f the English.
These verses, which were in no respect above the ordinary standard of
street poetry, had for burden some gibberish which was said to have been
used as a watchword by the insurgents of Ulster in 1641. The verses and
the tune caught the fancy of the nation. From one end of England to the
other all classes were constantly singing this idle rhyme. It was
especially the delight of the English army. More than seventy years
after the Revolution a great writer delineated with exquisite skill a
veteran who had fought at the Boyne and at Namur. One of the
characteristics of the good old soldier is his trick of whistling
Lilliburllero. Wharton afterwards boasted that he had sung a king out of
three kingdoms. But, in truth, the success of Lilliburllero was the
effect and not the cause of that excited state of public feeling which
produced the Revolution."

The mysterious syllables which Lord Macaulay asserted to be gibberish,
and which in this corrupt form were enough to puzzle a Celtic scholar,
and more than enough to puzzle Lord Macaulay, who, like the still more
ignorant Doctor Samuel Johnson, knew nothing of the venerable language
of the first inhabitants of the British Isles, and of all Western
Europe, resolve themselves into _Li! Li Beur! Lear-a! Buille na la_,
which signify, "Light! Light! on the sea, beyond the promontory! 'Tis
the stroke (or dawn) of the day!" Like all the choruses previously
cited, these words are part of a hymn to the sun, and entirely
astronomical and Druidical.

The syllables _Fol de rol_ which still occur in many of the vulgarest
songs of the English lower classes, and which were formerly much more
commonly employed than they are now, are a corruption of _Failte reul!_
or welcome to the star! _Fal de ral_ is another form of the corruption
which the Celtic original has undergone.

The French, a more Celtic people than the English, have preserved many
of the Druidical chants. In Beranger's song "Le Scandale" occurs one of
them, which is as remarkable for its Druidic appositeness as any of the
English choruses already cited:--

Aux drames du jour,
Laissons la morale,
Sans vivre a la cour
J'aime le scandale;
Bon!
_Le farira dondaine_
Gai!
_La farira donde_.

These words resolve themselves into the Gaelic _La! fair! aire! dun
teine!_ "Day! sunrise! watch it on the hill of fire (the sacred fire)";
and _La! fair! aire! dun De!_ "Da