ABSTRACT
Mr. pett ridge, in a passage almost excusably underlined and over-quoted, made a stout lady exclaim, after hearing “ Kathleen Mavoumeen ” sung : “ Anything about Ireland always makes me cry : I come from Kent.” That remark, overemphasised though it is into travesty, does nevertheless show that Mr. Pett Ridge’s sense of things is not so purely grotesque and derivative as some readers are in the habit of suggesting. It shows that he is not unaware of piercing general truths ; one of which is that there is prevalent in England a shocking sentimentality over the subject of Ireland. Mournful Irish songs produce free tears, however bad the songs may be. Songs such as “ Come Back to Erin ” are as popular with the general public as “ Father O’Flynn.” At the time of the Boer War one of the songs that moved drunken men most easily to tears was “ What do you think of the Irish now ? ”
