And if no one has explained this (not sure), Dan O'Hara, once a big farmer, is now a broken man, widowed and orphaned of his children by the Famine of the 1840s/1850s, and now reduced to scratching a living by selling boxes of matches on the street, wheedling passers-by with the refrain: "O bright pulse of my heart, won't you buy a box from me, and you'll have the prayers of Dan from Connemara".

A terribly bitter song with a hauntingly sweet melody.