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238 A CENTURY OF BALLADS
in phrasing and in spirit, he should miss no opportunity of hearing Santley sing."
"Trottin' to the Fair," another traditional Irish melody arranged by Stanford, is a song that Plunket Greene has made almost entirely his own. "It is a common idea," he says, " that a humorous song is on a lower scale than a tragic or a sentimental one. Both types have their appointed place in art, and are equally worth doing, and at the same time equally difficult to do well. A song can be light and amusing and meant to laugh at, and yet superlatively good. " Trottin' to the Fair" is just as much a masterpiece in its own line as Schubert's 11 Doppelganger."
Other of Stanford's traditional airs that may be mentioned are the fine "Battle Hymn," "Oye dead," "Quick, we have but a second," "My Love's an Arbutus," " Little Red Lark," "Molly Brannigan," "The Flight of the Earls," " Emer's Farewell," and his splendid settings of the Moore melodies.
Of Stanford's original Irish songs his Irish Idyll and Cushendall, both song-cycles, stand out as illustrations of what a modern Irish song should be. One number of the former, "The Fairy Lough," is, in Plunket Greene's opinion, perhaps the most beautiful song in the English language. The words, by Moira |
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