Lanterna Rally

Author: Katharine Tynan

Publisher:

Published: 2016-09-03

Total Pages: 118

ISBN-13: 9781537475639

Miss Tynan's collection of 'Irish Love Songs' is comprehensive, ranging as it does from 'Blooming Deirdre,' a translation from an Irish MS. of the year 1400, down to the works of Miss Tynan herself, from which, with rather doubtful taste, two extracts are made. The mo6t interesting part of the book is that which contains the translations-translations that tease the English reader by their singular alternations of fineness and commonplace, of spontaneous felicity and awkward artificiality. In one part of her preface Miss Tynan tells us that her book will owe most to Edward Walsh and Samuel Ferguson, "the two men who, above all others, knew how to transfuse the wild simplicity of the Irish songs into English, keeping their strange and lovely flavour as of wild bees' honey-sweet and unsophisticated." Later on she assures us that "those exquisite strains owe much to the genius of Walsh and Ferguson." Now did Walsh and Ferguson improve, or did they mar, the songs they translated? That is the question it would be interesting to settle, and on that question Miss Tynan only adds to our lack of knowledge by such opposite statements as those we have quoted. The charm of these Irish love songs lies in their homely sincerity-the way in which they seem to be written by people who are really in love, and who catch at the first words that will express their feeling. The same metaphors occur over and over again, the same longings are sung to the same airs, the same fanciful simplicity is seen everywhere. But this very similarity, in so many poems selected from such widely different sources, serves to show the genuine national characteristics of Irish song. What a singing note, what a note of bird-song, there is in a chorus of this sort!- Then, Oro, come with me I come with me I come with me! Oro. come with me I brown girl, sweet! And oh 1 I would go through snow and sleet. If you would come with mo, brown girl, sweet! It is the same note that one finds in the youngest and finest of the Irish poets of to-day, Mr. W. B. Yeats, from whom we quote this delicate little lyric, 'An Old Song Resung':- Down hy the salley gardens my love and I did meet; She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet. She bid me take love easy as the leaves grow on the tree; But 1, being young and foolish, with her would not Rgree. In a field by the river my love and I did stand. And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand! She bid me take life easy as the grass grows on the weirs; But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears. 'Verses' by J. M. G. are well wrought. They are manifestly the production of a man of intellect, education, and refined taste. The poet's inspiration J. M. G. probably does not claim to possess. - The Athenaeum