Q: The full reference is Michael Kilgarriff, 'Sing Us One of the Old Songs', OUP 1998. This is a monumental listing of popular songs published between 1860 and 1920 and is the first place to look for anything that has the slightest sniff of English music hall about it. There are several references in the index, but the key entry is on page 15.

The British Library catalogue shows Maclagan as the writer of half a dozen songs, but I don't think of him primarily as a songwriter. He was an importsant music hall performerof the 1860s. The publication date 1862 does seem to be the earliest yet located but doesn't, of course, settle the question beyond argument.