The Songs They Sang

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 16, 16 April 1903, Page 17

The Songs They Sang

Home papers to hand continue to publish sundry reminiscences, of very -varied interest, regarding the late Sir Charles CJavan Duffy. Here is one :—

' The late Sir Charles G avail Duffy had many .unusing expediences as a Minister of the Crown in Victona For instance, when, visiting a Swiss settlement in the Colony, ho inspected the local school, and asked the teacher whether the children could sing. ' Certainly,' u.us the leply ; whereupon, to his amazement, the Swiss "\ ouugsters started m chorus a well-known Hibernian ditty. " We're Paddies evermore." '

'The tale,' sajs the Edinburgh 'Catholic Herald,' has a recent parallel in the experience of an lash \isitor to South Africa. Calling at one of the orphanages maintained by the Sisters of Nazareth, he was i? i co tod with a school chorus, " Erin, my country-" ! sung by the children — including, among others, somo colored" youngsters, from whom the "touch of the tarbrush " did not dri\e avray the charity of the Sisters of Nazareth.'