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VI |
PREFACE |
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Indeed the line can never be drawn with absolute accuracy and it is possible that many pieces have been here included which may be considered neither, songs nor lyrics, but the editor while hoping generally to please the scholarly and critical reader, desires also to gratify, the larger public who will expect to find in such a collection, those verses which have endeared themselves to the hearts of the Irish people and which they would not willingly let die.
There is probably no body of poetry in the world which lends itself less readily to literary criticism and classification than that which has sprung from the great heart of the Irish people. They have ever been, like the holy men of old, who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. As a rule the poets of Ireland have appeared to care little for forms except those of rhyme and rhythm,—feeling dominating ever. There is little effect of the labor lima to be felt in the great body of Irish poetry; even in those polished and complicated verses, full of vowel rhymes and alliterations characteristic of the early writers in their native Irish some of which have been so felicitously rendered by Dr. Douglas Hyde, there is scarcely any sensation of the fetters of form. From the first Bard who told in burning and Homeric phrase the story of the fights of the Iberian Chiefs or of the grand stand which Brian Boru made against the Danish invasion, to the burning songs and ballads of the young Ireland- |
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