Na Píobairí Uilleann

Chairman, NPU

An Píobaire

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8 1 18 20120206 18 poet, Aodh Buidhe Mac Cruitín. This book was a rare early riposte from a member of the Gaelic intelligentsia to the prevailing deni- gration of Irish history and culture, one for which Mac Cruitín was illegally imprisoned for a year. 7 The ‘Limerick Buck-Hunt’ contains little in- ternal evidence to illuminate it, unlike some other Irish hunting songs. The immensely pop- ular ‘Kilruddery Hunt’ (1744), for instance, by Thomas Mozeen, chronicles the route taken through south co. Dublin by the earl of Meath’s hounds on 5 December 1744, having set out ‘at five in the morning by most of the clocks’. 8 North of the Liffey a century earlier, ‘The Fin- gallian Hunting of the Hare’ (c.1636) described the coursing of a hare from Raheny to Baldoyle by a party of local gentry headed by Richard St Lawrence of Raheny, a brother of Lord Howth’s. 9 The Limerick song is best known as published in 1839 by Thomas Crofton Croker (1798– 1854), a distant relative of Edward Croker’s, ‘from a manuscript copy, most obligingly pro- cured for the Editor by Miss Crumpe.’ 10 Croker had previously published the song in an un- signed review of The Shamrock: a collection of Irish songs … by Mr. Weekes of the Theatre Royal (London, 1830) in 1831. 11 Apart from minor differences, the 1831 and 1839 texts agree in having six verses, whereas earlier ones have seven: a comparison shows that verse 2 has lost lines 7–12 in the later version and verse 7 lines 1–6. Also in 1831/9, lines 7–8 in the last verse read ‘Long prosper this county, / And high sheriff's bounty …‘, thus dating the hunt to 1735, the year Edward Croker was high sheriff of Limerick. But these lines go ‘Long prosper the county, / The storehouse of bounty …‘ in the older versions, and we might justifi- ably suspect that Crofton Croker (or possibly 'Miss Crumpe') altered them to give an osten- sibly precise date for the hunt. 12 Instead of 1735, the buck hunt was held six years later according to the introduction to a version of the song published in Euphrosyne, The Chaplet of Chearfulness, and Company Keeper's Assistant. A selection collection of songs … Dublin: Printed by and for JAMES HOEY, junior. 1763, pp. 56–60: To the EDITOR. Sir, INclosed I send you a copy of a celebrated HUNTING SONG, which I believe will be accept- able to the readers of the extensive and excel- lent collection of Songs, you are now carrying on. It was wrote by PIERCE CREAGH, of the county of Clare, esq; on a Buck Hunt in the county of Limerick, at which he made one of the company, in the year 1741. The spirit that runs thro’ the whole is charming, and far above the tardy flights of studious endeavours, when na- ture is deficient: The language is suitable to the subject, and varied with elegance; this I men- tion, as there are some expressions, which the ignorant in criticism may accept against, for as the style, proper the epic poem, would be very unatural in the pastoral, or lyric, &c. so the terms usually made use of in describing a sea fight, would certainly be very ridiculous in the recital of the advances made at the siege of Namur or Ypres, or of the several dispositions, and movements of the armies at Blenheim: For which reason, the terms and sounds, applica- ble to a subject of this or any other kind, will never affect the majesty of thought, to be found only in a true poetical description, and which always accompanies it. ADDISON tells us, that BEN JOHNSON used to say, he had rather have been the author of the old song of CHEVY CHACE, that of all his works; and to speak in the same strain, and not to enter into a tedious criticism on the song I send you, I am strongly of opinion, that the author of it deserves more praise and a more lasting reputation as a poet, than if he had been the writer of all the tragedies, farces, romances and poems, that have been published in England or Ireland these five years; this assertion, I know will ex- asperate the critics, but the SPECTATOR will an- swer them for me: “If this song (says he, speaking of CHEVY CHACE) had been written in the Gothic manner, which is the delight of all our little wits, whether writers and readers, it would not have hit the taste of so many elegant and sublime genius’s and have pleased the readers of all ranks and conditions.” Your’s, &c.

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2012-02-01T00:00:00

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