McGrath - not saying "lonesome" is an anachronism, just that "lonely" would be more likely.

If you;ll double-check, you'll see that what Dickens wrote was "You'll feel it lonesome to-night," not "*You'll* feel lonesome tonight."

In support of this, a search of Google Books, HathiTrust, and NewspaperArchive (millions and millions of words) reveals only *two* printed examples of the phrase "lonesome tonight" in the entire 19th century, the earliest only from 1878.

The more specific phrase, "I'm lonesome tonight for" seems to be untraceable before 1937! And all the examples are in popular songs!

I don't know what connection, if any, W. P. Mulchinock may have had with the "India" stanza of "The Rose of Tralee." All one can say is that, based on a vast amount of printed evidence (as well as the absence of evidence that, if it exists, should be there), the phrase "I'm lonesome tonight for the Rose of Tralee" looks like it belongs in a 20th or 21st century pop song far more than in a formal Anglo-Irish composition written before 1864.

Interestingly, there's one more text containing the "India" stanza in a somewhat different form. Unlike Vin Garbutt's version, it ends the song:

"In the far fields of India mid war's dreadful thunder,
Her voice was a solace and comfort to me.
But the chill hand of death has now rent us asunder;
I'm lonesome tonight for the Rose of Tralee."

This sounds quite Victorian. Except for "lonesome tonight." (I'm also made a little uncomfortable by the clumsiness of her "voice" being a solace, since she's 10,000 miles away; a Victorian versifier might be inept, but once again the oddity sounds more 20th century than 19th.)

The stanza appears in Kenneth W. Milano's _Hidden History of Kensington and Fishtown_ (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2010), p. 125. The only source he gives for his information about Mulchinock is the Rose of Tralee Festival. I'm not reassured by his statement that "the Irish have told [their own] story" about the song's authorship "for more than a century."

If they have, there should be some published record of it long before 1953. But I can't find any.

"The Irish Monthly" in 1889 mentioned Mulchinock as a writer of verse, but the song it mentioned was "Fill High To-night!" not "The Rose of Tralee."

The references I find to WMP's romance with "Mary O'Connor" seem to be entirely from popular tourism books - not the most reliable of historical sources. And for the mesmerizing power of local boosterism, consider the baseless, discredited, but nevertheless official claim, endorsed by a statue in Dublin, that "Cockles and Mussels" celebrates a genuine (and of course beautiful) 17th century fishmonger who died in 1699. Similarly, Mulchinock wrote verses and was born in Tralee. Voila!

(I will retract the "voila!" if persuasive evidence of Mulchinock's authorship ever appears.)