Hi Steve,
The Irish version first appeared in the Dublin Comic Songster,by John Duffy 1845. It was written by Dublin singer James Kearney and re-appears in the Henry Collection as mentioned above. The only difference being Kearney uses the line "Be the Powers of delph" whereas the version in Henry changes this to "The powers of Guelph". The song is about the Opium War 1835. However, Kearney or someone else re-wrote it about the Crimean War, and this is the version you mention above found in The Poet's Box. We thus have 2 songs with the same title and the same opening line, which is a challenge to our search engines!