writer of the Georgian era was Donough
Roe M'Namara, a hedge schoolmaster, born
at Waterford. He wrote a small Æneid,
to celebrate his intended emigration to
Newfoundland.  Among other bards of
this kind we may mention the Reverend
William English, a friar of Cork, a great
humorist.  Also, Timothy O'Sullivan,
usually called Teige Gaelach, a poet of Waterford,
who, after a wild and reckless youth,
became penitent, and wrote numerous
sacred poems and hymns, which have been
collected into a volume.

In the troubled times, when the French
Revolution gave false hopes to the
disaffected in Ireland, the song-writers' hearts
began again to stir with wild impulses.  It
was in 1797, when the French tricolor was
waving in Bantry Bay, and the moment
of the expulsion of the hated Saxon seemed
at hand, that that fine song, The Shan van
Vocht (the poor old woman), was written:
the refrain sounds like the advancing march
of armed men.  The poor old woman named
in the song is, we need hardly say, a seer
or prophetess, who foretells the speedy
gathering of the pikes "in good repair" on
that noble battle-field not unused by the
Danes and Milesians of old the Curragh
of Kildare.  At many a rebel camp on the
green hills of Erin have these words been
shouted:

Oh, the French are on the sea,
Says the Shan van Vocht,
The French are on the sea,
Says the Shan van Vocht.
Oh! the French are in the bay,
They'll be here without delay,
And the Orange will decay,
Says the Shan van Vocht.

This martial song has one especial and
unusual merit among songs, that the last
verse rises to a climax, and expresses a
higher thought than those preceding it.
The final words rush on with the irrestrainable
velocity of an avalanche.  Pity they
were so mischievous and so fallacious!

Will Ireland then be free?
Says the Shan van Vocht.
Yes! Ireland shall be free,
From the centre to the sea.
Then hurrah for Liberty!
Says the Shan van Vocht

That great Protestant tune, Boyne Water,
dates back to an earlier period than '97, as
does the Protestant Boys, written by some
Ulster clergyman.

Later, the times of the volunteers and
the united Irishmen gave Ireland a few
good songs, more especially the one
written by Lysaght, or Grattan, and called
The Man who led the Van of the Irish
Volunteers. The words, to the rattling
tune of The British Grenadiers, are
however only remarkable for containing a
paraphrase of Grattan's eloquent sentence, "I
watched by the cradle of Irish independence,
and followed after its hearse."  The Irish
are also proud of Erin go Bragh, and God
Save the Rights of Man: both songs of the
later outbreaks of Wolf Tone's time.
Lysaght' s Island is by no means to be
despised as a national lyric.

The troubles of '98 and of Emmet's time
were commemorated in that fine lyric, The
Wearing of the Green, by Henry Grattan
Curran.  Mr. Boucicault's picturesque
paraphrase of the song, or even more than
paraphrase of it, in Arrah-na-Pogue, has
made it almost as well known in London
as it is in Dublin.  As in most Irish rebel
songs, and, indeed, most Irish lyrics that
are not mere tipsy praises of whisky, there
is a tone of sorrow and despair; as Tom
Moore says beautifully in his Dear Harp of
my Country:

So oft has thou echoed the deep sigh of sadness,
That e'en in thy mirth it will steal from thee still.

Curran's finest verse is the following:

Oh, I care not for the thistle,
And I care not for the rose,
For when the cold winds whistle,
Neither down nor crimson shows.
But like hope to him that's friendless,
Where no gaudy flower is seen,
By our graves with love that's endless,
Waves our own true-hearted green.

The so-called Irish patriot is never tired
of singing of the green flag, the green
immortal shamrock, and the green hills of
Erin.  In the Up for the Green: a song of
the United Irishmen of '96, the chorus
ends:

Then up for the green, boys, O up for the green,
Shout it back to the Sassanach, "We'll never sell the
green;
For our Tone is coming back, and with men enough, I
ween,
To rescue and avenge us, and our own immortal green."

Thomas David, who, however mad was
certainly a true lyrical poet, christened
some of his feverish verses The Green
above the Red. Though rather startling
to quiet, honest, well-intentioned Englishmen,
the song is a brave and earnest one.
The most passionate of the stanzas runs:

Sure 'twas for this Lord Edward died and Wolf Tone
sunk serene,
Because they could not bear to leave the Red above the
Green.
And 'twas for this that Owen fought and Sarsfield
nobly bled,
Because their eyes were hot to see the Green above the
Red.