In Colm O'Lochlainn's "Irish Street Ballads" (I don't know which of the two volumes), he suggests Oliver Goldsmith as the maker of the song, and as far as I remember he quotes at length from an article he wrote on the matter. It seems Goldsmith was in the habit of disguising himself as an itinerant ballad-singer and going around the streets of Dublin hawking ballads, some of his own composition.