D 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!_ "Day!
sunrise! watch it on the hill of God." In the Recueil de Chanson's
Choisies (La Haye, 1723, vol. i., page 155), there is a song called
Danse Ronde,
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