NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, 11 August 1921, Page 26

NOTES

Gilbert and Sullivan

Readers who are familiar with Pinafore The, Pirates of Penzance, and the Mikado will readily agree that it was a happy chance that brought Sir Arthur Sullivan and W. S. Gilbert together to give us respectively the music and the song of such inimitable light opera. Sir Arthur’s music is known in every country in the world. Gramophones and street organs have spread its ripples in widening circles from London to Otautau, and it never stales. It is not of course to be compared with the music of Wagner, Beethoven, and Chopin, but in its own humbler sphere it is all that the large, human, popular taste wants it to be. Many of our readers no doubt are familiar with the little volume called The Bab Ballads which contains such exquisitely humorous rhymes by Gilbert and demonstrates a priori his capability for producing the libretti that Sir, Arthur wanted in order to ensure success. The music is all important; but nevertheless, in this combination, Sullivan without Gilbert would be like Hamlet without the ghost. Therefore we venture to introduce to belated readers who have not yet made acquaintance with the Bah Ballads this amusing little book of poems.

“The Bab Ballads”

The ballads were written originally for publication in various English periodicals, ranging in dignity from Fun to Punch. They were all done in a period of three or four years, and some of them very hurriedly and spontaneously. The best known of them all had the fate to be declined by the editor of Punch on the ground that it was “too cannibalistic for his readers’ taste.” Notwithstanding this editorial verdict, The Yarn of the Fancy Bell is the most popular if not the best of them all. Its swing and verve catch hold of the memory and make an indelible impression when we have heard or read it once, in spite of the awful explanation of how the elderly naval man could be all that he said:

“Oh, I am the cook and the captain bold, And the mate of the Nancy brig, And a bo’sun tight, and a midshipmite, And the crew of the captain’s gig.

There is broad humor and rollicking fun, real pathos and shrewd sarcasm in this little book. You will find on one page a poem that will make you laugh loudly, and on the next, a homely lesson like the following:

Only a dancing girl, With an unromantic style, With borrowed color and curl, With fixed mechanical smile, With many a hackneyed wile, With ungrammatical lips, And corns that mar her trips.

And stately dames that bring • Their daughters there to see, Pronounce the “dancing thing” No better than she should be. r ' With her skirt at her shameful knee, And her painted, tainted phiz: Ah, matron, which of us is? ,-v

But change her gold and green 1 For a coarse merino gown, ' . And see her upon the scene Of her home, when coaxing down Her drunken father’s ; frown, : ■ In his :squalid.cheerless den: *- -.7 She s a fairy truly then !

The Living Gaelic

...W. H. Kent is as famous for his learning as the British Premier is for his lying. Lloyd George, who made it a criminal offence to speak Gaelic 'in Ireland, once in his caddish way taunted the Irish for not speaking the language that he had made it criminal to speak. The English scholar (who is a kinsman of the Wexford rebel, Edmond Kyan) scores and scathes the Welsh trafficker ruthlessly in'the Catholic World for June. Respect for the truth is as foreign to Lloyd George as scholarship or even geography, bub one can thank his ignorance inasmuch as it brought us the article in question from the pen of “W.11.K.” Pausing to dispose of the Marconi schemer’s argument that there was no separate nationality without a separate language, “W.H.K.” asks what of the United States, what of Switzerland, what of the many new nations formed after the war. He then goes on to show that the Gaelic never died in Ireland and that it is flourishing to-day. He quotes Hyde; “When the great Milesian and Norman families began to lose their power in the seventeenth century, a distinctly new school of poetry arose in Ireland, which discarded the learning and the metres of the old bards, and instead of carefully counting the syllables, as used to be the case, counted only the accented syllablesand lo! with a turn of the hand, Irish poetry changed its form and complexion, and from being an old man so bound up and swathed about with rules and fetters that it could scarcely breathe or see, it burst out into a blooming young maiden dressed in all the colors of the rainbow. Then, indeed, poetry became the handmaid of the many, not the mistress of the lew. Then, indeed, through every nook and corner of the island the populace, neglecting all bardic training, burst out into passionate song.” This, on the evidence of one of the greatest living authorities is what happened after Gaelic was supposed to have died ! Of the new Gaelic, Hyde goes on to say : “This is to my mind the rich glory of the modern Irish nation ; this is the sweetest creation of Gaelic literature: this is the truest note of the enchanting Gaelic syren, and he who has once heard it and remains deaf to its charm has neither heart for song nor soul for music. The Gaelic poetry of the last two centuries is the most sensuous attempt to convey music in words ever made by man. It is absolutely impossible to convey the lusciousness of sound, the richness of rhythm and perfection of harmony in another language.” One example of this modern song is the song;

Sci bhronach an la ml or sguras om elicit'd- gradh ’s a mhuirnin dills Eihhlin or/! Do phogas a deora , ’* mo chroidhe h tig did a gheurchradh,

’s a mhuirnin dills Eihhlin og.

. J Haying reviewed all the living and vigorous signs of modern Gaelic, “W.H.K.” mentions some of the very latest masterpieces written in the old tongue in our own day, dwelling especially on “A t-A thair Pcadar’s” oeadna, and on the Gaelic writings of Padraic Pearse, concerning the latter of which he says : “For a moment the reader’s delight in these writings may be dimmed with sorrow, as he thinks how this bright young life was cut short by. the hands of ruthless foemen, and the world was robbed of a genius who had so much more to give us. But the blow missed its mark. Pearse is not dead. His writings still live, and will continue literature 1 ” brightest i ewels in our living Irish