From Irish Peasant Songs in the English Language by Patrick Weston Joyce (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1906), page 2:

THE IRISH GIRL.

THIS beautiful air, and the accompanying words, I have known since my childhood; and both are now published for the first time.* I have copies of the song on broadsheets, varying a good deal, and much corrupted. The versions I give here of air and words are from my own memory, as sung by the old people of Limerick when I was a child; but I have thought it necessary to make some few restorations.

The "Red, red rose" is common in Irish peasant songs; and I have one song where it comes in exactly as in this verse of Burns—

"Oh, gin my love were yon red rose
That grows upon the castle wa';
And I mysel a drap o' dew
Into her bonnie breast to fa'!
Oh, there beyond expression blest,
I'd feast on beauty a' the night,
Seal'd on her silk-saft faulds to rest,
Till fley'd awa by Phoebus' light."

The corresponding verse of the Irish peasant song is (I write it from memory):—

I wish my love was yon red, red rose
That grows on the garden wall,
And I to be a drop of dew,
Among its leaves I'd fall—
'Tis in her sacred bosom
All night I'd sport and play,
And pass away the summer night
Until the break of day.

Burns took the idea, and partly the very words, from a Scotch peasant song—as was his custom—and with the magic touch of genius changed it to his own exquisite stanza.

These observations are merely preliminary to the following song:—"The Irish Girl."

1. As I walk'd out one evening
Down by a riverside,
While gazing all around me
An Irish girl I spied;
A rosy red was on her cheeks,
And coal-black was her hair;
And costly were the robes of gold
This Irish girl did wear.

2. The little shoes this maiden wore
Were of a Spanish brown;
The mantle, on her shoulders,
Of silk 'twas wrought all round.
Her modest face, her gentle ways,
Have left my heart in pain,
And I'd range this world all over
My Irish girl to gain.

3. I wish my love was a red, red rose,
To bloom in yon garden fair,
And I to be the gardener,
That rose would be my care.
I'd tend the pretty flowers all round—
Sweet-William, pink, and rue,
Primrose and thyme—but most of all,
Sweet rose, I'd cherish you.

4. I wish I was a butterfly,
I'd light on my love's breast;
I wish I was a nightingale,
To sing my love to rest;
I'd sing at morn, I'd sing at eve,
A love-song sweet and slow;
And year by year I will love my dear,
Let the wind blow high or low.

* More than half a century ago I gave this air to Dr. Petrie: and now I find—after printing the above—that it is included in the Stanford-Petrie collection of Irish Music recently published (No. 657): with my name acknowledged. But the words have never hitherto been published.