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rhyming, that their partiality led them to imagine that he was 
the author, though it does not appear that Reynolds himself 
ever made any such assertion. Some of his particular friends and 
near relatives, in lack of more conclusive evidence, swore before 
a justice of the peace in Dublin, that it was their belief that 
Reynolds was the real author; that the song was well known 
in their circle in the year 1799; that one of them, a lady, had 
given away a hundred copies of it among her friends, and that 
it had been noticed as the composition of Reynolds in the 
newspapers of the day. None of these newspapers, however, 
had been produced or named ; and as to the belief or convic- 
tion of any individual, however respectable and trustworthy, it 
availed nothing ‘in the determination of a question of this kind. 
It was stated in favour of Reynolds, that a wandering harper, 
ealled M‘Cluskey, had said that he had learned the song in 
the Irish Harp Society of Belfast in 1799, and that G. N. 
Reynolds was the author. This statement was treated as a 
fabrication, for the following reasons. The principal founders 
and supporters of the Irish Harp Society were Henry Joy, 
Esq., of Belfast, and Edward Bunting, the well-known col- 
lector of ancient Irish melodies, of which he published a 
volume or ‘* General Collection,” in 1809. Mr. Joy wroté 
the learned and elaborate History of Irish Musie which is 
prefixed to that volume. English songs appropriate to the 
airs were collected from various sources. Among them were 
three from Thomas Campbell, one of which is ‘‘ the Exile of 
Erin.” Had that song been ascribed to any claimant but 
Campbell, who gave it to Bunting as his own, Messrs. Joy 
and Bunting must have known it ; and it is not for a moment 
to be imagined that either of those honourable men would 
have published the song as Campbell’s, had there been but a 
breath of suspicion that he was not bond fide the real author ; 
and as little is it to be imagined that Campbell, with the con- 
sciousness of its not being his own, would have suffered it 
to be sent forth with his name, in a volume to which public 
