We are ourselves answerable for promul-
In hailing the publication of Edward

We have been impatient to submit this air. gating a theory in which we do not concur. Bunting's last splendid work (in the number we have above referred to) we said things, in the ardour of rejoicing, which we had not full time to ponder upon. In nothing do we think we fell into greater error than in appearing, with our author, to limit the origin of Irish airs to the three sources of the harp-the pipes-and the voice. How could we have forgot the violin? Bunting's own book in the VOCABULARY OF ANCIENT IRISH MUSICAL TERMS, pp. 32, 33, &c., gives the terms for the violin, &c. No doubt the instrument is no less ancient in Ireland than the others. The word used in obsolete English, “crowd,” means this instrument: thus, in Hudibras, part 1, canto ii.—

And again

"He with the foe began to buckle,
Vowing to be revenged for breach
Of crowd and skin upon the stretch;
Sole author of all detriment
He and his fiddle underwent."

"His fiddle is your proper purchase,
Won in the service of the Churches:
And, by your doom, must be allowed
To be or be no more-a crowd."

This word was of Celtic origin and imported into English probably from Wales. In Irish the word is Cpure, cruit, (pronounced somewhat like crooth,) and there is no part of the country where the instrument has not been one of popular use, "time whereof the "memory of man ruumeth not to the contrary." So we have Fleapzaċ, fleasgach, a fiddler, evidently from fleasg, a bow or rod; and biol, biol, a viol or stringed instrument. The Welsh historians agree (see David Powell's History of Cambria, translated by Lloyd, edit. 1584; Jones's Reliques of the Welsh Bards; Selden's notes on Drayton's Polyolbion; Preface to Bunting's second work, (1809) pp. 5 and 23,) that the "crowth," as well as the harp, came to Wales out of Ireland. The "crowth" used in Wales was twenty-one and a-half inches long; nine and a-half inches at bottom, tapering to eight; its finger-board ten inches long; it was more extensive than the violin, (to which the Celtic cruit was parent,) and capable of great perfection; its strings were six; the two lower were often struck with the thumb of the left hand, and served as a bass to the notes sounded with the bow. Among "the twenty-four measures of Welsh music,” was "tresi heli ;" Powell declares that the names of the measures (as of the times and all the instrumental music of Wales,) were derived from the Irish; and in the Irish we find Treise treise, force, and uillean, uillean, elbow.

The air before us cannot be played by an adept upon the instrument, of even moderate skill, who will not at once perceive that it must have grown into being upon the very strings of the violin. Its lie under the fingers-its effects by shifting-its out-speaking by the open notes-all demonstrate its origin.

2

THE WEARING OF THE GREEN"

Maelz! ♪ 69.

Fare well! for I must leave thee, my own, my native shore, And

Laws, our Tyrant Laws, have said, that seas must roll between Old

faithful Sons will fondly sing "the wearing of the Grees.