CATHBEIN NOLAN. I. “My love, when she floats on the mountain’s brow, is like the dewy cloud of the summer’s loveliest evening. Her forehead is asa pearl; her spiral locks are of gold; and I grieve that I cannot banish her from my memory.” II. “When she enters the forest like the bounding doe, dispersing the dew with her airy steps, her mantle on her arm, the axe in her hand to cut the branches of flame; I know not which is the most noble--the King of the Saxons, ** or Cathbein Nolan.” * Miss Brooks, in her elegant version of the works of some of the Irish Bards, says, “’Tis scarcely possible that any language can be more adapted to lyric poetry than the Irish; so great is the smoothness and harmony of its numbers; it is also possessed of a refined delicacy, a descriptive power, and an exquisite tender simplicity of expression: two or three little artless words, or perhaps a single epithet, will sometimes convey such an image of sentiment or suffering to the mind, that one lays down the book to look at the picture.” ** The King of England is called by the common Irish “Riagh Sasseanach.” This little song is of so ancient a date, that Glorvina assures me, neither the name of the composer (for the melody is exquisitely beautiful) nor the poet, have escaped the oblivion of time. But if we may judge of the rank of the poet by that of his mistress, it must have been of a very humble degree; for it is evident that the fair Cathbein, whose form is compared, in splendour, to that of the Saxon monarch, is represented as cutting wood for the fire. The following songs, however, are by the most celebrated of the modern Irish bards, Turloch Carolan, * and the airs to which he has composed them, possess the _arioso_ elegance of Italian music, united to the heartfelt pathos of Irish melody.