“As our spirits were operated upon by the wretched liquor, which we drank more to drown the rising sigh than for any partiality for it, Campbell called for pen, ink, and paper. ‘Mr. McC.’ said he, ‘your story has deeply interested me, and a kind of notion has arisen that I should like to put it upon paper.’ “In a little time a miserable ink-horn was produced, and something which was called paper, but it was so stained, and otherwise disfigured, it seemed almost impossible, with the wretched pen that accompanied it, that legible characters could be traced upon it; and I could but indulge in my risible propensities, at the idea of any attempt to write with such materials. “But the soul of the poet had been aroused, and he bade me again to refresh his memory with my tale, which I did by replying to such questions as he from time to time propounded to me. Every now and then he would pause, and pledge me in the tin cup with which we were furnished, for glasses there were none; when he would again commence to write, and before he had finished, so potent were the draughts in which we had indulged, that some of the last lines ran in any other direction than parallel to each other. “At last he finished his labors, and the result of them was the song of Erin-go-bragh, the very song printed in his works, and which I now hand to you. “This is a true history of that inimitable production, more full of feeling, in my opinion, than any thing he has ever written before or since. “Read it to me,” said the general, “for if the king would withdraw the act which banished me, the object nearest my Irish heart, I could not read that song aloud!” Such was the story told to the writer, as nearly as it can be remembered, after a lapse of thirty-eight years. There are yet living in this city several persons who will recognize it, and an appeal to them for the accuracy with which it is here told, would confirm it in every particular; its only defect being the absence of power in the writer to impart to his readers any thing of the enthusiasm with which General McC. related it—nor the heart-stirring emotion ever exhibited by him when it became, as it often did, the subject of conversation. As the reader may feel desirous to know what was subsequently the fate of the real and original Erin-go-bragh, he may be told that his friends found out where he was, remitted him funds, that he embarked in a profitable pursuit, and ever after lived in comparative affluence. The story of his marriage is of so romantic a nature, that as he is now no more, and there is therefore no impropriety in giving it publicity, the writer is tempted to narrate it, as he has often listened to it from the lips of the general, at his own hospitable board, in the presence of his wife. “‘There she is,’ he would say, ‘she is my preserver!’ Campbell and myself continued in our lodgings, and with Saturday night came the bill of expenses, but alas! our means were exhausted.