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FAMOUS SONGS
menced a tour of Ireland and Scotland which lasted until 1716. Now the Scotch claimed the melody, and published it to the British public under the name of " Robin Adair" about 1800. The grounds for this assumption, Hardiman informs us in his " Irish Minstrelsy," published in 1831, appear in the correspondence between Robert Burns and his publisher, Thomson, in 1793. The latter, in a letter to the bard, wishes him to give " Robin Adair" (meaning of course "Eileen Aroon") a Scottish dress. "Peter (Pindar) is furnishing him with an English suit. Robin's air is excellent, though he certainly has an out-of-the-way manner as ever poor Parnas-sian wight was plagued with." In reply Burns says that he believes the air to be Scotch, having heard it played by a man from Inverness, so that " it could not be Irish" (the question had arisen between them) though he admits that through the wandering habits of the minstrels, the air might be common to both. As a matter of fact, it was Hempson who carried the air to Scotland between i7ioand 1716, and the High-land minstrels annexed it. During his second visit to Scotland, in 1745, Hempson was taken into the Young Pretender's presence by Colonel Kelly of Roscommon, and Sir Thomas Sheri-dan, when he played and sang " When the King 3 33 |
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