ccurred in the one
just mentioned, in promoting a change in the style of our music; the
bards often driven together with their patrons, by the sword of
oppression, from the busy haunts of men, were obliged to lie concealed
in marshes, and in glyns and vallies resounding with the noise of
falling waters, or filled with portentous echoes. Such scenes as these,
by throwing a settled gloom over the fancy, must have considerably
increased their melancholy; so that when they attempted to sing, it is
not to be wondered at that their voices, thus weakened by struggling
against heavy mental depression, should rise rather by minor-thirds,
which consist but of four semitones, than by major-thirds which consist
of five. Now almost all the airs of this period are found to be set in
the minor-third, and to be of the sage and solemn nature which Milton
requires in his IL PENSEROSO."[3]

[Footnote 3: See Hist. Mem. of the Irish Bards.]

To illustrate his position, Mr. Walker introduces the following
anecdote: "About the year 1730, one Maguire, a vintner, resided near
Charing Cross, London. His house was much frequented, and his skill in
playing on the harp was an additional incentive: even the duke of
Newcastle and several of the ministry sometimes condescended to visit
it. He was one night called upon to play some Irish tunes; he did so;
they were plaintive and solemn. His guests demanded the reason, and he
told them that the native composers were too deeply distressed at the
situation of their country, and her gallant sons, to be able to compose
otherwise. But, added he, take off the restraints under which they
labour, and you will not have reason to complain of the plaintiveness of
their notes.

"Offence was taken at these warm effusions: his house became gradually
neglected, and he died soon after of a broken heart. An Irish harper who
was a cotemporary of Maguire, and like him, felt for the sufferings of
his country, had this distich engraven on his harp:

Cur lyra funestas edit percussa sonores?
Sicut amissum sors diadema gemit.

But perhaps the melancholy spirit which breathes through the Irish music
and poetry, may be attributed to another cause; a cause which operated
anterior and subsequent to the invasion of the English: we mean the
remarkable susceptibility of the Irish to the passion of love; a passion
which the munificent establishment of the bards left them at liberty
freely to indulge. While the mind is endu