“Mary Le More”
Description
"As I strayed o'er the common on Cork's rugged border" the singer meets Mary Le More, distracted. She tells that her brother and friend Connor have been murdered by soldiers and she has no one to avenge them. When troops appear she screams and runs away.
Notes
Broadside Bodleian Firth b.27(277), "Mary La More" is almost entirely illegible.
_The Ballad Poetry of Ireland_ by Charles Gavan Duffy (Dublin, 1845), pp. 119-120, "Mary Le More" makes the attribution to Reynolds. [A claim backed by Hoagland. - RBW]
See another similar broadside Bodleian Harding B 22(166), "Mary Le More" ("Oh! S---s of B---n, your merciless doings") in which Mary's father, Dermot, is killed. - BS
Broadsides
- Bodleian, Firth b.34(174), "Mary-le-More" ("As I stray'd o'er the common on Cork's rugged border"), J. Ferraby (Hull), 1803-1838; also Harding B 11(2350), "Mary-le-More"; 2806 c.15(321), "Mary Le More"; Harding B 11(495), "Mary le Moor"; Harding B 25(1223), "Mary-le More"
- NLScotland, RB.m.169(007), "Mary Le More," Robert McIntosh (Glasgow), after 1848
References
- O'Conor, pp. 11-12, "Mary Le More" (1 text)
- ADDITIONAL: Kathleen Hoagland, editor, One Thousand Years of Irish Poetry (New York, 1947), pp. 366-367, "Mary Le More" (1 text)
- BI, OCon011