The earliest reference I can find to this song comes from the British Library catalogue as a music sheet:-
'By the short Cut to the Rosses. Song, the words by N.Hopper, arranged to an old Donegal Air by C.M.Fox [Charlotte Milligan Fox]: London and New York: Boosey & Co., 1902'.

Eleanor Jane (Nora) Hooper, (1871-1906), writer, has an entry in the DNB. She was a poet and novelist greatly influenced by the Celtic Twilight although she never set foot in Ireland until 1905. Her first book of poems and stories of Irish fairy-lore, Ballads in Prose (1894) was highly praised by W B Yeats, despite her apparent plagiarising of Yeats and Katherine Tynan. This book and three later volumes of poetry can be read online via the Internet Archive, but none of these books appear to include 'By the short Cut to the Rosses'.
She married Wilfred Hugh Chesson in 1901, by whom she had three children, and she died in 1906 shortly after the birth of their third.

There is an undated letter in the Surrey History Centre from Frank Kidson written to Lucy Broadwood while staying at Mrs Chesson's home in St John's Wood. So it might appear that Nora Hopper/Chesson was familiar with folk song collectors.

This is certainly confirmed by her association with Charlotte Milligan Fox (1864-1916) who was a founder of the Irish Folksong Society in 1904, and editor of the Journal. Charlotte Milligan Fox was the sister of Alice Milligan (c.1865-1953), editor of the Northern Patriot and the Shan Van Vocht with Anna McManus (1866-1902), who is better known as Ethna Carbery, the writer of the 1898 song about Roddy McCorley.

Matthew Edwards