IRISH ART.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 110, 11 May 1936, Page 5

IRISH ART.

FOLK SONGS LOST. ALIEN TONGUE FACTOR. VISITING SINGER'S VIEW. The tragic artistic results of an alien language being forced on tlie people of Ireland were commented on in an intei - view by Mr. Sydney MacEwan, a visiting singer, who is touring New Zealand in company with Mr. Duncan Morison, pianist, under engagement to the Broadcasting Board. As a result of the suppression of Gaelic and the compulsory use of English, said Mr. MacEwan, the original Gaelic words sung to Irish f oik j songs were, in most cases, lost and forgotten. As a former student of the famous Irish singer and litterateur, PlunkettGreene, it is natural that Mr. MacEwan should take a great interest in Irish folk music. While at Glasgow University, of which he holds the degree, of Master of Arts, Mr. MacEwan was given an audition by the director of the__B.B.C.'s Glasgow station, and was appointed to the staff of the children's hour. After graduating he won a scholarship at the Royal Academy, London, studying there intensively and later with PlunkettGre'ene. Compton Mackenzie, the author and musical critic, and rector of Glasgow University, then interested himself in Mr. MacEwan's career, obtaining for him a long-term contract with a prominent gramophone company. Compton Mackenzie introduced Mr. MacEwan to John McCormack, the famous Irish tenor, who has helped him greatly and whose protege he now is. Thousands of Tunes. Discussing folk music, Mr. MacEwan said that several thousand traditional tunes had been recorded in Ireland and published to the world. They were to be found on the shelves of antiquaries, in rare books long out I of print, or circulating in modern form I among scholars,. expert fol klor i fits and &.

small body of musical amateurs. Of these tunes few were familiar to musicians outside Ireland.

Unlike the Hebrideans, who had always lived in close community, in many cafies in the remoteness of their islands, and had thus been able to preserve their language, the Irish had had an alien tongue forced on them. It was unfortunate that the original words of the Irish folk songs had been lost, for they had contained real gems of poetry. "We can easily imagine this to be true," continued Mr. MacEwan, "when we remember that the Irish monasteries were in the remote past the universities of Europe and that the ballad writers were using a language that had served literature for centuries before England had escaped from the barbarism of the Middle Ages. National Sufferings. "Suffering, struggle and hardship can produce character of a high order in human beings; and so these two nations, Ireland and Scotland, which have known these trials, have produced much finer

folk music than they would, perhaps, have done had their history been more placid. Compare them with the folk musio of England. England, after it had become an entity, never knew invasion or conquest in any true sense of the words —she rode ever on the crest of the wave. There is in the English folk music an air of lusty prosperity, good ale and roast beef." In the Irish folk song, said Mr. MacEwan, there was often a strain of sadness, but also of humour. Perhaps they had more humour than the Scots songs —were more mercurial. One had glimpses of the clear sky and sun, whereas the mist hardly ever left the Scots song completely. Many songs sung and classed as Irish were really synthetic; they were not the true Irish folk song. "To-day there is a great revival of the Irish language and a quickening interest in all things Gaelic," said Mr. MacEwan, "while the work of Herbert Hughes as a collector of the true Irish folk song is now being more fully appreciated."