Samuel Lover was multi-talented and and gained worldwide fame as a song writer, a painter, a novelist, a singer, a folklorist and song collector.
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“That’s eight times to-day that you’ve kissed me before.”
“Then here goes another,” says he, “to make sure,
For there’s luck in odd numbers,” says Rory O’More.
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Too little is it considered, while we gaze on aristocratic beauty, how much good food, soft lying, warm wrapping, ease of mind, have to do with the attractions which command our admiration.
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Ballads were the Internet of the early 19th century and were used to spread all sorts of ideas… some good, some not so good. Lover was a talented balladeer himself… as his name suggests, he mainly wrote romantic songs.
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But all husbands are geese,
Though our pride it may shock,
From the first ’twas ordained so by Nature I fear;
Ould Adam himself was the first of the flock,
And Eve, with her apple sauce, cooked him, my dear.
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Love…
Sure my love is all crost
Like a bud in the frost
And there’s no use at all in my going to bed,
For ‘t is dhrames and not slape that comes into my head!
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In Ireland they thought that when a child smiles in its sleep it is “talking with the angels.”
See the whole poem The Angel’s Whisper here
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Circumstances are the rulers of the weak; they are but the instruments of the wise.
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My hearing has suffered seriously; just now I am obliged to have the assistance of an ear trumpet. Think of that, my beauty! – There’s a state for your old Lover to be in! No more tender whisperings! Imagine sweet confessions to be made through an ear trumpet!
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My advice to you concerning applause is this: ‘Enjoy it but never quite believe it.’
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My Mother Dear (The Son to his Mother)
The last verse is often not given, but it completes the cycle of mother/child love.
See the full poem here
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Andy Rooney was a fellow who had the most singularly ingenious knack of doing everything the wrong way; disappointment waited on all affairs in which he bore a part, and destruction was at his fingers’ ends; so the nickname the neighbours stuck upon him was Handy Andy, and the jeering jingle pleased them.
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