I'm interested to see the queries on this page about who wrote this song and when...it must be pretty old as I know my great grandfather Robert Ferguson loved this song and he was born in 1845 at Ballybriest on the banks of Lough Fea, at the base of Slieve Gallion, in County Tyrone.   As a young man he travelled to New Zealand and the USA for work before returning to the same area in 1881 and raising 11 kids on a 'parcel of land' in Letteran Road, Tullynure in the Parish of Lissan on the lower slopes of Sleive Gallion, before coming to N.Z. in 1913.   

He & his children always pined for Ireland and their friends & family that were left behind. So great was their sadness that they wrote poems about the land of their birth including a poem Robert wrote in his dottage (He died in 1939 aged 95) about the Lough Fea & the area around Slieve Gallion which he set to the tune of Slieve Gallion Brae.   

When Robert & his family left Ireland in 1913 accompanying them on the ship was the young son of their neighbour, James McGarvey, years later this James's son married old Robert's granddaughter (interestingly named Fea after Lough Fea),

Today, realising that a song that was close to my great grandfathers heart 70 years ago has been recorded brings tears to my eyes as the tales of his home mountain, Lissan and Ireland have continued to be passed down to Robert's decendants on the far side of the globe!