Lovely Mary Donnelly

DESCRIPTION: "O lovely Mary Donnelly, my joy, my only best, If fifty girls were round you, I'd love you still the best." He describes her face and hair. He falls in love with her at a dance. She has many sweethearts. He is poor and has no hope of winning her.
AUTHOR: William Allingham (1824-1889) (source: OLochlainn-MoreIrishStreetBallads)
EARLIEST DATE: 1888 (Sparling); 1887? (_Irish Songs and Poems_?, suggested by OLochlainn-MoreIrishStreetBallads)
KEYWORDS: love beauty dancing nonballad hair poverty
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (2 citations):
OLochlainn-MoreIrishStreetBallads 53, "Lovely Mary Donnelly" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: H. Halliday Sparling, Irish Minstrelsy (London, 1888), pp. 247-248, 495, "Lovely Mary Donnelly"
NOTES [117 words]: William Allingham is known primarily for one piece, "The Fairies" ("Up the eairy mountain, Down the rushy glen"). Nonetheless he was a fairly major poet in his day; Patrick C. Power, A Literary History of Ireland, p. 159, writes "William Allingham was coeval also with the 'lost generation' [apparently the famine era] but he survived until 1888. He dispersed his talents imitating English poets such as Tennyson and his poetry is tinged with... pre-Raphaelitism.... Nevertheless, he wrote some ballads in the country style and poems inspired by his native Ballyshannon in County Donegal.... It appears that Allingham allowed himself to feel apart from the traditions of his native country...." - RBW
File: OLcM053

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