Terence’s Farewell

Lady Dufferin’s gently comic parting song, in which Terence bids goodbye to Kathleen as she leaves for England — worrying she’ll return speaking “such beautiful English” he won’t know her. She set the words to an existing traditional air: Elias Howe printed the melody as “Terence’s Farewell” in his Musician’s Omnibus No. 3 (1865), but the tune is the traditional “Pretty Maid Milking the Cow.” The Gallowglass Céilí Band recorded it as a waltz for Columbia in 1958.