(17) We may suppose this apology to have been uttered by one of those wandering bards, whom Spenser so severely, and, perhaps, truly, describes in his State of Ireland, and whose poems, he tells us, "were sprinkled with some pretty flowers of their natural device, which have good grace and comeliness unto them, the which it is great pity to see abused to the gracing of wickedness and vice, which, with good usage, would serve to adorn and beautify virtue."

(18) It is conjectured by Wormius, that the name of Ireland is derived from Yr, the Runic for a bow, in the use of which weapon the Irish were once very expert. This derivation is certainly more creditable to us than the following: "So that Ireland, called the land of Ire, from the constant broils therein for 400 years, was now become the land of concord."-Lloyd's State Worthies, art. The Lord Grandison.

(19) See the Hymn, attributed to Alcæus, "I will carry my sword hidden in myrtles, like Harmodius and Aristogiton," &c.

(20) "Of such celestial bodies as are visible, the sun excepted, the single moon, as despicable as it is in comparison to most of the others, is much more beneficial than they all put together."-Whiston's Theory, &c.

In the Entretiens d'Ariste, among other ingenious emblems, we find a starry sky without a moon, with these words, Non mille, quod absens.

(21) This image was suggested by the following thought, which occurs somewhere in Sir William Jones's works: "The moon looks upon many night-flowers, the night-flower sees but one moon."

(22) An emblem of the soul.

(23) "The Irish Corna was not entirely devoted to martial purposes. In the heroic ages, our ancestors quaffed Meadh out of them, as the Danish hunters do their beverage at this day."-Walker.

(24) I believe it is Marmontel who says, "Quand on n'a pas ce que l'on aime, il faut aimer ce que l'on a."-There are so many matter-of-fact people, who take such jeux d'esprit as this defence of inconstancy to be the actual and genuine sentiments of him who writes them, that they compel one, in selfdefence, to be as matter-of-fact as themselves, and to remind them, that Democritus was not the worse physiologist for having playfully contended that snow was black; nor Erasmus, in any degree, the less wise, for having written an ingenious encomium of folly.

(25) Meaning, allegorically, the ancient Church of Ireland.

(26) "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty."— St. Paul, 2 Cor. iii. 17.

(27) These lines were occasioned by the loss of a very near and dear relative, who had died lately at Madeira.

(28) This song was written for a fête in honor of the Prince of Wales's birthday, given by my friend, Major Bryan, at his seat in the county of Kilkenny.

(29) I have here made a feeble effort to imitate that exquisite inscription of Shenstone's, "Heu! quanto minus est cum reliquis versari quam meminisse !"

(30) This ballad is founded upon one of the many stories related of St. Kevin, whose bed in the rock is to be seen at Glendalough, a most gloomy and romantic spot in the county of Wicklow.

(31) There are many other curious traditions concerning this Lake, which may be found in Giraldus, Colgan, &c.

(32) This alludes to Robert Emmet.

(33) The words of this song were suggested by the very ancient Irish story called "Deirdri, or the Lamentable Fate of the Sons of Usnach," which has been translated literally from the Gaelic, by Mr. O'Flanagan, (see vol. i. of Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Dublin,) and upon which it appears that the "Darthula of Macpherson" is founded. The treachery of Conor, King of Ulster, in putting to death the three sons of Usna, was the cause of a desolating war against Ulster, which terminated in the destruction of Eman. "This story (says Mr. O'Flanagan) has been, from time immemorial, held in high repute as one of the three tragic stories of the Irish. These are, 'The death of the children of Touran;' The death of the children of Lear,' (both regarding Tuatha de Darans,) and this, The death of the children of Usnach,' which is a Milesian story." It will be recollected, that, in the Second Number of these Melodies, there is a ballad upon the story of the children of Lear or Lir; "Silent, oh Moyle!" &c.

Whatever may be thought of those sanguine claims to antiquity, which Mr. O'Flanagan and others advance for the literature of Ireland, it would be a lasting reproach upon our nationality, if the Gaelic researches of this gentleman did not meet with all the liberal encouragement they so well merit.

(40) These stanzas are founded upon an event of most melancholy importance to Ireland; if, as we are told by our Irish historians, it gave England the first opportunity of profiting by our divisions and subduing us. The following are the circumstances as related by O'Halloran:-"The king of Leinster had long conceived a violent affection for Dearbhorgil, daughter to the king of Meath, and though she had been for some time married to O'Ruark, prince of Breffni, yet it could not restrain his passion. They carried on a private correspondence, and she informed him that O'Ruark intended soon to go on a pilgrimage, (an act of piety frequent in those days,) and conjured him to embrace that opportunity of conveying her from a husband she detested to a lover she adored. Mac Murchad too punctually obeyed the summons, and had the lady conveyed to his capital of Ferns." The monarch

Roderick espoused the cause of O'Ruark, while Mac Murchad fled to England, and obtained the assistance of Henry II.

Such," adds Giraldus Cambrensis, (as I find him in an old translation,) is the variable and fickle nature of woman, by whom all mischief in the world (for the most part) do happen and come, as may appear by Marcus Antonius, and by the destruction of Troy."

(41) This ballad was suggested by a well-known and interesting story told of a certain noble family in England, (Marquis of Exeter.) Tennyson has also a ballad on the same subject.

(42) Our Wicklow Gold Mines, to which this verse alludes, deserve, I fear, but too well the character here given of them.

(43) The bird, having got its prize, settled not far off, with the talisman in his mouth. The prince drew near it, hoping it would drop it; but, as he approached, the bird took wing, and settled again," &c.-Arabian Nights.

(44) This alludes to a kind of Irish fairy, which is to be met with, they say, in the fields at dusk. As long as you keep your eyes upon him, he is fixed, and in your power;-but the moment you look away (and he is ingenious in furnishing some inducement) he vanishes. I had thought that this was the sprite which we call the Leprechaun; but a high authority upon such subjects, Lady Morgan, (in a note upon her national and interesting novel, O'Donnel,) has given a very different account of that goblin.

(45) "The Sun-burst" was the fanciful name given by the ancient Irish to the Royal Banner.

(46) In that rebellious but beautiful song, "When Erin first rose," there is, if I recollect right, the following line:

"The dark chain of Silence was thrown o'er the deep."

The chain of Silence was a sort of practical figure of rhetoric among the ancient Irish. Walker tell us of "a celebrated contention for precedence between Finn and Gaul, near Finn's palace at Almhaim, where the attending Bards, anxious, if possible, to produce a cessation of hostilities, shook the chain of Silence, and flung themselves among the ranks." See also the Ode to Gaul, the Son of Morni, in Miss Brooke's Reliques of Irish Poetry.

(47) Dimidio magicæ resonant ubi Memnone chorda.Juvenal.

(48) Tous les habitans de Mercure sont vifs.-Pluralité des Mondes.

(49) La terre pourra être pour Vénus l'étoile du berger et la mère des amours, comme Vénus l'est pour nous.-Pluralité des Mondes.

(50) In a metrical life of St. Senanus, which is taken from an old Kilkenny MS., and may be found among the Acta Sanctorum Hibernia, we are told of his flight to the island of Scattery, and his resolution not to admit any woman of the party; and that he refused to receive even a sister saint, St. Cannera, whom an angel had taken to the island for the express purpose of introducing her to him. The following was the ungracious answer of Senanus, according to his poetical biographer:

Cui Prasul, quid fœminis
Commune est cum monachis?
Nec te nec ullam aliam
Admittemus in insulam.

See the Acta Sanct. Hib., page 610.

(58) The particulars of the tradition respecting O'Donohue and his White Horse, may be found in Mr. Weld's Account of Killarney, or more fully detailed in Derrick's Letters. For many years after his death, the spirit of this hero is supposed to have been seen on the morning of May-day, gliding over the lake on his favorite white horse, to the sound of sweet unearthly music, and preceded by groups of youths and maidens, who flung wreaths of delicate spring flowers in his path.

Among other stories, connected with this Legend of the Lakes, it is said that there was a young and beautiful girl, whose imagination was so impressed with the idea of this visionary chieftain, that she fancied herself in love with him, and at last, in a fit of insanity, on a May-morning, threw herself into the lake.

(59) The boatmen at Killarney call those waves which come on a windy day, crested with foam, "O'Donohue's white horses." An English poet has called ocean "the Blue Steed with the Silvery Mane." Byron has also, in his Childe Harold, used this figure as applied to the sea.

(60) These lines were written on the death of our great patriot, Grattan, in the year 1820. It is only the first two verses that are either intended or fitted to be sung.

(61) Written during a visit to Lord Kenmare, at Killarney.

(62) In describing the Skeligs, (islands of the Barony of Forth,) Dr. Keating says, "There is a certain attractive virtue in the soil, which draws down all the birds that attempt to fly over it, and obliges them to light upon the rock."

(63) "Nennius, a British writer of the ninth century, mentions the abundance of pearls in Ireland. Their princes, he says, hung them behind their ears; and this we find confirmed by a present made A. D. 1094, by Gilbert, Bishop of Limerick, to Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, of a considerable quantity of Irish pearls.”—O'Halloran.

(64) Glengariff.

(65) Jours charmans, quand je songe à vos heureux instans,

Je pense remonter le fleuve de mes ans ;
Et mon cœur, enchanté sur sa rive fleurie,
Respire encore l'air pur du matin de la vie.

(66) The same thought has been happily expressed by my friend, Mr. Washington Irving, in his Bracebridge Hall, vol. i., p. 213. The sincere pleasure which I feel in calling this gentleman my friend, is much enhanced by the reflection that he is too good an American, to have admitted me so readily to such a distinction, if he had not known that my feelings towards the great and free country that gave him birth, have been long such as every real lover of the liberty and happiness of the human race must entertain.

(67) "Thomas, the heir of the Desmond family, had accidentally been so engaged in the chase, that he was benighted near Tralee, and obliged to take shelter at the Abbey of Feal, in the house of one of his dependents, called Mac Cormac. Catherine, a beautiful daughter of his host, instantly inspired the Earl with a violent passion, which he could not subdue. He married her, and by this inferior alliance alienated his followers, whose brutal pride regarded this indulgence of his love as an unpardonable degradation of his family."—Leland, vol. ii.

(68) These verses are meant to allude to that ancient haunt of superstition, called Patrick's Purgatory. "In the midst of these gloomy regions of Donegall (says Dr. Campbell) lay a lake, which was to become the mystic theatre of this fabled and intermediate state. In the lake were several islands; but one of them was dignified with that called the Mouth of Purgatory, which, during the dark ages, attracted the notice of all Christendom, and was the resort of penitents and pilgrims from almost every country in Europe."

"It was," as the same writer tells us, "one of the most dismal and dreary spots in the North, almost inaccessible, through deep glens and rugged mountains, frightful with impending rocks, and the hollow murmurs of the western winds in dark caverns, peopled only with such fantastic beings as the mind, however gay, is, from strange association, wont to appropriate to such gloomy scenes."-Strictures on the Ecclesiastical and Literary History of Ireland.

Ir is Cicero, I believe, who says, "naturâ ad modos ducimur;" and the abundance of wild, indigenous airs, which almost every country, except England, possesses, sufficiently proves the truth of his assertion. The lovers of this simple, but interesting kind of music, are here presented with the first number of a collection, which, I trust, their contributions will enable us to continue. A pretty air without words resembles one of those half creatures of Plato, which are described as wandering in search of the remainder of themselves through the world. To supply this other

half, by uniting with congenial words the many fugitive melodies which have hitherto had none,or only such as are unintelligible to the generality of their hearers,-is the object and ambition of the present work. Neither is it our intention to confine ourselves to what are strictly called National Melodies, but, wherever we meet with any wandering and beautiful air, to which poetry has not yet assigned a worthy home, we shall venture to claim it as an estray swan, and enrich our humble Hippocrene with its song.