The movement of the Forties was distinguished from all that preceded it by a passionate attempt to elevate and educate our people. The work of the Association was supplemented by the subtler work of the Press. The young men who gathered round the Nation bore the same relation to O'Connell as the heads of the permanent staff of the public service bear to the Cabinet. They projected much of the work announced from the platform, executed a liberal proportion of the agenda authorised in committee, and constantly brought the supreme stimulus of imagination to the cause. Under their inspiration the monster meetings were held on historic sites, rich in inspiring memories; bands were formed, banners were lifted above the multitude, and the people began to muster and march in ordered ranks. Historic books and pictures became common, and there soon might be found in every district of the country groups of students reared in the new ideas.
I proposed to my friends a simple device for feeding this flame which had a decisive success. We announced a series of monthly shilling volumes of Irish history, poetry, biography, and literature, bearing the title of the Irish Library. The first volume published was Thomas MacNevin's "History of the Volunteers of 1782," which was received with cordial welcome. The second was my "Ballad Poetry of Ireland."
I had a passion for ballad poetry from the time I read "Robin Hood's Garland," secreted in a lexicon at school, and longed for Irish ballads of the same scope and spirit. In Belfast I began to collect native poems from forgotten periodicals and books which had perished early, without any other aim in the first instance than personal enjoyment. But as the collection grew, new hopes and views arose, and now I was able to draw from that storehouse the first collection of Irish ballads ever published. Up to that time "Irish ballad" had only a grotesque meaning; even Sam Lover, who aimed to be a national lyrist, had written a burlesque essay on Irish ballads, selecting his illustrations from Zozimus, or some other bard of the Liberties. It was a keen delight, as well as a profound surprise, to sympathetic readers to find that Ireland had produced Anglo-Irish and Celtic ballads which might be classed without exaggeration with the ballads of Scotland
