Sources are bustin' out all over. The following is from Lyle Lofgren, who after publishing an article called Remembering The Old Songs: ROSE CONNOLEY (Laws F6) in Inside Bluegrass, May 2003, heard from a correspondent. What the correspondent said deserves wider circulation and certainly fills in the growing picture:

http://www.lizlyle.lofgrens.org/RmOlSngs/RTOS-RoseConn.html

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I was thrilled that someone did send me more information about the song. I received the following message from one Bob Moore:

Lyle,
I found your post about "Willow Garden" from 2003. You asked for the origin of the song. My Mother, who was born in 1900, sang this song to my family. She learned it from her father, John Duncan Sullivan, who was a wonderful folk singer. She remembered him singing it in her very early childhood; so it is at least as old as @ 1900. He told her it came from Ireland.

I was always interested in what the words meant in all of her songs. She told me that she had asked the same questions of her father. The Sullivan family was of Scotch/ Irish descent. Her explanation of the song was that the man was of a higher class than Rose, and that she became pregnant. His father did not want him to marry beneath his class and encouraged him to kill Rose; since he thought that his money and position would buy the boy out of trouble.

As for the term "burglars wine"; she told me that in the olden days, travelers would stay at roadside inns at night. Crooked inn keepers would dope wine to give to them so that when they went to sleep it would be easy to steal their valuables. This makes sense in that the songs murderer wanted to make sure that she did not resist when he stabbed her. Even in my early days, I am now almost 70, to poison someone did not necessarily mean to kill them. Looks like a well planned crime. In her version the last of the song was:

My race is run beneath the sun
Low hell is waiting for me
For I did murder my own true love
Whose name is Rose Conley

The term "low hell" refers to the 7 levels of hell. The lowest being reserved for the worst crimes. What crime could be lower than murdering one's own true love?

We were poor country folks in the late 1930s and 1940s when I was young, and were quite isolated from other folks. There were 10 children. We had to make our own entertainment. The thing we loved the most was my Mother's singing of numerous old songs, along with popular songs of the 1920s and 1930s. I wrote down many of her songs before she died in 1981. I only wish I had recorded them. She still had a wonderful voice even into her 70s. Hope this helps.
Regards,
Bob Moore

This explanation makes so much sense that I changed "lo" to "low" in the lyrics given above.  I also asked Bob for more information about his family background. His response:

Lyle,
As best as we can determine our ancestor Henry Sullivan or (O'Sullivan) came to Pennsylvania in 1746. Probably from County Cork. He was a peasant farm worker or maybe a servant type. There is evidence that he was a servant to a Samuel Flowers to whom he was in servitude for 4 years to pay his passage to the new world. His offspring migrated to Tennessee around 1800 and settled in Green County. For an absolute certainty we know our family decended from a Henry Sullivan who was born in Pennsylvania around 1788. He and his wife moved to Bledsoe County, TN by 1815. The family spread into White, Warren and Van Buren Counties. My Grandfather, John Duncan Sullivan, was born in 1868, in rural White or Warren County, TN. My mother was born at Bone Cave, Van Buren County, TN in 1900. Much of the family started west in covered wagons in 1906; but illness plagued them shortly after departure and they ran out of money. My Grandfather worked in a limestone quarry in Sherwood, Franklin County, TN. This is in the Crow River Valley near the Alabama border.

My Grandfather and 4 others of the family are buried there. I suspect, though I have no evidence, that this song had it origin in Ireland. Many of the other songs he sang came from there. My mother said that he told her he learned the songs from his mother. If that is so, the song would date to at least before his birth date.

Regards, Bob Moore

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