THE GALWAY PLAINS 333

EMOTION OF MULTITUDE 339

_Note._--The Essay on _Symbolism in Painting_ originally formed part of an
Introduction to _A Book of Images drawn by W. T. Horton_ (Unicorn Press),
1898.

WHAT IS 'POPULAR POETRY'?

I think it was a Young Ireland Society that set my mind running on
'popular poetry.' We used to discuss everything that was known to us about
Ireland, and especially Irish literature and Irish history. We had no
Gaelic, but paid great honour to the Irish poets who wrote in English, and
quoted them in our speeches. I could have told you at that time the dates
of the birth and death, and quoted the chief poems, of men whose names you
have not heard, and perhaps of some whose names I have forgotten. I knew
in my heart that the most of them wrote badly, and yet such romance clung
about them, such a desire for Irish poetry was in all our minds, that I
kept on saying, not only to others but to myself, that most of them wrote
well, or all but well. I had read Shelley and Spenser and had tried to mix
their styles together in a pastoral play which I have not come to dislike
much, and yet I do not think Shelley or Spenser ever moved me as did
these poets. I thought one day--I can remember the very day when I thought
it--'If somebody could make a style which would not be an English style
and yet would be musical and full of colour, many others would catch fire
from him, and we would have a really great school of ballad poetry in
Ireland. If these poets, who have never ceased to fill the newspapers and
the ballad-books with their verses, had a good tradition they would write
beautifully and move everybody as they move me.' Then a little later on I
thought, 'If they had something else to write about besides political
opinions, if more of them would write about the beliefs of the people like
Allingham, or about old legends like Ferguson, they would find it easier
to get a style.' Then, with a deliberateness that still surprises me, for
in my heart of hearts I have never been quite certain that one should be
more than an artist, that even patriotism is more than an impure desire
in an artist, I set to work to find a style and things to write about that
the ballad writers might be the better.

They are no better, I think, and my desire to make them so was, it may be,
one of the illusions Nature holds be