Poem: Sean O’Casey’s “Rose & Crown”
quoting Sean O’Casey, in his Rose & Crown:
“The chants of an odd bird, the lowing of cattle, the whistling of the wind, the patient patter of falling rain, the brave, meritorious tinkle of the Abbey Theatre orchestra, were all of the sweet sounds that the ear of Sean knew. Oh, and the folk-song, the folk-song, the gay and melancholy strains of the Irish folk-song, on fiddle, on harp, and on fife. And no folk-art is there but is born in the disregard of gain, and in the desire to add a newer beauty and a steadier charm to God’s well-turned-out gifts to man; and so, out of the big love in his heart for all things comely and of good shape, the great poet Yeats exclaims:
“‘Folk-art is indeed, the oldest of the aristocracies of thought, and because it refuses what is passing and trivial, the merely clever and pretty, as certainly as the vulgar and insincere, and because it has gathered unto itself the simplest and most unforgettable thoughts of the generations, it is the soil where all art is rooted.’”