Thank you for your help, but I am still looking. I found the Yeats poem, but I think the reference to "Salley Garden" may have put some off track.

The song that I am referring to goes as follows:

Down in the willow garden, where me and my love did meet,
There we sat a-courtin'. My love dropped off to sleep.
I had a bottle of burgundy wine, which my true love did not know,
And there I poisoned that dear little girl, down on the banks below.

I drew a saber through her, which was a bloody knife.
I threw her in the river, which was a dreadful sight.
My father often told me that money would set me free,
If I would murder that dear little girl whose name was Rose Connelly.

Now he sits in his cabin high, wipin' his teary eye,
A-lookin' at his own dear son upon the scaffold high.
My race is run beneath the sun. The devil is waiting for me,
For I did murder that dear little girl whose name was Rose Connelly.

If anyone knows more about this story, or where and when it originated, I would be grateful for their comments.

Steve Latimer