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This Day is Published,

BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. LVIII. FOR DECEMBER.-1821.

Contents.

I. Stanzas Dedicatory to Francis Jeffrey, Esq. &c. &c. &c.-II. Christmas Chit-Chat.-III. Vanderbrummer; or the Spinosist.-IV. Seashore Reflections at Sun-set.-V. The Primrose.-VI. Specimens of a Free and Easy Translation of Horace.-VII. On the Probable Influence of Moral and Religious Instruction on the Character and Situation of Seamen. No. 4.—VIII. Parini's Giorno.-IX. On the Italian Schools of Painting. No. I. On the Storia Pittorica of the Abate Lanzi, and the Works of Andrea del Sarto, and his Followers.-X. Howison's Canada.-XI. Christophe, late Emperor of Hayti. XII. Horæ Cantabrigiensis. No. VIII.-XIII. Ancient National Melodies, with the Music. No. I. Song 1 Comparisons are Odious. A Chaunt. Song 2. Cobbet's Complaint. A Dirge.-XIV. A Midsummer Night's Dream, in Blank Verse, by Blaize Fitstravesty, Esq.-XV. Drouthiness.-XVI. The Leg of Mutton School of Prose. No. I. The Cook's Oracle.-XVII. On Early Rising. In a Letter to Mr North.-XVIII. The Literary Pocket-Book; or Companion for the Lover of Nature and Art.-XIX. Singular Recovery from Death.-XX. Quip Modest to Mr Barker; in a Letter to Christopher North, Esq.-XXI. Works Preparing for Publication.-XXII. Monthly List of New Publications.-XXIII. Monthly Register. Commercial Report. Appointments, Promotions, &c. Births, Marriages, and Deaths.

&c. &c. &c.

PRINTED FOR WILLIAM BLACKWOOD, EDINBURGH; AND T. CADELL, LONDON.

BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. LIX.

DECEMBER, (PART II.) 1821.

VOL. X.

DEAR NORTH,

IRISH MELODIES.

IT has often struck me with astonishment, that the people of Ireland should have so tamely submitted to Mr Thomas Moore's audacity, in prefixing the title of Irish to his melodies. That the tunes are Irish, I admit; but as for the songs, they in general have as much to do with Ireland, as with Nova Scotia. What an Irish affair for example-" Go where glory waits thee," &c. Might not it have been sung by a cheesemonger's daughter of High Holborn when her master's apprentice was going in a fit of valour to list himself in the third Buffs, or by any other such amatory person, as well as a Hibernian Virgin? And if so, where is the Irishism of the thing at all? Again,

When in death I shall calm recline,

Bear my heart to my mistress dear ;* Tell her it fed upon smiles and wine

Tell her it fed upon fiddlesticks! Pretty food for an Irishman's heart for the ladies! Not a man of us from Carnsore Point to Bloody Forland would give a penny a pound for smiles; and as for wine, in the name of decency, is that a Milesian beverage? Far from it indeed; it is not to be imagined that I should give five or six shillings for a bottle of grape-juice, which would not be within five quarts of relieving me from the horrors of sobriety, when for the self-same sum I could stow under my belt a full gallon of Roscrea, drink beyond comparison superior. The idea is in fact absurd. But there would be no end were I to point out all the unIrish points of Moore's poetry. Allusions to our localities, it is true, we sometimes meet with, as thinly scat

NO. I.

tered as plumbs in the holiday puddings of a Yorkshire boarding-school, and scattered, for the same reason, just to save appearances, and give a title to the assumed name. There's the Vale of Ovoca, for instance, a song upon a valley in Wicklow, but which would suit any other valley in the world, provided always it had three syllables, and the middle one of due length.

Were I in a savage mood, I could cut him up with as much ease as a butcher in Ormond market dissects an ox from the county of Tipperary; but I shall spare him for this time, intending, if I have leisure, to devote an entire paper to prove his utter incompetence; at present I shall only ask, whether, in these pseudo-Irish Melodies, there is one song about our saints, fairs, wakes, rows, patrons, or any other diversion among us? Is there one drinking song which decent individuals would willingly roar forth after dinner in soul-subduing soloes, or give to the winds in the full swell of a thirty-man chorus? Not one-nonot one. Here am I, M. M. Mulligan-who, any night these twenty years, might have been discovered by him whom it concerned, discussing my four-and-twentieth tumbler, and giving the side of the festive board, or the chair presiding o'er the sons of light, with songs fit to draw nine souls out of one weaver, and, of course, hearing others in my turn-ready to declare that never was song of Moore's sung in my company; and that is decisive. If any one should appeal from my long experience-let such unbelieving person leave the case to any independent jury, selected indifferently from all districts,-from the honest Inishowen

This expression, I own, is Irish; but it is lost by the common punctuation, mistress dear, which is just as bald an epithet as any man would wish to meet with on a day's journey. VOL. X.

4 H

consumers of the north, down to the wet-gulleted devourers of Tommy Walker in the south, and he will be convinced. In fact, my dear North, read over his "Fill the bumper fair,' and you will find, that instead of giving us a real hearty chanson-a-boire, as we say in Dunkirk, you have a parcel of mythological botheration about Prometheus, and other stale personages, which, in the days of heathenisin, would be laughed at for its ignorance, as it is now, in the days of Christianity, voted a bore for its impertinence. And is this the national songwriter for this much-injured and harddrinking island?-Perish the idea!As an oratorical friend of mine once said at an aggregate meeting in Fishamble Street, such a thought is a stigma upon humanity, and a taint upon the finer feelings of man!

A fair sort of young man, the Hon. Mr O'Callaghan, of the White Knight's family, has been so struck with this deficiency of Mr T. Moore, that he is going to give us a number of melodies in opposition to those of our little bard. I wish him success, but I am afraid that, though he is an ingenious person, he is not possessed of that ideal faculty which is requisite for the task. For fear he should fail, I have deter mined to start, and shew the world a real specimen of true Irish melody, in a series of songs symphonious to the feelings of my countrymen. Neither Moore nor O'Callaghan will, I flatter myself, be much read after this series of mine. I hate boasting; but, -pocas polabras-as Christopher Sly

observes.

We were talking about the business last Thursday, at the Cock in Marystreet, while Talbot was playing most divinely on the Union pipes. There were present Terence Flanagan, Pat. Moriarty, Jerry O'Geogheghan, Phelim Macgillicuddy, Callaghan O'Shaughnessy, and some other equally well-known and respected characters, who are to a man good judges of punch, porter, and poetry; and they agreed it would be a sin if I did not publish a half-dozen of melodies, four of which I wrote in the tap-room the night before, just to get rid of a quarter of an hour or so, while I was finishing a few pints in solitary reflection. No man

1

can resist pressing of this kind, and I yielded. Talbot, in the handsomest manner, volunteered to set the airsfor which, though I offered him instant payment, he would not suffer me to remunerate him in any other manner than by permitting me to treat him to a hot glass. When it was asked what would be the best vehicle for giving them to the public, we voted that the only Irish Magazine, as you truly styled your great work last November, was the fit soil for the planting of Irish melodies; and it was carried unanimously that they should be instantly transmitted to your care, Mr North. If you publish them, my fame, and that of my country, will be materially extended. I think you will find them superior to the mere milk-andwater affairs which you see in your every-day reading.

I have not aimed, or rather Talbot has not aimed, at bothering the plain and simple melody by any adventitious airs and graces. You have them, unadorned, adorned the most-that is, stark-naked. The piano trashery bas bedevilled the tunes given by Moore; and this is another instance of the man's insufficiency. Just think of the piano being chosen as the instrument for Irish airs, when he had, as a southern correspondent of yours sings,

The harp or bagpipe, which you please, to melodize with! Moore first had Sir John Stevenson as his composer, (who now is at work for Mr O'Callaghan) and then he took up Bishop-both friends of mine, with whom I often have cleaned out a bottle, and therefore I shall not say any thing derogatory of either. In short, let the public judge between Moore, Mulligan, and O'Callaghan-Bishop, Talbot, and Stevenson-and God defend the right. I shall make a few remarks on the melodies I send, and then conclude. Indeed I had not an idea of writing half so much when I began.

Melody the first is theological, containing the principal acts of our national Saint-his coming to Ireland on a

stone-his never-emptying can, commonly called St Patrick's pot-his changing a leg of mutton into a salmon in Lent time-and his banishment of the snakes. Consult Jocelyn, or his translator, E. L. Swift, Esq. (1)

(4) The tune to which Mr Mulligan has put these words is a great favourite in Ireland. It is said the original words (The night before Lary was stretched") were written by a very learned gentleman, who is now a dignitary of the established church in Ireland. It is a first-rate slang song. C. N.

Melody the second is pathetic, being the Lamentation of a Connaught Ranger, discharged. I had eleven cousins in that regiment. I may as well give it as my opinion, that the only cure for our present difficulties, is to go to war without delay; and I venture to say, if an aggregate meeting of the seven millions of us could be called any where, a war would be voted nem. con. I don't much care with whom, that being an afterthought, but I certainly would prefer having a shaking of those ugly-looking garlic-eaters, the Spaniards, who are now so impudent as to imagine they could have fought the French without us. I heard one Pedro Apodaca say as much, and I just knocked him down, to shew him I did not agree with him in opinion. I would engage, that 200,000 men would be raised in a day in this country, and if we would not batter the Dons I leave it to the reader.

The third is amatory. Compare this with the best of Tom Moore's ditties. But to be sure it is absurd to think of a man of his inches talking of making love to half the girls of the country, as he does in Little's poems.

The fourth is warlike something in the manner of Sir Walter Scott's Gatherings. It relates to a feud in Kerry. (2)

on the spur of the occasion this morn ing, at the time noted. It is to the famous tune of Lillebullero-my uncle Toby's favourite; and the tune, as you may see, by Burnet, with which Lord Wharton whistled King James, of the unsavoury surname, out of three kingdoms. It is among us a party air, and called the Protestant Boys; but honest men of all parties must approve of my words. They come home to every man's feelings.

The last is sentimental. I wrote it merely to prove I could write fine if I liked; but it cost me a lot of trouble. I actually had to go to the Commercial Buildings, and swallow seven cups of the most sloppish Bohea I could get, and eat a quartern loaf cut into thin slices before I was in a fit mood to write such stuff. If I were to continue that diet, I should be the first of your pretty song writers in the empire; but it would be the death of me in a week. I am not quite recovered from that breakfast yet-and I do not wonder at the unfortunate figure the poor Cockneys cut who are everlastingly suffering under the deleterious effects of tea-drinking.

I have scribbled to the end of my paper, so must conclude. Believe me to be, my dear North,

Your's truly,

MORTY MACNAMARA MULLIGAN. P. S. Why don't you come to Dub

The fifth is convivial, and was extempore. I did not write it with the lin? other four, but actually chaunted it

9, Suffolk Street, Nov. 16, 1820.

SONG I.

SAINT PATRICK.

A FIG for St Den-nis of France, He's a trumpery fellow to

brag on; A fig for St George and his lance, Which spitted a

(2) The tune of this (“ The Groves of the Pool") is indigenous of the South of Ireland. There is a capital song to this tune, by R. Millikin of Cork, beginning with "Now the war, dearest Nancy, is ended, and peace is come over from France." Millikin is the author of the Groves of Blarney, which Mathews sings with so much effect. The Standard-Bearer has supplied us with some lines on that unknown poet. See No. LVII. p. 382.

There is a sort of sketch of his life in Ryan's Worthies of Ireland. We should gladly make room for a fuller account, with specimens of his poetry. If it is good—as we are sure it must-its locality will be of little consequence. C. N.

heathenish dragon: And the saints of the Welshman and Scot Are

pi-ti-ful couple of pipers, Both of whom may just travel to pot, If com

pared with the pa-tron of swipers, St Patrick of Ireland, my dear.

1.

A fig for St Dennis of France,

He's a trumpery fellow to brag on;

A fig for St George and his lance,
Which spitted a heathenish dragon;
And the Saints of the Welshman or Scot
Are a couple of pitiful pipers,
Both of whom may just travel to pot,
Compared with that patron of swipers,
Patrick of Ireland, my dear!

2.

He came to the Emerald Isle

On a lump of a paving-stone mounted;
The steam-boat he beat by a mile,

Which mighty good sailing was counted;
Says he, "The salt water, I think,
Has made me most bloodily thirsty,

So bring me a flagon of drink,

To keep down the mulligrubs, burst ye,
Of drink that is fit for a saint.”

3.

He preach'd then with wonderful force,
The ignorant natives a-teaching;

With a pint he wash'd down his discourse,
"For," says he, "I detest your dry preaching.”

The people, with wonderment struck,

At a pastor so pious and civil,

Exclaimed, "We're for you, my old buck,

And we pitch our blind gods to the devil,
Who dwells in hot water below.".

4.

This ended, our worshipful spoon
Went to visit an elegant fellow,
Whose practice each cool afternoon
Was to get most delightfully mellow.
That day, with a black jack of beer,

It chanced he was treating a party;
Says the saint," This good day, do you hear,
I drank nothing to speak of, my hearty,
So give me a pull at the pot.

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