We had fought, we had marched, we had thirsted all day, And, footsore and heartsore, at nightfall we lay By the banks of a streamlet whose thin little flood A thousand of hoof-beats had churned into mud. Our tongues were as parched as our spirits were damp, And misery reigned all supreme in the camp, When, sweet as the sigh of a zephyr in June, There stole on our senses an old Irish tune.
It crept low and clear through the whispering pines, It crossed the dull stream from the enemy’s lines, And over the dreams of the slumberers cast The magical spell of a voice from the past; It lulled and caressed till the accents of pain Sank to murmurs that seemed to entwine with its strain; And soothed, as of old by a mother’s soft croon, Was our worn-out brigade by that old Irish tune.
Now pensive, now lilting, half sob and half smile, Like the life of our race or the skies of our isle, Our eyelids it dimmed while it tempted our feet, For our hearts seemed to chorus its cadences sweet. Once again in old homes we were children at play, Or we knelt in the little white chapel to pray. Or burned with the passion of manhood’s hot noon, And loved o’er again in that old Irish tune.
A Johnny who crouched by the river’s dark marge, To pick off our stragglers, neglected his charge, And out in the moonlight stood, tearful and still, Most tempting of marks for a rifleman’s skill; A dozen bright barrels could cover his head, But never a ball on its death-mission sped; Our fingers were nerveless to harm the gossoon Who wept like ourselves at an old Irish tune!
It linked with its strains ere they melted away True hearts severed only by blue coats and gray, But faithful on both sides, in triumph and woe, To the home and the hopes of the long, long ago. The air seemed to throb with invisible tears Ere burst from both camps a tornado of cheers, And a treaty of peace, to be broken too soon, Was wrought for one night by that old Irish tune.
There is no country in Christendom whose inhabitants are so susceptible to music as the Irish. An itinerant musician, wandering round the different fairs in Ireland, can exercise an influence with his bagpipes or fiddle almost as superhuman as that of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. “God Save Ireland” will hush the listeners into reverential silence; “Savourneen Deelish” will cause tears to glisten on cheeks that a moment before were flushed with merriment; “The Wind that Shakes the Barley” will agitate the toes and rustle the petticoats of two thirds of the living humanity in earshot, and if that instrumentalist fancies himself a John L. Sullivan, and wishes for an opportunity of testing the muscles of the manhood about him, let him try the “Boyne Water” for five minutes. If he don’t get pretty well scattered about, it will be because he has been killed in the lump.