Tea at Trianon: Last of the Irish Bards

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Last of the Irish Bards

Who really composed the music of the "Star-Spangled Banner"?

The O’Carolan composition considered the likely “ancestor” of the music is a piece called “Bumper Squire Jones” which honours the named gentleman as one of the composer’s patrons. This was composed by O’Carolan in 1723. The theory is that subsequently the tune of Squire Jones found its way to London where it was used by John Stafford Smith who added his own words to make a drinking song called “Anacreon in Heaven”. This was done at the behest of a gentleman’s club in London, which was dedicated to “wit, harmony and the god of wine”.

This song was apparently a “big hit” in certain circles during the late 18^th and early 19^th century before it traveled across the Atlantic; where it was modified and used by Francis Scott Key as music for his composition commemorating the Battle of Fort MacHenry in September 1814. In this battle the occupying British Navy was defeated by the embryonic American Navy.

From there the song became first a patriotic song throughout the United States, until it was eventually declared the National Anthem in 1931, two years after the fact that the nation had no official anthem was brought to the attention of millions of Americans by the popular 'Ripley's Believe it or Not’ radio programme.

Who was Turlough O’Carolan?

The so-called “Last of the Irish Bards” was born near the oddly named village of Nobber in County Meath in 1678, where he lived the first 18 years of his life. His father was a small farmer and blacksmith. Turlough’s earliest works (musical and poetic) were dedicated to his first love, Bridget Cruise who lived nearby. In all he composed four pieces in this young lady’s honour.

At about this time, two significant events occurred in the young man’s life.

For some unrecorded and unknown reason, the entire O’Carolan family moved from Meath to the North Roscommon/Leitrim area west of the River Shannon where John Carolan was hired as blacksmith by the MacDermott Roe family of Alderford, near the village of Ballyfarnon. No doubt, the pain of his departure from his beloved Bridget inspired young Turlough's artistic heart to compose some his earliest pieces that still bear her name.

The second watershed event which occurred around this time was when Turlough was struck by the dreaded disease, smallpox, for which there was then no known cure. Resulting from this, Turlough O’Carolan would spend the rest of his life sightless. (Read more.)