“The day that traitors sould him and inimies bought him,
The day that the red gold and red blood was paid—
Then the green turned pale and thrembled like the dead leaves in Autumn,
And the heart an’ hope iv Ireland in the could grave was laid.“The day I saw you first, with the sunshine fallin’ round ye,
My heart fairly opened with the grandeur of the view:
For ten thousand Irish boys that day did surround ye,
An’ I swore to stand by them till death, an’ fight for you.“Ye wor the bravest gentleman, an’ the best that ever stood,
And your eyelid never thrembled for danger nor for dread,
An’ nobleness was flowin’ in each stream of your blood—
My bleasing on you night au’ day, an’ Glory be your bed.“My black an’ bitter curse on the head, an’ heart, an’ hand,
That plotted, wished, an’ worked the fall of this Irish hero bold;
God’s curse upon the Irishman that sould his native land,
An’ hell consume to dust the hand that held the thraitor’s gold.”
Such were the politics and poetry of Michael Finley, in his day, perhaps, the most noted song-maker of his country; but as genius is never without its eccentricities, Finley had his peculiarities, and among these, perhaps the most amusing was his rooted aversion to pen, ink, and paper, in perfect independence of which, all his compositions were completed. It is impossible to describe the jealousy with which he regarded the presence of writing materials of any kind, and his ever wakeful fears lest some literary pirate should transfer his oral poetry to paper—fears which were not altogether without warrant, inasmuch as the recitation and singing of these original pieces were to him a source of wealth and importance. I recollect upon one occasion his detecting me in the very act of following his recitation with my pencil and I shall not soon forget his indignant scowl, as stopping abruptly in the midst of a line, he sharply exclaimed:
“Is my pome a pigsty, or what, that you want a surveyor’s ground-plan of it?”
Owing to this absurd scruple, I have been obliged, with one exception, that of the ballad of “Phaudhrig Crohoore,” to rest satisfied with such snatches and fragments of his poetry as my memory could bear away—a fact which must account for the mutilated state in which I have been obliged to present the foregoing specimen of his composition.
It was in vain for me to reason with this man of metres upon the unreasonableness of this despotic and exclusive assertion of copyright. I well remember his answer to me when, among other arguments, I urged the advisability of some care for the permanence of his reputation, as a motive to induce him to consent to have his poems written down, and thus reduced to a palpable and enduring form.
“I often noticed,” said he, “when a mist id be spreadin’, a little brier to look as big, you’d think, as an oak tree; an’ same way, in the dimmness iv the nightfall, I often seen a man tremblin’ and crassin’ himself as if a sperit was before him, at the sight iv a small thorn bush, that he’d leap over with ase if the daylight and sunshine was in it. An’ that’s the rason why I think it id be better for the likes iv me to be remimbered in tradition than to be written in history.”
Finley has now been dead nearly eleven years, and his fame has not prospered by the tactics which he pursued, for his reputation, so far from being magnified, has been wholly obliterated by the mists of obscurity.
With no small difficulty, and no inconsiderable manoeuvring, I succeeded in procuring, at an expense of trouble and conscience which you will no doubt think but poorly rewarded, an accurate “report” of one of his most popular recitations. It celebrates one of the many daring exploits of the once famous Phaudhrig Crohoore (in prosaic English, Patrick Connor). I have witnessed powerful effects produced upon large assemblies by Finley’s recitation of this poem which he was wont, upon pressing invitation, to deliver at weddings, wakes, and the like; of course the power of the narrative was greatly enhanced by the fact that many of his auditors had seen and well knew the chief actors in the drama.
“Phaudhrig Crohoore.
“Oh, Phaudhrig Crohoore was the broth of a boy,
And he stood six foot eight,
And his arm was as round as another man’s thigh,
’Tis Phaudhrig was great—
And his hair was as black as the shadows of night,
And hung over the scars left by many a fight;
And his voice, like the thunder, was deep, strong, and loud,
And his eye like the lightnin’ from under the cloud.
And all the girls liked him, for he could spake civil,
And sweet when he chose it, for he was the divil.
An’ there wasn’t a girl from thirty-five undher,
Divil a matter how crass, but he could come round her.
But of all the sweet girls that smiled on him, but one
Was the girl of his heart, an’ he loved her alone.
An’ warm as the sun, as the rock firm an’ sure,
Was the love of the heart of Phaudhrig Crohoore;
An’ he’d die for one smile from his Kathleen O’Brien,
For his love, like his hatred, was sthrong as the lion.“But Michael O’Hanlon loved Kathleen as well
As he hated Crohoore—an’ that same was like hell.
But O’Brien liked him, for they were the same parties,
The O’Briens, O’Hanlons, an’ Murphys, and Cartys—
An’ they all went together an’ hated Crohoore,
For it’s many the batin’ he gave them before;
An’ O’Hanlon made up to O’Brien, an’ says he:
‘I’ll marry your daughter, if you’ll give her to me.’
And the match was made up, an’ when Shrovetide came on,
The company assimbled three hundred if one:
There was all the O’Hanlons,
