The Angel’s Whisper

Samuel Lover’s sentimental ballad, first published around 1834, built on the Irish folk belief that when a baby smiles in its sleep, angels are whispering to it; in the song a fisherman’s wife keeps watch over her child while praying for her husband on the stormy sea. It was among the most widely reprinted of Lover’s songs, appearing in American sheet music editions from 1834 onward, and the air crossed into instrumental collections including Keith’s Flute Instruction Book (Boston, 1847), the Hibernia Collection (1860), and O’Neill’s Music of Ireland (1903).