This is a radio script I used last year for Manx Radio:

A.P. GRAVES       (Born 22nd July 1846)

Today is the one hundred and fifty-seventh birthday of a man who had a considerable influence, not only on Celtic music generally, but on Manx Song (of a particular type) in particular. His name was Alfred Percival Graves.

CD332 TR3 - Father O'Flynn

One of the songs composed by A.P. Graves who was born in Sneem, County Kerry, the son of Dr Charles Graves the Anglican Bishop of Limerick who himself was married in Kirk Malew, in the Isle of Man in 1840.
Graves is most notable as a 19th century poet who began collecting Irish folk melodies but, unfortunately, ignored the lyrics that accompanied them. He is quoted as having said, 'Irish lyrics are not worth collecting', and he extended this attitude to Welsh and Manx repertoires. 'They are worthy of only peasants' he said (which is rather missing the point, I would have thought).

CD333 TR1 - Trotting to the Fair (another of Graves' songs)

In 1875, A.P. Graves was appointed an inspector of schools attached to the Manchester District which, for some reason was itself responsible for the inspection of Manx schools, and it was on an inspection trip to the Isle of Man that he first heard Manx songs - in Manx - at Cronk Y Voddy School. Also on that trip he met the local folk song collector, Dr John Clague of Castletown.
Subsequently Graves met the two brothers Gill who were gathering together the material for the Manx National Song Book with a view to publishing it - indeed Graves was instrumental in introducing Clague and the Gills to the music publishers Boosey and Co.
From a Manx point of view, Graves made by far the greatest contribution of lyrics to the Manx National Song Book, cherished by so many local singers. Eleven out of fifty two of the song-words are attributed to him.
Among the songs for which he supplied words were
She Sang to her Spinet.
Lament of the Duchess of Gloucester.
Robin and Betsy.
Two Lovers - which contains the deathless lines
        Two lovers thro the land - Went ling'ring hand in hand
        The skylarks danced and sung - The swallows glanced and swung
        And blithe the sheep-bells rung - From green dell to dell.
(just proving that poetry does not make folk song)
And then, of course there was this one :

MD TR1 - The Wreck of the Herring Fleet.

Since the Manx National Songbook was published in 1896, A.P. Graves would have been in his late 50's when writing the lyrics for his songs there.
Graves was a great supporter of the Pan Celtic movement - the union of the Celtic countries, so much so that he wrote a Pan-Celtic anthem called the Heather Song here's the first verse.
        
        A blossom there blows - That scoffs at the snows
        And faces, root fast - The rage of the blast,
        Yet sweetens a sod - No slave ever trod,
        Since the mountains up-reared - Their altars to God,
        The flower of the free - Is the heather, the heather;
        It springs where the sea - And the land leap together.

It wasn't adopted.

While talking about A.P. Graves I should mention that Mona Douglas the Manx collector was his secretary for some years when he was living in Harlech.
But here we must introduce a West Country barrister from Bath by the name of Fred Weatherley, he was a prolific song writer who composed and published more than 1,500 lyrics for popular songs, one of which was this tremendously popular one.

MD TR - Roses of Picardy - Peter Dawson.

Fred Weatherley - the author of those words was a friend of Alfred Percival Graves, or at least he was up to the time that he wrote the words of the song Danny Boy in 1910.
For the tune of the song he used one called The Londonderry Air - you may remember I played you Percy Grainger's arrangement of it last week. The tune had come to Weatherley from his sister in America, and the song caught on after being published by Boosey and Co.
However Graves - Weatherley's friend - had already written two lyrics to the melody and felt that Fred had poached the folk tune from him and never spoke to him again as a result.
Weatherley wrote; After my song had been accepted by the publisher I got to know that A.P. Graves had written two sets of words to the same melody - Emer's Farewell and Erin's Apple Blossom and I wrote to tell him what I had done. He took up a strange attitude. I am afraid my old friend Graves did not take my explanation in the spirit which I hoped from the author of those splendid words, Father O'Flinn.

So Alfred Percival Graves who was born 157 years ago today and died in 1931, was also a rather touchy customer.
Well this should irritate him even more.

CD348 TR10 - Danny Boy - De Danann