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STORIES OF
of Britain were semi-savages, was the centre of a cultivation of surprising extent and refined quality. Her harpers and bards—who in later ages developed into wandering minstrels and itinerant musicians—were honoured for their art, for their precepts and their practice, as the uninformed may gather from the many tomes of recent years rescued and revived, telling of those bygone periods of Erin's grandeur and glory. Ballads of extraordinary felicity and power abound, quite equal to any that have grown familiar to the English reader through those praiseworthy volumes of Ancient Poetry of England, Scotland and Wales—though justice lias not yet been done to the bardic wealth of the latter country.
However, I must not linger by the way over
" Old unhappy far-off things And battles long ago,"
but must endeavour to tell the stories of some of Ireland's songs.
Much can be gathered of the ancient practice of music in Ireland, and of the origin of the harp in the works of Giraldus Cambrensis and of Petrie; Walker's " Memoirs of the Irish Bards," Bunting, Holden, Hardiman's " Irish Min-strelsy," Curry's " Manners and Customs of
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