“MY ROSARY.”

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17220, 1 October 1927, Page 17 (Supplement)

“MY ROSARY.”

ROMANCE OF A SONQ. PATHETIC STORY. Behind a popular melody may lurk a pathetic tale —such as Air Frederick G. Winter tells of the authorship of the well-known song, “My Rosary.” Twenty years or more ago a set of verses of haunting sweetness was written by a man to the woman he loved and from whom he was separated. Years passed, and the lady married; the man, after suffering cruel reverses of fortune, was struck down with an incurable disease. A business career being impossible, he sought consolation in what had always been his true vocation. He led a solitary existence and wrote ballads, such as “Where Willows Whisper,” which was set to music and had a certain popularity. But the pocket-book into which it had been copied was lost in a restaurant.

One evening he was asked in a crowded drawing-room if he would like to hear “My Rosary,” the song that had become so popular.

The author had neither heard the song nor read the novel, and judged it but a coincidence that the 'title should be the same as that of his lost poem. But when the music boated towards him, and the first words of the song reached his ear, he realised that it was no coincidence, but that the song they were listening to with such rapt attention was the poem that had been written in the lost pocketbook.

Mr Frederick G. Winter thereupon rose and informed the audience, to their intense surprise, of the romantic story. lie immediately set to work to find the publisher of the song, and discovered that the poem was attributed by them to Mr Robert Cameron Rogers, whose name, in fact, appears on the cover of the music.