|
Life
1813-1885; Lays and Legends of Fairyland, with poems and songs (London 1849) and other works incl. Minstrel Musings (18?83). Ed. many collections and anthols., incl. The New Irish Song Book, The Shamrock Songster, The Mavourneen Songster; lived in London; listed as Irish by D. J. O’Donoghue (Poets of Ireland, 1912). PI ODQ
[ top ]
Wikipedia: called an English playwright, composer, and songwriter; b. 2 Nov. 1813; d. 6 May 1885 at Bayswater; came to London from Leamington, 185; wrote various touring musical entertainments such as The Road, the Rail and the River, and a Vocal, Pictorial, and Descriptive Illustration of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853); appeared in Wisbech at the Public-hall accompanied by the Misses Jolly to present musical entertainments including An Hour in Fairyland in November 1854; also The Sanctuary, a two-act musical, and Love and Honour, three acts (both 1854); three-act drama Adam Bede, 3 acts (1862); more than 2,500 lyrics for songs and duets, publ. in Ainsworth's Magazine and others, partnering with composers including Henry Bishop, Stephen Glover, and James Ernest Perring; ed. 10 vols. of Penny Readings in prose and verse, 1865-67. (See Wikipedia - online; accessed 15.08.2013.)
Belfast Public Library holds Lays and Legends of Fairyland (1849).
[ top ]
Quotations
‘What are the wild waves saying / Sister, the whole day long / That ever amid our playing/I hear their low lone song?’ (Oxford Dictionary of Quotations). Also ‘Yes/but there’s something greater / That speaks to the heart alone/The voice of the great Creator / Dwells in that Mighty Tone!’ [idem.]
Lays and Legends of Fairyland (1849), subtitle incl. phrase ‘English song’; parts, ‘Lays and Legends’, ‘Poems’, ‘Sacred Song’, ‘Songs and Ballads’. ‘The mystic, dream-like, fairy past/Was all too pure, to bright, to last;/For thus in life - can age restore/Youth’s beauteous, fairy, scenes of yore?/No, but in dreams again we roam/Those sunny realms, the Fairies’ home’; also ‘The Bundle of Rags’, an ubi sunt poem. ‘Emigrants Song to His Wife’, ‘far from this land where wealth alone has power/Where honour and genius but decay ... [&c.]’.
[ top ]