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wanted-colour, romance, high-sounding words, deeds of daring, and the spirit of sacrifice. It is easy to laugh at his melodrama, but he brought the Irish masses into the theatre by giving them drama that they could understand, and with which they sympathised. For that alone he deserves to be remembered. His work was continued by J. W. Whitebread in a series of very patriotic melodramas which continued to fill the theatre almost to the eve of the Great War. The type of stage Irishman which these two playwrights managed to popularise was a compound of all the virtues which the Irishman was sure he possessed, and the self-satisfied audiences were given villains whom they could hiss, and heroes who died for the liberation of their country. Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Napper Tandy, were a few of the heroes who roused Dublin audiences to enthusiasm in the plays of Whitebread and his associates. These plays were Irish in theme, as Robertson's were English, and almost for the first time they gave to Ireland drama which had some connection with the life and thought of the people. They were poor plays, but they made history real for thousands of Irish people.

Meanwhile melodrama had invaded life in the turmoil of the Parnell controversy, and after Parnell had been deserted and vilified by those who ought to have been his most ardent and constant supporters the bottom seemed to fall out of Irish life. There was disillusionment and bewilderment. Then it was that attention turned to those cultural movements which have since remade the life of Ireland. The Gaelic League was founded; and the Irish Literary Society, from which sprang Sinn Fein. Standish O'Grady published his famous history of Ireland, and John O'Leary enthused his youthful listeners with his high mind and deep patriotic feeling. The wranglings of the politicians seemed as if they would never cease, and as they consisted mainly of personal abuse there was little to be expected from them in the immediate future. The minds of many of the younger men were turned from politics to literature, and the Irish Literary Renaissance began. At the same time the drama was having a renaissance in Scandinavia, and the work of Ibsen was being brought to the notice of the world in Free Theatres, Independent Theatres, and Little Theatres in many parts of Europe. Bernard Shaw carried the campaign against the older drama to London, and

waged incessant warfare against the commercial theatre as it then existed. When the Independent Theatre was founded in London its chief supporters were Irishmen, and it actually produced the first plays of Bernard Shaw, George Moore and W. B. Yeats.

To one of these came the idea that Ireland ought to have a national drama of its own; and when that idea came to W. B. Yeats the Irish drama was conceived. He discussed the matter with George Moore, Edward Martyn, and Lady Gregory; and with the assistance of these three he founded the Irish Literary Theatre. When that theatre gave its first performance in Dublin in 1899 the Irish drama was born, and a new national drama was given to the world. Hitherto everything that Ireland had given to drama was given to England; now and henceforth Ireland would have a drama of its own which would represent it to the world in a somewhat better guise than that of Boucicault or Whitebread, and would more worthily voice the culture that was striving to be made vocal. So Ireland came at last to be represented in the theatre of the world. And when the first play in the Irish language was produced in 1901 a new, but very old, language was given to the theatre at last.

ANDREW E. MALONE

THE OLDEST ENGLISH FOLK-SONG

1. Long (W. H.) "A Dictionary of the Isle of Wight Dialect," etc. 8vo. London and Newport, I.W. 1886.

2.

Hersart de la Villemarqué. "Ballads and Songs of Brittany." translated
by Tom Taylor from the "Barsaz-Breiz" of Vicomte Hersart de la
Villemarqué. 8vo. Cambridge. 1865. Also "Barzaz-Breiz Chants
Populaires de la Bretagne" (Preface). 1839, and later editions.

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3. Eckenstein (Lina). Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes." 8vo. London. 1906.

4. Courson (Aurélien de). "Histoire des Peuples Bretons," 2 vols. 8vo.

Paris. 1846.

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6. Longmans' Magazine. January and June, 1889.

7. Jayne (Walter Addison). "The Healing Gods of Ancient Civilizations." 8vo. Yale University Press. 1925.

8. Luzel (François Marie). "De l'Authenticité des Chants du BarzazBreiz." 8vo. Paris. 1872.

Also "Soniou Breiz-izel," 2 vols. 1890.

"Celt" throughout the article applies to the Celtic-speaking peoples, not to a Celtic race, of the separate existence of which modern ethnography is doubtful.

SOME

OME forty years ago Rembrandtesque scenes might still be witnessed on Saturday nights in the tap-rooms of small English country inns. Old England then still survived. Clustered round the bright fire sat the fathers of the village with their long pipes and mugs of ale. In the strong firelight the rugged old features suggested ancient pictures of the Dutch School. There would be a mutter and babble of rustic talk and the sound of rich forgotten dialect; and soon there would be " zinging," for singing was not then forbidden where men drank. The songs were mainly ancient, for these singers in the early 'eighties were mostly too elderly to have come under the modernizing influences of the still new-fangled Board Schools. They were sung with solemn emphasis, with something of ritual and a pious aroma of local patriotism, and their subjects were the unhappy loves of young ploughmen who hanged themselves on "willo-o-w trees young lasses of the type of Tess.

or

Cherished in the annals of my family is one Charlie Nippard. The scene of his singing was in the Isle of Wight, but there he

was referred to as "an Overner "-one, that is, who came from despised regions on the mainland of England. He was probably a West Countryman from Hardy's Wessex, and his sheaf of songs may have been thence derived. With one Frank White, a fellow labourer, but an islander, he could be persuaded to burst, after much hesitation, into a mysterious rousing song, sung to an equally rousing rolling tune, itself probably traditional. "What is your One, O?" he sang, and the other man answered. This was their song :

"THE TWELVE APOSTLES."
(Isle of Wight version)
What is your one O ?
When the one is left alone,
No more he can be seen O.
What is your two O?

Two and two-the lily white boys
Clothed all in green O,

When the one is left alone

No more he can be seen O.
What is your three O ?
Three, three-the King's O,
Two and two-the lily white boys
Clothed all in green O, &c.

What is your four O?
Four-the four Evangelists,
Three, three-the King's O,

Two and two-the lily white boys, &c.

What is your five O ?

Five is odd and even O, &c.

What is your six O ?
Six, six-the weaver, &c.

What is your seven ?

Seven stars in the sky, &c.
What is your eight O?
Eight-the eight Archangels, &c.
What is your nine O?
Nine, nine-the triple Trine, &c.

What is your ten O?
Ten-the Ten Commandments, &c.

What is your eleven O ?
Eleven-the Gospel preachers, &c.
What is your twelve O ?
Twelve-the twelve Apostles, &c.

Although delivered with a certain pious emphasis as being, in Wessex parlance, something" wold ancient," the song manifestly

sounds like nonsense. Yet in this nonsensical shape it has for long survived in many countrysides.

When first I came across the Island song it occurred to me that it might be found in other countries. I opened Stoeber's collection of Alsatian folk-sayings and songs, and at once lighted upon "Die Catechisation," popular at Hagenau in Northern Alsace. This proved to be a manifestly Christianised version of the English song. It is written, not in the Alsatian patois, but in High German, and is probably universal east of the Rhine.

Guter Freund, ich frage dich !

"Guter Freund, was fragst du mich ? "
Sag' mir was ist der Erste !
"Eins und eins ist Gott allein,
Der da lebt und der da schwebt
Im Himmel und auf Erden."

That is the explanation of the number One. Number Two is explained as the two Tables of the Law (of Moses); "Three " as the Three Patriarchs; "Four," the Four Evangelists; “Five,” the Five Laws (Gebote) of the Church; "Six," the six jars of red wine of the Feast of Cana in Galilee; "Seven," the Seven Sacraments; "Eight," the Eight Seligkeiten or Beatitudes; "Nine,” the Nine Choirs of Angels; "Ten," the Ten Commandments; Eleven," the Eleven Thousand Virgins of legend; and "Twelve," the Twelve Apostles.

The Alsatian philologist, Auguste Stoeber, traces this folk-song to the "Haggada" of Abraham Ben Baruch, where it appears in a Hebrew version of thirteen strophes. The Haggadas are the body of writings embodying the free rabbinical interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures and, into the rituals among these, Jews of Germany in the late Middle Ages adopted two or three German folk-songs. A German Volkslied concerning a kid has, for instance, been copied in a Chaldee version into the Haggada Shel Pesach, the domestic ritual, partly in Hebrew, partly in Chaldee, used on the first two evenings of the Passover. This Volkslied is what Mr. Jacobs calls an "accumulation droll," seeing that each new verse repeats all the verses that have preceded it on the principle of its variant, "The House that Jack Built," or of "The Twelve Apostles " above-quoted.

Stoeber, however, is probably incorrect in his inference that The Catechisation" is drawn from a Jewish source. The

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