Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1998. Vol. 2. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)

Studies - Jan Smaczny: The stuff of life' - aspects of folksong in the fabric of art music in the British Isles

Like the bright lamp that lay on Kildare's holy shrine

4 And burn'd thro' long ages of darkness and storm, Is the heart that sorrows have frown'd on in vain, Whose spirit outlive them, unfading and warm! Erin! oh Erin! thus bright, thro' the tears Of a long night of bondage, thy spirit appears! (Thomas Moore: Irish Melodies

, 1808, p. 11) In the remaining verses the imagery focuses on apostrophes to freedom and the renewal of the nation: tho' Slavery's cloud o'er thy morning hath hung, The full noon of Freedom shall beam round thee yet' and 'Till the hand of Spring her dark chain unbind, and daylight and liberty bless the young flow'r. Erin! oh Erin! thy winter is past, And the hope that liv'd thro' it shall blossom at last!'). Even the iconography of the engravings adorning some sections of the publication is rich with the conceits of innocence married to national imagery. At the head of the first volume, Ireland is portrayed as a maiden, the central picture surrounded by foliage punctuated with wreaths of shamrock, the national flower. The maiden herself seems almost a negation, if not an actual parody, of the imperialist images beloved in English iconography at the end of the eighteenth century. Instead of a proud Britannia with shield, spear and lion, the maiden rests with her elbow leaning on a traditional Irish harp; in right hand is a quill pen and in her left a rolled scroll of parchment. To her right, fallen to the ground is a spear, and to her left a shield, emblazoned with a shamrock, and an upturned helmet set almost carelessly on the greensward. In other illustrations in Moore's publications the pictures favour images of peaceful creativity, for example, the crowning of a bard. These highly evocative engravings and, of course, the collection of songs itself, were vital in fixing images of the Irish nation in the context of the British Isles.

5 The single crucial musical image was, of course, the harp. The harpist was a central figure in early Irish music and culture. Major Gaelic chieftains held their harpists, who collaborated with poets in the providing of a rich oral tradition of bardic sung poetry, in positions of considerable 4 This is a reference to the inextinguishable fire of St Bridget at Kildare (mentioned, as Moore himself points out, in Giraldus Cambrensis). 5 There is, of course, an obvious parallel with the impact of Herder on the construction of a national identity in Germany and later in Bohemia. The products as far as folksong collecting was concurned concerned are to be found in von Arnim and Brentano's Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1806-8) and later the massive collections of Moravian folksong by SuSil and Bohemian folksong by Erben. 31