Dear Skarpi,

Further to the information provided by ?"Master" McGrath, the air chosen by O'Casey for these verses is "Eamonn a Chnuic", or "Ned of the Hill", a song made by a Seventeeth-Century "ropari"/"raparee" Edmond Ryan, from Tipperary. He was one of those Gaelic gentlemen who took to the hills in order to resist the English occupation of their country, and is named "Edmund Knock Ryan" in one warrant for his arrest. "Knock" is an English phonetic approximation to the Irish "chnuic", a hill (hence "Ned of the Hill"). I've got a version in English of some of this song, as well as a nineteenth-century set of verses to the same air, if you're interested (I don't know if either is already in the Mudcat directory, but that would be easily checked).

mise le meas,

B.C.D.