CONVIVIAL AND HUMOROUS SONGS.

IN

N the hard-drinking days of the last century it was acknowledged that the Irish were superior in the depth of their potations to even the capacious English, and carried off their liquor more handsomely than even the hard-headed Scotch. The stories that are told, not only of the occasional bouts at drinking, but of the regular habits of good society, are almost incredible. The fathers instructed their boys to "make their head" when young, that is, acquire the power of drinking great quantities of liquor without getting drunk, and not even the clergy of the Established Church, or the judges, avoided or discouraged the bowl. Drinking was a fashionable accomplishment among the upper classes, and they devoted themselves to it as to a proper pastime and enlightened occupation. A gallon of claret was considered not more than a fair allowance per man, and there were various devices to hasten the circulation of the glass and prevent shirking or desertion. No "heeltaps," no "skylights," were allowed, that is to say, any remainder in the glass, or space between the liquor and the rim. The bottoms of the decanters were frequently rounded so that they could not be set upright, and therefore had to be kept in constant circulation. Another custom was to break off the stems of the glasses so that they must be emptied as soon as filled. It was sometimes customary to take away the shoes of the guests, and strew broken glass along the entry to prevent anybody's

escape. A huge glass called a "constable" was inflicted as a fine for any recalcitrance or fraud in drinking; and when any one left the table bits of paper were dropped in his glass to count the rounds of the bottle in his absence, which he was obliged to make up on his return or be fined so many bumpers of salt and water. There were astounding individual feats of drinking, and Jack Gallaspy,* a noted buck of those days, was celebrated for drinking a "full hand,” that is from five glasses held between his fingers so that each one emptied into the first glass in turn. The custom of celebrating marriages before noon was to avoid the probable obfuscation of the bridegroom and possible fraud upon him, and there were other arrangements adapted to a society in which everybody was expected to be drunk after dinner.

Some of the anecdotes of extraordinary bouts of drinking are recorded in Sir Jonah Barrington's "Sketches of his own Time," which, although accused of some exaggeration, and not always true in particular details, give an extraordinarily vivid description of society as it existed at that time. In one, which took place on his father's estate in his youth, and which he attended for the first day, nine gentlemen shut themselves up in the huntsman's lodge on St. Stephen's day with a hogshead of claret and the carcass of a fat cow hung up by the heels. An anteroom was spread with straw for a bed and the windows closed against the light of day. Two pipers and a fiddler furnished the music, and a couple of hounds were taken in to add to the vigor of the hunting choruses. The sports consisted of cock-fighting and cardplaying, but the main business was to carouse. There they remained for a week, until the hogshead of claret was upon the stoop and the last steak cut from the cow, and in a gallon of mulled claret they drank to their next merry meeting. On another occasion a clergyman on a visit to a country

* "Streets of Dublin," in Irish Quarterly Review.

house escaped from a convivial party and fled into the park, where he was pursued by the revellers with cries of "stole away." He passed the night on the ground with the deer, and in the morning on returning to the house he witnessed an extraordinary procession. Such of the party as were in possession of their legs had procured a low-backed car, and, piling the bodies of their insensible friends within it, covering them with a sheet and illuminating them with candles after the fashion of a wake, they drew them to their respective homes, singing a keen, or lamentation, by the way. These orgies have long passed out of date in Ireland, as they have in the rest of Great Britain, and were only a little more extravagant than those in England and Scotland at the same time.

The chief persons in the kingdom at one time formed themselves into a society called the "Monks of the Screw," whose title was significant of its purpose, and whose ranks included the Marquis of Townsend (Viceroy of Ireland), the Earl of Charlemont (the leader in the Volunteer movement), Hussey Burgh (Chief Baron), Lord Avonmore and Lord Kilwarden. (judges), Henry Grattan, John Philpot Curran, Rev. Arthur O'Leary, and others of the most distinguished persons in Ireland. They were accustomed to meet at a tavern in St. Kevin Street, Dublin, which they called the Convent, and to indulge in a grand festival and "high jinks," at which there was probably more wit, as well as conviviality, than at any meetings held in Great Britain since those of Shakespeare, Jonson, and their associates, at the Mermaid. That period was the golden age of Irish society, when it had recovered from the ages of turmoil and bitterness, and had peace and leisure to gather and flourish, and before the absorption of the Irish Parliament into the English extinguished its most powerful nucleus, and drew more and more of its highest elements to London. It was the period when eloquence as

eloquence reached its highest point of cultivation in Great Britain, and which was almost equally distinguished by a brilliancy of wit and humor. Not even French society can show a richer collection of jests and bon mots at any period than were uttered by the leaders of the Irish bar in the period of the Union. It can be easily imagined what the convivial meetings of such a party would be.

An accompaniment of drinking was very naturally singing, and convivial songs celebrating whiskey and wine, the delights of good-fellowship, and the prowess of drinkers, were composed in great abundance. There is perhaps no bacchanalian poet among the Irish who equalled in number and variety the happy verses of Captain Morris in praise of the bowl, or rivalled the quality of one or two of Burns's lyrics; but there were individual songs quite entitled to rank in sincere joviality and spirit with Bishop Ritson's "Back and Syde, Goe Bare, Goe Bare," and Walter De Mapes's "The Jolly Priest's Confession," so effectively rendered from the Latin by Leigh Hunt, or any of the celebrated drinking anthems and shoeing-horns of poetry which have descended to us from all time. "Bumpers, Squire Jones," by Baron Dawson of the Exchequer, is unique in its spirit and melody. The fashion went out of date with Moore, as the habit had done before, and in his bacchanalian verses there was an element of insincerity, of classical compliment and elaborate fancy, quite different from the real delight in drinking and vivid experience displayed in the earlier songs. After his time there was no more singing of the delights of getting drunk than of gluttony, and perhaps the old songs may not be pleasant to a more refined and temperate taste; but in a view of the poetry of Ireland some specimens of them cannot well be omitted.

As to the Irish poetry of a comic or humorous cast, the statement will be considered a little strange that the great

bulk of what passes for such was not written by Irishmen. The songs full of bulls and blunders, and drawing their humor from brogue and horse-play, are almost without exception the production of English writers, who as a general thing give little more than a coarse caricature, without truth or faithfulness. It was the custom of the dramatists of the time of Garrick and Foote to introduce Irish characters into their farces to raise a laugh by broad brogue and blunders; and songs were written by George Colman the Younger, and others, in the same vein, which were not only vulgar and stupid, but had not the slightest real flavor of Irish life. For many years they were the stock "Irish” songs, and their successors to-day in the London music-halls and in the variety theatres of the United States are the composition of the poets of the negro minstrels, and where they have any strength or flavor at all it is as caricatures of AngloIrish, or Irish-American, rather than Irish life. An exception is to be made in favor of the Irish ballads of Thackeray, who thoroughly understood and appreciated Irish character, and reproduced it in kindly and faithful caricature; but even in these Mr. Anthony Trollope complains that the brogue is at fault in some minor particulars. The general impression is that there is a great quantity of Irish comic poetry; but the larger portion of it will be found on examination to have been written by English writers, and to be as uncharacteristic as it is worthless. The really Irish poetry of a humorous cast is quite limited in amount in comparison with the English and Scotch.

It is not for the want of humor in the race, for that, we know, is superabundant; and if we cast about for a reason, it may possibly be found in the fact, that the Irish, like the Americans, for several generations, were quite sensitive to ridicule, and did not feel that assurance in their position among nations to like to present their ridiculous aspects even to