The best known of these choruses is "_Down, down, derry down_," which may either be derived from the words _dun_, a hill; and _darag_ or _darach_, an oak tree; or from _duine_, a man; and _doire_, a wood; and may either signify an invitation to proceed to the hill of the oak trees for the purposes of worship, or an invocation to the men of the woods to join in the Druidical march and chant, as the priests walked in procession from the interior of the stone circle to some neighbouring grove upon a down or hill. This chorus survives in many hundreds of English popular songs, but notably in the beautiful ballad "The Three Ravens," preserved in Melismata (1611):--
There were three ravens sat on a tree, _Down-a-down! hey down, hey down_. They were as black as black might be, With a down! Then one of them said to his mate, Where shall we now our breakfast take, _With a down, down, derry, derry, down!_
A second well-known and vulgarised chorus is "_Tooral looral_," of which the most recent appearance is in a song which the world owes to the bad taste of the comic muse--that thinks it cannot be a muse until it blackens its face to look like a negro:--
Once a maiden fair, She had ginger hair, With her _tooral looral lá_, di, oh! And she fell in love Did this turtle dove And her name was Dooral, Hoopty Dooral! _Tooral looral_, oh my!
This vile trash contains two Celtic or Gaelic words, which are susceptible of two separate interpretations. _Tooral_ may be derived from the Celtic _turail_--slow, sagacious, wary; and _Looral_ from _luathrail_ (pronounced _laurail_)--quick, signifying a variation in the time of some musical composition to which the Druidical priests accommodated their footsteps in a religious procession, either to the grove of worship, or around the inner stone circle of the temple. It is also possible that the words are derived from _Tuath-reul_ and _Luath-reul_ (_t_ silent in both instances), the first signifying "North star," and the second "Swift star;" appropriate invocations in the mouths of a priesthood that studied all the motions of the heavenly bodies, and were the astrologers as well as the astronomers of the people.
A third chorus, which, thanks to the Elizabethan writers, has not been vulgarised, is that which occurs in John Chalkhill's "Praise of a Countryman's Life," quoted by Izaak Walton:--