets — " The Lambs on the Green Hills, " The Nobleman's Wedding," " My love is like the Sun," " I know where I'm Going," " An Allulu mo Wauleen." They are from the stock of traditional songs, and the printers of the broadsheets, had they come across them, would have printed each as " An Old Admired Song." Something must be said about the printing of the Irish words in "Shule Agra" and "The Cruskeen Lawn." They are in a spelling that does not represent the real sound, and that must look offensive to anyone who reads Irish. But I thought it was only right to reproduce the rude phonetics of the broad-sheet.
The ballad-singers of Ireland have come to an unnoted decline. Ballad-making and ballad-singing have their great epoch during the national or political excitement of a people who are hardly literate. Our present ballad singers are the survivals of those who established themselves with " The Wearin' o' the Green " and " The Peeler and the Goat." The period of political excitement is now over, and when it comes again the ballad-singer's audience will have departed. The crowd in the country town is now quite literate, and the people read the newspapers instead of listening to the ballad-singer. Observe that he appeared amongst them, not as the minstrel but as the chorus in the drama of daily happenings. He uttered the appropriate sentiment on the execution of a murderer, and he had the proper comment on the sinking of a ship or the measures of a statesman. But now the leader-writer, the newspaper reporter and the camera-man of the picture-paper have displaced him as the recorder and the commentator. We may see the last of the ballad-singers being brought up to Dublin as the shanachie or the traditional singer is brought up to the Oireachtas or the Feis Ceoil.
