Kathleen Mavourneen

A parting song composed in 1837 by English composer Frederick Nicholls Crouch (1808–1896), setting a poem by Mrs. Crawford, first published by D’Almaine & Co. in London. Irish soprano Catherine Hayes made it her signature piece, singing it for Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace in 1849, and her American tours of the 1850s planted the song so deeply that it became one of the emblematic separation songs of the American Civil War — “it may be for years, and it may be forever.” Crouch himself emigrated to America in 1849 and ended up playing trumpet for the Confederacy. John McCormack recorded it as early as 1911, and the song anchors a key scene in Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels and the film Gettysburg.