1894.] on Old Irish Song. 175 



Giraldns Cambrensis, an inveterate opponent of everything else 

 Irish — " They are incomparably more skilful than any other nation 

 I have ever seen. For their manner of playing on these instruments, 

 unlike that of the Britons or (Welsh) to which I am accustomed, is 

 not slow and harsh, but lively and rapid, while the melody is both 

 sweet and sprightly. It is astonishing that in so complex and swift 

 a movement of the fingers the musical proportions as to tune can be 

 preserved ; and that throughout the difficult modulations on their 

 various instruments, the harmony is completed with such a sweet 

 rapidity. They enter into a movement and conclude it in so delicate 

 a manner, and tinkle the little strings so sportively under the deeper 

 tones of the bass strings — they delight so delicately, and soothe with 

 such gentleness, that the perfection of their art appears in the con- 

 cealment of Art." 



John of Salisbury (twelfth century) is equally eulogistic, and 

 Fuller says, "Yea, we might well think that all the Concert of 

 Christendom in this war and the Crusade conducted by Godfrey of 

 Boulogne would have made no music if the Irish harp had been 

 wanting." There is indeed a continued record of praise (British and 

 Continental) of the Irish music and its professors from the twelfth 

 to the seventeenth centuries, which we may conclude by Drayton's 

 stanza in his Polyolbion : — 



" The Irish I admire, 

 And still cleave to that lyre 

 As to our Muse's mother; 

 And think, till I expire, 

 Apollo's such another." 



The antiquity of individual airs has distinct historical confirma- 

 tion by Bunting and others. The tune called ' Thugamar fein a 

 sowra lin' was sung to welcome the landing of the Duke of Ormond 

 by a band of Virgins who went out to meet him from Dublin. Again, 

 the ancient Irish air ' Summer is coming ' is the same song practi- 

 cally as ' Summer is a comin in/ which is reputed as the first piece 

 of music set in score in Great Britain. Bunting claims that air, 

 therefore, for Ireland on the ground of the extreme improbability of 

 its having been borrowed by the ancient Irish from a country that 

 has no national music of its own (the Welsh excepted). " Their igno- 

 rance of the English language," he adds, " and their rooted aversion 

 to their invaders, were effectual bars to any such plagiarism or 

 adoption." 



Besides the remarkable similarity between our lullabies and those 

 of the East, already touched on, there is a marked correspondence 

 between some of the early Norse and ancient Irish tunes. The 

 distinguished Swedish harpist, Sjoden, who visited Dublin on the 

 occasion of the Moore Centenary, showed me that some of our old 

 Irish airs — for instance-^the ' Cruiskeen Lawn ' — were almost iden- 

 tical with early Norse ones ; the question for settlement of course 



