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FAMOUS SONGS
but is a bouquet or plume of white ribbons with which the young women of Munster adorn the hair and headdress on wedding and other festive occasions. The custom prevailed early in the seventeenth century, for we find a poet of that period, Muirio 3Iac Daibhi Duibh Mac Gcarailt, addressing a young woman in these (translated) words:
" O brown-haired maiden of the plume so white, 1 am sick and dying for love's sweet aid* Come ease my pain and be my delight,
For I love you true and your white cockade."
Many songs were written to the striking air. A Jacobite song wras translated from the Irish by J. J. Callanan and sung to the old tune in 1745, beginning " King Charles he is King James's son," and therein the "White Cockade" is turned to military account.
The counterpart of "The Campbells are Coming" is to be found (in two versions) in a song by Andrew MacGrath, an intellectual but erratic Munster bard, who was perhaps too fond of gay company and wandering about The song was entitled " The Old Man," and the incident which brought it into existence is as follows: " In the course of his wanderings the poet chanced to meet with a young woman
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