Who also wants to know who made off with my cookie.

This verse:

If Killyboyne it was mine in chorus
And the green fields were mine in white
And if my pen was made of the temper-ed steel
My true love's praises I ciukd never write

has caused puzzlement ever since Hugh Shileds first heard the song from Eddie Butcher. What is clear is that the singer didn't understand the verse - it simply makes no sense and he couldn't explain it.

Hugh interpreted it as a metaphor for pen, ink and paper; Killyboyne (a place name - unidentifiable, I'm afraid, but presumably being or containing a large lake or pond) being the ink horn (in chorus), the white fields being a very substantial piece of paper and the pen being of the most enduring kind known to the song-maker. Thus, with inexhaustible ink and paper and an everlasting pen, it was not possible to write all the ways in which his true love could be praised.

An Irish "Song of Solomon" - can anyone come up with an equally well based alternative?