Here is what Patrick Weston Joyce himself said in 1872:

"I took this sportive pretty air from Joseph Martin in 1853; but I have since heard it sung in Dublin by Jane Murphy, to a song of which this is the only part I can remember:-

"'O, my darling girl I'll soon come back and surely marry you.'

"As I cannot produce the old song, perhaps the following jeu d'esprit of my own will answer as well."


Joyce spells the word "Leprehaun."