Kathleen, a daughter much beloved

The second stanza of Whittier's ballad, Kathleen, illustrates the poet's skill at compressing a substantial amount of meaning into a small space:

There was a lord of Galaway,
A mighty lord was he;
And he did wed a second wife,
A maid of low degree.

The third stanza introduces the second wife's evil ways.

She whipped the maids and starved the kern,
And drove away the poor;
"Ah, woe is me!" the old lord said,
"I rue my bargain sore!"

The lord's second wife's cruelty extended far beyond bread. She harmed the maids, the poor, and even the lord's soldiers — the kern. Her misbehavior caused the lord to rue his bargain, but what bargain did he make? By "bargain" does he mean his marriage?

Then, in the fifth stanza, a significant shift occurs. The "song of old Ireland begins":

This lord he had a daughter fair,
Beloved of old and young,
And nightly round the shealing-fires
Of her the gleeman sung.

In the above stanza, Whittier uses two more words no longer in common usage: shealing and gleeman.

Shealing, also spelled "sheeling," is, according to Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, published 1913 by C. & G. Merriam Co. "A hut or small cottage in an exposed or a retired place (as on a mountain or at the seaside) such as is used by shepherds, fishermen, sportsmen, etc.; a summer cottage; also, a shed."

A gleeman was a traveling storyteller and minstrel during the Middle Ages; they were noted for their juggling ability.

So began the tale of the lord's daughter, a girl who had captured the hearts of many.

Kathleen, a ballad by Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier wrote another poem about a young woman named Kathleen. For some reason, Whittier referred to Kathleen as a ballad rather than a poem.

Here's his comment on Kathleen:

This ballad was originally published in my prose work, Leaves from Margaret Smith's Journal, as the song of a wandering Milesian schoolmaster. In the seventeenth century, slavery in the New World was by no means confined to the natives of Africa. Political offenders and criminals were transported by the British government to the plantations of Barbadoes and Virginia, where they were sold like cattle in the market. Kidnapping of free and innocent white persons was practised to a considerable extent in the seaports of the United Kingdom.

Here's Kathleen's first stanza:

O NORAH, lay your basket down,
And rest your weary hand,
And come and hear me sing a song
Of our old Ireland.

As he did with another poem, Maud Muller, Whittier begins Kathleen with a woman's name; however, unlike Maud Muller, the woman whose name begins Kathleen is not the woman whom the poem's about. Instead, she is the woman to whom the ballad is being sung.

Here's a listing of all Whittier's poems on Project Gutenberg.