From Fiddler's Companion, I ran across the following:


ROSE CONNOLLY. AKA and see "Rosey Connolly," "The Fair at Dungarvan," "Alas, My Bright Lady," "Lament for Kilcash," "Nelly, My Love, and Me," "There is a Beech‑tree Grove," "Were You Ever in Sweet Tipperary?" Irish, Air (6/8 time). E Major. Standard tuning. One part. The tune was noted by the Irish collector Edward Bunting from an unknown source in Coleraine in 1811.

***

All you young men and Maidens I pray you take warning by me,

And never court your true love anunder a Hozier Tree.

The devil and his temptations it was that came over me,

And I murdered my Rosey Connolly anunder a Hozier Tree.

***

O'Sullivan notes that "ozier," a form of willow, is meant for "Hozier" in the lyric. Actually, the term referring to willows is osier (Janie's note.)

***

Joel Shimberg points out that the American old-time duo Grayson and Whitter recorded a song called "Down In The Willow Garden" in the 78 RPM era, a reworking of the "Rose Connolly" theme. However, John Moulden says that "Down in the Willow Garden" was not very widespread in pre-Ralph Peer (the seminal 78 RPM recording engineer of the 1920's) Appalachia. It goes:

***

Down in the willow garden, where me and my love did meet,

It's there we sat a-courting, my love dropped off to sleep.

I had a bottle of burgundy wine, which my true love did not know,

And there I murdered that dear little girl, down under the banks below.

***

I stabbed her with my dagger, which was a bloody knife,

Threw her into the river, with was a dreadful sight.

My father often had told me that money would set me free,

If I would murder that dear little girl, whose name was Rose Connolly.

***

Now he sits in his own cabin door, a-wiping his tear-dimmed eyes.

Watching as his only son climbs up the scaffold high.

My race is run beneath the sun, and hell now waits for me,

because I murdered that dear little girl, whose name was Rose Connolly.

***

The "Down in the Willow" tune made its way into bluegrass repertoire from the Grayson/Whitter recording. O'Sullivan/Bunting, 1983; No. 14, pg. 21.

It is not clear to me from the Fiddler Companion if the tune for Rose Connolly for which notation is provided is the same tune as "Down in the Willow Garden."