KATHLEEN MAVOURNEEN AND ITS COMPOSER.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 230, 29 September 1931, Page 2

KATHLEEN MAVOURNEEN AND ITS COMPOSER.

/l has Deen said, with more regard for epigram than fact, that this queen amongst Irish songs Iras born out of its own country, of English parents. But the truth is that though the composer, F. N. Crouch, was an Englishman—he might have been Irish if he had chosen, for there are many of that name in the Creen Isle the writer of the words, Mrs. Julia Crawford, was a true daughter of Erin, having been born in County Cavan toward the 'close of the last century. By lading up her abode at a small town in Willshire when quite young, and where she resided for many years, her few biographers have been led into the error of supposing her to be English. Besides "Kathleen Mavourneen," she wrote over a hundred lyrics, mostly Irish in sentiment, and published, with F. N. Crouch as the composer of the music, a volume of "Irish Songs” in 1840 When Crouch wrote his greatest song'he was travelling for a firm of metal brokers in Cornhill. AfterWards he was appointed musical director at Drury Lane Theatre and brought out many a singer who has long since achieved name and fame. The words, as already stated, were written by Mrs. Crawford, a contemporary of Mrs. Hernans and Sheridan Knowles, the Irish dramatist, whose verses were occasionally set by this once eminently fertile composer; among them the “Swiss Song of Meeting" and "Zephyrs of Love" which achieved immediate success through the inimitable singing of Marie Malibran and Anna Tree, to whom they were respectively dedicated. The melody of "Kathleen Mavourneen,” according to Crouch, came as an inspiration one day mhen he Was riding along the banks of the Tamar. Soon afterwards he sang it at Plymouth—for he was a capital ballad singer—and for more than half a century it has continued to find a place in concert programmes But although the song is said to have brought in profits to the extent of fifteen thousand pounds it did not enrich the composer, who only received a small sum down for it originally. So hard were the times with Crouch, and so unkind his country to him, that he who was a friend of the great Rossini, when Ceorge the Fourth Was king, had to emigrate to America in 1849 to earn a living. —S. J. Adair Fitz-Cerald, in “Stories of Famous Songs.”