Irish Peasant Girl, The

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"
AUTHOR: probably Charles Joseph Kickham (1825-1882)
EARLIEST DATE: 1865 (Duncathail)
KEYWORDS: emigration dying hardtimes Ireland separation money
FOUND IN: Ireland
REFERENCES (3 citations):
O'Conor-OldTimeSongsAndBalladOfIreland, p. 126, "The Irish Peasant Girl" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Duncathail (pseud)., _Street Ballads, Popular Poetry, and Household Songs of Ireland_, McGlashan & Gill, 1865 (avaialble on Google Books), p. 66, "The Irish Peasant GIrl" (1 text)
H. Halliday Sparling, Irish Minstrelsy (London, 1888), pp. 261-262, 502, "The Irish Peasant Girl"
Roud #5687
RECORDINGS:
Tommy McGrath, "She Lived Beside the Anner" (on Voice04)
NOTES [106 words]: O'Conor-OldTimeSongsAndBalladOfIreland 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
Last updated in version 3.0
File: RcTIrPGi

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