ABSTRACT
The English pastoral mode and the more populist street ballads circulating in Ireland would in turn influence Thomas Moore's poetical style, but Celticism and political song would equally exert a significant bearing on his writing. Through works such as Joseph Cooper Walker's Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards and Charlotte Brooke's Reliques of Irish Poetry, Ireland's literary, musical and cultural history was rediscovered and redefined. These works also became catalysts for the development of overtly political ideology. Association forged between the bard and war was perpetuated throughout Celtic and political literature. Published in 1757, Thomas Gray's The Bard: a Pindaric Ode popularized the notion of the bard opposed to tyranny and fighting for liberty. James Macpherson's warriors also took inspiration from the battle songs of the bards, accompanied by the harp. In Macpherson's poems, harps and battle shields are hung side by side on the ancient walls underlining the links first propagated through literature and, later, through music.
