Irish Emigrant

A song of bereavement and emigration — “I’m sitting on the stile, Mary” — with words by Helen Selina, Lady Dufferin (1807–1867), published around 1845, in which a widower speaks to his dead wife before leaving Ireland for America. The standard musical setting is by the Scottish-born singer William R. Dempster (1809–1871), issued as sheet music in Boston in the early 1840s and widely reprinted in London and New York. Unusually for the drawing-room repertoire of this book, the song genuinely entered oral tradition: Clare singer Tom Lenihan (1908–1990) was field-recorded singing it at his home in Knockbrack, and John McCormack recorded it commercially.