(_To be Continued._)
* * * * *
MR H. L. ROLFE, the celebrated Irish painter, has just finished a large
natural history picture, entitled "A Border Feud." The scene is laid on
a Scotch loch. An otter has succeeded in taking a salmon, which it has
just commenced to devour; an eagle is flying away, having been
disappointed of its prey. This last effort of Mr Rolfe's is the most
successful which has yet appeared from his studio.
THE Christian Knowledge Society is bringing out a revised edition of
their Gaelic translation of the Book of Common Prayer.
ON THE DRUIDICAL CHANTS PRESERVED IN THE CHORUSES OF POPULAR SONGS IN
ENGLAND, SCOTLAND, IRELAND, AND FRANCE.
By CHARLES MACKAY, LL.D., F.S.A., _Author of the Gaelic Etymology of the
English and Lowland Scotch, and the Languages of Western Europe_.
THE learned Godfrey Higgins informs us in his Anacalypsis that "every
word in every language has originally had a meaning, whether a nation
has it by inheritance, by importation, or by composition." He adds that
it is evident if we can find out the original meaning of the words which
stand for the names of objects, great discoveries may be expected. The
Duke of Somerset, in our day, expresses the same truth more tersely when
he says that "every word in every language has its pedigree."
All who are acquainted with the early lyrical literature of England and
Scotland, preserved in the songs and ballads of the days immediately
before and after Shakspere, must sometimes have asked themselves the
meaning of such old choruses as "_Down, down, derry down_," "_With a
fal, lal, la_" "_Tooral, looral_," "_Hey, nonnie, nonnie_," and many
others. These choruses are by no means obsolete, though not so
frequently heard in our day as they used to be a hundred years ago.
"_Down, down, derry down_," still flourishes in immortal youth in every
village alehouse and beershop where the farm labourers and mechanics are
accustomed to assemble. One of the greatest living authorities on the
subject of English song and music--Mr William Chappell--the editor of
the Popular Music of the Olden Time, is of opinion that these choruses,
or burdens, were "mere nonsense words that went glibly off the tongue."
He adds (vol. i., page 223), "I am aware that '_Hey down, down, derry
down_,' has been said to be a modern version of '_Ha, down, ir, deri
danno_,' the burden of an old song of the Druids, signifying, Come let
us haste to the oaken grove (Jones, Welsh Bards, vol. i., page 128), but
this I believe to be mere conjecture, and that it would now be
impossible to prove that the Druids had such a song." That Mr Chappell's
opinion is not correct, will, I think, appear from the etymological
proofs of the antiquity of this and other choruses afforded by the
venerable language which was spoken throughout the British Isles by the
aboriginal people for centuries before the Roman invasion, and which is
not yet extinct in Wales, in Ireland, in the Isle of Man, and in the
Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
Julius Cæsar, the conqueror of Gaul and Britain, has left a description
of the Druids and their religion, which is of the highest historical
interest. That system and religion came originally from Assyria, Egypt,
and Phoenicia, and spread over all Europe at a period long anterior to
the building of Rome, or the existence of the Roman people. The Druids
were known by name, but scarcely more than by name, to the Greeks, who
derived the appellation erroneously from _drus_, an oak, under the
supposition that the Druids preferred to perform their religious rites
under the shadows of oaken groves. The Greeks also called the Druids
Saronides, from two Celtic words _sar_ and _dhuine_, signifying
"excellent or superior men." The Celtic meaning of the word "Druid" is
to enclose within a circle, and a Druid meant a prophet, a divine, a
bard, a magician; one who was admitted to the mysteries of the inner
circle. The Druidic religion was astronomical, and purely deistical, and
rendered reverence to the sun, moon, and stars as the visible
representatives of the otherwise unseen Divinity who created man and
nature. "The Druids used no images," says the Reverend Doctor Alexander
in his excellent little volume on the Island of Iona, published by the
Religious Tract Society, "to represent the object of their worship, nor
did they meet in temples or buildings of any kind for the performance of
their sacred rites. A circle of stones, generally of vast size, and
surrounding an area of from twenty feet to thirty yards in diameter,
constituted their sacred place; and in the centre of this stood the
cromlech (crooked stone), or altar, which was an obelisk of immense
size, or a large oblong flat stone, supported by pillars. These sacred
circles were usually situated beside a river or stream, and under the
shadow of a grove, an arrangement which was probably designed to inspire
reverence and awe in the minds of the worshippers, or of those who
looked from afar on their rites. Like others of the Gentile nations
also, they had their 'high places,' which were large stones, or piles of
stones, on the summits of hills; these were called carns (cairns), and
were used in the worship of the deity under the symbol of the sun. In
this repudiation of images and worshipping of God in the open air they
resembled their neighbours the Germans, of whom Tacitus says that from
the greatness of the heavenly bodies, they inferred that the gods could
neither be inclosed within walls, nor assimilated to any human form; and
he adds, that 'they consecrated groves and forests, and called by the
names of the gods that mysterious object which they behold by mental
adoration alone.'
"In what manner and with what rites the Druids worshipped their deity,
there is now no means of ascertaining with minute accuracy. There is
reason to believe that they attached importance to the ceremony of going
thrice round their sacred circle, from east to west, following the
course of the sun, by which it is supposed they intended to express
their entire conformity to the will and order of the Supreme Being, and
their desire that all might go well with them according to that order.
It may be noticed, as an illustration of the tenacity of popular usages
and religious rites, how they abide with a people, generation after
generation, in spite of changes of the most important kind, nay, after
the very opinions out of which they have risen have been repudiated;
that even to the present day certain movements are considered of good
omen when they follow the course of the sun, and that in some of the
remote parts of the country the practice is still retained of seeking
good fortune by going thrice round some supposed sacred object from east
to west."
But still more remarkable than the fact which Doctor Alexander has
stated, is the vitality of the ancient Druidic chants, which still
survive on the popular tongue for nearly two thousand years after their
worship has disappeared, and after the meaning of these strange snatches
and fragments of song has been all but irretrievably lost, and almost
wholly unsuspected. Stonehenge, or the _Coir-mhor_, on Salisbury Plain,
is the grandest remaining monument of the Druids in the British Isles.
Everybody has heard of this mysterious relic, though few know that many
other Druidical circles of minor importance are scattered over various
parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. In Scotland they are especially
numerous. One but little known, and not mentioned by the Duke of Argyll
in his book on the remarkable island of which he is the proprietor, is
situated between the ruins of the cathedral of Iona and the sea shore,
and is well worthy of a visit from the thousands of tourists who
annually make the voyage round the noble Isle of Mull, on purpose to
visit Iona and Staffa. There is another Druidic circle on the mainland
of Mull, and a large and more remarkable one at Lochnell, near Oban, in
Argyllshire, which promises to become as celebrated as Stonehenge
itself, combining as it does not only the mystic circle, but a
representation, clearly defined, of the mysterious serpent, the worship
of which entered so largely into all the Oriental religions of remote
antiquity. There are other circles in Lewis and the various islands of
the Hebrides, and as far north as Orkney and Shetland. It was, as we
learn from various authorities, the practice of the Druidical priests
and bards to march in procession round the inner circle of their rude
temples, chanting religious hymns in honour of the sunrise, the noon, or
the sunset; hymns which have not been wholly lost to posterity, though
posterity has failed to understand them, or imagined that their
burdens--their sole relics--are but unmeaning words, invented for
musical purposes alone, and divested of all intellectual signification.
The best known of these choruses is "_Down, down, derry down_," which
may either be derived from the words _dun_, a hill; and _darag_ or
_darach_, an oak tree; or from _duine_, a man; and _doire_, a wood; and
may either signify an invitation to proceed to the hill of the oak trees
for the purposes of worship, or an invocation to the men of the woods to
join in the Druidical march and chant, as the priests walked in
procession from the interior of the stone circle to some neighbouring
grove upon a down or hill. This chorus survives in many hundreds of
English popular songs, but notably in the beautiful ballad "The Three
Ravens," preserved in Melismata (1611):--
There were three ravens sat on a tree,
_Down-a-down! hey down, hey down_.
They were as black as black might be,
With a down!
Then one of them said to his mate,
Where shall we now our breakfast take,
_With a down, down, derry, derry, down!_
A second well-known and vulgarised chorus is "_Tooral looral_," of which
the most recent appearance is in a song which the world owes to the bad
taste of the comic muse--that thinks it cannot be a muse until it
blackens its face to look like a negro:--
Once a maiden fair,
She had ginger hair,
With her _tooral looral lá_, di, oh!
And she fell in love
Did this turtle dove
And her name was Dooral,
Hoopty Dooral! _Tooral looral_, oh my!
This vile trash contains two Celtic or Gaelic words, which are
susceptible of two separate interpretations. _Tooral_ may be derived
from the Celtic _turail_--slow, sagacious, wary; and _Looral_ from
_luathrail_ (pronounced _laurail_)--quick, signifying a variation in the
time of some musical composition to which the Druidical priests
accommodated their footsteps in a religious procession, either to the
grove of worship, or around the inner stone circle of the temple. It is
also possible that the words are derived from _Tuath-reul_ and
_Luath-reul_ (_t_ silent in both instances), the first signifying "North
star," and the second "Swift star;" appropriate invocations in the
mouths of a priesthood that studied all the motions of the heavenly
bodies, and were the astrologers as well as the astronomers of the
people.
A third chorus, which, thanks to the Elizabethan writers, has not been
vulgarised, is that which occurs in John Chalkhill's "Praise of a
Countryman's Life," quoted by Izaak Walton:--
Oh the sweet contentment
The countryman doth find.
_High trolollie, lollie, lol: High trolollie, lee_,
These words are easily resolvable into the Celtic; _Ai!_ or _Aibhe!_
Hail! or All Hail! _Trath_--pronounced _trah_, early, and _la_, day! or
"_Ai, tra, là, là, là_"--"Hail, early day! day," a chorus which Moses
and Aaron may have heard in the temples of Egypt, as the priests of Baal
saluted the rising sun as he beamed upon the grateful world, and which
was repeated by the Druids on the remote shores of Western Europe, in
now desolate Stonehenge, and a thousand other circles, where the sun was
worshipped as the emblem of the Divinity. The second portion of the
chorus, "_High trolollie lee_," is in Celtic, _Ai tra la, la, li_, which
signifies, "Hail early day! Hail bright day!" The repetition of the word
_la_ as often as it was required for the exigencies of the music,
accounts for the chorus, in the form in which it has descended to modern
times.
"_Fal, lal, là_," a chorus even more familiar to the readers of old
songs, is from the same source. Lord Bathurst, afterwards Earl of
Dorset, wrote, in 1665, the well-known ballad, commencing:--
To all you ladies now on land,
We men at sea indite,
But first would have you understand
How hard it is to write.
With _a fal, lal, là_, and _a fal lal, là_,
_And a fal, lal, lal, lal, là_.
_Fal_ is an abbreviation of _Failte!_ welcome! and _là_ as already noted
signifies a day. The words should be properly written Failte! la! la!
The chorus appears in the "Invitation to May," by Thomas Morley, 1595:--
Now is the month of Maying,
When merry lads are playing,
_Fal, la, là!_
Each with his bonnie lass,
Upon the greeny grass,
_Fal, la, là!_
The Celtic or Druidical interpretation of these syllables is, "Welcome
the day."
"_Fal, lero, loo_," appears as a chorus in a song by George Wither
(1588-1667):--
There was a lass--a fair one
As fair as e'er was seen,
She was indeed a rare one,
Another Sheba queen.
But fool, as I then was,
I thought she loved me true,
But now alas! she's left me,
_Fal, lero, lero, loo_.
Here _Failte_, as in the previous instance, means welcome; _lear_
(corrupted into _lero_), the sea; and _luaidh_ (the d silent), praise;
the chorus of a song of praise to the sun when seen rising above the
ocean.
The song of Sir Eglamour, in Mr Chappell's collection, has another
variety of the _Failte_ or _Fal, la_, of a much more composite
character:--
Sir Eglamour that valiant knight,
_Fal, la, lanky down dilly!_
He took his sword and went to fight,
_Fal, la, lanky down dilly!_
In another song, called "The Friar in the Well," this chorus appears in
a slightly different form:--
Listen awhile and I will tell
Of a Friar that loved a bonnie lass well,
_Fal la! lál, lal, lal, lá! Fal la, langtre down dilly!_
_Lan_ is the Gaelic for full, and _dile_ for rain. The one version has
_lanky_, the other _langtre_, both of which are corruptions of the
Celtic. The true reading is _Failte la, lan, ri, dun, dile_, which
signifies "Welcome to the full or complete day! let us go to the hill of
rain."
_Hey, nonnie, nonnie._ "Such unmeaning burdens of songs," says Nares in
his Glossary, "are common to ballads in most languages." But this burden
is not unmeaning, and signifies "Hail to the noon." _Noin_ or noon, the
ninth hour was so called in the Celtic, because at midsummer in our
northern latitudes it was the ninth hour after sunrise. With the Romans,
in a more southern latitude, noon was the ninth hour after sunrise, at
six in the morning, answering to our three o'clock of the afternoon. A
song with this burden was sung in England in the days of Charles the
Second:--
I am a senseless thing, with a hey!
Men call me a king, with a ho?
For my luxury and ease,
They brought me o'er the seas,
_With a heigh, nonnie, nonnie, nonnie, no!_
Mr Chappell cites an ancient ballad which was sung to the tune of _Hie
dildo, dil_. This also appears to be Druidical, and to be resolvable
into _Ai! dile dun dile!_ or "Hail to the rain, to the rain upon the
hill," a thanksgiving for rain after a drought.
_Trim go trix_ is a chorus that continued to be popular until the time
of Charles the Second, when Tom D'Urfrey wrote a song entitled "Under
the Greenwood Tree," of which he made it the burden. Another appears in
Allan Ramsay's Tea-table Miscellany:--
The Pope, that pagan full of pride,
He has us blinded long,
For where the blind the blind does guide,
No wonder things go wrong.
Like prince and king, he led the ring
Of all inquitie.
_Hey trix, trim go trix!_
Under the greenwood tree.
In Gaelic _dream_ or _dreim_ signifies a family, a tribe, the people, a
procession; and _qu tric_, frequently, often, so that these words
represent a frequent procession of the people to the hill of worship
under the greenwood tree.
In Motherwell's "Ancient and Modern Minstrelsy," the ballad of Hynd Horn
contains a Celtic chorus repeated in every stanza:--
Near Edinburgh was a young child born,
With a _Hey lilli lu_, and a _how lo lan_!
And his name it was called young Hynd Horn,
And the birk and the broom bloom bonnie.
Here the words are corruptions of _aidhe_ (Hail); _li_, light or colour;
_lu_, small; _ath_, again; _lo_, day-light; _lan_, full; and may be
rendered "Hail to the faint or small light of the dawn"; and "again the
full light of the day" (after the sun had risen).
In the Nursery Rhymes of England, edited by Mr Halliwell for the Percy
Society, 1842, appears the quatrain:--
_Hey dorolot, dorolot_,
_Hey dorolay, doralay_,
Hey my bonnie boat--bonnie boat,
Hey drag away--drag away.
The two first lines of this jingle appear to be a remnant of a Druidical
chant, and to resolve themselves into,
_Aidhe, doire luchd--doire luchd,
Aidhe doire leigh, doire leigh._
_Aidhe_, an interjection, is pronounced Hie; _doire_, is trees or woods;
_luchd_, people; and _leigh_, healing; and also a physician, whence the
old English word for a doctor, a leech, so that the couplet means
Hey to the woods people! to the woods people!
Hey to the woods for healing, to the woods for healing.
If this translation be correct, the chorus would seem to have been sung
when the Druids went in search of the sacred mistletoe, which they
called the "heal all," or universal remedy.