A Murder, Three Poets, and a Song

THE EXILE OF ERIN.

The controversy which has been going on for some time in “Roddy’s” columns, concerning the authorship of the famous poem, “The Exile of Erin,” interested me particularly. I do not claim to be able to solve the mystery with any degree of finality, but there is a romantic story attached to it, which has not, I think, hitherto been given as fully as it might be. It may throw some light on the subject and give those who are interested material on which to form a judgment.

It begins with a murder. In the middle of the 18th century there was living at Letterfine, near Carrick-on-Shannon, a landowner named George Nugent Reynolds. Reynolds was a man of learning and culture, the possessor of a fine library, and one of the Leitrim patrons of Turlough O’Carolan. Many a time the bard enjoyed the hospitality of the Reynolds’ mansion, and in his “Planxty Reynolds” he has left an enduring monument to the memory of his friend. A near neighbour of Reynolds was Robert Keon, an attorney, and a cousin of Myles Keon of Keonbrook, the founder of the Catholic Association to whom Wolfe Tone pays a glowing tribute in his autobiography. This Robert Keon was an irascible individual and a man whose professional integrity was not above reproach. He quarrelled with Reynolds and struck him with a horse-whip in the street of Carrick. A mutual friend named Plunkett intervened and suggested as a means of composing the quarrel, that the two men should fight a mock duel—that is, one in which the pistols were charged with powder only. It was a face-saving device and a not uncommon one in those days. The parties appear to have agreed and the meeting was fixed for Monday morning, October 16, 1786, the place chosen being the three-cairned hill of Sheemore which overlooks the town of Carrick. Keon and his two brothers arrived on the ground first; Reynolds and Plunkett a little later. But the duel never took place. The moment Reynolds appeared, Keon raised his revolver and shot him dead. He was apprehended later in the day, tried for murder at the following Spring Assizes in Carrick, and duly hanged.

Reynolds had a son, also called George Nugent. He learnt the songs of O’Carolan at his mother’s knee and from his father he inherited a love of literature. Whilst still in his twenties he established a reputation as a wit and a poet. He contributed many pieces to the “Dublin and London Magazine” and the Dublin “Evening Star,” of which the best known are the tender lyric “Kathleen O’More,” and the longer poem entitled “The Catholic Lamentation,” which begins: “Green were the fields where my forefathers dwelt.” He died in 1802 at the early age of 32, as the result of a chill contracted through gallantly giving up his inside seat in a stage coach to a lady in cold and wet weather, whilst on a visit to his relative, the Marquis of Buckingham. His claim to the authorship of “The Exile of Erin” is worth investigating.

The poem first appeared anonymously, in the London “Morning Chronicle” in January, 1801. Its authorship remained a matter of doubt until 1809, when it was included in the collected poems of Thos. Campbell, published in that year, at that time Reynolds was dead but his relatives did not hesitate to accuse Campbell of plagiarism. They declared that they had seen the poem in manuscript form in Reynolds’ possession as far back as 1799, and that there could be no doubt whatever that he was the author. When asked to explain how it came into Campbell’s hands, they stated that Reynolds left all his papers to the Marquis of Buckingham (at whose seat he died); that Campbell had access to those papers by permission of the Marquis, and that he had, in fact, “stolen” the poem! The charges were set out in some detail in a letter which appeared in the “Sligo Observer” of the time.

The Scottish poet was not slow in replying. In a letter published in the London “Times,” he said: “If my character did not repel the calumny, I could refute it by the fact that I never in my life had access to poems at the Marquis of Buckingham. I wrote the song of the ‘Exile of Erin’ at Altona (in Germany) and sent it from thence to London, where it was published by my friend Mr. Perry, in the ‘Morning Chronicle’… If my Irish accusers have any proof that George Nugent Reynolds ever affected to have written the song they will consult the credit of his memory by not blazoning the anecdote; for if he asserted that the piece was his own he assuredly told an untruth.”

That was forthright enough, but it did not end the matter. Reynolds’s friends—and they were numerous—returned to the attack. They alleged that if Campbell did not get the poem at the Marquis of Buckingham’s, he got it from the “Morning Chronicle.” They obtained numerous declarations from friends of Reynolds in Leitrim and Roscommon, in all of which it was stated that the “Exile” was well-known to be the Leitrim poet’s composition. Reynolds’s sister, a Mrs. MacNamara, swore a declaration before a Justice of the Peace in which she stated that she wrote down the words of the song from her brother’s lips and added that it was composed by him in order to be sent out to a friend of his named John McCormick, who had been exiled for his part in the ’98 Rising.

Here the long arm of coincidence comes in. Campbell also claimed to have written the poem for an Irishman who was exiled after the Rising! This was Anthony MacGann of Dundalk, whom Campbell met in Hamburg, and with whom he deeply sympathised. And it is certain that MacGann, delighted with the poem, sent copies of it to his friends in Ireland. But—the friends of Reynolds asserted—that proved nothing. Campbell, they alleged, found the poem in the “Chronicle” transcribed it, and passed it off on MacGann as his own.

The controversy has been revived at various times during the past century. Writers like Hercules Ellis—no mean authority—have supported the Reynolds claim, and the evidence, which I have merely synopsised, is not unimpressive. On the other hand, Charles Gavan Duffy, Samuel Lover and Michael Joseph Barry—an eminent trio—have supported Campbell. They pointed out (1) that during his residence in Germany Campbell sent no less than 50 poems to the “Chronicle,” whilst Reynolds sent none (unless the disputed poem is his); (2) that the “Exile of Erin” is so much better than anything else that Reynolds wrote that it is unlikely to be his; (3) that it is far more likely to have come from the pen that wrote “Hohenlinden,” “Lord Ullin’s Daughter,” and “O’Connor’s Child”; (4) that Campbell, although not Irish, was deeply sensible of the wrongs of Ireland; and (5) that he was a man whose honour was above suspicion.

So there it is; or, rather, there it was. For, suddenly, a correspondent of “Roddy’s” has come along and thrown a spanner in the works. Signing himself, “A Relative of the Exile,” this correspondent declares that the poem was not the composition of either Campbell or Reynolds, but of Frank Ruagh Lysaght, a transported rebel, who wrote it in Irish, from which it was translated into English by one Edmond Comyn. “Frank Lysaght being an ex-convict gave the poem to his brother and the brother gave gave it to Campbell, the Scotch poet, and he afterwards went to Italy and took credit for the poem.” One would like to know more about Frank Ruagh and Edmond Comyn, before taking this claim seriously. “I knew the history of the poem since 1856,” says “Roddy’s” venerable correspondent, “and heard it frequently from that until 1859.” Curiouser and curiouser! Can these dates be right? Is there actually somebody alive to-day whose memory carries back over a span of 84 years?