e Percy
Society, 1842, appears the quatrain:--

_Hey dorolot, dorolot_,
_Hey dorolay, doralay_,
Hey my bonnie boat--bonnie boat,
Hey drag away--drag away.

The two first lines of this jingle appear to be a remnant of a Druidical
chant, and to resolve themselves into,

_Aidhe, doire luchd--doire luchd,
Aidhe doire leigh, doire leigh._

_Aidhe_, an interjection, is pronounced Hie; _doire_, is trees or woods;
_luchd_, people; and _leigh_, healing; and also a physician, whence the
old English word for a doctor, a leech, so that the couplet means

Hey to the woods people! to the woods people!
Hey to the woods for healing, to the woods for healing.

If this translation be correct, the chorus would seem to have been sung
when the Druids went in search of the sacred mistletoe, which they
called the "heal all," or universal remedy.

There is an old Christmas carol which commences--

_Nowell! Nowell! Nowell! Nowell!_
This is the salutation of the Angel Gabriel.

Mr Halliwell, in his Archaic Dictionary, says "Nowell was a cry of joy,
properly at Christmas, of joy for the birth of the Saviour." A political
song in a manuscript of the time of King Henry the Sixth, concludes--

Let us all sing nowelle,
Nowelle, nowelle, nowelle, nowelle,
And Christ save merry England and spede it well.

The modern Gaelic and Celtic for Christmas is _Nollaig_--a corruption of
the ancient Druidical name for holiday--from _naomh_, holy, and _la_,
day, whence "Naola!" the burden of a Druidical hymn, announcing the fact
that a day of religious rejoicing had arrived for the people.

A very remarkable example of the vitality of these Druidic chants is
afforded by the well-known political song of "_Lilli Burlero_" of which
Lord Macaulay gives the following account in his History of England:--

"Thomas Wharton, who, in the last Parliament had represented
Buckinghamshire, and who was already conspicuous both as a libertine and
as a Whig, had written a satirical ballad on the administration of
Tyrconnel. In his little poem an Irishman congratulates a brother
Irishman in a barbarous jargon on the approaching triumph of Popery and
of the Milesian race. The Protestant heir will be excluded. The
Protestant officers will be broken. The great charter and the praters
who appeal to it will be hanged in one rope. The good Talbot will shower
commissions on his countrymen, and will cut the throats o