A look through my bookshelves reveals more information - though not to the advantage of the Mulchinock theory.


From James N. Healey's _The Second Book of Irish Ballads_ (Cork, Mercier, 1962), p. 76:

"The story of young William Pembroke Mulchinock and his unhappy romance with Mary O'Connor, the Rose of Tralee, has passed into the legendary of Kerry Town, where his song is so loved that a monument to him, and it, has been erected in the Town Park." Healey goes on to say that Mary "is said to have been a servant" in WPM's parents' house. They exiled him for loving her. He "wrote the song late in life when he was blind and lonely." (Of course, in 1845 or so he still had twenty more years to live, but never mind.)

Healey supposes that the "pure crystal fountain that stands in the beautiful vale of Tralee" is the River Lee, though a river is hardly a "fountain" and hardly describable as "standing," particularly when a local who knew what he was talking about could easily have written "flows" rather than "stands." It is even more euphonious.

Healey also credits WPM with the melody. He says that the familiar tune is "not the original," but he gives no presumed original.

Perhaps most fascinating is that after all that, the lyrics Healey gives are *precisely* those of E. Mordaunt Spencer, ending with the stanza about the truth in her eyes ever dawning.

Nothing about India, nobody lonesome tonight, no "chill hand of death."