but also that of having been directly inspired by
it; and yet, although wanting in the rare and
graceful finish of the original, the Irish copy
has, we feel, so much fire and feeling that it at
least tempts us to regret that Scott's poem was
not written in that heart-stirring Northern
dialect without which the noblest of our British
ballads would lose half their spirit. Indeed, we
may safely say that some of Le Fanu's lines
are finer than any in 'Young Lochinvar,'
simply because they seem to speak straight from
a people's heart, not to be the mere echoes of
medieval romance.

'Phaudrig Croohore' did not appear in
print in the 'Dublin University Magazine'
till 1844, twelve years after its composition,
when it was included amongst the Purcell
Papers.

To return to the year 1837. Mr. William Le
Fanu, the suggester of this ballad, who was from
home at the time, now received daily instalments
of the second and more remarkable of his brother's
Irish poems--'Shamus O'Brien' (James O'Brien)
--learning them by heart as they reached him,
and, fortunately, never forgetting them, for his
brother Joseph kept no copy of the ballad, and he
had himself to write it out from memory ten
years after, when the poem appeared in the