Listening to the words of Fill, Fill, a Run O as sung beautifully on Triona and Maighread Ni Dhomhnaill's current album, I was struck by the interesting use of a kind of emotional pun by the (19th-century? 18th-century?) songwriter.

For instance, the verb Fill - return - has its most common and familiar reference in most people's subconscious filing system in the seanfhocal "Filleann an feall ar an bhfeallaire" - the wrong returns on the wrongdoer, or more exactly, in the context of this song of a priest who has forsaken his religion and shamed his people by becoming a Protestant minister, the betrayal returns on the betrayer: feall means wrong, but more precisely, a betrayal.

Then there's the opening line, bitterly addressing the minister as "a hAthair Ui Domhnaill" - obviously any Irish-speaker would know that St Colmcille, the designer of the Book of Kells and the great local saint of Donegal, and especially the area from which the song comes, was an O'Donnell, and would of course have been "Athair Ui Domhnaill" himself.

And when I listened desultorily first I thought there was a reference to "Orangemen in their boots" - "Buachailli bui ina mbroga", only to realise that it was "buclai bui ina broga" - "yellow buckles on her shoes" as Neili (the priest's old mother, if I remember right) is "pulled down the road like a ghost" on her way to Mass.

In Connemara this is sung as "Shean tu Peadar is Pol" - you *refused* (St) Peter and Paul - though "shean" also has the implication of "betrayed"; the Donegal version more explicitly says "threigh tu Peadar is Pol".

Does anyone have the full history of the song, and is its writer remembered?