The electronic version of this text has been created as a part of the "Publishing in Irish America: 1820-1922" project that is being undertaken by the CUNY Institute for Irish- American Studies. Project: Publishing in IA Date Created: 9/2012005 ObjectlD: 000000040 Object Name: Popular Songs of Ireland Author: Thomas C. Croker Date Published: 1886 Publisher: George Routledge and Sons Donor: lona College MORLEY'S UNIVERSAL LIBRARY. I ~ \ -- 1/. BURLESQUE PLAYS AND POEMS. [lation. 1!8. DANTE'S DIVINE COMEDY. Longfellow's Trans- 19. GOLDSMITH'S VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. ~LA YS AND POEMS. --- ~-y~..........C .. ~"' ..... ~hA <::AN,c;K RIT. 15.nan~. ~rt:J!I bAl.I.ANTYNE, UANSO:-: AND CO. J:::LHNBUR\.iH AND LONDON POPULAR SONGS OF IRELl\.l\JD COLLECTED BY THOMAS CROFTON CROKER WiTH AN iNTRODUCTION BY HENNY lIIORLEY LL.D., PkOFESSQR OF ENGLISU LITERATnm AT Vl\!VERSITY COLLEGE, LONVOJi LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SO~S BROADWAY, LtJDGATE HILL NEW YORK: 9 LAFAYETTE PLACE 1886 r~ /, 0 y C! ? t/3 MORLEY'S UNIVERSAL LIBRARY. I. Sheridan's Plays. 21. Hobbes' Leviathan. 2. Piays from lifolitre. By 22. Hltllibms. By SAMUEL En....lish Dramatists. BUTLER. 3. Mm":/cnve's Faustus and 23. .ld,al Commonwealths. Goet/te's Faust. 24. Cavendish's Lift of Wolsey. 4. Chr,'nlcle of the Cid. 25 & 26. DOlt Quixote. In 5. Rabelals' Gargantlta and the Two Volumes. Flnoic DUtts OF Palltaj.',11ul. 27. Burlesque Plays an" Poems. 6. The Prime. By l\1AcIIIA- 28. Dante's Divitle Cumedy. YELLI. LONGFELLOW'S Translation. 7. Bacon's Essays. 29. Goldsmith's Vicar of Wake- 8. D<Joe's Journal '!I the field, Plays, and Po~ms. Plague Year. 30. Fables and Proveds from 9. Locke on Civil Govern1lle1It the Satlskrit. (H£topadesa.) and Filmer's "Patriarclza." 31. Charles Lamb's Essays of 10. Butler's Analogy of Religion. Elia. I J. Dryden's Virgil. 32. Tile History oj' Thomas 12. Scott's Dmlotlology and Ellwood. Wildlcraft. 33, Eln-rsotl's Essays, &>c. 13. Herrick's Hesperid<s. 34. Southey's Lift of Nelson. 14. Colc-ridge's Table-Talk. 35. De Quinay's Confessions 15. Boccaaio's Decameron. tif an Opium-Eater, ~c. 16. Sternt's Tristram Shatldy. 36• Stories of Ireland. By Miss 17. Chapman's Homer's .Iliad. EDGEWORTH. 18. MtdllZVal ]i,ltS. ::\7. Frere's A ristopha1tes: 19. Voltaire's Candide, and Acha1"uialls, Kuiglzts, Birds. Joltllson's Rasselas. 38• Speec.htsand Letters by 20. Plays and Poems. By BEN Edmund Burke. JONSON. 39. 1honzllS a Kemp;s. 4°. Popular SOtlCSif Ire/mid. U l\Iarvels of clear type and general neatness."-Dai£y Telegraph. INTRODUCTION. THOMAS CROFTON CROKER, the editor of this pleasant c.ollection of wngs popular in Ireland in his time, was born at Cork, OIl the 15th of January, 1798. His father, lVIajor Croker, counted among his friends John Wilson Croker (of Galway, and n~t a relative), who, for more than twenty years, after the year 1809, was Secretary to the Admiralty. Thomas Crofton was the Major's only son. He was placed in a merchant's count- ing-house when he was fifteen years old, but was more deft at figure drawing with his pencil than at figures ranged between the red lines of a ledger. He sent sketches as a painter to the local exhibitions, and sketches as a writer to the local newspapers. He began early the collection of legends. John \Vilson Croker's Secretaryship of the Admiralty, however, solved the material problem of life for his young friend. At the age 6 INTRODCCTIOi\: of i.wcllty-one Thomas Crofton Croker was made a junior clerk at the Admiralty, and he thenceCorth proceeded to work his way up to the position of a first clerk with £800 a year. The problem of ways and means being thus solved, Thomas Crofton Croker used his leisure chiefly in genial study of the life of his own people. He began in 1824, at the age of twenty- six, with "Researches in the South of Ireland," a book that blended the results of special study with humour and feeling. In the following year he published, anonymously, his" Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland," which were followed by a second series. In 1827 he was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy. In 1828, still keeping to Irish ground, he published "Legends of the Lakes," and a tale of an Irish drawer of the long-bow, "Daniel O'Rourke." In I 832, followed" Barney Mahoney," and "My Village." In 1838, he edited" Memoirs of Joseph Holt, General of the Irish Rebels;" and in 1839 he published this \'olume of "Popular Songs of Ireland." About this time, Thomas Crofton Croker was among the founders of two of the best INTRODUCTION. 7 societies established for the mainten;.mcc of a right knowledge of past history and literature, the Camden Society, established in 1838, and the Percy Society in 1840. For the Camden Society he edited, in 1841, "Narratives Illustrative of the Contests in Ireland in 164 I and 1690." For the Percy Society he edited, with an introduction and notes, in the same year I 84 I, "The Revol ution in Ireland of 1688. Illustrated by the Popular Ballads of the Period," and also for the same Society, In 1844, "The Keen of the South of Ireland, as illustrative of Irish Political and Domestic History, Manners, Music and Super- stitions." He contributed also to the Percy Society in 1845, 1846, and 1847 four volumes of "Popular Songs Illustrative of the French Invasions of Ireland." Thomas Crofton Croker was also a member of the Hakluyt Society, founded in 1846, for the publication and diffusing of Rare and Valuable Voyages, Travels, and Geographical Records. He was, of course, also a member of the Antiquarian and Archa:ological Societies. In 1850, at the age of fifty-two, he retired from the Admiralty on a pel15ion of £580 a year, and 8 INTRODUCTION. he died in his house at Old Brompton on the 8th of August, 1854. Crofton Croker was no Dryasdust. He could be kindly and playful as a gatherer of small things characteristic of his people in his time, and he produced light popular literature with solid knowledge upon which to build it all. He com- bined, indeed, to an unusual extent, the natures of the artist and the antiquary. His books are not among the greater monuments of literature; but they are genuine books. He wrote of what he cared about, he had a quick insight in reading, and a quick eye for living ~haracter. He gives us, through a book like this, some share of his own insight into the life of Ireland as he saw it when our century was young, with cheerful features that all hope to see restored before our century is dead. H. 1\1. 'lldy 1886. THE POPULAR SONGS OF IRELAND. -~I~.~'- ST. PATRICK. OF a personage so celebrated as the National Saint of Ireland, it is here only necessary to state that the anniversary of his death, * namely, the 17th of March, has been long carefully observed by all good and pious Irishmen; not, indeed, with painful abstinence or melancholy seclusion, but with glorious feasting and uproarious jollification. Harris recommends, in consequence, the publi- cation of a Life of St. Patrick, as "the means of rectifying our deluded countrymen, who spend the festival of this most abstemious and mortified man in riot and excess, as if they looked upon him only in the light of a jolly companion." * Qttere, th~t of his birth! It is very difficult, in the lives of the saints, to ascert~in one from the other; ~s the s~me word is com- monly used by their biographers to express both events. " A nativity, or nat~1 day "-th~t is, the day on which a saint is rele~sed from mortality here, and born to eteruallife. 10 POPULAR SONGS OF IRELAND. Justly has this anniversary been characterizf:d in the" Irish Hudibras," as rich "With rhymes, cronaans,* and many a gay trick, In adoration of St. Patrick." When the people of Ireland, in their venerated Saint's "name, make holiday, When all the Monaghanst shall play; Ordain a statute to he drunk, And burn tobacco free as spunk. t And (what shall never be forgot), In usquebah, 51. Patrick's pot; To last for ever in the nation, On pain of excommunication." It is a day on which all true-born sons of Erin feel peculiarly happy, and are inclined to view every occurrence in a favourable and mellow light. This was remarked more than two centuries ago, as a reference to " Strafford's State Letters," vol. ii. p. 57, will prove; where Mr. Garrard informs the Lord Deputy of Ireland, that, "on Friday morning, the I 7th of this month (March 1636), St. Patrick's Day, was the queen brought to bed of a daughter: which," he adds, "will please the Irish well." The day, in fact, is nationally regarded as auspicious. Major Mitchell, whose recent work on * Son!:S. t Clowns; inhabitants of the county of Monaghan. ::: Tinder. ST. FA TRICK. II Australia is an important addition to our know- ledge of that interesting country, thus notes the starting of his expedition for the Darling and Murray rivers precisely two hundred years after- wards (1836);- "Dr. Johnson's Obidah was not more free from care on the morning of his journey, than I then was on this the first morning of mine, which was also St. Patrick's Day; and, in riding through the bush, I had again leisure to recall past scenes and times connected with this anniversary.