So God bless the Queen and the House of Hanover,
And never may Pope or Pretender come over. 
Lillibullero, Bullen-a-la.

If the song is still remembered by other than historical students, it is probably more because Uncle Toby, when he was hard pressed in argument, “had accustomed himself, in such attacks, to whistle Lillibullero,” than for any other reason.

But whether it be doggerel or dignified verse, popular poetry almost invariably possesses one great merit.  When we read the outpourings of the seventeenth and eighteenth century poets to the innumerable Julias, Sacharissas, and Celias whom they celebrated in verse, we cannot but feel that we are often in contact with a display of spurious passion which is the outcome of the head rather than of the heart.  Thus Johnson tells us that Prior’s Chloe “was probably sometimes ideal, but the woman with whom he cohabited was a despicable drab of the lowest species.”  The case of popular and patriotic poetry is very different.  It is wholly devoid of affectation.  Whatever be its literary merits or demerits, it always represents some genuine and usually deep-rooted conviction.  It enables us to gauge the national aspirations of the day, and to estimate the character of the nation whose yearnings found expression in song.  The following lines—­written by Bishop Still, the reputed author of “Gammer Gurton’s Needle”—­very faithfully represent the feelings excited in England at the time of the Spanish Armada: 

    We will not change our Credo
      For Pope, nor boke, nor bell;
    And yf the Devil come himself
      We’ll hounde him back to hell.

The fiery Protestant spirit which is breathed forth in these lines found its counterpart in Germany.  Luther, at a somewhat earlier period, wrote: 

    Erhalt uns, Herr, bei deinem Wort,
    Und steur des Papsts und Tuerken Mord.

Take again the case of French Revolutionary poetry.  The noble, as also the ignoble, sides of that vast upheaval were alike represented in the current popular poetry of the day.  Posterity has no difficulty in understanding why the whole French nation was thrilled by Rouget de Lisle’s famous song, to whose lofty strains the young conscripts rushed to the frontier in order to hurl back the invaders of their country.  On the other hand, the ferocity of the period found expression in such lines as: 

    Ah! ca ira, ca ira, ca ira! 
    Les aristocrates a la lanterne,

which was composed by one Ladre, a street singer, or in the savage “Carmagnole,” a name originally applied to a peasant costume worn in the Piedmontese town of Carmagnola, and afterwards adopted by the Maenads and Bacchanals, who sang and danced in frenzied joy over the judicial murder of poor “Monsieur et Madame Veto.”

The light-hearted and characteristically Latin buoyancy of the French nation, which they have inherited from the days of that fifth-century Gaulish bishop (Salvianus) who said that the Roman world was laughing when it died ("moritur et ridet"), and which has stood them in good stead in many an arduous trial, is also fully represented in their national poetry.  No other people, after such a crushing defeat as that incurred at Pavia, would have been convulsed with laughter over the innumerable stanzas which have immortalised their slain commander, M. de la Palisse: