Some of the Irish folk-melodies are of ancient origin, others have emerged in the last 300-400 years, a good number as late as the last century, many of these composed by Carolan, one of the last Irish bards. These bards, or harpists — poets, composers and singers in one person — used to be very numerous: every Irish chieftain kept his own at his castle. Many also travelled around the country as wandering minstrels, persecuted by the English, who quite rightly saw in them the main bearers of the national, anti-English tradition. The old songs about the victories of Finn Mac Cumhal (whom Macpherson stole from the Irish and turned into a Scot under the name of Fingal in his Ossian,3180 which is entirely based on these Irish songs), about the splendour of the old royal palace of Tara, about the heroic feats of King Brian Borumha, and the later songs about the struggles of the Irish chieftains against the Sassenach (English) were preserved by these bards in the living memory of the nation; and they also celebrated in song the deeds of contemporary Irish chieftains in their struggle for independence. But when the Irish people were utterly crushed in the seventeenth century by Elizabeth, James I, Oliver Cromwell and William of Orange,b robbed of their land holdings in favour of English intruders, outlawed and turned into a nation of pariahs, the wandering minstrels were hounded as fiercely as the Catholic priests, and towards the beginning of this century they gradually died out. Their names are forgotten, of their verses only fragments remain; the most beautiful legacy which they bequeathed to their enslaved but undefeated people are their melodies.
Poems in the Irish language are all composed in stanzas of four lines. For this reason, most of the melodies, especially the older ones, are based on this four-line rhythm, although the link is often somewhat obscured. This rhythm is often followed by a refrain or a coda on the harp. Many of these old melodies are known only by their Irish names or opening words, even though in most of Ireland Irish is now only understood by old people, or not at all. But the greatej- part of the melodies, being more recent, already have English names or texts.
The melancholy that prevails in most of these melodies is even today the expression of the national mood. How could it be otherwise among a people whose rulers are always inventing new, more up-to-date methods of oppression? The latest method, introduced forty years ago and carried to extremes for the past twenty years, is the mass eviction of the Irish from house and home, and that — in Ireland — is tantamount to deportation. Since 1841 the population of the country has decreased by two and a half million, and more than three million Irishmen have emigrated. All in the interests and at the behest of the large landowners of English origin. If this goes on for another thirty years, the only Irishmen left will be those in America.
Endnotes
[179] Engels wrote notes at the request of Marx's eldest daughter, Jenny. They were intended as a preface to Erins-Harfe, Irländische Volksmelodien nach Thomas Moore, which was being prepared for publication in Hanover. Jenny Marx sent them to Ludwig Kugelmann, asking him to hand them to Joseph Risse, the compiler of the collection (see Jenny Marx's letter to Kugelmann, July 17, 1870, present edition, Vol. 43). However, they did not appear in the collection printed in 1870. They were first published in 1955, in Movimento Operaio, No. 2, Milano, in Italian, and in La Pensée, No. 75, 1957, in French. In English this article was published in Marx and Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1978.