Familiar Songs - Their Authors & Histories

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	THE LAMENT OF THE IRISH EMIGRANT. THE LAMENT OF THE IRISH EMIGRANT.	86
	Helen Selina Sheridan was bom in Ireland in 1807. She inherited the wit and brilliance of her grandfather, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and was noted in fashionable circles for her beauty and accomplishments. Besides the words of the songs, with which she occupied her leisure hours, she wrote music and considerable elegant literature, which has not survived like that of her sister, Mrs. Norton. When but eighteen years old, she married the Honorable Price Blackwood, afterward Lord Dufferin. He died in 1841, and twenty-one years afterward, when her old and intimate friend, the Earl of Gifford, was in his last illness, she became his wife, that she might be constantly by his side. He lived but two months, and five years later, June 13, 1867, Lady Gifford died also. The present Earl Dufferin, late Governor-General of Canada, is her son. The music which so exquisitely expresses the sentiment of Lady Dufferin's song, was composed by William R. Dempster, and many will well remember hearing him sing it in this country.