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FAMOUS SONGS
fitted and fixed to it—the music plays the second part and not the first. Though Thomas Moore, " who dearly loved a lord,"as his friend Lord Byron said, was a poet of Ireland, he was in nowise an Irish poet in sentiment, sympathy or sensibility. Still we are not ungrateful to him for his labour in saving to us these classic pieces. Moore's other " Melodies" are fully dealt with in a later chapter.
" Shandon Bells," once a great favourite, was written by Francis Mahoney, who chose as his nom de plume " Father Prout," by which name he is mostly known. The " Bells" in question refer to Shandon, where,
" The spreading Lee that, like an island fair, Encloseth Cork with his divided flood."
The history of the Bells and the origin of the song are of more than passing interest. Crofton Croker, in his " Popular Songs of Ireland," tells us that the steeple of the church of St. Anne, or Upper Shandon, in which hung the bells cele-brated in the song, is one hundred and twenty feet high, and being built upon a considerable eminence, appears a remarkable object in every point of view of the city; but especially from what Moore has termed " its noble sea avenue,"
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