Thank you, Nigel. I have "Prose, Poems and Parodies of Percy French edited by his sister Mrs. De Burgh Daly", published by the Talbot Press of Dublin in 1929 (repr. 1954). The book gives 37 titles under "Songs and Poems", 6 under "Parodies", 36 under "Further Songs and Poems" and 8 under "Short Plays and Dialogues". These include all his well-known pieces (Eileen Oge, Shlathery's Mounted Fut, Mountains of Mourne, "Are ye right there, Michael?",, etc.) but there is no mention (in the body of the text or in the introduction by Alfred Perceval Graves) of Abdul. I wonder why this is? Is Healy our only authority for French's authorship? Neither Spaeth nor Sandburg give an author, though Spaeth does give two tunes (did French make them both?).

Jon Bartlett