Let's sort out the words:#

Graves in "Irish Songs of Wit and Humour" (1884) has the following:


Oh, Who will plough the field or who will sell the corn?
Oh, Who will wash the sheep an' have 'em nicely shorn?
The stack that's on the haggard, unthrashed it may remain
Since Johnny went a-thrashing the dirty King of Spain

The girls from the bawnogue in sorrow may retire
And the piper and his bellows may go home and blow the fire
For Johnny, lovely Johnny is sailing o'er the main
Along with other patriarchs to fight the King o' Spain

The boys will surely miss him when Moneyhore comes round
And they'll weep that their bould captain is nowhere to be found
the peelers must stand idle, against their will and grain
Since the valiant boy who gave them work now peels the King o' Spain

At wakes and hurling matches your like we'll never see
Till you come back again to us astore gra-geal-machree
And won't you throunce the buckeens that show us much disdain
Because our eyes are not so black as those you'll meet in Spain

If cruel fate will not allow our Johnny to return
His heavy loss we Bantry girls will never cease to mourn
We'll resign ourselves to our sad lot and live in grief and pain
Since Johnny died for Ireland's pride in the foreign land of Spain

Sparling's first edition (1887) doesn't include the song - and makes no mention of Graves' book.

Sparling's second edition (1888)includes the song, gives Graves as the source. His only change is to give the Irish phrase in verse 4 in Gaelic spelling:

a-stóir grádh geal mo-chroídhe

(N.B. Note the Cló Rómhánach! Nothing new under...)


O'Lochlainn gives Sparling as his source for the words and makes a few minor changes:



The boys will surely miss him when Moneymore comes round
And they'll weep that their bould captain is nowhere to be found
the peelers must stand idle, against their will and grain
Since the valiant boy who gave them work now peels the King of Spain

At wakes and hurling matches your like we'll never see
Till you come back again to us astóirín óg mo chroí
And won't you throunce the buckeens that show us much disdain
Because our eyes are not so bright as those you'll meet in Spain

O'L gives Petrie as his source for the air - with the "Johnny, lovely Johnny.." lines quoted earlier. Petrie says of that air:

(collected) " in the county of Londonderry in the summer of 1837 and is very probably a tune of Ulster origin. It was sung to an Anglo-Irish peasant ballad, of which I have preserved the following quatrain: " - followed by the lines cited.

As a musical illiterate, I can only say that O'L s tune LOOKS the same as Petrie's! The words are a different matter - they certainly sound like a fragment of Edward/What put the blood... and the date makes it very unlikely to have been the same song.

Regards