Ballad anthologist Colm O Lochlainn included the song in "More Irish Street Ballads" (1965). He called it "Good Bye Mursheen Durkin."

O Lochlainn says, "I learnt the last verse in childhood, and 'invented' the other two, finding nothing else but a fragment 'And now to end my story, I'll marry Queen Victory.'"

O Lochlainn was born in 1892. The single verse he learned in childhood is now the usual chorus (though he has "Corney" (for Cornelius) rather than "Carney" or "Barney."

Evidently he never heard Murty Rabbett's recording, or had long forgotten it if he did. As I recall, it's essentially the same as "Molly Durkin" in the DT (from a Jerry Silverman book). In that one, the singer's name is "Cooney" and he's "off to Califooney." (That's also how I remember Rabbett singing it.) And the singer in the DT version promises to marry "Miss O'Kelly."

The Irish Rovers made additional changes, for example "Mrs." Durkin, and the line about "Queen Victory." I believe that the Rovers are mostly responsible for the song's popularity since the late '60s.