In this small volume to which these pages are prefixed, an attempt had been made to provide form the lyric wealth of Ireland, a collection that shall fulfil two distinct important functions - the furnishing for all readers a fairly adequate opportunity of judging Irish character, as it is shown in the most self-revealing of all means of expression; and the providing Irish readers with a book that, in its scope completeness, and accuracy, may be found worthy to take rank on their shelves beside Gavan Duffy’s Ballad Poetry and the Spirit of the Nation. This two-fold aim, ambitious though it be, has been kept steadily in view; every song, ballad, or lyric is by an Irish writer, upon an Irish theme, and clearly Celtic in thought and feeling. Wherever possible it is one, also, that has actually been popular among the peasantry, who have always been the depository of the song, music and simple story, that are now finding securer keeping in printed books. From them, and those in sympathy with them, can the force which again and again revived the hope and courage that strove against unrelenting encroachment during dreary centuries in which the feet of war went to and fro over the face of the land. ... Like Anteus must Humanity renew its vigour by the touch of Mother Earth. From the conscious, rule-encumbered art of a complex civilisation must we turn to the truth, freedom, and tenderness of the spontaneous art of a simple nature-moulded life; from the perennial fountain thus kept fresh all really Irish writers have drawn their inspiration; and until tried by the test thus furnished no song or lyric can be unquestioningly received as truly Irish. [xvi]

[On T. C. Croker:]. His knowledge of history was more than equalled by misapplication of its meaning, and Popular Songs of Ireland [Colburn 1839] gave to the world the though and feeling of a class as that of a nation, and seemed for ever to confirm the slander that Irish songs were “either pure English, or mere gibberish”. [Synopsis of history beginning with ‘the suicidal folly of inviting foreign intervention in Ireland’ xviii] Concanen, Congreve, and O’Keeffe must be counted as English writers. [xix] Congreve was so anxious to hide even that he was born in Ireland that he persuaded Jacob to write him down as born in Bardsley in Yorkshire, a lie still copied to the compilers of biography. [xix] The eighteenth century opened with the Irish people ‘pacified’ into seeming death. The country was in the hands of an enormous garrison, supplemented by the imported proprietors and Shoneen [‘upstart’] aristocracy. That part of the island that had lain without the pale was crushed into quietude; the Anglicised portion had not yet become national; Swift’s Drapier’s Letters, and the movement connected with them, interested but a small section of the country ... [xx]

The first great blow struck at the British Empire, and at monarchical government - a blow from which they bleed yet - was struck by Irish refugees. ... A number of exiles, driven out by excessive rents in Ulster, went to America, where they soon had a chance of revenge upon English they were not slow to seize. [xxi ...]

[On Thomas Moore:] Moore ... unhappily tinkered most of the old tunes he used into drawing-room shapes and wedded them to words that were only Irish in their sentiment and their swiftness and [xxii] melody. For the rest - intonation, inflection, character - they might have been written by an educated Cockney with an ear or music; quotes Hazlitt to the effect that Moore had ‘converted the wild harp of Erin into a musical snuff-box’; calls the founding of the Nation ‘a great development’ [xxiii]; it is not too much to say that Irish history took a new meaning, a fresh departure, with the starting of the Nation; that the fresh departure found expression in the rebirth of the national literature, of which the songs and ballads of its poets and their successors were not the least important part. [xxiv]

... Today the Irish race, world-scattered though it be, is solidary and united; with an ever-growing literature distinctively its own, and yet a part of the literature of the English-speaking peoples.

To those who have erected fanciful theories of Irish character, and come to this little book for confirmation, disappointment must result. There is revealed no glaring difference between the Irish and the English people that need prevent them from meeting and mingling as close friends, from uniting as one folk. In the lyric of love, war, or fancy, the Celtic singer gives utterance to thought and feeling that appeal to all men. The difference is one of manner rather than of matter; swifter perception, and a lighter touch.

Sparling regards the Scots as the masters of songmaking, the Elizabethans second, and the Irish ‘not far behind’, xxiv]; she has given soldiers and statesmen to the building of the Empire; poets, artists, and musicians to its adornment; writers and historians to its records and description. In none of these things has she been more successful, or conferred a greater boon, than in singing the hope and fear, the passion and aspiration of humble common folk - in giving us so many moving songs ‘that a child or peasant might sing and feel.’ [Special acknowledgements to Rev. Matthew Russell and CG Duffy]. [xxv; end.]