Literary remains of the United Irishmen of 1798

3 December 1800

Battle of Hohenlinden

THE UNITED IRISHMEN OF ’98.

In a Paper written by a distinguished Irishman
—Dr. Drummond — on the subject of this contro-
versy, and read before the Iloyal Irish Academy of
Februarj?-, 1846, the merits of the contested claims
to the authorship of the song are placed in a very
clear point of view, and by the liberality of that
gentleman being permitted to avail myself of this
valuable paper, I lay before my readers such por-
tions of it as seem to me most deserving of notice.

“ We are informed in an article upon Campbell,
in Chambers’s Cyclopedia of English Literature,
vol. 2, p. 370, that 4 soon after the publication of
44 The Pleasures of Hope,” he went to Bavaria and
witnessed from the monastery of St. Jacob the
battle of Hohenlinden. He returned to Hamburgh
in 1801, and resided there some weeks composing
44 The Exile of Erin,” and 44 The Mariners of Eng-
land.” The former was suggested by an incident
like that which befell Smollet at Boulogne, namely,
meeting with a party of exiles who retained a
strong love of their native country, and a mournful
remembrance of its wrongs and sufferings.7 ....

“ This account,” says Dr. Drummond, 44 given by
Chambers, is, I believe, perfectly true and correct.
It corresponds with what I myself have heard from
the lips of Dr. Anderson, between thirty and forty
years ago. He informed me that Campbell wrote
4 The Exile of Erin’ at Altona, in consequence of
having there met some persons who had been
banished or obliged to flee from Ireland for

THE UNITED IRISHMEN OF '98. 353

Now, the whole claim set up for George Nugent
Reynolds’s authorship of the ballad of 44 Mary Le
More” has no other foundation than a mistake of
Mrs. MacNamara in the name of that other ballad
which she claims for her brother. In that deposi-
tion of hers, which I have referred to, she states
that her brother, George Nugent Reynolds, 44 was
the author of the song called 4 Cathleen O’More,’ ”
and thus the ballad got confounded with that of
Rushton’s “Mary Le More.”

If Campbell was capable of writing 44 The
O’Connor’s Child,” 44 The Mariners of England,”
44 The Battle of Hohenlinden,” was it necessary
for his fame to steal a song from Mr. Geo. Nugent
Reynolds 3

If Campbell was a wholesale stealer of the
literary labours of other men, at the outset of his
career, how does it happen that in the progress of
it, and to its close, no other similar charge was
ever brought against him, and no filching, on a
small scale, no retail pilfering of dead men’s
thoughts contained in books or passages from the