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STORIES OF
by the roadside wTho was weeping bitterly, and appeared to be abandoned to inconsolable grief. Upon inquiring the cause of her affliction, he found that she had been induced, at the urgent request of her parish priest, to wed, for the sake of his great wealth and worldly possessions, an old man, the coldness of whose nature presented but an imperfect requital to her youthful warmth of affection. MacGrath, who with all his failings possessed a heart ever sensitively alive to the wrongs of injured youth and innocence, was moved by the narrative of the young girl's wrongs, and produced an extempore song on the occasion. Here is the first stanza:
" A priest bade me marry for * better or worse'
An old wretch who'd nought but his money and years— Ah, 'twas little he cared, but to fill his own purse,
And I now look for help to the neighbours with tears."
The popularity of the song was enormous, and travelled via the minstrels throughout the length and breadth of the land, and into Scotland, where It was utilized also. But the earliest trace of it in Scotland is, according to Stenhouse, 1715, and the tune was not printed there till about 1760, when it appeared in Bremner's " Scots Reels and Country Dances," and again in Aird's " Selection of Scots Airs," 1782. MacGrath was
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