Matthew and Mick, thank you so much. This was a long shot and I didn't think there'd be a response to this lovely and obscure song.

However, I'm confused (or maybe I'm just having a dense day). The introduction to 'Songs of Erin', Alfred Perceval Graves and Charles Villiers Stanford (which you provide a link for, Matthew, thank you) says, "The fifty Irish songs which compose this book are are almost entirely drawn from the unpublished portion of the great Petrie Collection of the music of Ireland". This makes me think the songs are traditional. He goes to state that "Some of the Lyrics are adaptations from the early or medieval Gaelic, a few others are based on Hiberno-English folk songs, but the main body of them are original". So they aren't traditional? Is he saying that only the *tunes* are mostly from Petrie, rather than whole songs, and he added lyrics based on traditional words; or is he saying he took traditional songs and 'adapted' them to his own ends (in the manner of Burns)? (I have never seen the Petrie ms., so I don't know if it contains songs and tunes or just tunes.)

Sorry to be dim!