Page:Irish minstrelsy, vol 2 - Hardiman.djvu/20

8 and, as it was treason to sing them openly, they were chaunted at private meetings, or by the cottage fire-sides throughout the land, with feelings little short of religious enthusiasm. By these means, the embers of discontent were fanned and kept alive, until they burst forth in those terrible conflagrations which afterwards entailed so much misery on the country. The effect the government could punish, but it could not prevent the cause. Perhaps, if a remedy were sought, the best would have been to give publicity to those proscribed stanzas. The spell of secrecy would thus be broken, and the charm from which they derived their principal influence dissolved. Time, however, has rendered them harmless. They are now remembered, merely for some favorite expression or poetic beauty; and sung, more for the sake of the charming airs with which they are associated, than for any political sentiments which they may contain. The claims of the ill-fated Stuarts are forgotten. These once national hymns can, therefore, at the present day, be considered only as curious literary fragments; and, as such, they are now laid before the public.

Although the present part of this work is entitled "Jacobite Relics," yet some poems of an earlier date have been admitted. The "Lament of the Gael," in the time of Elizabeth; "John O'Dwyer of the Glen," in the days of Cromwell; and perhaps, one or two others. The greater number, however, were composed at, and since the period of the Revolution of 1688. Of the authors but little is known. In a country groaning under the inflictions of penal laws, and the influence of a