Samuel Lover! Of course! You see, this is what comes of having most of your library in storage for 18 months...

You can get Lover's Legends and Stories of Ireland for pennies in a Senate Myths & Legends edition simply under the title of IRELAND - a single volume which unites it with the equally essential Fairy Legengs of the South of Ireland by Thomas Crofton Croker.

So - at 1831 Lover is the earliest thus far...