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xxvi |
PREFACE. |
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fainting; yet it was her favourite of all songs, and gave occasion to those verses addressed in her fifteenth year to her sister."*
"With the Melody entitled, " Love, Valour, and "Wit," an incident is connected, which awakened feelings in me of proud, but sad pleasure, to think that my songs had reached the hearts of some of the descendants of those great Irish families, who found themselves forced, in the dark days of persecution, to seek in other lands a refuge from the shame and ruin of their own ;—those, whose story I have thus associated with one of their country's most characteristic airs: —
Ye Blakes and O'Donnells, whose fathers resign'd The green hills of their youth, among strangers to 6nd That repose which at home they had sigh'd for in vain.
From a foreign lady, of this ancient extraction,— whose names, could I venture to mention them, would lend to the incident an additional Irish charm, —I received about two years since, through the hands of a gentleman to whom it had been entrusted, a large portfolio, adorned inside with a beautiful drawing, representing Love, Wit, and Valour, as described in the song. In the border that surrounds the drawing are introduced the favourite emblems of Erin, the harp, the shamrock, the mitred head of St. Patrick, together with scrolls containing each, in- |
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* Quarterly Review, vol. xli. p. 294. |
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