“The Irish Peasant Girl”
Description
Singer thinks about widow Brown's daughter. She crosses the Atlantic to send money home. Her dying wish is that a letter be written to her mother and brother at home. Singer in Ireland thinks of "the lily of the mountain furze that withers far away"
Notes
O'Conor has the author as John Banim (1798-1842), who wrote "Aileen," "Soggarth Aroon," "The Reconciliation," "The Irish Maiden's Song," and "The Irish Mother in the Penal Days." Sparling makes Kickham the author and is supported in that by the article "Charles Joseph Kickham" at the New Advent site _Catholic Encyclopedia_. The first line is "She lived beside the Anner at the foot of Slievenamon"; _Catholic Encyclopedia_ notes that the same was true of Kickham. - BS
Colum's _An Anthology of Irish Verse_ also credits it to Kickham. For more on him, see the notes to "Patrick Sheehan" [Laws J11]. - RBW
Recordings
- Tommy McGrath, "She Lived Beside the Anner" (on Voice04)
References
- O'Conor, p. 126, "The Irish Peasant Girl" (1 text)
- ADDITIONAL: H. Halliday Sparling, Irish Minstrelsy (London, 1888), pp. 261-262, 502, "The Irish Peasant Girl"
- Roud #5687
- BI, RcTIrPGi