SOURCE: Davis, Leith. “Irish Bards and English Consumers: Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies and the Colonized Nation.” ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature, 24, no. 2 (April 1993): 7-25.

In the following essay, Davis examines the varied responses The Irish Melodies has elicited among both Irish and English audiences in light of its position as the product of a colonized nation.

In a letter to John Stevenson, printed in the first volume of the Irish Melodies (1808), Thomas Moore announced his excitement over the “truly National” project which he was undertaking: reclaiming Irish songs which had, “like too many of our countrymen, passed into the service of foreigners” (Works 4: 113). Daniel O'Connell's speech at a meeting of the Dublin Political Union indicates his confidence that the Melodies fulfilled this nationalist function: “I attribute much of the present state of feeling, and the desire for liberty in Ireland to the works of that immortal...