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This is an Irish Love Song of the early 1800s.  In 1808 Thomas Moore wrote the words that are popular today.

It is said that Moore wrote the words for the wife of the Duke of Wellington when she suffered facial scars from smallpox. Another theory is that Moore wrote it for his own wife.

Henry C. Work wrote many folk songs. This was one of his most successful ones. It was written in 1876.

We liked singing 'sad' songs late in the evening.

The tune was originally a camp-meeting hymn from the American Civil War. In 1861 Julia Ward Howe wife of a government official, wrote a poem for Atlantic Monthly for five dollars. The magazine called it, Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Mr Figgis likes to put in one or two songs for us 'chillen' as he calls us.

This tune first appears as a nursery rhyme in Percy Society's Early English Poetry, Ballads, and Popular Literature of the Middle Ages (1841).

If you would like to find other folk songs of the 18th & 19th Century then visit