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New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 16, 6 May 1925, Page 34

NOTES

By Eileen Duggan

The Songs of Elizabeth Shane: A Singer of the North Songs in the dialect read so trippingly, BO smoothly that no man can guess the art that has gone into their making. In the case of Moira O'Neill this is particularly so. The utter melody of her heart-breaking little songs comes from the beauty of her choice and arrangement of vowel sounds. Winifred Letts thinks less of the melody than of the human subject. Elizabeth Shane, not yet as great as they, achieves wonderful effects by the use of place names, the flowing placenames of the North. She sings of Donegal, that home of many poets. In England the poets write of Sussex, in Ireland they write of Donegal. After Moira O'Neill, Elizabeth Shane seems wanting in perfect artistry. So many of her subjects are similar to those of the older writer that at first one is disappointed, but, after all, life is the same in those parts always, ways are the same, work is the same. And when one remembers this, one grows to love the little poems, and to give them a place of their own. The first song in the book is appropriate enough, Cod 'mows, in those sad days I sang my songs in a weary day An' one that I knew came up the way: "Now sure, there's no sense at all,"' said he, "In singing of things that have ceased to be." "I know, (!<•;! hell) me, I know," said I, "But I sing .for the love of the daws gone by." "An' far an' wide as I walked the land 'Twas sorrow an' fear on every hand, For people were dead ami songs were dumb. An' clouds lay dark on the years to come. But still as I went I" sang away To keep up heart for a better day." That is a lesssou. for her whole land. Misfortune cannot break the heart that keeps on singing. . Songs of the Mountainy Men Then there is the rhyme of red-haired Meg. Bod hair is unlucky in Ireland. A stranger man came in by the door, and the daughters of the house hastened to welcome him —

"An' Kale might dance an' Nor ah might sing, 'Twas still on Meg his eyes would be: An' 'Only,' sez he, "for the color o' red In the hair o' her head, That's the one I would marry,' sez he. Then back he came when a year was past, Wi' the dust o' travel upon his shoes: An' ' Where,' sez he, ( is the one that sat there Wi the shining hair? The like of her now is ill to lose.'' But red-haired Meg had married Shan Milroy, and he was left dusty, and sorrowing. Another mountainy man met a bright girl on the crown of Carntreena and asked her name and dwelling. She flitted away from him. He followed after by Cregmore, Oweedore, and Middletown. There he asked a man with cows how to find Mary. "He took his pipe out an', said he, ' There's Mary up at Logans, An' Mary Breen, an' Mary Boyle, An' Mary Dunn, an' Mary Doyle, An' Mary beg o' Barney Shea An' Mary Kate that's kin to me, An' Mary o' the Brogans.' " I brightened by this army of Marys he makes advances to a maiden called Nancy, but she tells him it was not .for her he came, and so Ik; turns to home — "I turned then to the road 1 came, An' sure it was a long one. For 'twas no use at all to stay When Nancy wouldn't look my way, An' I darena' mention Mary's name Wi' girls on every side the same, For fear I'd get the wrong one." Then there is tho old story-teller, Cathal O'Flynu, avlio lives by his lone and mumbles stories by the winter fire — r "He'll tell o' the church in his own toAvnland That never was built by mortial hand, But every night it would grow a bit, An' the whisper rose who was buildin' it: An' 'twould ha' been finished stone on stone

If them that was at it was left alone. But once when the night was dark and i deep '*?*£ Owld Kitty, tho Broguey, went to peep, ■ : f^ r ~' An' the dear knoAvs what it might be befel, But ne'er a, bit o' herself would tell ' Now God forgive me,' was all she'd say, ' For driving the blessed saints away.' -;J An' speech was dead on her tongue since then, An' the good saints never came back again, An' the wee church never was roofed at all, Though it's standin' yet with its broken wall." Then there is tho pitiful little tale of the colleen whoso lad rowed her over to the Island dance and there lost his heart to a bright-haired stranger. They sailed homo in silence—"l watched him up the loanin' And my heart was cryin' out: There's not a man in all the world I'll marry now I doubt, When my own one couldn't like me well Wi' other girls about." One of the most pitiful is "Dark Days." A mountainy lad begs his colleen not to leave him for America. She tosses her head and tells him to follow. It makes one's heart ache to read it, this story of a simple man's struggle between the two great loves of his life—- •• Drear was the day when I sailed her to land In at Buubeg with its close-hidden quay: ''X Me Avi' the ropes feelin' strange in my "7" hand, Wild Avi' the pain o' her parting from mo. "Plenty there were that could bid her goodbye, - ; ;.■, Aye, and could follow the road that she'd gone, Laughin' and oallin' and waven': but I Back to the island came sailing alone. .: ' "Here is my home since the day I was born, ; Sorra a son has my mother but me: Who would be mindin' the cows an' the corn Tf I. would follow across the salt sea? "That is the way I am full of despair, Youth now is dead on me, OAvld I have a grown: • . What if my heart is with Kitty out thero, How- can I lave my owld mother alone?" r, ; Perhaps the haughty young Kitty out in great America found time to repent her . hardness. If she didn't, he was as well without her, but the human heart is God's strangest work, so perhaps he would never* realise that. T " • ' *