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PEEFATORY NOTICES- |
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upon your interest from the appeal which it makes to your patriotism. Indeed, absence, however fatal to some affections of the heart, rather strengthens our love for the land where we were born; and Ireland is the country, of all others, which an exile from it must remember with most enthusiasm. Those few darker and less amiable traits with which bigotry and misrule have stained her character, and which are too apt to disgust us upon a nearer intercourse, become softened at a distance, or altogether invisible ; and nothing is remembered but her virtues and her misfortunes—the zeal with which she has always loved liberty, and the barbarous policy which has always withheld it from her—the ease with which her generous spirit might be conciliated, and the cruel ingenuity which has been exerted to " wring her into undutifulness." *
It has been often remarked, and oftener felt, that our music is the truest of all comments upon our history. The tone of defiance, succeeded by the languor of despondency—a burst of turbulence dying away into softness —the sorrows of one moment lost in the levity of the next —and all that romantic mixture of mirth and sadness, which is naturally produced by the efforts of a lively temperament to shake off, or forget, the wrongs which lie upon it,—such are the features of our history and character, which we find strongly and faithfully reflected in our music ; and there are even many airs, which it is difficult to listen to, without recalling some period or event to which their expression seems applicable. Sometimes, when the strain is open and spirited, yet shaded here and there by a mournful recollection, we can fancy that we behold the brave allies of Montrose f, marching to the aid of the royal cause, notwithstanding all the perfidy of Charles and his ministers, and remembering just enough of past sufferings to enhance the generosity of their present sacrifice. The plaintive melodies of Carolan take us back to the times in which he lived, when our poor countrymen were driven to worship their God in caves, or to quit for ever the land of their birth—like the
* A phrase which occurs in a Letter from the Earl of Desmond to the Earl of Ormond, in Elizabeth's time. Scrinia Sacra, as quoted by Curry.
t There are some gratifying accounts of the gallantry of these Irish auxiliaries In "The Complete History of the Wars in Scotland under Montrose" (1CG0). See particularly, for the conduct of an Irishman at the battle of Aberdeen, chap, v! p. 49.; and for a tribute to the bravery of Colonel O'Kyan, chap. vii. p. 55. Clarendon owns that the Marquis of Montrose was Indebted for much of his miraculous success to the small band of Irish heroes under Macdonnell. |
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