‘Anglo-Irish Ballads’, by F. R. Higgins and W. B. Yeats, in Broadsides: A Collection of Old and New Songs (1935)

Abstract

The earliest Anglo-Irish ballads we know anything about were made at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Gaelic civilisation had been defeated at the Boyne.² Increasing numbers began to speak English words that found no reverberation in their minds; those minds had no sounding-box left, they were all strings. Many of these Irish ballads, translations or original poems, were the work of hedge schoolmasters, packed with Latin mythology and long words derived from the Latin, but all were sung to Gaelic music, all showed the influence of Gaelic pronunciation and metre — ‘e’ in Gaelic must always sound like ‘a’:

• O, were I Hector that noble victor who died a victim to Grecian skill;

• O, were I Paris whose deeds are various an arbitrator on Ida’s hill;

• I’d range through Asia, likewise Arabia, Pennsylvania seeking for you

• The burning regions like sage Orpheus to see your face, my sweet Colleen Rue.³

Frederick Robert Higgins (1896–1941), Irish poet, editor, and director at the Abbey Theatre.