Author of Irish Songs and Poems, published under the pseudonym “Dreolin.” Mr Fahy is a member of the group of notable lyrists whose captain is Sir Samuel Ferguson.
SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON. (1810-1886.)
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This celebrated poet and archæologist was born in Belfast. He has aptly been called a man of encyclopædic learning; but this learning did not prevent his becoming perhaps the foremost Irish poet of the Middle Victorian period. His most ambitious poetic work is Congal: an Epic Poem (1872)—a work full of lofty imagination and epical music, but unfortunate in its metrical setting. His short poem, “The Forging of the Anchor,” is one of the most celebrated and popular poems of our era. Even yet, the influence of his Lays of the Western Gael (1865) is considerable, and for good. “Cean Dubh Deelish” (darling dark head), of which several able, and one or two good translations have been made, finds its happiest interpreter in Ferguson. How many poets and lovers have repeated these lines—
“Then put your head, darling, darling, darling,
Your darling black head my heart above;
Oh, mouth of honey, with thyme for fragrance,
Who, with heart in breast, could deny you love?”
“Molly Asthore” is also a paraphrase. The original is ascribed to a celebrated Irish Gaelic bard, Cormac O’Con.
“The Fair Hills of Holy Ireland,” is familiar to Irish men and women in every part of the world.
ALFRED PERCIVAL GRAVES.
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One of the best known names of Ireland of to-day. Mr Graves, born in Dublin in 1846, is thoroughly national, and his delightful work is perhaps as adequately typical of the Irish spirit as that of any one man could be. His lyric faculty—or at any rate his movement, his verve—is unsurpassed by any living Irishman. These few examples of his poetical writings should win him many more readers. His first book, Songs of Killarney, was published over twenty years ago. Since then he has issued Irish Songs and Ballads, Songs of Old Ireland, and (1880) his best known collection, Father O’Flynn: and other Irish Lyrics. Irish Songs and Airs is the title of his promised contribution to Sir Gavan Duffy’s Irish Library.