PREFACE.
Though an edition of the Poetry of the Irish Melodies, separate from the Music, has long been called for, yet having, for many reasons, a strong objection to this sort of divorce, I should with difficulty have consented to a disunion of the words from the airs, had it depended solely upon me to keep them quietly and indissolubly together. But, besides the various shapes in which these, as well as my other lyrical writings, have been published throughout America, they are included, of course, in the two editions of all my works printed at Paris, and have lately appeared, in a volume full of typographical errors, in Dublin. I have, therefore, readily acceded to the wish of the Proprietor of the Irish Melodies for a revised and complete
