Familiar Songs - Their Authors & Histories

300 traditional songs, inc sheet music with full piano accompaniment & lyrics.

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	RORY O'MORE.	415
	RORY O'MORE. The name of " Rory O'More " has long suggested all that was impudently coaxing and bewitchingly tormenting iu rural courtship j but more than two centuries ago it was worn by a champion of the Irish people, and it signified to them everything that was lofty and unselfish in a patriot. It was the country's proverb that the hope of Ireland was " in God, the Virgin, and Rory O'More." The words and music of this song are by Samuel Loter, who says': "From an early period I had felt that Irish comic songs (so called) were but too generally coarse and vulgar, devoid of that mixture of fun and feeling so strongly blended in the Irish charac­ter—that a pig and a poker, expletive oaths, 'hurroos,' and 'whack-fol-de-rols,' made the staple of most Irish comic songs j and having expressed this opinion in a company where the subject was discussed, I was met with that taunting question which sometimes sup­plies the place of argument, 'Could you do better?' I said I would try; and 'Rory O'More' was the answer. Its popularity was immediate and extensive; so much so that on the occasion of her Majesty, Queen Victoria's coronation, every band along the line of pro­cession to Westminster Abbey, played 'Rory O'More' during some part of the day, and, finally, it was the air the band of the Life Guards played as they escorted her Majesty into the park, on her return to Buckingham Palace. Being called upon to write a novel, I availed myself of the popularity attaching to the name, and entitled my story 'Rory O'More.' The success of the novel induced the management of the Adelphi Theatre to apply to me to dramatize the story, and in this, its third form, ' Rory O'More' was again received by the public with such approbation, that it was played one hundred and eight nights in the first season, in London, and afterward universally throughout the kingdom."