Interesting that Carrickfergus is featured in the US television series Boardwalk Empire (series 1, episode 5, "Nights in Ballygran") in a scene set in the 1920s, and again just this week in the BBC's Peaky Blinders, set in 1919. So a song unknown before 1960 is mysteriously making its way backwards in time. If we want to know its origins, all we have to do is wait until box-set TV drama takes us back to when Fineen MacCarthy composed it after the Battle of Callann or some such.