Richard II. of England, were sat at table, " on the first dish being served they made their minstrels and principal servants sit beside them, and eat from their plates, and drink from their cups. The knight appointed by Richard to attend them having objected to this custom, on another day « ordered the tables to be laid out and covered, so that the kings sat at an upper table, the minstrels at a middle one, and the servants lower still. The royal guests looked at each other, and refused to eat, saying, that he deprived them of their good old custom in which they had been brought up." However, in the reign of Edward II., a public edict was issued, putting a check upon this license, and limiting the number of minstrels to four per diem admissible to the tables of the great. It seems, too, that about this period the minstrels had sunk into a kind of upper servants of the aristocracy: they wore their lord's livery, and sometimes shaved the crown of their heads like monks. When war and hunting formed almost the exclusive occupation of the great; when their surplus revenues could only be employed in supporting idle retainers, and no better means could be devised for passing the long winter evenings than drunkenness and gambling, it may readily be conceived how welcome these itinerant musicians must have been in baronial halls, and how it must have flattered the pride of our noble ancestors to listen to the eulogy of their own achievements, and the length of their own pedigrees. Sir William Temple says, « the great men of the Irish septs, among the many officers of their family, which continued always in the same races, had not only a physician, a huntsman, a smith, and such like, but a poet and a tale-teller. The first recorded and sung the actions of their ancestors, and entertained the company at feasts; the latter amused them with tales when they were melancholy and could not sleep; and a very gallant gentleman of the north of Ireland has told me, of his own experience, that in his wolf-huntings there, when he used to be abroad in the mountains three or four days together, and lay very ill a-nights, so as he could not well sleep, they would bring him one of these tale-tellers, that when he lay down would begin a story of a king, a giant, a dwarf, or a damsel, and such rambling stuff, and continue it all night long in such an even tone, that you heard it going on whenever you awaked, and believed nothing any physicians give could have so good and so innocent an effect to make men sleep, in any pains or distempers of body or mind.» In the reign of Elizabeth, however, civilization had so far advanced, that the music which had led away the great lords of antiquity no longer availed to delude the human understanding, or to prevent it from animadverting on the pernicious effects produced by those who cultivated the tuneful art. Spenser, in his view of the state of Ireland, says, le There is amongst the Irish a certain kind of people called Bardes, which are to them instead of poets, whose profession is to set forth the praises or dispraises of men in their poems or rithmes; the which are had in so high regard and estimation among them, that none dare displease them, for fear to run into reproach through their offence, and to be made infamous in the mouths of all men. For their verses are taken up with a general applause, and usually sung at all feasts and meetings by certain other persons whose proper function that is, who also receive for the same great rewards and reputation amongst them. These Irish Bardes are, for the most part, so far from instructing young men in moral discipline, that themselves do more deserve to be sharply disciplined; for they seldom use to choose unto themselves the doings of good men for the arguments of their poems; but whomsoever they find to be most licentious of life, most bold and lawless in his doings, most dangerous and desperate in all parts of disobedience and rebellious disposition: him they set up and glorifie in their rithmes; him they praise to the people, and to young men make an example to follow." The moralizing poet then con tinues to show the « effect of evil things being decked with the attire of goodly words," on the affections of a young mind, which, as he observes, «< cannot rest;» for, «if he be not busied in some goodness, he will find himself such business as shall soon busy all about him. In which, if he shall find any to praise him, and to give him encouragement, as those Bardes do for little reward, or a share of a stolen cow, then waxeth he most insolent, and half mad with the love of himself and his own lewd deeds. And as for words to set forth such lewdness, it is not hard for them to give a goodly and painted show thereunto, borrowed even from the praises which are proper to virtue itself; as of a most notorious thief and wicked outlaw, which had lived all his life-time of spoils and robberies, one of their bardes in his praise will say, that he was none of the idle milksops that was brought up to the fireside; but that most of his days he spent in arms and valiant enterprises-that he did never eat his meat before he had won it with his sword; that he lay not all night in slugging in a cabin under his mantle, but used commonly to keep others waking to defend their lives; and did light his candle at the flames of their houses to lead him in the darkness; that the day was his night, and the night his day; that he loved not to be long wooing of wenches to yield to him, but, where he came, he took by force the spoil of other men's love, and left but lamentation to their lovers; that his music was not the harp, nor the lays of love, but the cries of people and the clashing of armour; and, finally, that he died, not bewailed of many, but made many wail when he died, that dearly bought his death.>> It little occurred to Spenser that, in thus reprobating these poor bards, he was giving an admirable analysis of the machinery and effects of almost all that poets have ever done! In 1563 severe enactments were issued against these gentlemen, to which was annexed the following-« Item, for that those rhymers do, by their ditties and rhymes, made to dyvers с lordes and gentlemen in Ireland, in the commendacion and highe praise of extorsion, rebellion, rape, raven, and outhere injustice, encourage those lordes and gentlemen rather to follow those vices than to leve them, and for making of such rhymes, rewards are given by the said lordes and gentlemen; that for abolishinge of soo heynouse an abuse,» etc., etc. The feudal system, which encouraged the poetical state of manners, and afforded the minstrels worthy subjects for their strains, received a severe blow from the policy pursued by Elizabeth. This was followed up by Cromwell, and consummated by King William, of Orange memory. More recently a Scotch writer observes, « In Ireland the harpers, the original composers, and the chief depositories of that music, have, till lately, been uniformly cherished and supported by the nobility and gentry. They endeavoured to outdo one another in playing the airs that were most esteemed, with correctness, and with their proper expression. The taste for that style of performance seems now, however, to be declining. The native harpers are not much encouraged. A number of their airs have come into the hands of foreign musicians, who have attempted to fashion them according to the model of the modern music; and these acts are considered in the country as capital improvements.» We have gone into the above details, not only because they are in themselves interesting and illustrative of the « Irish Melodies," but because we fully coincide with the bard of Childe Harold," that the lasting celebrity of Moore will be found in his lyrical compositions, with which his name and fame will be inseparably and immortally connected. Mr Moore possesses a singular facility of seizing and expressing the prevailing association which a given air is calculated to inspire in the minds of the greatest number of hearers, and has a very felicitous talent in making this discovery, even through the envelopes of prejudice or vulgarity. The alchemy by which he is thus accustomed to turn dross into gold is really surprising. The air which now seems framed for the sole purpose of giving the highest effect to the refined and elegant ideas contained in the stanzas « Sing, sing—music was given, has for years been known only as attached to the words of, «Oh! whack! Judy O'Flanagan, etc.,» and the words usually sung to the tune of Cumilum are of the same low and ludicrous description. He possesses, also, in a high degree, that remarkable gift of a poetical imagination, which consists in elevating and dignifying the meanest subjects on which it chuses to expatiate: As they, who to their couch at night Would welcome sleep, first quench the light, Cold, cold my heart must grow, Unchanged by either joy or woe, Like freezing founts, where all that's thrown The ingenuity with which the above simile is applied, is not more remarkable than the success with which the homely image of putting out the bed-candle before we sleep, is divested of every particle of vulgarity. In the same way, and with equal facility, the sudden revival of forgotten feelings, at meeting with friends from whom we have been long separated, is compared to the discovering, by the application of heat, letters written invisibly with sympathetic ink: What soften'd remembrances come o'er the heart |