his sojourn with his army in Pawling in 1778 were at the house of John Kane. This gentleman was a man owning considerable landed property in this vicinity. His sympathies were decidedly in favor of the Patriots, but, having little faith in the ultimate success of their cause, was moved by considerations of self-interest to side with the Loyalists. He, however, took occasion to speak favorably of the Whigs on all public occasions, which greatly incensed the friends of the King. So, when his estate (under the Act of Attainder of October 27, 1779) was confiscated by the Patriot authorities, he petitioned the King to reimburse him for his loss, but was met with the charge: 'you talked too well of the King's rebellious subjects to receive favours at his hands.' Disowned by both sides, he was dispossessed of all his property and was drummed out of town. The family suffered all the indignities that could be inflicted on the bitterest Tory. The good words he had spoken for them had been forgotten by the Patriots, so inflamed were they by passion." After the war, he returned to New York and re-entered business in the City with his sons. I can find no record that the State restored to him his Dutchess County estate, although he lived there for several years until his death on March 15, 1808.

So ended the career of this unfortunate and obstinate Irishman. He evidently meant well, but made a sad mistake! He left many descendants, among the most noted of whom, perhaps, were his grandsons, Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, the celebrated Arctic explorer; General Thomas L. Kane, and Judge John Kent Kane of Philadelphia. The latter was one of the best-known American politicians of his time. A devoted friend of President Andrew Jackson, he took a conspicuous part in the historic crusade against the Bank of the United States, and not only did the first attack upon that institution orginate with him, but it was his brain that inspired certain stirring passages in the President's State Papers. In 1845, he became Attorney-General for Pennsylvania but resigned the next year to become Judge of the United States Court for the District of Pennsylvania. I find his name on the roll of membership of the Hibernian Society of Philadelphia in the year 1828.

John Kane's eldest son, John, established an extensive mercantile business in New York after the Revolutionary war, and his son, James, located in Albany. Gorham A. Worth, in his "Ran

dom Recollections of Albany," thus refers to James Kane: "For his extensive business operations, his wealth, liberality, great courtesy and scholarly attainments, he was the most prominent man in Albany in his time." Charles, another son of John Kane, located in Schenectady, and Elisha Kane, who married into the Van Rensselaer family, settled in Philadelphia. The town of Kane, Pa., was named after this branch. Another son, Archibald, formed a partnership with one of the Van Rensselaers in 1800 and established a mercantile house in Utica and in time they became the most extensive merchants in the interior of the State and are referred to as such in Bagg's "Pioneers of Utica." Delancey Kane, the well-known society man of New York, is also one of John Kane's descendants.

In September, 1905, the Dutchess County Historical Society, with appropriate ceremonies, affixed a tablet to a large sycamore tree near John Kane's former residence at Pawling, the inscription on which reads:

THE RESIDENCE OF JOHN KANE
ON THIS SITE

WAS HEAD-QUARTERS OF WASHINGTON

FROM SEPTEMBER TWELFTH TO NOVEMBER 27, 1778
WHILE THE SECOND LINE

OF THE CONTINENTAL ARMY WAS ENCAMPED AT QUAKER HILL
AND IN THE VALLEY NEAR.

The facts contained in the foregoing are taken from the Kane Genealogy; the publications of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society; Hasbrouck's History of Dutchess County; Francis Bazley Lee's Genealogical and Memorial History of New Jersey, and other sources.

FOLK MUSIC OF IRELAND.

BY R. C. O'CONNOR.

"Ah, who can tell what a holy spell

Is in the songs of our native land."

Lover.

Music is the universal language of the soul, and is capable of expressing the feelings, the emotions, and the passions of the heart better than any written or spoken language.

Moore understood this well when he wrote:

"Music, Oh how faint, how weak,

Language fades before thy spell,
Why should feeling ever speak,

When thou canst breathe her soul so well."

This is especially true of Irish music.

Of the many splendid legacies left us by our ancestors there is none of which we may feel prouder than the native melodies of our country. Whatever tone of feeling they assume-whether of cheerfulness or of tenderness; of mirth or of deep sorrow, there is in them a grace and delicacy of feeling, and a force and earnestness of passion such as we look for in vain in the national music of any other country in the world.

True melody, the music of the soul, has no mortal artist for its inventor; it has been implanted in man's nature as a pure and heavenly gift by the great Creator Himself, and the greatest masters of the art in modern days attempt in vain to rival the beautiful, soul-possessing, and unaffected melodies of the simple minstrels of ancient days, whose music seemed to have sprung spontaneously from their souls, called forth by some passing emotion or incident of their lives.

Our most beautiful melodies are, indeed, the most simple and the most ancient, their origin being lost in the dim obscurity of time. Guided by the authority of our ecclesiastical and secular literature, we are able to follow with certainty the general history of Irish music to a period much earlier than the introduction of Christianity into Ireland.

In our ancient records music blends itself so intimately with

the life of the people of Ireland that its history is as old as the history of the Irish race itself.

Our music, therefore, should possess a special interest not for ourselves alone, but for everyone whose soul is capable of being moved by the softening and refining influence of music.

That Irish music is not more widely known and appreciated is, in great measure, due to our own negligence and indifference. It is true that many very valid excuses can be made for us in times past, but to-day under better conditions and happier auspices, there is no reason why we should not cultivate and make known the rich inheritance of music bequeathed to us by our fathers, the greatest heritage of song ever bequeathed to a people.

Efforts have been made to trace the origin of this music to Eastern nations, especially our beautiful lullabies which some think came to us from Persia or India. This may be a testimony to their great antiquity, but there is ample evidence to prove that our music is of native growth as distinctively and characteristically Irish as our ancient and extensive literature. It is too, perhaps, a better index to our character and history than our literature. Miss Margaret Stokes, in her valuable work "Early Christian Art in Ireland," says that, "since the Norman Invasion the native character of Ireland has best found expression in music. No work of purely Celtic art, whether in illumination of the sacred writings, or in gold, or bronze, or stone, was wrought by Irish hands after that century."

To our native music, therefore, we must turn for the expression of Irish feeling, for the music of Ireland is:

"Gemmed with her gladness, steeped with her sadness,

Aglow with her genius, agloom with her wrongs."

It is exultant in victory, sad in defeat, changeable as our Irish skies, "where shadow and sunshine are chasing each other" and is in this way a faithful reflex of Irish character.

Music was cultivated in Ireland with the greatest care from the earliest times down to the reign of Queen Elizabeth. During her reign, and that of her immediate successor, James the First (now 300 years ago), the Irish chiefs and nobles who had always patronized the bards and the harpers, were either slain or banished, and from that time the cultivation of our Irish music began to decline.

Occasionally, however, even amid the ruin and desolation that prevailed, owing to wars, pestilence and famine; in the caves of the mountains, in the lonely valleys, and in the inaccessible bogs, the sweet strains of our ancient music would be heard "like the spirit of Memnon sounding 'mid desolation tuneful still."

Carolan, who has been called the last of the bards, died in 1738, and since his time Ireland has had no great composer in the Irish mode. The odious penal laws had done their hellish work; the heart of the nation was broken and could not sing; it could but sob; it lay, as Grattan truly said, like a corpse upon the dissecting table, until Moore came and took up the harp that had been silent since the days of Carolan, and tuning its strings anew, he wedded the sweet melodies of his country to imperishable song, and breathed a new soul into Ireland that will not die until she sits again a queen among the nations, the mistress of song and story, of learning, music, and art, as she was in the olden, golden days when the nations thronged to her for a spark of that sacred fire that lit up the land with a glory that is remembered still.

It is not my purpose to speak of the technical or scientific side of Irish music; it would require a far greater expert than I to make that side of the subject interesting. I may say, however, that the scale in which the ancient Irish music was written was called the pentatonic scale, and consisted of five whole tones; while modern music is written in what is called the diatonic scale, and consists of two whole tones and a half tone, three whole tones and a half tone.*

As the study of music advanced the Irish came to use the half tones. Redfern Mason in his very interesting work "The Song Lore of Ireland" says: "For, beautiful and characteristic though the five tone scale undoubtedly is, the task of realizing the musical destiny of the Celtic race was beyond its powers." And Father Bewerunge, Professor of Ecclesiastical Chant in Maynooth College, who made a thorough study of Irish music, expresses his conviction as follows:

*"The great body of our music is constructed on a scale whereof four of the intervals differ from the modern scale and three coincide with it. And a numerous class of tunes, and they the most important, are composed on a scale having but two interval coincidences with the modern scale and five differences."

To reconcile the differences between the two scales, to some extent at least, accidental, or grace, notes were introduced.