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INSCRIBED BY PERMISSION,

TO

SIR WILLIAM VERNER, BART.,

(M.P. FOR ARMAGH),

THE TRIED AND TRUSTY FRIEND OF LOYALTY,

AND PROTESTANT ASCENDANCY IN CHURCH AND STATE.

PREFACE.

"Let others make the laws-give me the making of the songs of a country."-FLETCHER OF SALTON.

The influence of ballad poetry on the popular mind is so generally admitted that we need here offer no apology for the present volume. In all ages, and amongst every variety of people, civilized and savage, the most important historical events have been chronicled in song, and handed from generation to generation by the bards-the verses of the Druid's preserved not merely the spirit but the letter of the Gallic laws, and in still later times has the "Genius of the Soul" been applied to a similar purpose.

Demagogues, alive to the power over the mind which is centered in the lay of the minstrel, have not been backward in seizing the facilities afforded by the press for publishing doctrines the most pernicious to the common weal. We have, therefore, endeavoured here to counteract as far as possible the evil tendency of

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