?
The Angel's Whisper

By Samuel Lover (1797-1868), 1834.
He was a multi-talented singer, songwriter, painter and novelist.

Roud Number: V129

Printed in Songs and Ballads, by Samuel Lover, 1839, p.9.
Samuel Lover wrote a series of poems upon the superstitious fancies of the Irish people, and this song is the fourth song in the chapter Songs of the Superstitions of Ireland.

First printed in The Irish Monthly Magazine of Politics and Literature, Vol 3, August 1834, pp. 484-485.
Under Notices of New Works:
Songs of the Superstitions of Ireland. Written and composed by Samuel Lover, Esq. R.H.A. Printer: Duff and Co., London

Early printing in The Songs of England and Scotland, published by James Cochrane and Co. (London), 1835, Vol 1, Songs of England and Ireland, p.277.

The song became popular with early printings of sheet music by various printers in Britain and North America between 1835 and 1839, such as:

Bodleian Library Broadside Ballad
Printer: Catnach, J. (London), 1838 or earlier.

HathiTrust Digital Library
Printer: Fiot, Meignen & Co., (Philadelphia), between 1837 and 1839

And also printed in The Odeon: A Collection of Secular Melodies, by G. J. Webb and Lowell Mason, Boston, 1837, p.84


Of the music, Lover says:
The song was written to an old Irish air (one of the few Moore left untouched) entitled "Mary do you fancy me?" Words had been written to it in "Holden's Periodical Irish Melodies," but they were ineffective, and left the air still in oblivion, while mine had better fortune, and made this charming melody widely known; and I think it may be allowed to be pardonably pleasing to an author that it is now known by the name of "The Angel's Whisper."


The Angel's Whisper relates to the Irish superstition that when sleeping infants smile, the angels are whispering to them.

The song tells of a woman weeping for her husband fishing in a storm while her baby sleeps. She prays that the angels always watching over her baby would now watch over her husband. He returns safely in the morning.


A baby was sleeping,
It’s mother was weeping,
For her husband was far on the wild raging sea;
And the tempest was swelling
Round the fisherman’s dwelling,
And she cried, “Dermot, darling, oh come back to me!”

Her beads while she numbered,
The baby still slumbered
And smil’d in her face as she bended her knee;
“Oh blest be that warning,
My child, thy sleep adorning,
For I know that the angels are whispering with thee.

“And while they are keeping
Bright watch o’er thy sleeping,
Oh, pray to them softly, my baby, with me!
And say thou would’st rather
They’d watch o’er thy father!—
For I know that the angels are whispering with thee.”

The dawn of the morning
Saw Dermot returning,
And the wife wept with joy her babe’s father to see;
And closely caressing
Her child, with a blessing,
Said, “I knew that the angels were whispering with thee.”